Let's reverse this problem: we go back and try to send a manned mission to Moon.
This implies a huge amount of vertical engineering and research. But instead of saying that the government is going to pay for the project upfront - we say that all of these scientists and engineers are going to be paid after the mission had been completed.
How many of them would be motivated enough to go through the whole vertically-planned project themselves; even if the project is itself quite inspiring?
Same with software - I don't think that starting on the highest levels of abstraction is "not to get bored really quickly". It's the case where you can quickly try and see what programming is without spending another 5 years trying to understand every possible intricacy of a modern computer. Call it "time resource risk management".
More importantly, most of the time if you're young but are already employed - you're being told what exactly you should do anyway.
The big question is why is this person trying to learn programming. Is it because they hope to spend the next 20-30 years of their career as a professional programmer or is it because they have some problems in their chosen field of study that they hope that knowing a bit of programming will help to solve.
dagw, true. That's exactly the path I had taken - but I had enough experience as a pure hobby to begin with to know exactly what I was choosing.
For example - I ended up in a deep learning department just a few months before it became a thing in the media. I knew it was beneficial for me due to a huge amount of statistics involved, even if I would later not get a job doing this. But if I did not know it - I would probably have taken another subject as it appeared too theoretical and didn't seem to be in any way truly relevant today (and there were alternatives as theoretical and as good).
How many students had any idea which subjects to pick for a study in such a pragmatic way? I was not aware how lucky I was at the time, but later on I realised that I actually were.
It's great to say something along the lines of "just study for 5 years and it's probably going to be good for you, since education is generally good". But then you start meeting people with Ph.Ds from mediocre universities who had spent a good chunk of their lives on something that landed them a mediocre job and that's where I believe the problem with modern system lays.
Smart dedicated people will probably find they way anyway. What about somebody who isn't an architect but who could become a great builder solely because he's not so interested in the industry on a higher level, but is capable given the circumstances?
This implies a huge amount of vertical engineering and research. But instead of saying that the government is going to pay for the project upfront - we say that all of these scientists and engineers are going to be paid after the mission had been completed.
How many of them would be motivated enough to go through the whole vertically-planned project themselves; even if the project is itself quite inspiring?
Same with software - I don't think that starting on the highest levels of abstraction is "not to get bored really quickly". It's the case where you can quickly try and see what programming is without spending another 5 years trying to understand every possible intricacy of a modern computer. Call it "time resource risk management".
More importantly, most of the time if you're young but are already employed - you're being told what exactly you should do anyway.