I just re-read Mr. Atwood's post, and I'm not sure that's what I get out of it. He talks about people learning to code to do it for a living, not just doing it as a hobby/learning experience. Though he starts by saying code is just one skill among many, his arguments centers around people doing as a career ("we don't need more bad programmers" and "programmers should be writing less code").
I suspect that really, Jeff and Zed might actually agree that people should be free to tinker, and resources should be available for them to learn to tinker (see Jeff's plumbing analogy--would the Jeff Atwood of plumbing tell me not to learn how to fix my leaky faucet because there are already enough bad plumbers in the world?).
Certainly, some people learn to code for the wrong reasons, and they see every problem as a program to be written. But hey, if they want to do that in their basement (or even as part of their job), let them--we've all had to learn one way or another that the world doesn't work that way.
I suspect that really, Jeff and Zed might actually agree that people should be free to tinker, and resources should be available for them to learn to tinker (see Jeff's plumbing analogy--would the Jeff Atwood of plumbing tell me not to learn how to fix my leaky faucet because there are already enough bad plumbers in the world?).
Certainly, some people learn to code for the wrong reasons, and they see every problem as a program to be written. But hey, if they want to do that in their basement (or even as part of their job), let them--we've all had to learn one way or another that the world doesn't work that way.