I feel that I can be more creative when programming than when playing Go.

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Stay out of my territory! (W. White, aka Heisenberg)

It does not mean that at all.
Personally, I put priority on my fimily and my future, and programming is the means I chose to secure that future. Other people might have chosen different paths, its cool. But I seriously don't see how a mature and responsible person can have much different priorities.

Go is just a game, and for pretty much all of us here - its only a hobby, something we enjoy and do in our spare time. Chances are none of us here will ever support ourselves from Go, and we will certainly not put our kids through college with Go. It will not help you buy a house or fix your car so you can get to work on time. It will not pay your medical bills whe you get sick. Stuff like that...

You know... come to think about it, I am not really sure why I am defending this particular point... if you really think that playing Go in your life should take precedence over taking care of your family, it is really not my problem. You're a big boy, do what you want. But you won't be able to change my opinion, so this conversation is moot.

Just cross out this particular sentence from my original post and we take it from there.
What else you got?

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

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Converting the book Shape UP! by Charles Matthews/Seong-June Kim
to the gobook format. last updated april 2015 - Index of shapes, p.211 / 216

I just started to learn programming and just want to hear some perspectives particularly from Go players who are also programmer. Maybe the better question would be "Do dan Go player have easier time learn programming and progress faster than lower level Go player, or what?" or maybe I should stop asking these questions and go do my Hello world (When will I be able to make anything meaningful??)

I'm programming for more then 25 years
That doesn't help me that much to improve at go...

I started programming at 13yo (on my beloved commodore C64) and started to learn go at 41... That makes quite a difference....

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Converting the book Shape UP! by Charles Matthews/Seong-June Kim
to the gobook format. last updated april 2015 - Index of shapes, p.211 / 216

When did I say that? If you aren't going to discuss what I actually write, then I agree, this conversation is moot.

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be immersed

I am about equally skilled at both, I think. I started learning both at about the same age, and am probably better at both than some 95% of my peers. You can become 1d at go within a year, if you start young, have some talent and spend a significant amount of time on it. To become equally competent at programming (1d is about top 10%, I think) takes far more time, because it is a much much wider field of knowledge (Perhaps if you focus on a very narrow field of programming, and spend all your time only on that field, you could be a top 10% programmer within that narrow field within a year).

This discussion seems to have twisted the OP, which explicitly allows for people that are not professional programmers. For me both programming and Go have both been hobbies. I started Go in the 70's when I picked up my first Go book and I started programming in the 80's when I bought my first PC. Both have provided a great deal of pleasure and soaked up a great deal of time at different points in my life. Neither was what put bread on the table. Which is more difficult to be competent in? Beats me. Ask me again if I ever reach that point in either.

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Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21

I don't know about your skill at programming, but to say that you are not competent at go is nonsense. Competence does not imply perfection. You're among the best 5% of players, how much more competent can you get?

In October of this year I will hit the tenth anniversary of joining my amateur groups in Tokyo. It means that I will have met and studied with a short list of typical Japanese pros four times a month for 120 months. I have had a lot of fun but have always done it as a hobbyist. None of my teachers have been title contenders in their careers. Nevertheless they all have a hard-edged competence that is completely different than whatever skills I possess. I have an outsider's understanding of the study and competitive process that went into making/selecting them pros. I have also been privileged (IMHO) to discuss many different games, problems, ideas, etc. with them. There simply IS a difference between us. I do not expect to ever cross that still vast chasm.

Similarly in programming. My background is accounting and my career was in banking and insurance. I have worked together with any number of professional programmers. That has included quite a few relative 'beginners'. It is the nature of the business world. However, they all had a background knowledge/competence that was different from anything that I had managed as a hobbyist. Although I might understand the business situation better and even such things as the data requirements, there was a line over which I could never really cross in any IT project. There was a point where someone 'competent' had to actually sit down and write code, professional code. The people who did that were simply different than wannabes like me.

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Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21

In Go, fewer than 1 out of every 10,000 players make professional. In programming, the majority are paid every month to write "professional code". Much of that code could be vastly improved by more highly skilled programmers, but it gets the job done. Much of our modern society runs on mediocre quality code that "gets the job done".

I simply don't think it is fair to say that you need to be among the 0.01% best to be considered competent. You could competently teach a group of SDKs and they would learn a lot and be happy with their progress. Many an SDK could teach beginners and do so competently. IMO the word "competent" has a commonly understood meaning in English, and that meaning is not "having spent your entire life on learning it and being among the very very best in your field".

"Competent" is a relative term as I see it. Using the example already given, you could competently teach SDKs go. You could not competently teach pros go.

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be immersed

Competent is relative to the task at hand. When that task is "teaching professionals go", then the group of competent people is quite small indeed. But when the task is simply "go" (i.e. to play the game). then IMO anyone who can start, play, finish and score a game is competent, and your average 20 kyu qualifies.

The dictionary gives "having the necessary ability, knowledge, or skill to do something successfully", which is right along what I understand the term to be. I would say: "I'm a competent driver, even though I'm not a racecar driver." or "I'm a competent cook, even though I'm not a professional chef".

The dictionary also gives "acceptable and satisfactory, though not outstanding", so by that definition it would actually be a bit of an insult to call a professional "competent" at go.

I'd say no. They both to some extent rely on the same mental capabilities - piling up shapes from the bottom and strategies from the top, meeting in the middle to make an emergent thing - but that's talking about capability, not the applicability of one thing to another.

Being a dan-level programmer sure doesn't feel like it's helped me become any kind of Go player



Maybe. But I'd also say that Hello World is meaningful, if you think about what it's really doing.

Enjoy learning to program, it can be a long and winding road but just walking it is worthwhile and interesting!

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Confucius in the Analects says "even playing go is better than eating chips in front of tv all day." -- kivi

I'm no longer a programmer, but I used to be, and I used to be fairly competent, too. I've never been much of a go player.

Knowing one doesn't help you to master the other.

It's quite impossible to compare the effort needed to master go vs. programming. Compared to programming go is a very limited domain, yet I guess you can infinitely become better and master more finesses. It also evolves quite slowly (new joseki/fuseki/tesuji/whatever are developed, but the pace is very slow compared to programming. Programming is virtually unlimited domain, but you can master a single "variation" (almost) perfectly. However, programming evolves really fast, there is always a new language, design pattern, architectural style, API, framework, platform, version or something you can learn. Naturally you can derive a lot from what you have previously learned, but usually there is a whole bunch of things that are completely new to you.

In short:
Go = limited domain, infinitely complex/not possible to master completely, evolves slowly
Programming = (virtually) unlimited domain, limited complexity/possible to master a limited subdomain completely, evolves really fast

A closing remark: it is very hard to say where programming "ends" and software engineering "begins" - just being able to program (in the strictest sense) and not knowing other aspects of software engineering is really a useless skill.

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Offending ad removed

I have a different viewpoint of the word, but I suppose I am okay with that.

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be immersed

Programming is super easy. I wrote a few video games back in the day.

Go seems way harder.

My two cents.

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Maybe time and commitment priority difference?
How did you approach studying Programming vs Go?
To me, Go has structure learning and improvement, and the only you have to do is put time consistently moving forward. Programming on the the other hand, I am overwhelmed so far.

Make a clock, phonebook, calculator, word editor, calendar, random number generator, encrypter...

Just sit down, come up with an idea for a simple program and see if you can make it.

That way you can practice what you learn.

And then maybe a video game. So much fun to make :-)

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I guess go is a competitive sport and programming is a problem-solving technique. I wonder whether rugby or calculus is harder? Different, certainly. I think calculus is more intricate, creative and deep, but you don't want to pick me for your rugby team.

Perhaps go vs code golf?

Agile programming vs tsumego?


PS: I think someone used the word 'infinite[ly]' and 'go' which I don't think strictly match.

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Revisiting Go - Study Journal
My Programming Blog - About the evolution of my go bot.