Coding isn’t intuitive

Read a blog post about code smells recently and it had some pretty good information in there. You can read it here. It did have one line that was deeply troubling for me.

Refactoring is so basic that if you need a book to learn it you shouldn’t be a programmer

This is just appalling comment from a very well respected programmer. Refactoring is not intuitive. Its not something our forebears had to deal with that is passed down in our genes. It has to be learnt. Sure some people may be able to pick it up faster than others but to say that you shouldn’t be a programmer if you don’t already know it is just so wrong.

We already have an elitist culture, no need to perpetuate it.