> If you are in high school or college, I would highly recommend using free/cheap online resources to get comfortable with programming languages and concepts, and then take some Computer Science courses to learn fundamentals and formalize your knowledge
However
> For all of the hardcore Web 1.0 programmers who say “Don’t Learn to Code”[...]
I'll leave aside the weird "Web 1.0" "hardcore" qualifiers (seriously, what's up with that?), but note that it links to Norvig's "Teach yourself programming in 10 years" piece. Why, may I ask? Is Norvig discouraging the reader from attempting to become a programmer? Of course not. All he's saying is that if you want to get good at it, you have to put in lots of effort for a long time. That's how you get good at anything. I mean, take the guitar for example. Nobody's going to question that it takes daily hours of practice, sweat and blood (literally, you'll bleed from your fingers) to become a guitarist. So why does programming have to be any different?
Then I found the notion of Java and C++ being "hardcore" to be quite odd. Is manifest typing considered hardcore these days? C++ is complex, but Java is the definitive dull enterprise language.
I purposely presented a narrow path so that readers are not overwhelmed by options. It's hard to know where to start with no guidance, so I directed beginners to the easiest entry point. When I tried taking a class in C++ it was intimidating to start with something so opaque.
I eliminated "hardcore" haha clearly the word didn't go over well.
