{"id":15741,"date":"2024-08-31T15:37:37","date_gmt":"2024-08-31T13:37:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2024\/08\/31\/i-learned-the-language-of-computer-programming-in-my-50s-heres-what-i-discovered\/"},"modified":"2024-08-31T15:37:37","modified_gmt":"2024-08-31T13:37:37","slug":"i-learned-the-language-of-computer-programming-in-my-50s-heres-what-i-discovered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2024\/08\/31\/i-learned-the-language-of-computer-programming-in-my-50s-heres-what-i-discovered\/","title":{"rendered":"I learned the language of computer programming in my 50s \u2013 here\u2019s what I discovered"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A writer with no technical background recounts his incredible journey into the realm of coding and the invaluable lesson it taught him about the modern world<\/p>\n<p>One day in 2017 I had a realisation that seems obvious now but had the power to shock back then: almost everything I did was being mediated by computer code. And as the trickle of code into my world became a flood, that world seemed to be getting not better but worse in approximate proportion. I began to wonder why.<\/p>\n<p>Two possibilities sprang immediately to mind. One was the people who wrote the code \u2013 coders \u2013 long depicted in pop culture as a clan of vaguely comic, Tolkien-worshipping misfits. Another was the uber-capitalist system within which many worked, exemplified by the profoundly weird Silicon Valley. Were one or both using code to recast the human environment as something more amenable to them?<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/article\/2024\/aug\/31\/learning-computer-programming-language-coding-devil-stack-andrew-smith\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><br \/>\n<img src=\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/d059b58efe8ce50d15639f76448becdeec69bc9b\/0_184_7200_4320\/master\/7200.jpg?width=140&amp;quality=85&amp;auto=format&amp;fit=max&amp;s=0d19f32145e3b7b8871cc047f9683393\" title=\"I learned the language of computer programming in my 50s \u2013 here\u2019s what I discovered\" \/>A writer with no technical background recounts his incredible journey into the realm of coding and the invaluable lesson it taught him about the modern world<br \/>\nOne day in 2017 I had a realisation that seems obvious now but had the power to shock back then: almost everything I did was being mediated by computer code. And as the trickle of code into my world became a flood, that world seemed to be getting not better but worse in approximate proportion. I began to wonder why.<br \/>\nTwo possibilities sprang immediately to mind. One was the people who wrote the code \u2013 coders \u2013 long depicted in pop culture as a clan of vaguely comic, Tolkien-worshipping misfits. Another was the uber-capitalist system within which many worked, exemplified by the profoundly weird Silicon Valley. Were one or both using code to recast the human environment as something more amenable to them? Continue reading&#8230;Technology | The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A writer with no technical background recounts his incredible journey into the realm of coding and the invaluable lesson it taught him about the modern world One day in 2017 I had a realisation that seems obvious now but had the power to shock back then: almost everything I did was being mediated by computer &hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"> <a class=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2024\/08\/31\/i-learned-the-language-of-computer-programming-in-my-50s-heres-what-i-discovered\/\"> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">I learned the language of computer programming in my 50s \u2013 here\u2019s what I discovered<\/span> Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":15742,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15741"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15741\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}