Alex Gay (7/10/2013)
Whilst it is true that there are dabblers, and that devices are getting easier to use, knowledge of basic programming techniques would be a great advantage.My phone/camera software downloads photos into a great big heap in my Pictures folder, to organise them in to folders by date I either have to move a lot of files manually, or I can write a script to organise them how I want. What I use to do this is a matter of personal choice, but probably Python if at home and VBScript or Powershell if at work.
If this is something I am having to do, and I can quickly whip up a script to do this, then it is also a problem for a lot of people who don't have this skill and will get very frustrated when they have to spend hours sorting out their photo collection.
Programming may be a specialist skill set, but the pattern required to move files based on a couple of loops can't be that difficult to learn, can it?
You expect people to learn a scripting language? Even Python, as elegant and simple as it is, is far too complex for the kind of task you're talking about.
I've tried to teach non-programmers how to program, and it's next to impossible. They can do "recipes" and that's about it. Loops, conditionals, etc, provoke a response of TL;DR. 🙂
And that's not going to change, any more than introducing children to algebra makes them mathematicians. Or historians. Or geologists. The problem is not only is there an enormous amount to remember, syntax wise, there's a lot of grammer rules as well--it's very much like learning a foreign language. People can do it--but only if they REALLY need to.
Even casual coding at the level you're talking about isn't something people want to devote the brain power to. Because it's alien, and not necessary for them to. That's what *pizza* and having a "computer friend" are all about. :hehe: