纪念国家语法日 (In Honor of National Grammar Day)

…或作为语言的代码的喜悦和痛苦 (…or The Joy and Pain of Code as Language)

When I’m not coding, reading about coding, or solving coding problems, I’m a managing editor for a business technology-related educator in the Pacific Northwest. As such, I spend at least eight hours a day in that place where art and science crash headlong into each other, playing word doctor to the resulting casualties. Believe me, there are many. Fortunately, it seems I’m one of those who can cross the right brain/left brain divide without too much effort (though I confess to greatly preferring the right brain functions), so I’m comfortable hanging out in the middle space between them.

当我不编码，阅读编码或解决编码问题时，我是西北太平洋地区与业务技术相关的教育家的执行编辑。因此，我每天至少要在艺术和科学相撞的地方度过八个小时，在这个词打招呼中招致死伤。相信我，有很多。幸运的是，我似乎是无需过多努力即可穿越右脑/左脑鸿沟的人之一(尽管我承认非常喜欢右脑功能)，所以我很愿意在它们之间的中间空间闲逛。

That also means that I spend at least eight hours a day thinking about language. Language and clarity. Clarity and efficiency. Efficiency and effectiveness. Effectiveness and … you get the point.

这也意味着我每天至少要花8个小时来思考语言。语言和清晰度。清晰度和效率。效率和有效性。有效性和……您明白了这一点。

All this thinking has led me to conceive of the word “language” very broadly. For example, several years working in educational publishing taught me the linguistic qualities of mathematics — the grammar of how problems are written, the specific vocabulary used, and how many mathematical properties can actually be interpreted as simply finding synonyms for different “words.”

所有这些想法使我对“语言”一词的理解非常广泛。例如，在教育出版领域工作了几年，就教会了我数学的语言特质-问题写法，所使用的特定词汇以及实际上可以解释为简单地找到不同“单词”同义词的多少数学属性的语法。

达到重点... (Getting to the point …)

Some time ago, in an online forum for self-taught coders, someone asked a question about why learning the basics (which we can generally take to be HTML, CSS, and JavaScript) is so difficult; or rather, why it’s so difficult for some, but not for others. I replied that we’re basically trying to learn three foreign languages all at the same time. Not only that, but three foreign languages that use similar, but not quite the same, vocabularies. I thought it would be far stranger if it wasn’t as difficult as it is.

前一段时间，在一个面向自学成才的程序员的在线论坛上，有人问一个问题，为什么学习基础知识(我们通常可以将其理解为HTML，CSS和JavaScript)如此困难？或更确切地说，为什么对某些人如此困难，而对其他人却如此。我回答说，我们基本上是在尝试同时学习三种外语。不仅如此，还有三种使用相似但不完全相同的词汇的外语。我以为，如果不像现在那么困难的话，那将是陌生的事情。

So what difference does that make? We already knew that we were learning languages, right? I mean, it’s right there in the name — programming languages. For the coders who don’t struggle, it doesn’t make much difference, if any at all. But for those who feel like they’re “never going to get it,” that their brains “just aren’t wired that way,” and that they’re “not cut out for coding,” it could make all the difference in the world. So the rest of this article is written for them.

那有什么区别呢？我们已经知道我们正在学习语言，对吗？我的意思是，它就在这里-编程语言。对于不苦苦挣扎的编码人员来说，这根本没有什么不同，即使有的话。但是对于那些觉得自己“永远都不会得到它”，大脑“只是没有那样连接”以及“没有为编码而掏腰包”的人来说，这可能会有所作为世界。因此，本文的其余部分是为他们编写的。

学习再说一遍 (Learning to Speak All Over Again)

Let’s start with a simple question — when was the last time you learned a new language? For many Americans, that was grade school, when they took a few years of Spanish, or German, or what have you. For some people, though, that would have been about the same time they learned to walk. No joke. If you weren’t forced to learn a foreign language at some point since then, the last time you learned a foreign language — before you started coding — was when you learned your native tongue.

让我们从一个简单的问题开始-您最后一次学习一种新语言是什么时候？对于许多美国人来说，那是小学，当时他们花了几年的西班牙语，德语或其他知识。但是，对于某些人来说，这大约是他们学会走路的同时 。不是开玩笑。如果从那时起您没有被迫学习外语，那么上一次学习外语(在您开始编码之前)就是学习母语的时候。

Think about that for a minute. Most people say their first word at between 10 and 15 months. They don’t get a firm grasp on spelling and grammar until between 8 and 10 years old. Those that truly master the language usually only do so after several years of college.

考虑一下。大多数人在10到15个月之间说出他们的第一个单词。直到8到10岁之间，他们才对拼写和语法掌握得很牢。那些真正掌握该语言的人通常只有在大学几年后才能这样做。

You expect to master JavaScript in four months. As well as HTML5 and CSS3.

您希望在四个月内掌握JavaScript。以及HTML5和CSS3。

[Insert skeptical expression here]

[ 在此处插入怀疑的表情 ]

So yeah, what you’re trying to do is hard.

是的，您要尝试做的事很难。

(热爱语言的一个侧面论点) ((A Side Argument for the Love of Language))

I hate to be one of those guys, because I think it’s somewhat out of step with the self-taught coder ethos, but why is also very important. Why are you learning to code? Not too many people learn to speak so they can get a job. In fact, everyone starts out learning to speak because they need to communicate something and have found that language is much more effective than crying at the top of their lungs until someone figures it out.

我不愿意成为这些人中的一员，因为我认为这与自学成才的编码人员精神有些失落，但是为什么这也很重要。为什么要学习编码？没有太多的人学习说话，以便他们能找到一份工作。实际上，每个人都开始学习说话，因为他们需要交流一些东西，并且发现语言要比在别人弄清楚之前大声哭泣要有效得多。

In the same way, I often suspect that the people who struggle most with learning to code are the ones that don’t have anything they want to communicate. Their reason for learning the language is much more pragmatic. There’s nothing wrong with pragmatism. I think the world needs more of that, actually. It’s just harder to learn things if there isn’t a passion or some sort of more intrinsic motivation for the learning. That’s why I did really well at calculus, but not very well at basic algebra — I was way more enthusiastic about calculus. I didn’t need to be forced to learn its grammar and vocabulary and punctuation. I wanted to know how to answer the questions that only calculus could answer.

同样，我经常怀疑那些在学习编码方面最挣扎的人是没有想要交流的人。他们学习语言的理由更加务实。实用主义没有错。我认为世界实际上需要更多。如果没有激情或某种内在的学习动机，那么学习东西就会更加困难。这就是为什么我在微积分方面确实表现出色，但在基本代数方面却表现不佳的原因-我对微积分更加热情。我不需要被迫学习其语法，词汇和标点符号。我想知道如何回答只有微积分才能回答的问题。

关于工具的最后一件事 (One Last Thing About Tools)

As I’ve been learning, I’ve seen bazillions of questions about frameworks and libraries and text editors and just about everything related to coding that isn’t actual code. It’s the same thing I saw with photography when I was moderating an online critique group— beginners who feel too insecure to participate in conversations about the substance of a thing instead choosing to talk about tools and rules. I totally get it. The problem is that it can often be a distraction from the real matter at hand, because just like the real test of a camera is the photograph that results from the photographer using it, the real test of a framework or library or text editor is the code that the coder produces with it.

在学习的过程中，我已经看到了无数有关框架，库和文本编辑器以及与编码相关的，不是实际代码的问题。当我主持一个在线评论小组时，这与我在摄影中看到的是一样的。初学者觉得自己不太安全，无法参加关于事物实质的对话，而选择谈论工具和规则。我完全明白。问题在于，这常常会分散眼前的真实事物的注意力，因为就像相机的真实测试就是摄影师使用它所产生的照片一样，框架，库或文本编辑器的真实测试就是编码器随其产生的代码。

As I’ve been learning, I’ve been trying out some of the different frameworks, libraries, and tools out there. With environments like and , it’s effortless to road test something new. The ones that I’ve taken to the most are the ones that simplify the grammar of coding rather than the ones that tend to the book itself.

在学习的过程中，我一直在尝试一些不同的框架，库和工具。使用和之类的环境，可以轻松地进行新的测试。我最喜欢的是那些简化了编码语法的代码，而不是那些倾向于本书本身的代码。

I’ve come to think that one of the things that makes coding so hard is that some languages like HTML are about 75% grammar and punctuation and only 25% meaningful vocabulary. For example, here’s a line of HTML from one of my :

我开始认为，使编码如此困难的原因之一是，某些语言(例如HTML)的语法和标点符号约为75％，而有意义的词汇仅为25％。例如，这是我的之一HTML ：

And here’s the same line written in Jade:

这是用Jade编写的同一行：

button.Adjust.add(type=’button’) i.fa.fa-fw.fa-arrow-circle-up

button.Adjust.add(type ='button')i.fa.fa-fw.fa-arrow-circle-up

Naturally, I love the Jade version. It’s clear, concise, efficient, and effective. It makes the word doctor in me smile at its simplicity.

自然，我喜欢Jade版本。清晰，简洁，有效和有效。它使我里面的医生一词对它的简单性微笑。

Things like NPM, on the other hand, drive me crazy. They’re basically just like having an editorial assistant whose only job is running around collecting your dictionaries every time you sit down to write something — even when you don’t actually need them. Sure he’s useful, but he’s a total distraction when he gets all amped up on Red Bull and starts breaking things.

另一方面，像NPM这样的事情使我发疯。它们基本上就像有一个编辑助理，每次您坐下来写东西时，唯一的工作就是收集字典，即使您实际上并不需要它们。当然，他很有用，但是当他全神贯注于Red Bull并开始打破常规时，他完全会分心。

There are times when the editorial assistant comes with the job and you can’t fire him because he’s the president’s nephew. So be it. You work with him as best you can and try not to shove him out a 12th-story window. But you sure as hell don’t go hiring your own if you don’t have to.

有时候，编辑助理会提供这份工作，您不能解雇他，因为他是总统的侄子。就这样吧。您将尽力与他合作，并尽量不要将他推到12层高的窗户之外。但是您确定，如果不需要，不要去雇用自己的人。

Of course, these are all the opinions of a maybe-intermediate level, self-taught code monkey whose interest in coding is much more passion project than ambitious career path, so take everything I’ve said with a healthy dose of “does that fit with my experience?”

当然，这些都是中级水平，自学成才的代码猴子的观点，他们对代码的兴趣比野心勃勃的职业道路更能激发激情，因此，请以健康的态度接受我所说的一切以我的经验？”

As the Buddha said, “Rely not on theory, but on experience.”

如佛陀所说：“不是依靠理论，而是依靠经验。”

(This essay began as a discussion in the Facebook group. If you’re a self-teaching coder, it’s an excellent resource.)

(本文是在 Facebook小组中的讨论开始的。如果您是一个自学的编码人员，那么这是一个很好的资源。)