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Ask Slashdot: Do Kids Still Take Interest In Programming For Its Own Sake?
nirgle writes "I have been wondering lately if there are any kids interested in programming for its own sake anymore. When I was my nephew's age, computers were still fascinating: There wasn't a laptop on every table, facebook wasn't splattered on every screen, and you couldn't get any question answered in just a couple seconds with Google. When I was 10, I would have done anything for a close programming mentor instead of the 5-foot high stack of books that I had to read cover-to-cover on my own. So I was happy when my nephew started asking about learning to do what "Uncle Jay does." Does the responsibility now shift to us to kindle early fires in computer science, or is programming now just another profession for the educational system to manage?"
Another reader pointed out a related post on the Invent with Python blog titled "Nobody wants to learn how to program."
Humans can be trained in how they think and so you fail to grasp the point of school. You also fail to see other forms of intrinsic motivation that drive the really successful people.
Work ethic is, I'd say, an intrinsic form of motivation that can be learned or ingrained. If you think otherwise go talk to some immigrants from Asian or Easter Europe. They can't not work, it's in their very blood and nothing short of death will make them stop (and in some cases they try to make sure even that isn't a barrier via instructions to their kids). As such boredom no longer applies since their intrinsic desire to be productive carries them onward.
People with strong extrinsic motivation (and who have good grades at school) tend to fail in real life, because they search for the immediate rewards.
Wow, you must have gone to some crappy school and known some crappy people. The students I knew who had good grades did it for intrinsic or long term rewards. The ones who cared about short term rewards never got good grades because grades provided no immediate enjoyment so it was difficult for them to put the effort into it. That's the whole point of your very argument, extrinsic goals aren't effective. The ones who got good grades either had ingrained work ethic/parental approval intrinsic drives and/or long term intrinsic drives. They got good grades because they knew that doing so will give them future benefits and let them meet their own future goals better.
That last one is by the way apparently genetic and correlated well with long term success. If you don't understand it then, well, sorry to hear that.