I have learned a lot of programming languages and techniques over the last 40 years or so, but it’s become almost impossible to learn how to make things with computers, no matter how much you already know, unless you spend all your time doing so. Some of the reasons why:

- Documentation doesn’t exist; it’s auto-generated from code and meaningless.

- Books got replaced by the internet, and Github/Stack Overflow are mostly Reddit arguments

- Platforms/APIs/environments change at internet speed, and you can’t keep your code working for long

One reason I love making Atari 2600 games so much is because nothing has changed since 1977.

The comparison case for success in broad-based programming practice shouldn’t be something like Python, but Microsoft VisualBasic, a well-documented, slow-moving system that allowed millions of mostly part-time programmers to make useful software that worked over time.