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Why Johnny Can't Code and How That Can Change
snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister discusses why schools are having a hard time engaging young minds in computer science — and what the Scalable Game Design program in Colorado is doing to try to change that. 'Repenning's program avoids this disheartening cycle in three important ways. First, it deemphasizes programming while still encouraging students to develop the logical thinking skills they'll need for more advanced studies. Second, it engages students by encouraging them to be creative and solve their own problems, rather than just repeating exercises dictated by their instructor. Third, and perhaps most important, students are rewarded for their efforts with an actual, concrete result they can relate to: a game.'"
Johnny can code, just that there's too much against Johhny to make him want to do so.
Get rid of offshoring, and Johnny will want to code.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
no amount of coddling will make you a good programmer.
Johnny needs a solid foundation in Programming Logic and avoiding pitfalls of "drop-through logic" before Johnny writes code for production.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
... it's designed to attract the types of students who are disinterested in, or don't have the mind-set for, "real programming".
That worked out real well for all those colleges that churn out useless web monkeys - but not so well for the unemployable students going around with their "Certificate as a Webmaster's Assistant".
What next - "Programming by Powerpoint"? Oh wait ...
Future Borders employees in that they will be coding the database software that Borders uses in it's thousands of stores worldwide.
I can never spell "recursion" correctly on Google
That was the one frustrating thing about CS classes it seemed like a whole lot of useless exercises. I wanted something that felt like it would matter later; exercises that show me how to draw a circle on the screen are great, but students need applicable exercises to show them why this stuff matters.
When we'd talk after class as juniors in college we wondered if we really knew anything at all, because it felt like we didn't.
Motivation is everything and if you feel like what you're learning has no applicability it's damn depressing.
It's hard for young students to see the purpose of these kinds of exercises, particularly when there is already plenty of software available to accomplish the same tasks, with no programming required.
The big problem with doing large "real" projects while still learning is that eventually you hit a point where you realize your initial design was bad. On a small "make work" project you can start over .. on a large project you just kind of have to go with it. Obviously this happens in real life to seasoned pros as well... but while you are still learning the fundementals it's apt to happen way more often and would seem to hold less educational value.
Somewhat offtopic, something that isn't done enough when people are learning to do design and coding, is to analyze failures. If you come up with a bad design, don't just bin it and start fresh.. really look at the process you went through to end up with that bad design. Sometimes it is a lack of understanding of some concept (especially true when initially learning OO fundementals) ... but sometimes it is a way that you looked at a problem. I think a lot can be learnt not just from looking at a bad design and analysing why it is bad, but also looking at we arrived at that design.
You programmers rest on the achievements of the physical sciences which allowed the production of billion transistor CPUs, gigahertz clock rates and gigabytes of RAM , etc. There is no consequence to writing academically "bad" software. Just keep waiting and hoping for a faster computer and blame the hardware for being "slow", even though you wouldn't even understand how a 25 year old computer actually worked inside.
Software is now a personal thing, everyone with a glimmer of an idea invents a new language or "framework" for one specific task, creating a tidal wave of buzzwords, incompatible ways of doing things and general confusion. Software is a world where you learn something one day, flush it down the sink at the end of the day and start again from scratch the next day.
Software is a world in which people can say with a straight face they are "craftsmen" when in reality a craft is all about learning a set of tools that DOESN'T CHANGE, so you CAN learn the tool! Do you know any craftsmen who learn let's say about the circular saw, then forget all about and find some other way to cut wood the next day? You'd have them committed for mental evaluation.
Software shouldn't be all that different. At the end of the day, your job is to take a byte from here and put it there. That's it.
How about just making it possible to not require a degree? Combine that with a required preference for US citizens - linked to the long-term and short term unemployment rates - and allow ourselves to redevelop our home market.
It might be painful for business, but getting obstacles out of the way for workers is as valid as removing obstacles for business.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Yeah. Good luck with that. Companies need people who aren't "blind" programming. The will always need good "computer scientists" who can look at a design and see the defects before any coding is done to save the company $$$ and time getting to market.
They'll also need people who can LOOK at the code from the kids and make sure that whet they're writing is actually, I don't know... FUNCTIONAL ?
Too many companies are short sighted in their hiring/retention practices and forget that people with experience have just that, EXPERIENCE. They're used to looking at a problem and seeing solutions (or at least seeing the problems and working around them).
UPS Sucks
You either have it or you don't. I think in this case of nature/nurture, nature plays a much bigger factor. Nurturing can find these minds, but I've not seen any evidence that it can create them.
How much game programming can you do in an hour's lesson? Even Scratch, used at our local school, takes an age to get the loop timings and event handling right. My little'un soon got bored of that.
How long would it take one of you guys to program Tic-Tac-Toe in a low level scripting language? What about with an AI?
The kids spend 38 weeks a year at school, maybe doing an hour ICT a week. Knock Tic-Tac-Toe out in 38 hours? I think not.
The article also spoke about getting Johnny interested... My little'un camp back from school yesterday with a robot. It consisted of a batery pack, two motors, two microswitches with cable-ties attached, which doubled the speed of the motor when pressed, all held together with electical tape, with two googly-eyes on top. You want interesting? That's what you do with young children.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
I can't help but feel lucky to have met computers back in the 80's and to have spent my time using something "simple" like the C64 with BASIC and then moving up to PC's learning various languages and growing my interest more and more to then eventually be sat a linux workstation coding in Python for a living. Many of the ids I know through family no longer look at computers with the same sparkly or excitement of those early days.
I feel incredibly lucky to have got in at a point where I could experience relatively low spec & power computing and see it progress to the state it is today. I get the feeling that a lot of people getting into computers these days as kids don't get that sort of exposure and so don't get so bonded to learning about them. There was a good chance you could understand the schematic of a C64. Look at a die of a modern i7 and it's more modern art than anything that's going to make sense to a kid.
I definitely feel that in some way we lucked out in getting to experience computing the past 30 years.
jaymz
"The middle school years are critical for students in reaching conclusions regarding their own skills and aptitudes,"
Yes educators should make things understandable, yes we should make learning fun but there is a whole big nasty world of hungry people who would kill for the chance to "reach conclusions about their own skills...".
Where are the parents or schools telling students that engineering, maths and science can make the difference between having a job and not? Because at the end of the day those students need to get the cold hard fact: Do something useful and get paid, or hope somebody else will just give you a living. Presumably they don't expect to be hungry no matter what happens.
N.B. please reread the "Yes educators should make things understandable, yes we should make learning fun" line before replying.
I started programming BASIC when I was 10 (1985) and that is where I developed my love of programming. Sure, as a Java developer now, I know BASIC does little more than teach bad programming habits, but it was FUN and it helped me develop The Knack. There is plenty of time to learn proper OOPs methods later once you develop the interest to learn more about programming.
Nevermore.
You want Johnny to want to code, give him every advantage to get him wanting to code. He is paying attention to the long term when he's deciding where/for what he wants to go to college.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Why teach people which don't want to learn?
Those which want to learn definitely can, it is not about the reward but about the activity itself which should create joy.
That is the problem with schools.
I Think the problem is that "Johnny" doesn't like programming. Why fix that?
The worst employee is a specialist that hates his specialty. He's only going to fight his way out of his job and defer to others. Why do you think there's usually more IT managers than Developers? :)
The poster made a mistake because of a homophone. Before you assume that he doesn't know the difference, consider that it may just be an honest mistake. I know the difference, for example, between "no" and "know", but when typing quickly, I might accidentally type the wrong one, and if I'm not careful, I won't go back and fix it. It doesn't mean I'm an idiot who doesn't know basic English. It just means I'm being careless. And for the commentary section on a second-rate news aggregator site, I don't think that's a big deal.
Been writing web applications for 15 years. Through 5 startups. Been outsourced twice, one time with the entire US team the week after closing an important B-round that we all worked really hard to land.
I have two kids. I've never suggested work in a technology field as a career choice for my own children. I'm glad they don't teach coding in schools, it's not good work. Coders are paid sh*t and used like toilet paper. All of our daily creativity and occasional brilliance ends up making the MBA pukes rich and rolling in blow.
=^..^= all your rodent are belong to us
It has been my experience that walking a student through making something simple will widen their eyes considerably. This usually means something like an easy game where they can visually see the results of their work. Games that can be modified easily are even better, because they -will- play with the code and try to improve it for their own tastes.
On the other hand, teaching them to write a linked list is mind-numbingly boring for someone who can't imagine why they'd want such a thing.
Getting people interested in programmer is mostly about giving them the right exposure at the start.
This course sounds like it at least is headed the right direction.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Always looking for things to motivate my young aspiring computer-game-designer offspring. When I was their age (8) I wasn't really exposed to computers all that much, but did already have exposure to Logo. Any good sites online that might provide some experience similar to that? The only one I know of is Lightbot.
The wife and kids are heavily into Minecraft at the moment, and I'm hoping to get them into building more redstone circuits. (unfortunately, minecrafwiki's realstone circuits seem to be down at the moment). I'm pretty tickled by the whole concept of constructing complex circuits the size of buildings out of basic NOT-gate building blocks, which has kinda been a running joke in IC logic design classes forever.
What are other good programming games / intros to expose them to?
+1 and I'd mod you up if I had modpoints. (hmm, it's taking a much longer time to get modpoints with this account than it did with my previous account)
I've been touch typing since I took typing in high school. And I know the diff between write/right, to/too/two, your/you're, its/it's, etc.
With muscle memory and/or the lizard brain running things when I'm typing quickly, I've had plenty of instances when I thought one word but the other came out of my fingertips. This is often compounded by physiological issues with the speed at which the messages travel from brain to the different fingers and it's very common for me to type, e.g., suod instead of sudo.
Since I know this happens I make a point to check, and even so I still miss some. I wonder how many are in this message.
just like normal people aren't clever enough to use Linux (hence it's low market share)
Uhm... try that one again.
Most people don't use Linux because:
- The support for it is limited to forums where you never get actual help, but instead a bunch of ass-hats who shout back "RTFM LAMZOR" and similar insults at you. If you write in to a bug report forum or a feature request to some bit of software, someone screaming "the beauty of it is its linux so you can fix it yourself so go fix it yourself and post the fix noob" is not comforting or likely to make you stick around.
- Most of the programs they are looking to run, don't run on Linux (games industry, sadly, used to be a lot better but has backslid over the years considerably).
- The "open source alternatives" to many of the programs they run, have problems with shifting crap around on them for poorly documented reasons.
- You don't just "switch to linux." You have to pick one of a gazillion discordant distros, or else fuck around trying out every goddamn one for six months to settle on the one you like and HOPE that it remains updated and supported thereafter. And that they don't fuck with you in the next release, like Ubuntu just did forcing this crap "Unity" interface. And that the architecture for your particular distro isn't rewritten in some bizarre-ass fucking arcane way that causes your particular hardware to break on the "standard linux driver"... presuming one even exists.
I won't say that there aren't very intelligent people using Linux - there obviously are. But it has become very obvious to me over the past 15 years that the people programming Linux, the people designing interfaces for Linux, and the people evangelizing Linux, have absolutely no goddamn fucking clue what a normal desktop user wants, needs, or what will appeal to same. I refer you to this insightful post from someone who also has spent plenty of time with Linux as well.
I'm happy Johnny can't code, means I can keep my job and the market doesn't get flooded with yet *more* crappy code.
We don't need more programmers, we need to treat the ones we already have better.
.
In other words, start off students with easy wins and clear syntax (like Ruby). Don't make them spend hours debugging pointer bugs (C/C++). There's plenty of time for that later. First get them hooked on creating. That's where the fun in programming is... making something new that actually works. I suspect most of us remember the first time we wrote a program that actually did something. That's the high, the rush, that we want potential programmers to feel. How easy can we make it get their first hit?
How can we do this instead of depending on their internal motivation? I'm sure we'll rope in a few that don't have the chops for it, but I bet we'll find a lot more who do but never considered the field because the barriers to entry were too high.
Agile Artisans
Game programming is not like most "real" programming - it's designed differently, implemented differently, and fundamentally just differs. Game programming is full of coding in the exceptional cases - run doMainBattleLoop(), unless you're in a boss battle and in a round less than 4, when you should run doBossBanterBattleLoop(), unless you're in a battle with Boss X and it isn't the final one, when you should add a branch to the end to call doBossRunawayScene() instead of doBattleEndScene(), but if it's the actual last battle, jump to doBattleEndSceneFinal(), then call doCreditsMinigameLoop() after expanding backgroundMusicBuffer from 10 minutes to 20 so it doesn't crash while loading that big long ending song the music guy wrote...
Not to mention the language issues. I'm willing to bet the school's using UE3. That engine does a lot of game stuff (weapons code, broad AI coding, etc.) in a proprietary "UnrealScript" - similar in syntax to JavaScript, but with a completely different DOM model, and with a lot of added functions.
All this is going to do is teach students bad coding and bad game design.
Didn't you hear? Borders and B&N won't exist in 10 years once EBooks and E-Readers take over.
While I hate to jump to the defense of the masses, this is ridiculous. Normal people are certainly "clever enough" to use Linux. Lots of people on here, I'm sure, have wives or parents who use Linux; my wife does. It's no harder than using Windows, and in a lot of ways is quite a bit easier. Of course, as with the others with Linux-using relatives, I have to be the IT support person, but that's no different from Windows for most people: they outsource their IT support to either their kid, their nephew, or Geek Squad (I see them driving to peoples' homes in subdivisions here all the time) or some other "computer repair" business. Luckily, Linux doesn't have problems nearly as much as Windows, but things happen sometimes, or they need help finding a certain application to do something.
Now granted, these Linux users aren't working at the command line, writing bash or Perl scripts, and certainly not full-blown C++ applications, nor are they compiling their own kernel. But they're still using Linux, even if all they do is use Firefox and OpenOffice/LibreOffice.
As for kids doing programming, you're half right. It's not that they aren't clever enough: most programming really isn't that hard, and anyone with half a brain who applies themselves can write simple programs in Java or Perl or Python or whatever if they really want to. But just like doing automotive repair work or woodworking, you have to want to do it, and take time to learn it. Most people aren't interested, and would rather take their car to a mechanic, buy their furniture pre-made (even if it is shitty particle board with fake-looking veneer), or buy a pre-made application or hire someone to do something custom (or just do without).
Just like other professions, programming takes a lot of time to learn and master, and even more time to keep up with because it's constantly changing (e.g., 5 years ago Perl was still pretty popular, but these days everyone seems to be using Python for that stuff now, and only the diehard Perl fans still use it; C++ just released a totally new revision with all kinds of changes). The big question is: why is there SO much of a push by educators to get kids to take up programming? Why not push them to take up auto mechanics, so they can fix their own cars and save money? Why not push them to learn woodworking, which they used to do decades ago in schools? Why not push them to learn about law, since we can never have enough lawyers (sarc.)? It's probably because there's a bunch of tech companies in this country that want a larger pool of workers so they can pay less. The worst part is that they're trying to get these poor kids interested in programming games. Everyone here should know by know how bad the working conditions are at EA and the other game makers, because they rely on a constant stream of bright-eyed college grads who are all excited by being a "games programmer" that they can take advantage of and overwork until they're totally burned out; it's absolutely the worst part of the software field. I'm sure they never tell these schoolkids about this.
The will always need good "computer scientists" who can look at a design and see the defects before any coding is done to save the company $$$ and time getting to market.
No they don't. Have you seen the quality of commercial software these days? Especially "enterprise" software? It costs a fortune and is total crap. Yet the companies that make it make money hand over fist from their business customers. What do they need good computer scientists for? If they're making this much money from clueless customers with crap code, then I doubt they'll get much return on their investment by hiring better (and more expensive) people to do it better.
Sigh. Yet another project that took the money from the people, and took away the results from the people. That's rediculous. If "we the people" paid for research, then "we the people" should get the result. It should be a rule that all government-funded research software must be released as open source software (unless it's classified or for some other reason can't be released to the public in any form)... at least by default. If someone wants to develop proprietary software, then they should be investing their own money, not taking mine. Why am I not getting what I paid for?
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
You're right about Johnny not liking programming. That's what TFA is pointing out. Why fix it? Because you're never going to fill the gap between the low number of able programmers and the need for them if you don't entice kids into the field. How can you expect to engage middle and high-schoolers in programming if you stick to theory. Let them figure out they hate it in college, that's what it's there for.
Young kids probably picture Milton and his stapler when they think of computer science. How can we possibly expect to attract anybody with that image, even the ones who can program but don't know it yet?
Get rid of the means for business to send work offshore or to make work less secure, and that can change for the better.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Care to point out any time in history when trolltalk.com ran even one paid advertisement?
Hint - you can pick from these three: never, null, and zero.
You still haven't explained how people giving away their GPL'd code is greedy (which is the accusation you made elsewhere, that by doing so on trolltalk I'm a greedy advertiser - webmistress Rachel completely trolled you on that, and you took the bait :-).
YHBT. Again! Sucker! Why don't you just stick slashdot in your precious hosts file and make the Interwebs safer for yourself?
When I learnt how to program I couldn't see any other use for it except to make games. And soon as I had the opportunity I went for it. Now of course I am a little more knowledgeable. I have a few friends who are working for some huge banks doing java code and earning buckets of monies, another few in web development and a few others scattered here and there but im pretty happy to be a Game programmer. Its not the best way to learn but it might be the best way to get one interested in programming.
On topic, I would like to see if people who arent good at math also cant code.
Why bother with the fundamentals when someone else has already done them? I can just use a library I found on the Internet.
What I've encountered is that one ends up with 'software' that's a bunch of not-well-understood third-party pieces cobbled together that works under ideal circumstances. In my estimation developers must have:
Once upon a time computers were invented to solve serious, difficult problems.
Today they are toys to fill up our empty hours.
Or sales platforms.
How do you spell iPad?
It is my opinion that the dot com bubble bursting, offshoring, and the equation of salary vs hours worked + stress is why people do not pursue programming as a profession.
So it seems it is not that people can't code, it is that there is no motivation to do it as a career.
Hobbyist programmers, or those that do it 'on the side' to their regular career (I am assuming many that participate in open source or linux-based software) will be able to code, but that they will not be counted as a full-time coder.
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
I think that a combination of a lack of available resources and late introduction to all things coding are responsible. We have the technology, we just don't have it in the classrooms everywhere. Perhaps due to lack of budget or adherence to "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", the curriculum hasn't quite arrived yet. It can be tough finding the right instructors, teaching style and materials (including facilities and hardware) for the job of educating those interested. Yes it's true that there can be those students who get 'suckered in' to liking programming but then discovering that's not what they want to do, but I think that a late introduction to tech fields such as programming in grade school is at least partially to blame for that. But hey, there's a new CS Principles course in pilot thanks to CollegeBoard. Perhaps not all hope is lost. :)
The more you know, the more you have to say and the more you should listen.
Webmistress Rachel trolled you, and you, being the idiot you are, fell for it rather than check out the site.
Why not make life easy for yourself, and put slashdot in your stupid APK HOSTS FILE, and make the internet safe from idiots like yourself, who couldn't buy a clue if they were free?
Or you can explain how giving away my own GPL'd code makes me "greedy", like you accused me of being elsewhere.
How does it feel setting yourself up as the fool yet again? YHBT. Suck it up, fat boy (yes, APK is obese. He claims to have grown several inches in his 30's so that he's not overweight any more, but unless he spent a couple of years on the space station, that's just another fat lie).
It just doesn't matter why Johnny can't code: by the time Johnny grows up, our corporate masters will have off-shored every programming job in the U.S.
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
Except that Jina only is coding because of anti-US fraud that works in her favor.
Sounds like you don't want a US citizen until they've been beat down to a level of world subservience. Another point to add - you weren't paying attention that we're not asking about Jina, just Johnny.
We need less of you, less of Jina, and to give every advantage to Johnny.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
College needs to change for the times start by cutting down on the filler classes.
Cut back on the math some CS programs have to much of it.
Some of the classes are to much theory based others are all about the test (some you can just cram for the test and pass with people who are good with working with if but are bad at tests failing) others are very hands on.
We need mixed tech school / apprenticeships for CS and IT.
AgentSheets combines a graphical, drag-and-drop user interface with a rule-based programming language to allow students to develop games and interactive applications of surprising sophistication. Projects built with AgentSheets incorporate not just code but images, sounds, and other multimedia.
Haven't we seen software like this many times before? Examples include (but are not limited to): Alice, the old GUI used to program Lego Mindstorms, and Labview. If those didn't "take off" in terms of generating interest in programming and computer science, why should we expect this one to be any different?
Anyway, ...back to your argument:
I love linux, but I never^H^H^H^H^Hrarely recommend it.
If you like Windows...USE it. Why would you go to Linux? I tell people Linux is harder to use, flat out.
And then people either shutup about it...or they ask me WHY I use it. Oh, then it gets interesting. I explain, that, for a programmer, Linux represents probably the best choice as a platform. Endless programming language, databases, web servers, browsers, etc. More tools I can shake a stick at. All free!
But most people aren't interested in that. Like you pointed out, they want to run Microsoft Office, play games, etc. That's fine, run Windows.
So, we'll never have a Linux desktop? Cough. Most people have USED linux at one point or another. How many appliances use linux? How many tablets, smart phones, routers, etc are using it? People use it all the time....but it's not a Linux "Desktop"
The reason for that is simple. A Desktop for people is "Running Microsoft Office, playing games, etc."
Linux is bigger than that.
When I was back in grade-school and high-school, I was interested in coding. (Heck, back then, you pretty much HAD to be, since that came as part of the deal when you bought a new computer. You learned BASIC and started keying in programs from listings published in books of "50 great computer programs for your Timex Sinclair 1000" or whatever you were using, and kind of went from there. The owners' manual packaged with whatever computer you bought included a complete programming reference for it. It was just assumed that you were going to be inputting some code to make the computer do things, or else you wouldn't have bought it in the first place!)
As time passed and things progressed, though, I got sidetracked by the ever-increasing complexity of software people were making and distributing. It became a career path of its own just to learn to USE the stuff other people made, vs. writing your own code. Half the time, I couldn't even think of anything possible to write that hadn't already been done by somebody else -- and I didn't have much motivation to re-invent the wheel.
By the time I took another serious look at writing some code, so much had changed, I realized I had NO useful talents in that area anymore. Nobody coded in BASIC anymore .... years of knowledge and experience right out the proverbial window there. (In fact, I was repeatedly told that knowing BASIC was a DETRIMENT to being a good programmer, since it encouraged lots of "bad programming techniques" that were best avoided.) I took a stab at learning "C" in college, until I became completely disenchanted and befuddled by it. (No clean English-like syntax to be seen? All this mental gymnastics required to master recursion and keeping track of pointers to variables and such? Ick! Bleah!)
Since then, I've watched numerous languages come into vogue and vanish back into obscurity ... and all in all, I think I'm pretty happy I stayed away from it. I'm pretty good at the hardware side of things and at doing support and network administration. It's more my "calling" than the software development side of things. I can put together a batch file when I need to, and decipher command line parameters -- and that gets me by just fine.
Part of me hopes my kid will take an interest in learning to code, because she didn't have to grow up with all this useless "legacy knowledge" that I had, and maybe she'll be fine using the latest and greatest languages and compilers. But so far, she loves the computer while not seeming to care a bit about creating her own new content for it. (She likes limited things like changing the clothing on an avatar in a game or decorating up her igloo in "Club Penguin" -- but doesn't even go so far as to like games like "Little Big Planet" that center on world building.)
At the end of the day, I'm just not sure too many kids today can get TOO excited about things like "coding their own game", when everything they've been exposed to is such a big production. People don't generally sit down and write their own game title from start to finish by themselves anymore. It's more like a movie, with art directors and musicians and code QA testers, script-writers, etc. etc. I wonder how many folks working at a company like EA even have much of an idea what a title will turn out like as they're paid to code their little component of it every day?
This....
I'm not a technophobe. I've used computers since I was 12 (I'm 39 now). I prefer a command line over a GUI for a lot of activities. I can build a computer from the ground up. I can write complex programs in multiple languages.
And I don't use Linux because.....my apps all work in Windows (even the foss versions cater to Windows to gain an audience) and no one has yet to build a list of "this distro is best for you because of feature X" list.
>He opened it up, pulled out a copy of Turbo Pascal, handed it to me and said, "Here...you can write your own games with this." ...and I did. It was probably the most brilliant parenting move he made in his entire career. )
Excellent! Reminds me of the phrase, "Give someone a fish and you fed them for a day. Teach them to fish [ in your case your dad gave you a fishing pole ] and you have fed them for life."
mfwright@batnet.com
I think you've taken the analogy and extended it improperly. What if woodworking were like programming?
We'd have a circular saw that never broke down, that was designed over 50 years ago, but that takes a journeyman carpenter a year to learn how to use (Lisp). We'd have another design that takes about the same ammount of time to learn, cuts through lumber 10 times as fast, but occassionally blows up and takes off the arms of novices (C). Then we'd have a whole bunch of slow saws imported from China that have to be serviced every other week, and tend to break down every other day. Wait, I haven't told you the best part. When you go out on one jobsite, you have to use a particular saw. Houses in the Web Districts have banned C-saws because they assume they're unsafe despite the fact that somebody invented a safety shield for them. Other job sites have arbitrarily committed you to a particular saw because once their carpenters are trained on it it's hard to switch. Also, the saws make cuts such that wood can't be joined properly if it was cut with a different saw. The only way to fix that problem is to bring in a nail and glue consultant who charges 3 times what a regular carpenter does.
Now, how's that for a coding analogy?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I coded for years as a hobby. Quit because I became worried that I would somehow step on someones software patent by accident. Just not worth the trouble for a hobby.
Nothing remains as constant as change.
Not good engough to say X is bad and then don't bother to explain what is wrong. How are things going to get better otherwise?
Normal people aren't clever enough to program, just like normal people aren't clever enough to use Linux (hence it's low market share). If kids aren't interested in programming, its because they aren't clever enough and don't have the spark - in which case we can just let them join the rest of the hurd and do mundane 9-5 job for the masses, its all they can imagine doing anyway.
I'm a Computer Scientist (official name of my position) in an engineering shop, and there are a bunch of *very* smart Engineers who can't code (otherwise why would they need me?). Coding is a skill, not an attribute.
We need a lot of programmers (2 year tech degree) and a few computer scientists (4 year degree and beyond).
A "good" programmer just needs to be able to hit the write keys to implement someone else's design. That's why we hire the young kids willing to do the job for the least amount of money. Old programmers are future Borders employees.
Wrong. Absolutely Wrong.
For starters, Computer Science is only good if you want to stay in the theoretical - e.g. doctoral work. For anything else (e.g. a real job) it's a joke and useless as it does not have the balance between theory and pragmatics that is really necessary to succeed in the field. I never recommend CS to anyone that wants to actually do something outside of Academics - I only recommend Computer Engineering and Software Engineering degrees for people that want real jobs.
Second, as otherwise noted, "blind" programmers are useless. They need to be able to understand what they are working on to do it right - and that means they really need a Computer Engineering/Software Engineering degree.
However, to get kids interested in going for Computer Science/Computer Engineering/Software Engineering then the high school programming classes need to inspire the kids - create something that "scratches their itch" and helps them solve the problem - create a competitive environment between the students - so the class is not so much strict adherence to solving the problem, but also how one does it - the presentation, the user interface, etc; with strict adherence being the minimum required (e.g. a C+/B- grade).
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
I admit I haven't coded in years, and never done java or scripting or whatever. So it's either I spend some years in computer classes or years muddling through whatever scraps of stuff out there. There are books but they immediately jump into all kinds of options and various things. What I hate are examples of "hello world" and how easy it is to write the source but there is nothing about compiling (kind of like teaching someone to skydive but you don't provide a jump plane).
This reminds me about learning networks, there are no books except those written in the 1990s (with lots of pages discussing thinnet vs. thicknet), virtually all webpages are basically aggregates of some shallow discussion but you are blasted with ads.
What I think is needed is something basic that can get people started, and they can then decide if that is what they want to do or not. I use an example of a ballroom dance studio has beginner specials. You are taught basic (very basic) waltz,foxtrot, tango,rumba,cha-cha,swing skills enough to get you on the dance floor so you can experience the activity. Now if you want to master then that will take considerable more training. You don't start beginners with intent to train them to compete as open pros.
mfwright@batnet.com
A little off topic, but my mind is stuck with this thought:
How many people use an Office software product? Billions+
How many people use an Operating System? Everyone with a PC, Billions+
How many people use a web browser? Billions+
Now
How many actual programmers (not including support staff, mgmt and such) does it take to write and maintain an office program suite, or single program, or web site? Perhaps 100 developers? Maybe even less, say 25? 10?
So, why would Johnny want to code?
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
The only way those offshore coders get a chance is through fraud. Our worst are better - and we don't make them suffer Third World conditions.
The odds are in the US's favor that there'll be a good one. Get rid of the fraud that seems to always accompany offshoring, and Johnny will code.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Then remove offshoring and all the fraud/waste it brings. Not only does it allow our programmers(and anyone else) to thrive in an honest environment, it would have the side effect of bringing in new ones that see actual opportunity.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Pretty sure it'll be sooner than 10 years.
http://write2publish.blogspot.com/2011/05/ebook-vs-print-book-sales.html
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
http://patapata.sourceforge.net/WhyEducationalTechnologyHasFailedSchools.html ... So, there is more to the story of technology than it failing in schools. Modern information and manufacturing technology itself is giving compulsory schools a failing grade. Compulsory schools do not pass in the information age. They are no longer needed. What remains is just to watch this all play out, and hopefully guide the collapse of compulsory schooling so that the fewest people get hurt in the process."
"Ultimately, educational technology's greatest value is in supporting "learning on demand" based on interest or need which is at the opposite end of the spectrum compared to "learning just in case" based on someone else's demand. Compulsory schools don't usually traffic in "learning on demand", for the most part leaving that kind of activity to libraries or museums or the home or business or the "real world". In order for compulsory schools to make use of the best of educational technology and what is has to
offer, schools themselves must change.
I wrote that essay after working towards some FOSS tools to make it easier for kids to get into programming.
Also related:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm
"I'll bring this down to earth. Try to see that an intricately subordinated industrial/commercial system has only limited use for hundreds of millions of self-reliant, resourceful readers and critical thinkers. In an egalitarian, entrepreneurially based economy of confederated families like the one the Amish have or the Mondragon folk in the Basque region of Spain, any number of self-reliant people can be accommodated usefully, but not in a concentrated command-type economy like our own. Where on earth would they fit? In a great fanfare of moral fervor some years back, the Ford Motor Company opened the world's most productive auto engine plant in Chihuahua, Mexico. It insisted on hiring employees with 50 percent more school training than the Mexican norm of six years, but as time passed Ford removed its requirements and began to hire school dropouts, training them quite well in four to twelve weeks. The hype that education is essential to robot-like work was quietly abandoned. Our economy has no adequate outlet of expression for its artists, dancers, poets, painters, farmers, filmmakers, wildcat business people, handcraft workers, whiskey makers, intellectuals, or a thousand other useful human enterprises -- no outlet except corporate work or fringe slots on the periphery of things. Unless you do "creative" work the company way, you run afoul of a host of laws and regulations put on the books to control the dangerous products of imagination which can never be safely tolerated by a centralized command system."
And, speaking as someone who has been using computers for thirty years, and while thinking everyone should ideally have a baisc computer literacy to be an informed citizen, how many programmers does the world really need? Kids are smart. They know there are fewer and fewer "good" jobs in technology for all sorts of reasons.
http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html
http://community.dice.com/t5/Tech-Market-Conditions/Alice-Dice-s-claim-of-4-Unemployment/td-p/235866
From:
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4209831/Engineering--The-next-generation
"We often hear from readers who are engineers that they try to dissuade sons and daught
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I want to jump through my TV and strangle every CEO that says our country (USA) is falling behind in engineering and science, and that colleges must produce more engineers and scientists.
What CEOs want is an oversupply of engineers and scientists, that way you can work them to death 80 hours a week for $40,000 a year, and throw them away when you are done with them.
Mike Rowe says that we are also lacking skilled tradesman in this country. I have a hard time believing that with 9% unemployment, housing market in the toilet and new construction levels also in the toilet that none of those 9% would learn a trade in one of these short-handed fields.
The reality is that we have a shortage of people with skills that are willing to work FOR SLAVE WAGES. Employers can not expect to get highly skilled workers in exchange for near minimum wages.
There is one RELIABLE way to get more of something - pay for it. Start raising wages in short-handed fields, and in less than 10 years, you will have a glut of people in that field. You don't even need to go back in history that far for proof - just look a the dot com boom in the early 90s. This programmer "shortage" is a result of that employment bubble.
-ted
Why should business get the complete favor, instead of letting them trample on everyone?
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
They see the value in it, and decided it is not worth it.
They sell crap software, then charge maintenance fees or require upgrades to get software that fixes the bugs.
Sometimes maintenance or upgrade fees are valid where is includes support, or the platform changes (ie. new versions of OS, or tax code changes, etc.).
I object to having to pay support to report a vendor's bugs to them.
Fight Spammers!
Why let the lobbyists win? If the lobbyists are hurting, twist the knife even more. If they go offshore, our military and intelligence departments can handle that easily. The idea is that if they play hardball, you have to take it one step higher.
Turn up the pain on business, even if it means that the lobbyists cry out. When they stop crying out and actually want to not obliterate the US, continue a bit more. Then stop when they have no strength to do anything against the US.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Why should business get to demand more when workers can't?
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
I recently went through a related exercise with my daughter. I showed her ponycorns because it's exactly the kind of game she already likes. She got the idea that we could create a game too, since I'm also a programmer and she's a whole two years older than Sissy. At that age I'm not about to teach her actual programming, but I thought it might be a good way for her to see the creative process at a higher level - plus we'd end up with something that she could enjoy and show off to her friends. We had a lot of fun with her drawing the characters which I then turned into sprites, and recording audio, and brainstorming about what puzzles would be in the game. Now the effort has stalled, mostly for lack of a decent framework. I mean, all we need is basic point-and-click stuff, maybe even an inventory and stuff like that, but it would sure be nice to have the characters actually *move* smoothly from one place to another instead of just disappearing from one place and appearing in another. Oh, it would be extra nice to have something open source, or at least runnable on Linux. I looked at dozens of frameworks that I found on http://www.ambrosine.com/resource.html and elsewhere, and very few could meet those simple requirements without getting into full-out 2D suitable for side-scrollers and platformers - meaning that they're way more complicated than I need and generally don't "scale down" to the simpler stuff very well. I tried Adventure Maker but quickly ran into its limitations even with a project as simple as this. I might try GameMaker next, even though it's also Windows-centric (I can use my wife's machine if I have to), because the other offerings out there seem so incredibly thin.
The point is not that I personally need help finding a tool with which to make this particular game - though suggestions would certainly be welcome. The problem is that the "state of play" is just so incredibly piss-poor overall. Forget about finding something that even an older child could use *themselves* to create a game that doesn't totally suck. It's hard enough to find something that a *professional programmer* (albeit not a game programmer like Sissy's dad) can stand to work with long enough to get such a result. Something just good enough to let parents and kids put together a simple adventure/puzzle game on par with ponycorns, to give them something that's fun and that just barely hints at what you can do if you can program, would go a long way toward making them want to learn more. As far as I can tell, such a thing doesn't exist.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
. But it has become very obvious to me over the past 15 years that the people programming Linux, the people designing interfaces for Linux, and the people evangelizing Linux, have absolutely no goddamn fucking clue what a normal desktop user wants, needs, or what will appeal to same.
And thank the FSM for that. I was forced to use an OSX laptop not to long ago and it was a nightmare. The mouse and keyboard default speeds were set at retard slow, it did not support my Model M very well at all. It did not seem to support my extra mouse buttons, find anything was a pain in the ass, its terminal does not support tabs, and I did not bother trying to find out how to enable focus follows mouse which is a must have. Even worse the terminal does not close when you exit it, you have to use the mouse to click the window close button like an ape.
Well, at least it's like that where I live.
See, ages ago, we had kids being taught LOGO and BASIC. That worked splendidly. Write some stuff, see a turtle draw, or make an infinite '10 print "hello": 20 goto 10' loop.
Then came along Pascal, usually in high school, although it wasn't unheard of to see it in the final levels of elementary school. It was a bit more of a nuisance, with all the begins and ends, and the semicolons too, but it was still somewhat manageable for the kids.
But then someone had a serious brainfart and decided that kids be "taught" C and even C++. Suddenly there were all these strange symbols ("teacher, why is 'and' called '&&' here and why and how is '&&' different than '&'?") and stdio.h includes and god damn pointers, which extremely few children managed to grasp because they had no idea how memory and processors work. No, they were supposed to learn what a keyboard is, then how to translate a number into binary/hexadecimal and back, and then they were immediately thrown into curly braces and pointer hell.
I have no idea what it's like in the USA, but over here it fucked up everything. If you make it hard for the kids and drown them in hardcore idiocy to the point of them being sickened by IT classes, then you can't expect that they learn how to code.
Me? I started with BASIC on the ZX Spectrum in the early eighties. Had the Speccy had something more difficult, I'd have been a librarian right now.
Bovine Scatology (that's B.S. for short).
I have a part-time job working with kids between 6th grade and 8th grade, and I'm continually amazed at how clever and intelligent every single one of them can be...if you can find a way to motivate them to make the effort. I also used to work as a flight instructor, so I have first-hand experience teaching, too. I've had students that I was certain were either deliberately trying to kill me in the airplane or else were so uncoordinated that they would never be able to fly. One of those students ended up becoming one of my best students, once I figured out how to communicate flying concepts to him in a way he could understand.
Saying "normal people aren't clever enough to program" is a cop out. If a teacher can't motivate the student to make the effort to learn to program or can't communicate in a variety of styles so that people of all learning types can get that "Aha!" moment when it finally begins to make sense, it's a failure of the teacher. Here's a tip for you, though: if you're so insecure that the thought of "the masses" learning to code scares you, then you probably aren't one of the top 10%, either.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
What TFA is stating is nice and all, but until you can get hiring managers, recruiters and other HR types to stop recruiting solely on the latest buzzwords you'll have this problem.
Even though you may not have programmed Java or C# in a professional environment, doesn't mean that you are not qualified. You may have plenty of exp. in other languages and the mental capacity to solve problems. The syntax is the easy part. May non-techie/manager types fail to understand this.
Normal people aren't clever enough to program, just like normal people aren't clever enough to use Linux (hence it's low market share). If kids aren't interested in programming, its because they aren't clever enough and don't have the spark - in which case we can just let them join the rest of the hurd and do mundane 9-5 job for the masses, its all they can imagine doing anyway.
You could not be more out of touch. The reason for the low marketshare is the the lack of applications and games. Fragmentation of the linux platform is what causes this lack of software. If everyone could agree on a linux base set of libraries including audio subsystems and one common default GUI toolkit then you would see higher adoption by developers outside of the "open source' community. The lack of programs like Adobe photoshop keeps end users from even considering it as a platform for everyday use.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Schools won't bother to teach coding until someone puts it on the state assessment test. Until then, coding will be the same independent extracurricular activity it has been since the days of BASIC. Reporting from the real world (Maryland).
ROFL.
Although, I switched to Linux because I wasn't masochistic enough to use Windows =)
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
This is not a story. This is the 2nd time in week this 99$ per kid sales promotion has been posted here.
http://developers.slashdot.org/story/11/06/14/2156236/Programming-Is-Heading-Back-To-School
English might not be the person's first language.
BTW. My righting is always purfect.
Fight Spammers!
The big question is: why is there SO much of a push by educators to get kids to take up programming?
My g/f is doing her PhD in adult education, and spending much time looking at documents from the OEDC, the World Bank, etc, on the so-called "Knowledge-Based Economy", which is a catch-all term for "high-tech stuff people who write policy documents for places like the OEDC and the World Bank don't understand".
These people have the idea that there is something really important about information technology, and in particular seem to believe that using more complex machines somehow makes work MORE knowledge-intensive instead of less, whereas the entire thrust of work since the Industrial Revolution has been to make work less knowledge-intensive.
To make pottery before Wedgewood invented the modern factory required everyone involved in the process have a huge amount of very specialized knowledge, from raw materials to finishing, and in fact the only people who could be involved were master potters and their apprentices. After Wedgewood, anyone who could follow a simple set of operational instructions for a single step in the process of making one particular type of pottery could participate in the process, and benefit from the increased productivity involved.
Even fifty years ago creating a finished document was the work of a specialized secretary because a typewriter was a very simple machine. Today we use a vastly more complex machine--Libre Office--to let anyone who is capable of pointing and clicking do all that work in complete ignorance of tab stops and standard formats.
The same is true of engineering drawing: today high-school kids can create drawings that are better than highly-trained draughtsmen could turn out fifty years ago.
In every field we are deskilling, but educators are being told their students need more and more skills, and because they are mostly not very experienced with the world outside schools they take the policy documents at face value and try to teach what they are told to teach.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
The mouse and keyboard default speeds were set at retard slow
This is true, it's why there have been programs like USB overdrive (and the excellent MagicPrefs for the Magicmouse) and the like on mac for years. The default tracking is painfully slow.
it did not support my Model M very well at all. It did not seem to support my extra mouse buttons
Don't know about the keyboard, but the mouse buttons are basically a driver problem. Again, something like USB Overdrive is needed to support them.
find anything was a pain in the ass, its terminal does not support tabs,
Was this pre-Tiger ? Because Terminal most certainly has tabs, and Spotlight (OSX' desktop search system) has been part of OSX since Tiger.
and I did not bother trying to find out how to enable focus follows mouse which is a must have
Does not play well with the single menu bar. Think about it.
Even worse the terminal does not close when you exit it, you have to use the mouse to click the window close button like an ape.
Cmd+Q.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
It was the last PPC OSX, I am not sure what cat that is. Installing drivers for stuff is too windowsy for me.
If single menu bar and mouse focus conflict then single menu bar is a broken concept. Since it was ppc I could not get firefox, which meant no vimperator. A browser without vimperator is not a world I want to live in.
I can understand the attraction of OSX for those who are not good with computers, but it seems like a huge usability step backward for me from my linux machines. I do not hold any notions that what I want is what typical people want, I just don't want my options to go away.
My mother was a school teacher which certainly helped and she brought a computer home each summer, at about the same time my Dad bought a TRS-80 which I setup and programmed and I was into video games since I got an Atari in, I think, '82. Video games definitely encouraged my experimentation with computers as did my interest in those choose your own adventure books and the Infocom text adventure games. My public library had an Apple lab and I was there several times a week using the computers and playing games with the high school students; this was as an elementary school student.
You need to cultivate the interest by creating a supportive environment at an early age. Public schools tend to fail students by focusing on boring things like tests and facts that turn kids off to school instead of just making learning fun. Kids learn a lot more when they're having fun at play; there is plenty of time to focus on course material at the high school and collegiate level.
Johnny can't code because coding is hard. Johnny only wants to do things that are easy.
You're such a liar, APK. I have NEVER done a single ad banner on trolltalk, as anyone can verify with the wayback machine. The answer is no, I have never accepted a single paid add on ANY of my domains - the ONLY ads I have ever run on any of my personal domains were for other open-source projects. Then again, you've already said that you think that giving away source code under the GPL somehow makes me greedy ... how does that work?
Rachel completely trolled you - you thought you didn't see ads because of your stupid hosts file, when in fact there were none to begin with.
She p0wned you, dickhead. The worst part was she TOLD you, over and over, that she was trolling you, and you still fell for it. No wonder everyone thinks APK is an idiot - it's because you keep giving us so much proof that you're nothing but a fat stupid dope.
She trolled you, using your own stupid dependency on your stupid hosts file. If you had been using adblock plus (or any other MODERN solution) , you could have temporarily disabled ad-blocking on the site, and you would have seen that there were no ads.
As bugs bunny would say, "Alexander Peter Kowalski, the hosts file guy? What a maroon!" Oops, make that "What an obese maroon!"
It's not ridiculous at all.
Grants are institutions giving money to companies to develop ideas that otherwise would very likely not be developed. If you limit grants to basically academics, non-profits, and volunteers you're not going to get nearly as much done. Many non-profits work for a bit and shut down when the key people get tired of it and want to pursue something else. Academics are going for a paper and drop the project immediately after reaching a diminishing returns point on it's ability to produce more papers.
Grants are also highly unpredictable and in my experience they're usually for short incremental tasks on something that requires massive ongoing development.
If you want to do something long term, you need long term money. Grants are not long term. It's the difference between "I could quit my job and do this 3 year grant, then hope I can find another job" and "I could quit my job for this 3 year grant, and then it should be able to sustain itself and my salary". Can you see why the latter would attract a lot more people?
Open source is really awesome when there's enough real interest to create a sustainable project. "That's cool... somebody should do that" isn't enough, you have to do it.
Sorry, but there are coders and there are programmers.
You can teach a person to write code. It's not rocket science. Especially with today's RAD tools, intimate knowledge of anything isn't really a requirement anymore. And since pretty much every problem you might usually have in everyday programming has been solved already, copy/paste programming has become a staple of the industry.
That doesn't mean that these people really know what they're really doing.
I don't know if you ever had to take over legacy code from someone. Often you find out that he has been fired with good reason. There's a lot of voodoo programming going on, with people filling their programs with a lot of code that makes no sense whatsoever, but it was in the snippet they copied (where the code might even have done something meaningful).
So please, don't think that just 'cause a lot of people are "writing code" today that they actually know what they're doing. There's a lot of cookbook coders out there.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Because Johnny doesn't care about coding. He doesn't care about computers work. Johnny cares about getting high, fucking Tiffany, vandalism, watching Jersey Shore, listening to shitty "music" and rap, being "gangsta", playing *ball so he will get fat stacks in the majors, and generally being a douchebag.
Johnny doesn't care about coding because he has YouTube, Google, a phone capable of (t|s)exting, Garage Band, and software that can do what ever he wants to do.
Johnny doesn't care about coding because it takes too long, requires an ability to think clearly, intelligence, and doesn't provide instant positive feed back. Johnny like coding because it takes effort.
Johnny doesn't care about coding because it isn't cool and you rarely see a rich coder. The rich and happy people he sees are movie stars, bankers, executives, and athletes who generally get slaps on the wrist for doing things that would put a coder in prison.
Johnny can't code because Johnny has no need to, desire to, or interest in coding and you really can't blame him.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Bullshit. Jina can code just as well as Johnny if not better, and he doesn't have the elitist "I'm always right because I studied design theory for four years" attitude. That's the problem.
I had played around with coding myself, but really learned first at Stanford. The thing is after returning to Japan I went to a specialty school that didn't even have an entrance exam - anyone can attend, and had to re-learn everything during the first year. I thought this would be worthless, but I quickly found out I had been taught how to code very poorly. You could easily draw parallels from programming education to math education in America vs math education in Japan or India.
I'm sure I'll get marked flamebait for all of this, but from my personal experiences both learning to code and working with other coders from America, Japan, and India I can tell you I'd probably never choose to partner with an American coder over an Indian or Japanese. Drop the attitudes and learn from those who in reality are doing it better than you.
Bullshit. I've been to Japan, and there are good developers and bad developers there. Same with the Johnnies here in America. Same with the Jinas in India... oh, I've so have had to deal with the bad offshore coders from India, it's not even funny. The good ones aren't get paid peanuts, and many of them actually come to study or work here.
Again, there are good and bad developers in any random country of your pick. You know that, so don't give me this shit you are trying to feed us. You have a point on the deficiencies in math education at pre-collegiate levels, but are you going to tell me that there are marked college-level mathematics deficiencies here? Marked to the point that they are substantially detrimental?
Your experience in Stanford is pretty much that, a personal experience. What courses you took? Under what conditions? What specifically did you learn badly at Standford? And assuming that all of that is true, how do you take that personal experience at a specific university (and elite one mind you) into a accurate generalization of software development and CS education in the US? And for that matter, how do you take your own personal experience at that particular specialty school in Japan and turn it into an accurate generalization of software/CS education in that country? Here is a xkcd cartoon to you. Maybe it will give you some insight into the flaws of your argument.
I never had a problem with forums since I started using Linux in 1999. They've been a superb source of support for BOTH Linux and Windows.
Forums where noobs are roasted aren't worth visiting, so don't go there.
Problem fucking solved.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
- The support for it is limited to forums where you never get actual help, but instead a bunch of ass-hats who shout back "RTFM LAMZOR" and similar insults at you
As opposed to forums about windows where you are always sure to get helpful professional advice?
If you write in to a bug report forum or a feature request to some bit of software, someone screaming "the beauty of it is its linux so you can fix it yourself so go fix it yourself and post the fix noob" is not comforting or likely to make you stick around.
Have you ever tried sending a bug report to Microsoft? I have and, believe me, I'd rather be called "noob" than get the response I did:
-"We are aware of that situation and it will be fixed in the next version"
-"Oh, great! And when will you send me the next version?
-"It will be available next spring for $"599.95"
- You don't just "switch to linux." You have to pick one of a gazillion discordant distros
Yeah, like Linux Starter, Linux Home, Linux Professional, or Linux Ultimate, right?
And that the architecture for your particular distro isn't rewritten in some bizarre-ass fucking arcane way that causes your particular hardware to break on the "standard linux driver"... presuming one even exists.
That reminds me of the last time someone asked me for help installing his new printer in his dual-boot computer. He had already installed the drivers for Windows that came in the CD. I asked "have you tried printing something in Linux?" He hadn't. When he did the printer just worked in Linux, differently from Windows, there was no need to run any install programs.
But it has become very obvious to me over the past 15 years
Admit it, you haven't actually tried to run Linux in the last 15 years, have you? Because your comments are exactly the way I felt in 1995 when I first installed Yggdrasil Linux in my computer.
I refer you to this insightful post from someone who also has spent plenty of time with Linux as well.M
I found this "insightful" pearl in that link: "I want to use Notepad++; it lacks a Linux port.". That's like saying "I want to eat pig shit and can't find it in this fancy restaurant's menu".
Robo Rally. Try the demo.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
Not necessarily. Johnny could be a diamond in the rough, but thinks that programming is hard and pointless. By giving him a rewarding goal that shows results quickly, he might discover that he actually has a talent and a passion. It worked for me - I only learned to program so that I could hack Netrek, and now I do some fairly deep fu.
Remember, we're competing for Johnny's heart and mind. Would we rather that he became a lawyer, or an accountant?
Point me to one great programmer, or physicist or mathematician or musician or whatever-specialist that was good, if not great despite the fact that he found his subject of interest hard and pointless? Great practitioners seek that which is hard and they never need to be coerced into seeing that which they seek as not being pointless. This is not empty rhetoric (while your proposition is.) This is how mastery of something works.
It is a natural talent. It can be guided, assisted or supported. But it cannot be created out of the vacuum for someone who is not talented and that. And the great American Failure is to think that everyone can be talented at everything if just they get polished a little into the right direction. It flies in the face of human experience, and it is a complete denial that talent for something is scarce, not general, and that there are people who will not be talented, or even efficient at anything.
Instead of wasting time trying convince kids into going into programming by what is nothing more than shinny gimmicks, we should be 1) improving the overall quality of general education and 2) providing kids with vocational education opportunities (as in the German/Japanese models of education) early on.
It was the last PPC OSX, I am not sure what cat that is.
Sounds like Panther, which shipped with the last generation of PPC macs (PPC itself was supported until as recently as Leopard in 2007.)
Installing drivers for stuff is too windowsy for me.
Well , they're not strictly drivers more like what we called "commodities" on the Amiga (run in the background modifying system behavior.) Don't know what you would call that on Windows or Linux.
If single menu bar and mouse focus conflict then single menu bar is a broken concept.
It's a question of preference. Personally I could never stand "focus follows mouse." You could make "single menu bar" and "focus follows mouse" work together by "locking" the menu bar to a program by using a modifier key of some sort eg. by holding the right mouse button à la Amiga. That's pretty un-maclike though.
Since it was ppc I could not get firefox, which meant no vimperator. A browser without vimperator is not a world I want to live in.
There were very definitely PPC builds of Firefox 2 for mac available around that time.
I can understand the attraction of OSX for those who are not good with computers, but it seems like a huge usability step backward for me from my linux machines. I do not hold any notions that what I want is what typical people want, I just don't want my options to go away.
Yeah like I say a question of preference, in the end that's why we have different OS's at all. Good thing they're not all the same. It has little to do with the technical proficiency of the user though since OSX is just a (very nice) layer above a unix OS.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
I fund trolltalk out of my pocket. I have never asked for, or received, even a penny for it. Right now, one subdomain (http://starmedia.trolltalk.com) is being used to expose the frauds and confidence games of Alex Cholella and his starmedia.ca and 770star.com businesses. Again, not a penny of revenue will ever be generated from that, even though whistleblowing can result in a lot of legal expenses - but I think it's worth the risk to expose a fraud, and to show others that we really need to stand up against this sort of crap,or we become part of the problem through our silence.
It's because I don't accept revenue in any shape or form for the domain that I was able to hold firm when the hosting company yanked the site for two days while we debated whether http://starmedia.trolltalk.com/ was citizen journalism or not. It's to their credit that they agreed that it is, and access to the site was restored. Score one for all the people on slashdot who offered to mirror it, and my restraint in not making a big deal out of it by exploiting the Streisand Effect. If I were generating revenue from it, you can be darned sure that I would have submitted the suspension as a story about censorship of citizen reporting, rather than saying "Great, we've resolved that, no harm, no foul, let's move on".
In the future, part of trolltalk will be used for promoting "l'Art de la troll" - "The art of trolling", as webmistressrachel wants, and as a discussion forum for how white-hat trolling is a skill that is needed today to counter misogynist asshats like you (and how this has always been the case, we just didn't call it that in times past).
White-hat trolling is educational, informative, insightful, and gets past all the bafflegab that people have erected to ignore reality, making them respond on a gut level, and exposing their prejudices and illogic. When someone like gmhowell says he occasionally trolls, it's not necessarily a bad thing - especially when the target is either you or me (he admits he does it to me anonymously on occasion to keep me honest, and I have no problems with that :-)
You, on the other hand, are a fool, and so SO easily played that you're like the Titanic - you serve as an example of what NOT to do. And you keep giving others, including me, opportunities to prove it when we have a few spare moments. The simple fact is that if you had been using modern ad-blockers instead of a hosts file, you would have been able to see immediately that there are no ads on ANY of my personal domains. The only ads I have ever run were banners for open-source projects - for example, firefox when they were doing their big push, or openoffice before the Oracle debacle.
Oh, right - giving free advertising for free open-source projects licensed under the GPL makes me greedy ... I think it would be a good thing if everyone were at least as "greedy" as me.
Moron! Rachel's going to get a real kick out of how she completely p0wned you, even after warning you many times that she was trolling you.
Right, because we need tons of people churning out more shovelware bullshit, instead of people with the skills and the knowledge to actually innovate. You're advocating for shitty products made by sheeple instead of quality products and inventions made by those with skills. Further, if you can't imagine how programming skills directly tie in with all engineering and innovation you're a moron. You know what, even if you do see those things you're still a moron. We need people who can design the machines that unskilled labor operates, and we don't have enough of them. If you lack the skills you will be left behind in the global, national and local economies.
If I can just reach out with my words and touch a butthole, just one, it will all be worth it.
There were very definitely PPC builds of Firefox 2 for mac available around that time.
This was last week, not years ago.
It has a lot to say about the technical proficiency of the user, that unix OS has no real useful tools installed. Even locate was missing. Worse yet, there is no official way to get them, maybe the app store fixes that.
make hot women
Error: No target for hot women
If your gf hasn't read "In The Age of the Smart Machine" by Shoshanna Zuboff, I recommend she give it a look. It has a lot of insight on exactly what you've described in your post.
"There are more and more [computer science] jobs," says Alexander Repenning, a computer science professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, "but the interest is actually going down, and the interest of women in these kinds of jobs is going down even faster."
That is as far as I got. Every alarm bell in my head was ringing. Quite unpleasant. So I went and found something of possible value: http://www.cra.org/resources/crn-online-view/undergraduate_cs_degree_production_rises_doctoral_production_steady/ . Long read, but take a look at those charts. I think I am willing to step out on a limb and say, "Man people like the idea of getting rich for not much work, and during the dot-com boom CS was the place to pan for gold." I need to find longer term data though. Oh and the claim about women in the above quote is not born out by this data.
Exactly.
Like you, I'm 40, and like you, I cut my programming teeth on the C-64 (among others). I started writing code because because I didn't have *ANY* software for my first computer (a ZX-81). I pursued programming through junior high and high school because I wanted to fly...but at thirteen and with no income, that dream was a long way off (four years is an eternity when you're a teenager). So, I tried to write a helicopter flight simulator. I didn't have a snowball's chance with what I knew at the time, but I learned a lot about programming, which eventually lead to a job that paid enough for me to get a pilot's license.
As I said elsewhere in the comments, provide kids with the right motivation, and you'll be surprised at what they can do.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Just turn it into a script kiddie competition. Put them in a classroom with old XP (or maybe even Windows 95) machines hooked together on a private network, show them how to get started writing email trojan scripts for Outlook Express, and let them fight it out. That's more likely to get kids interested faster (because good games take longer to write).
There were very definitely PPC builds of Firefox 2 for mac available around that time.
This was last week, not years ago.
Ahem, Firefox 0.8 for OSX (Jun 2004), Firebird 0.6 for OSX (Jun 2003), ...
It has a lot to say about the technical proficiency of the user, that unix OS has no real useful tools installed. Even locate was missing. Worse yet, there is no official way to get them, maybe the app store fixes that.
No locate ? OSX manpages online says you're wrong. And Macports (formerly Darwinports) has been around since at least 2003 delivering all other goodies you can think of.
No offense but I think time and frustration may have warped your memory.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
Ah, yes, deemphasizes programming... Because existing CS degrees don't do enough of that already. I've done a B.Sc., a masters and am now doing a Ph.D. in CS... And the whole time, everybody's been pretending that programming is just not that important. That computer science should be something pure and somehow entirely detached from the practical realities of computing. The result? Lots of students can't code. Lots of students don't really understand how computers work, both in the concrete and in the theoretical sense.
I think if you hate coding, you should pick another field. Like it or not, unless you're doing purely theoretical CS, you're going to need to implement something on a computer at some point... And this is done with a programming language.
I think coding could be made more *fun* and less tedious, but I don't think we should try to hide it under a rug and pretend it's not there. If anything, learning to program is a great way to develop your logical/critical thinking.
I did not go looking at archive.org I looked at firefox.com and was told no modern firefox existed.
Niether of those is official.
I agree though frustration probably did warp my memory. It was a huge PITA and a more modern version of OSX would have helped a ton.
And those are probably your good points.
Your obsessive crap-floods are why I advise others to post AC when replying to you - it makes you go nuts (which is a bonus), but the real reason is preventing you from stalking them the way you do me, since I don't post as an AC, and am easy to follow.
Those of us who have followed your personal obsession with me for some time know the real reason you're so obsessed with me, and it has nothing to do with your stupid hosts file. And we're laughing at you, because you can't come out in the open and admit the real reason, because you haven't got the guts. Think of it - of the almost 600 people who have friended me on slashdot (and the thousands more who just happen to take a peek once in a while because I'm sometimes interesting, sometimes funny), I think about half of them know the real reason, and we're all laughing at you.
BTW, are you a monkey-f*cking, goat-dick-sucking serial pedophile? Just asking, because that's got to be at least as likely as my being "greedy" because I run some sites that don't take any paid advertising whatsoever, and promote giving away GPL code (including my own), expose fraud such as I'm doing at http://starmedia.trolltalk.com/ and ran a few banner ads years ago on one of them (not trolltalk.com) telling people to OMG HOW EVIL OF ME get firefox because your beloved IE sucked.
Poor APK. Do yourself and the world a favor: Go HOSTS FILE yourself. And lose some weight.
I linked to archive.org to show the webpage as it existed at the time, builds for OSX were offered right alongside windows versions at the time on the official webpage for firefox. Firefox finally abandoned PPC builds with version 4 I believe.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
Most people don't use Linux because:
You're overthinking it. Most people don't run Linux because, quite simply, there's no reason to. They don't give a shit about fsf-style "freedom" or the Unix way of doing things, which are quite simply the two biggest reasons, generally speaking, to run Linux. Actually, that really should be "the two biggest rationalizations" to run Linux, because I suspect the biggest *reason* has more to do with simply wanting to geek out (which, again, is a reason that is important to almost no one).
Very few people ever get to a point in their decision-making process where you list comes into the picture.
For most people, buying a computer means buying a Windows PC (although they don't even realize that's a way to refer to it). For a lot of people, it means choosing between a PC and a Mac. For a reasonably large minority, it means buying a Mac.
But for almost no one does it even include the option of running Linux, let alone some sort of pro/con assessment. Those that do can find it on the internet easily enough, and have plenty of options and communities which to join, if they so wish. It's a fairly nice arrangement, except the part where the nerds get in a fuss about market share. You (the general 'you', not you specifically) can't expect people to want to use something that doesn't serve their needs, regardless of how well it serves yours.
Although I've never been happy with the drag-and-drop method of producing programs (because it hides too much of the internal mechanics), being able to get something running quickly and then altering it to do something better has a big appeal. Providing that enough of the workings are explained, this looks like a good approach.
What I don't understand from the article is why the program disappears because funding stops. The software is there, why can't teachers continue using it?
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
I used this last week, meaning in 2011 not years ago when it was brand new.
I honestly considered putting a ppc linux on the machine. If the battery was not dead I would have. Too much work to fix it though, stupid Apple sealed laptop design.
I used this last week, meaning in 2011 not years ago when it was brand new.
In that case : Tenfourfox (community ppc build of Firefox 4) and of course Firefox 3.6 is still available as a universal (x86 & ppc) binary.
I honestly considered putting a ppc linux on the machine. If the battery was not dead I would have. Too much work to fix it though, stupid Apple sealed laptop design.
What laptop is it, the "non user-upgradable" batteries only came in about 2008 IIRC, with the unibody macs ?
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
Yeah, make the class game centric. Some will like the art aspects, some will like the programming, others will like being the "idea/problem solver" guy or girl. Teams work together to make a product just like real life.
Oh, I'm so scared of yet another APK anonymous post. Not.
Everyone should post AC when replying to you, because this way you can't stalk them like you do me. Don't like it? Then don't do it yourself, you lying hypocrite.
It'll increase your problem solving abilities.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
and that means they really need a Computer Engineering/Software Engineering degree.
Not necessarily. Some people (though not all or many) can teach it to themselves through the use of various methods. And, despite this, they actually know what they're doing.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Python is a great language but here is a prediction. Teaching Python in a required class, not the Friday afternoon computer club, at the middle school level: not going to work.
And just like art, it requires a certain "gift" if you hope to do any better than stick figures and finger painting.
Well, when I was a teacher, (and even now in my professional life), I used to ask everyone a simple question.
"What is the difference between a Programmer, a Software Engineer, and a Hacker?"
To which i give the answer:
"When presented with a square hole and a round peg and told to integrate: The programmer will say, it cannot be done. The Engineer will re-engineer the hole and/or the peg in order to fit properly, the Hacker does the same, but with a Hammer."
However, in any real project (especially agile) you need people with all three mentalities. You need the developers to code the menial stuff, allowing the engineers to focus on the more chalenging aspects, and sometimes you need the hacker mentality to meet a particular deadline, as long as you have a long term plan to refactor that code later.
Have a nice day!
Y can't Tori read?
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
The last mac book ppc, huge screen, maybe the battery is user replaceable I did not look. When I see an Apple product I immediately think "Sealed useless when breaks". Not that I have never fixed an iPod, but Apple is outright hostile to folks like me so rather than fix them I prefer to tell people to buy something with a replaceable battery.
If you want to blame someone, look in the mirror - but make it a BIG mirror, you fat loser.
Also, maybe Johnnhy can't code, but you can't read english. The quote from webmistressrachel does not say that I ever ran ads on the site - it says the site itself is an "advertisement" for my giving away GPL'd code that I wrote.
Also, when you write crap like "Why run a website with adbanners if you're not being paid? Why run a CMS Software site at all if you're not making monies on it and at least PR'ing it using adbanners to again, be paid." you smear everyone who has ever donated bandwidth to run a free banner for getfirefox or any other open-source software (yes, I've done that), as well as the hundreds of thousands of devs who also make their code available for free, including many who are paying to host the code themselves, because they believe in giving back and paying it forward.
Again, Johnny can't code, but APK (the "hosts file" guy) can't understand what he reads, which is worse, but at least good for some lulz on a rainy day.
Jackass!
BTW - you're the one who wrote that you stopped paying to host your crap because you wanted to spend the $80 on a new graphics card. How is repeating that "libel"?
Just like pointing out that anyone can duplicate your "life's work" with a couple of lines in a shell script under any *nix certainly isn't libel.
And I only yank your chain when your lies come to my attention, which you go out of your way to attract, with your crap-floods after my posts. The only stalker here is you.
But really, since you claim that I ran ad banners on trolltalk.com (not that it would be a big deal if I did, who gives a f***), prove it.
You can't because it never happened. You said I was "greedy", based on your misinterpretation of what someone else (webmistressrachel) wrote, and I have yet to see any convincing argument that people who give away their code under the GPL and host it on a web server paid for entirely out of their own pocket, with nary and ad in sight, are "greedy".
Then again it's what I expect from a Windows fan-boi whose life is spent either spamming discussion boards about his craptastic "hosts file" when everyone else has moved on to better solutions, or stalking people who pointed out your bs.
So again, APK, if you didn't check it out yourself, you're stupider than even I thought possible. In fact, I doubt we'll find a dumber poster on slashdot. Rachel gave you lots of notice that she was trolling you, and even then, you either didn't bother to check, or you did, but assumed that your "hosts file" blocked any ads - because you wanted SO badly to believe that I was a greedy slimeball. A pshrink would say that it's revealing how you project your internal self-image onto others' actions.
I'm "LONG gone".
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Pretty sure she hasn't... thanks for the tip. It looks like an interesting read!
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Ok, you've convinced pretty much everyone that you're a total psychotic nutjob with those last two posts.
If you call that "winning", even Charlie Sheen carries it off better than you.
But no, you haven't "exposed" anything, or "won" anything, except the Internet Fool of the Year Prize. We're all still here, there was never any "coordinated attack" against you except in your own paranoid-addled pea of a brain, and everyone is laughing at you, not with you.
None of the code I've GPL'd is a derived work, moron.
Silly goose, learn to read (and to format your posts properly). I never said I ever had any banners on trolltalk.com.
and that means they really need a Computer Engineering/Software Engineering degree.
Not necessarily. Some people (though not all or many) can teach it to themselves through the use of various methods. And, despite this, they actually know what they're doing.
In context - "blind programmers" rarely do more than type out code, etc as specified by some other individual - code monkeys really. Yes, they may be able to do self study to better themselves and get out of that "blind programmer" job; but they would be far more beneficial to the world if they were not a "blind programmer" to start with in that case - in which case, a CE/SE degree would do them best.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
I was just saying that a degree isn't necessarily needed for someone to learn how to do the job properly and efficiently. Some people can learn without that.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Agreed.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)