NYC Mayor Bloomberg Vows To Learn To Code In 2012

theodp writes "New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has announced his intention to take a coding class in 2012 via Twitter ('My New Year's resolution is to learn to code with Codecademy in 2012! Join me.'). So, is this just a PR coup for Codeacademy, or could EE grad (Johns Hopkins, '64) Bloomberg — who parlayed the $10 million severance he received after being fired as head of systems development at Solomon Brothers into his $19.5 billion Bloomberg L.P. fortune — actually not know how to program? Seems unlikely, but if so, perhaps Bloomberg should just apply to be a Bloomberg Summer 2012 Software Development intern — smart money says he'd get the gig!"

Comments

Cobol

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe he wants to know how to code in something besides cobol and fortran.

Re:Cobol

[Kristian T.]

Fortran isn't that bad, considering it's from 1957. Anyone who can do Fortran, could learn C++ very quickly, [begin rant] Cobol on the other hand was a step backwards the day it appeared in 1959, and it's creators should be bludgeoned with a frozen fish for even writing the design document. And yes - I've written tons of Cobol - it doesn't grow on you. It's probably the first example of the fundamental misconception, that it's desirable (if even possible) to make formal descriptions using informal language. The MBA's still think you can describe a piece of software in Word, and then it's a trivial process to make the software that customers want. Informal language is desirable to humans because it supports leaving out details - which is exactly what makes it useless for programming a computer. Using the word "plus" in stead of the symbol "+" is completely missing that fundamental point.[end rant]

Re:Cobol

[zarlino]

The MBA's still think you can describe a piece of software in Word, and then it's a trivial process to make the software that customers want. Informal language is desirable to humans because it supports leaving out details - which is exactly what makes it useless for programming a computer.

That's because software *is* the description of what the computer should do. Check this great article: http://www.osnews.com/story/22135/The_Problem_with_Design_and_Implementation

He was never a programmer

[tomalpha]

Mike Bloomberg was always the business/sales guy at the company. Tom Secunda was (one of the) original programmer of the first terminals. That was all in Fortran back then. A fair chunk of it probably still is. You can read this and oh so much more in his not-very-gripping autobiography, which was required reading for all team leads and managers at Bloomberg. [Ex Bloomberger].

Head of systems development?

[nurb432]

So? Just beacuse you manage a department doesn't mean you can do the work they are doing. He was there to manage people, not code.. a vastly different skill set.

Sure, its nice if you can do the job of your people, so you can have a deeper understanding of what is going on, but its not a requirement.

Re:Head of systems development?

[Asic Eng]

According to BBC, the reaction of the London mayor was that he's too busy for things like that.

That's completely wrong. The BBC actually reports [...] the mayor is in awe of his good friend Michael Bloomberg, and if re-elected will explore whether he can join him on that course. I believe you got Boris Johnson (current mayor) confused with Ken Livingstone (former mayor and current candidate for the opposing party). Ken Livingstone stated If I'm elected, I'll be a bit too busy to take any education courses.

Anyway, it's certainly nice if politicians broaden their minds, but it's reasonable that they have to allocate their time and set priorities.

They don't make programming tools like they use to

[LostCluster]

Common in the 60s: Punch cards, text only dumb terminals, mainframes...
Common Now: Online storage, visual designers, client/server setups....

If your knowledge of computers ends in the 60s. there's a lot of updating to be done. Mayor Bloomberg has the right idea... every 10 years or so it's time to retrain to the current tools.

Why was this mod'ed "Funny"?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you look at just about all tech companies, the person who got it going was the sales guy. In some cases the tech guy is also a great salesman - Larry Ellison of Oracle or Zuckerberg of Facebook - actually, FB is just a marketing data collection company.

In my years in software development, I've seen some really great ideas and implementations just get burried because the geek didn't know how to sell it's value.

All the tech bigshots knew how or knew someone who knew how to sell the value of their stuff.

Wozniak had the luck of having God's gift of salesmenship, Steve Jobs, as his friend. All the gazillionaire techies had someone with them that had the contacts and sales ability to take their idea and make it into something.

"Build a better mousetrap and the World will beat a path to your door" is a lie. The countless examples of inferior technology ruling the marketplace is proof.

My first program

[jacobsm]

10 Print "I've got lots of money"
20 goto 10
30 end

Re:Fortran & COBOL are ok... apk

[Grishnakh]

Should I use COBOL or ForTran (Formula Translator)?

No, it's "FORTRAN". While it does indeed stand for "formula translator", back in those days they didn't use CamelCase, and making portmanteaus and then writing them in all caps was normal. You can still see it in US military acronyms, such as "USCENTCOM" (US Central Command).

According to Wikipedia, they didn't start using camelcase for programming language names until the 1970s, and it only became fashionable for company names in the 80s.

Re:Much rather

[PPH]

I'd much rather he learn empathy, humility, and how to not be a giant fucking jackass.

Well then, learning to code is definitely NOT the way to go.