This guy is toxic, you guys should stop feeding the troll 
I used to think that, but because of studying Grammar Points by JLPT levels, I start to feel that it can be more complex than English… One of the main reasons is Conjugation.
Proof? There are Lv60’s who cannot properly read and listen to Japanese. They have to take time to study grammar.
Computer languages are practical languages, and learning to do something practical isn’t that hard.
Likewise, learning to speak a random Japanese sentence isn’t that hard – like ありがとうございました〜
However, speaking the same language as native speakers is a different story. (I mean speaking smoothly in the same topic.) Likewise, writing a code like a professional programmer is hard; still, it may be on the same difficulty level as Synthetic languages, which is supposedly easier than a Natural language.
About listening and reading, both Japanese and computer languages are somewhat difficult.
So, I do think human languages and computer languages are quite similar, the latter being a little easier – but not so easy.
And the difficulty goes from:
Random babbling → Listening/Reading → Speaking/Writing like a native.
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computer language is more like an instruction set ／ command and executed by machine～
comparing with natural human language is not fair comparison ԅ(¯﹃¯ԅ)
unless we became robot～
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As a programmer I’m sure you’re all about efficiency. You could be using the limited time you’re wasting with silly arguments here on actually learning Japanese. Efficiency!
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I can’t tell if we’re being trolled or not. Fun read though.
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Well sorry my English was bad. I was refering “this post” to OP’s post 
Because when you get to Japan and have the common kanji readings in your back pocket to either look up or ask people about new words, you’re going to be super thankful Wanikani taught you them. Also because they help you memorize new words faster. It might surprise you to learn that acquiring common readings is actually vastly more efficient for vocabulary acquisition in the long run.
If Wanikani gave you every word in the language and there were no patterns to them, sure, it might make sense to skip over individual kanji readings. But it doesn’t, it can’t, and it’s preparing you to acquire more vocabulary on your own.
Source: Currently living this experience.
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Thanks for the catch! Completely messed that one up! 
Thankfully my point still stood despite the typo. xD
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As others have said, if you want to be remotely close to fluent, you need to learn the different pronunciations - they are not a waste of time, they are in fact essential. It’s the law of first principles, which as a computer programmer etc, you really should already understand.
Could you imagine learning Arabic for example, without learning the alphabet? Very inefficient. That goes for pretty much any language. As a programmer you should be all about efficiency.
This has been an interesting discussion on language learning. It’surprising to come across a learner who wants to skip an integral part of a non-native language. On a language learning site. My own followup question would then be, if someone were to ask you what parts of your own native language they could skip learning, how would you respond? The alphabet? Then, if this person were to hear a word they didn’t know, how are they supposed to look it up?
Clearly many people learn through memorizing vocabulary lists, and I guess you could try to memorize Japanese sentence structures, but really this would be a waste of your time, no? You want to treat yourself like a computer I think, but even Google Translate spits out some wacky answers sometimes. You can’t deal with the complexities and nuances of language through memorization. If you’re looking at just the most simple modes of communication, then by all means just memorize, but skipping building blocks won’t help you linguistically in the long run.
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Don’t feed the troll
So, I know that this has been hit quite thoroughly, but I’d like to give the standpoint of a fellow software developer. I’ve been studying Japanese (inefficiently) off and on since junior high, so for the better part of 17 years. Recently as an adult, I decided to take it more seriously. This will be my 4th year taking a JLPT test (N3 redux as I failed last year). I’m noticing that a big part of my problem is higher level jukugo (compound kanji), because I focused on learning kun’yomi and easier vocab readings. Obviously, I’m very new to WaniKani and I’m already finding it incredibly helpful, even for kanji I’m familiar with.
Contrastly, I went to college for computer science and math, and I’m decently confident in my competency as a programmer. While it’s important to know the fundamentals and have a lot of tools at your disposal, programming today is far easier than it was because you have access to the Internet as you go. Surprisingy, good Google-Fu can get you pretty far into an issue that would have otherwise taken you much longer to solve. Stack Overflow is magic, because chances are someone else has had your issue. It’s all about practicality, as was mentioned before.
Everyone has their strengths, but human language is far more than memorization. I haven’t yet dreamt in Japanese, but good gravy have I dreamt in code. Human language takes an entire mindset shift; to say it’s just memorization is doing a disservice to both native speakers and learners of any language. Low level programming has NOTHING on language fluency.
Honestly, though, I’m pretty sure you’re a troll seeing as you haven’t made it past level 1 since you opened this thread 10 days ago?
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I assume he left, since it wasn’t to his liking. More power to him.
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