Programming — Now Starting In Elementary School

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Programming — Now Starting In Elementary School

Posted by timothy on Sunday May 20, 2012 @06:52AM from the deprogramming-starts-after-college dept.

the agent man writes "The idea of getting kids interested in programming in spite of their common perception of programming to be 'hard and boring' is an ongoing Slashdot discussion. With support of the National Science Foundation, the Scalable Game Design project has explored how to bring computer science education into the curriculum of middle and high schools for some time. The results are overwhelmingly positive, suggesting that game design is highly motivational across gender and ethnicity lines. The project is also finding new ways of tracking programming skills transferring from game design to STEM simulation building. This NPR story highlights an early and unplanned foray into bringing game-design based computer science education even to elementary schools."

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What do you mean, "now" starting? by EmagGeek · 2012-05-20 06:57 · Score: 5, Interesting

I took programming in 3rd and 4th grades. In 3rd grade we started with logo, and then in 4th grade we started writing in BASIC.
That was standard curriculum throughout the State back in the early 80s.
1. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by gman003 · 2012-05-20 07:03 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Same - I was using Logo in 3rd grade, back in '96 or so. Loved that turtle.
  Weirdly, programming disappeared from my curriculum until high school, when I was started on Java. Of course, I taught myself in the mean time - Basic, C++, Java, and so on. Tried teaching myself assembly - did not go so well.
2. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by bananaquackmoo · 2012-05-20 07:08 · Score: 1
  
  Ditto. Add one more person who did this in the late 80s / early 90s in elementary school.
3. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by RightwingNutjob · 2012-05-20 07:13 · Score: 2
  
  In the Philadelphia public schools in the early 90's, 2nd and 3rd graders would have computer class with Apple 2e's 1-2 hrs a week, and LOGO was the tool of choice to teach programming. Loops, subroutines, conditionals, everything. And then it disappeared, only to be echoed weakly with the occasional 10-line TI calculator program in high school calculus.
  
  My thinking is that when you're talking about young kids, they'd be open to it, but the school district would have to have the funding, patience, and political will to have a programming class for each grade, not just a one-off thing in elementary school. After all, math, English, history, and foreign language are multi-year sequences. It would be absurd to only have arithmetic in 3rd grade and then do no math until high school, or to have one year of Spanish in 5th grade and then expect fluency out of high school grads.
4. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by NotSoHeavyD3 · 2012-05-20 07:21 · Score: 2
  
  Yup, I'm another one. They had us do Logo when I was in the 6th or 7th grade in the early 80's. Still maybe if they get to the kids early enough they can teach them some good coding habits. (For instance yes, most of your functions should fit on the freaking screen. No, it's not a good idea to have functions that are several hundred if not several thousand lines long. Oh, and my favorite, DON'T CUT AND PASTE CODE THROUGH OUT YOUR PROGRAM! Write a function damn it.)
  
  --
  Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
5. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by stanlyb · 2012-05-20 07:25 · Score: 1
  
  You mean when? Some 20 years ago?
6. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-20 07:25 · Score: 0
  
  Yeah, our text-books even had little snippets of BASIC in them as an enrichment exercise at the back of every math lesson, and this was in Alabama in the early 80s.
7. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by phaserbanks · 2012-05-20 07:27 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Yup. Started BASIC in 3rd grade at public elementary school in Tampa. Fast forward today: I asked my son what they do in his computer class, and he said "we made a song in Garage Band". WTF
8. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-20 07:29 · Score: 0
  
  Yup. Throw me onto the "me too" pile.
9. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by the+agent+man · 2012-05-20 07:34 · Score: 2
  
  I took programming in 3rd and 4th grades. In 3rd grade we started with logo, and then in 4th grade we started writing in BASIC.
  That was standard curriculum throughout the State back in the early 80s.
  yes, WAS! Programming has been tried before, in some way or another, even in Elementary Schools. However, these programs did not stick. At the high school level there are some CS AP courses but in general they are doing quite terrible especially with female and minority students. At the middle school level there are very few programming related activities. At the elementary school level there is basically nothing in US schools.
  Unlike with the programming found in schools in the 80ies there is now some evidence suggesting that middle and elementary school teachers can be trained to sustain programming related activities and that programming can even be introduced into the curriculum. This was never really the case before.
10. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-20 07:42 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  I taught myself in the mean time
  That was very much the mode in those days.
11. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by antdude · 2012-05-20 07:44 · Score: 1
  
  Ditto. My parents signed me up for computer classes for BASIC. In sixth grade, I had a geek teacher, Mr. Mangel (is he on /.?) who taught us Apple 2 LOGO. He even had an awesome robotic turtle, like a slow plotter, that drew on big papers! That was radical/rad. :)
  
  --
  Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
12. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by CliffH · 2012-05-20 07:46 · Score: 1
  
  About the same for me as well. We had a TRS-80 in class and learned on that in 2nd Grade (in '82). First it was copying down what was in the book, then basic problem solving along the lines of "What's missing in this line". I should have really kept going with it but by the time I was 12 I was completely and utterly fed up with it. That's when I switched to music. :) Of course, nowadays I pay the bills doing the usual admin and network engineering I would say a lot of us do and try not to get anywhere near programming.
  
  --
  sigs are like a box of chocolates, they all suck remove the underscores to email me
13. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by Dracos · 2012-05-20 07:47 · Score: 1
  
  I started in 4th grade on an Apple ][e in 1985. I was the first kid in the class to figure out how to do animation, as a result of a bug in my code.
14. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by EmagGeek · 2012-05-20 07:47 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  I started teaching myself Fortran in 7th grade when I got my Ham Radio license and heard that it was the program of choice for modeling Antennas. Of course, I was not aware of this whole calculus thing, so I couldn't actually write my first antenna modeling program until 8th grade after my dad taught me calculus over the summer.
  Math is another subject we seriously need to accelerate. High School just doesn't teach enough Math, even in AP. High school graduates pursuing STEM degrees need to have a firm grasp of Vector Calculus and Differential Equations by the time they get to college. Too many entry level classes are non-calculus based because of this problem, and are therefore a waste of time.
  We can do better.
15. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-20 07:48 · Score: 0
  
  another one here, hell I had more years of pre-collegiate schooling where i was studying programming than years when i wasn't
  BASIC: 3,4,5+6
  Pascal: 9+10
  C++: 11+12, class of '99
  all of those excepting 3rd in public(though affluent) schools
16. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by Kensai7 · 2012-05-20 07:52 · Score: 1
  
  Amazing as it sounds, I had the same experience in backwards Greece in the early nineties. LOGO and BASIC in 4th and 5th grade (elementary school has six grades in us). So why the news?
  
  --
  "Sum Ergo Cogito"
17. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-20 07:54 · Score: 0
  
  In the last 1960's the late Dr. Orla Bell started programming courses at East High School, Salt Lake City, Utah.
  I took a ForTran course from her in 11th grade starting in the fall of 1969.
  The courses have been offered ever since (now in all high schools in the several school districts in the Salt Lake Valley).
  Strange that at this late date there is a move to move programming courses into the high schools.
18. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by rrohbeck · 2012-05-20 07:56 · Score: 2
  
  Modern CPUs are too complex to learn Assembly on them. I learned on an IMS6100, basically a single chip PDP-8. It had a RISC-y instruction set that you knew by heart within a week. Same thing a little later with the 6502. Even the 8086/8088 was tolerable. It started to get hairy with the 386. It's like C++: TIMTOWTDI and everybody uses a subset.
  I'd start learning on an emulated old 8-bitter, maybe a C64 emulator.
  
  --
  thegodmovie.com - watch it
19. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by TheSpoom · 2012-05-20 08:02 · Score: 1
  
  For me it wasn't standard curriculum, but we did have around 5 Commodore 64s in grades 5 and 6, and probably about half the class took the opportunity to learn C64 BASIC. It helped that we could to some degree control our learning in that class... not everyone is so lucky.
  
  --
  It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
  - E. Debs
20. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-20 08:03 · Score: 0
  
  I just hope it's optional, but then again, it's elementary school, so I doubt it.
21. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by rainmouse · 2012-05-20 08:03 · Score: 1
  
  Same - I was using Logo in 3rd grade, back in '96 or so. Loved that turtle.
  Cant help but feel that in all likelihood what they learn there has a good chance of being utterly redundant or irrelevant by the time they are old enough to make use of it. Why not instead teach them the kind of programming orientated maths and logic?
22. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by steelyeyedmissileman · 2012-05-20 08:06 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Seriously-- there's no reason we shouldn't be teaching Algebra from the *very beginning*. I mean, come on.. what's the difference between 1 + _ = 2 and 1 + x = 2? You're figuring out the exact same thing!! The only reason I can think that we can't introduce Algebra from the start is that it scares the heck out of the teachers.
23. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by fongaboo · 2012-05-20 08:08 · Score: 1
  
  What state? We had Commodore PETs in 3rd grade in 1983. Granted it was part of a 'Gifted and Talented' program and not my regular class curriculum. We programmed in BASIC.
24. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by gman003 · 2012-05-20 08:23 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  No, it won't be "irrelevant", because it's some of the most fundamental elements of programming.
  Things I learned in that Logo class:
  variables and assignment
  IF-THEN-ELSE statements
  WHILE loops
  FOR loops
  GOTO
  Functions
  With the exception of that last one, what, really, is different in modern programming? I still use every one of those, every day, except the goto.
  The syntax is unimportant. The API is unimportant, as long as it's simple, and visual enough for a third-grader to "see" the results of his program. The important thing is teaching the basic programming elements. Hell, the important thing at that age is teaching that a computer is just a machine, that it's not some magic box. I've seen *adults* who can't grasp why a computer is doing what they told it instead of what they want.
25. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by oakgrove · 2012-05-20 08:24 · Score: 1
  
  Agree completely. The high school math here in the states, I.e., algebra, trig, geometry and calculus is in no way "advanced" math and could be embarked upon years earlier. Advanced maths starts when you get into proofs IMO.
  
  --
  The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
26. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by gatzke · 2012-05-20 08:26 · Score: 1
  
  Back in the TRS 80 / Sinclair days, you generally had to copy games from a magazine into the basic interpreter. Not really programming, but you learned something from it.
  I also took a few courses in elementary school, but did not program anything for real until middle / high school.
  After judging FLL Middle School robotics for a while, the lack of anything on the programming side scares me a lot. They all seem to use very simple programs without any real structure or even sensor feedback. It worries me.
27. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by MightyYar · 2012-05-20 08:28 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Elementary math is memorization and learning a mechanical system of computing. Algebra relies more on symbolic thought.
  That said, I think that algebra could be taught a few years earlier. I remember seeing it for the first time in 8th grade and thinking, "Oh, wow, this is just like variables in BASIC!"
  
  --
  W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
28. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by gman003 · 2012-05-20 08:30 · Score: 0
  
  The only reason I can think that we can't introduce Algebra from the start is that it scares the heck out of the parents.
  FTFY
  A lot of the problem isn't the teachers - it's the dumbass parents who think "their babies" can't handle Shakespeare, or Al-gee-brah, or the history of any country that isn't 'MURICAH!
  Yeah, you can probably blame a bit of it on the teachers, and on the students, and quite a bit on the government's continual lack of funding and constant barrage of tests and requirements, but a lot of the problem comes from the dumbass parents.
29. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by OrangeTide · 2012-05-20 08:38 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  amd64 is not too bad, it cleans up i386 stuff quite a bit. but ARM asm is where things get super easy. I don't understand why people are buying AVR and PIC microcontrollers, or why stuff like Arduino is popular, when an ARM microcontroller is as cheap and is easier to program. (yes, you can get a cortex-m0 for under $2 now)
  
  --
  “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
30. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-20 08:41 · Score: 0
  
  No, the problem is parents who are more interested in paying for their SUV's and 3000 sq ft houses than their children. Our ghetto subculture has a similar problem, with a different cause, but the same affect.
31. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by cheekyjohnson · 2012-05-20 09:05 · Score: 1
  
  High School just doesn't teach enough Math
  I wasn't aware that it taught math at all. Well, it teaches students how to memorize formulas, but that's about it. Let's try to improve schools before we "accelerate" any of the material.
  
  --
  Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
32. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-20 09:06 · Score: 1
  
  Microcontrollers are bought for the peripherals, not for the core, and of course there's a big helping of "I'll get what everybody uses".
33. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by sensei+moreh · 2012-05-20 09:29 · Score: 2
  
  My second grade teacher convinced me I could do algebra using essentially this example:
  . Teacher: How much is 1+1?
  Class: 2
  Teacher: if 1+x = 2, what's x?
  Class: 1
  Teacher: You're doing algebra.
  I was convinced. It wasn't until I hit my undergraduate group theory class that I started thinking maybe I can't really do algebra (but I repeated the class, group theory, that is, and convinced myself I really could do it)
  
  --
  Geology - it's not rocket science; it's rock science
34. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-20 09:39 · Score: 0
  
  Sure, but do you expect a third-grader to enter the workforce at the end of the year? That Logo may be irrelevant doesn't matter one bit, as the ones who liked Logo will go on to learning more programming (including -gasp- Java!) later in the lives, and maybe later, if they want jobs as programmers, they'll learn whatever flavor-of-the-year programming language they need, and if past experience is any judge it'll likely contain little new from Logo.
35. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by rrohbeck · 2012-05-20 09:42 · Score: 1
  
  Oh that sounds good. I'm waiting for a Pi...
  
  --
  thegodmovie.com - watch it
36. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by TheRaven64 · 2012-05-20 09:47 · Score: 1
  
  ARM assembly is pretty clean. One rich addressing mode, orthogonal architecture, lots of GPRs. If I were teaching assembly, I'd start with ARM today.
  
  --
  I am TheRaven on Soylent News
37. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by RightwingNutjob · 2012-05-20 10:03 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Lack of funding my ass. There's plenty of money to spend of laptops and HD projectors and electronic whiteboards and new sets of math textbooks with new sets of politically correct glossy pictures every other year. It ain't the money, it's the lack of an adult in the room to decree that it's the math that's important, not the glossy pictures. My dad showed me his 5th grade algebra textbook from 1950's Soviet Russia. The size of a DVD case, not a single picture, but all the math you need to learn in a simple package. And it probably would cost $20 to write, fact-check, print and distribute here in today's dollars.
38. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by steppin_razor_LA · 2012-05-20 10:10 · Score: 1
  
  Logo and Basic (Apple IIE) around 3rd grade was my start as well. :)
  
  --
  Evolution: love it or leave it
39. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by SixAndFiftyThree · 2012-05-20 10:11 · Score: 1
  
  Hmm, it seems that /.ers don't have children (even the ones who can remember back to the '80s). In the school where my kids go, a local robotics nerd is teaching programming to grades 3 and onwards using Scratch and they're loving it. Yes, Scratch has a colourful GUI for junior programmers and doesn't let you edit your code in vi, but it has loops, objects, methods, variables, and most of the constructs that older programmers use.
  Now if I could only get my 6th grader to stop fixing bugs in his maze and start watching his TV like he's supposed to ....
40. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by gman003 · 2012-05-20 10:31 · Score: 1
  
  Pre-emptively correcting myself before someone bitches at me: My "with the exception of that last one" was supposed to refer to the GOTO - I added Functions to the list while revising.
41. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by gman003 · 2012-05-20 10:45 · Score: 1
  
  Laptops? They barely had enough funding to get those for the teachers that needed them, never mind the students.
  "HD" projectors (ie. 1024x768) and electronic whiteboards I'll concede to, but they're also actually useful - teachers can write notes on the board and just *save* them. Sure beats the old transparencies, in any case, which were usually so faded and yellowed that they were barely legible. And it also simultaneously replaces the crappy TV-on-a-cart used for any videos. Sometimes "wasteful" spending actually does the job better.
  I still have my high school history textbook because they were literally used to death - they didn't even bother having students hand them back in, as they were finally being replaced with ones that post-dated Y2K. The pictures may once have been glossy, five years ago, but no longer. Same went for essentially every other textbook - the only "new" textbook I ever had was in Music History, and that was *paperback*.
  Oh, and I didn't go to some crappy "ghetto" school. I went to literally one of the top schools in the state, a Governor's School, with strict entrance requirements (seriously, it was harder to get into that school than it was for me to *get* *a* *job*). Extremely bright teachers, bright students, but if *we* couldn't get that kind of funding, I shudder to imagine what the "regular schools" lived on.
42. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by JonySuede · 2012-05-20 10:45 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Logo's better than you think.
  It is a scheme like language:
  world model --> initial environment
  procedure level -> nested environment
  turtles --> thread environment
  It revolves around a built-in actor model funnily named turtles.
  An implementation of a multithreaded logo interpreter is trivial because of that.
  If Logo was compiled to byte-code or machine code using a modern compiler it would be a competitive language assumed it had a decent library or the capability to call to other languages transparently.
  
  --
  Jehovah be praised, Oracle was not selected
43. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by MightyYar · 2012-05-20 11:47 · Score: 2
  
  I can't comment on your specific school district, but on average the US spends more per-pupal than just about any other country (I think we're number 2?). We rank far lower in achievement... money ain't the problem.
  
  --
  W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
44. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by Taco+Cowboy · 2012-05-20 12:24 · Score: 1
  
  I taught myself in the mean time
  That was very much the mode in those days
  I do not know about "those days" or "these days", but, as far as I know, I've been teaching myself all these while, since early 1980's
  And it's still continuing
  If the kids "these days" do not know anything about "teaching themselves" skills that they need, I can only say that I feel sad for them
  
  --
  Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
45. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-20 13:22 · Score: 1
  
  Elementary math is memorization and learning a mechanical system of computing. Algebra relies more on symbolic thought.
  You sound like you know what you are talking about. Too bad.
  Everybody on Slashdot pretends to be a cognitive neuro-scientist when these type of subjects come up. I guess I'll get back to the Khan Academy and practice "symbolic thought" because I'm getting bored of the "mechanical system of computing" that is called "elementary math".
46. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by Culture20 · 2012-05-20 13:55 · Score: 1
  
  Music teacher doubles as the computer teacher apparently.
47. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-20 14:04 · Score: 1
  
  On this note about filling a child's head with relevant information, I'm posting AC so I don't get roasted as a heretic, but why teach programming at all?
  Few US companies use it, and it is akin to teaching a child the details of hand stitching shirts. Yes, doing the profession takes skill, but in the real world, it is a skill that most companies completely offshore, just as manufacturing is offshored. In fact, the only people I see on this side of the lake who touch anything code related are the people who package the code packages to get ready to ship, and those are H-1B hires because of the "secret requirement" companies have.
  Don't force your kid to have to go through high school and possibly college only to find that they have to compete for scraps on the freelance sites for a living. Yes, the CS and IT majors understand why their four years is different from someone who took a couple courses at banging code from ITT, but managers and the people with the hire/fire ability do not care what qualifications someone has. Managers just see that they are paying for some kid's Prius while they can pay a fraction of that employee cost cost to an outsource shop and get reliability, delivery time, and serviceability guarantees. Don't forget the tax breaks. Few payroll taxes and reduced employee size mean that companies can fly under a lot of regulations, so they will do all they can possibly get away with in order to avoid hiring anyone American and technical.
  Instead, show programming off as a sideshow like how some people make baskets for a living at tourist resorts, and take your kid to more marketable skill sets. CPA work is boring, but it isn't going anywhere. Neither are the guys with the J. D.s who work in the tall buildings. Use your judgement of where to where to guide your kids, preferably some career in demand, but decently tolerable. Just remember, a J. D. degree means something virtually everywhere but SF, LA and New York. A CS degree means an automatic promotion to Private First Class when Junior has to enlist.
  If you teach your third grader something, consider teaching them how to compete and win. Not the silly games these days where every kid gets a medal, but games where only one wins, gets the prize, and everyone else gets nothing until the next game. I don't mean abuse the kids, but they should have it in their heads by the time that they are 18 that they have to compete for every single dollar they earn, and there are no holds barred for work in whatever profession they choose. They will be squaring off against people who will lie, cheat, and use anything in their means to ensure that they get the job. This doesn't mean that one has to teach Junior to lie/cheat, but how to deal with the cheaters, the liars, and the saboteurs. These are the people Johnny will be encountering the rest of his life once he turns 18, and if he has no clue to deal with them, Junior will be back at home with a pink slip in no time flat, or even worse, in jail with some "hacking" rap because some root passwords mysteriously appeared in his home directory.
  You might want to consider martial arts for the kids. Not cookie cutter "karate/tae kwon do" schools, but schools where the student gets used to taking hits and is able to defend against people getting in the face and ready to cause harm. Channel their aggression constructively. Trust me, this will do a world of good when they hit the work world and have to deal with the red-faced browbeaters whose sole method of expressing their points is shouting, or the "anger is confidence" BS that is taught in MBA courses.
  On the verbal/writing front, enroll the kids in debate. This is an essential skill in the adult world, but is seldom taught.
  The US is a different country than it was in the 1990s, and people need to raise their kids to understand this. To use WoW terms, it isn't a PvE world like the 1990s. The US economy can be considered "PvP", and anything gained by a new worker is coming from someone else who didn't make the mark or get the promotion. A good parent needs to teach kids not just conflict resolution skills, but aggression channeling in order to survive. The pie isn't growing anymore, so the kids have to make sure someone doesn't take their slice.
48. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-20 14:31 · Score: 0
  
  You think you're not using GOTO, but have you looked at the assembly code your compiler generates? Everything is GOTOs. Everything.
49. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-20 14:34 · Score: 1
  
  If you teach your third grader something, consider teaching them how to compete and win. Not the silly games these days where every kid gets a medal, but games where only one wins, gets the prize, and everyone else gets nothing until the next game. I don't mean abuse the kids, but they should have it in their heads by the time that they are 18 that they have to compete for every single dollar they earn, and there are no holds barred for work in whatever profession they choose.
  I too am posting as AC because I've been roasted to death for sharing my opinions on this matter. However, while you make a lot of good and helpful points, I think the part I quoted above is probably the most needed out of all. At work I'm tasked to manage about 20 people, which includes a few over 30 and handfuls of 20-somethings (some even approaching 30) who seem to have never outgrown kindergarten. They turn in the least amount and worst quality work, but they are completely unable to see themselves as anything but "Dr. Awesome" who is the rockstar of the department. No amount of me talking to them nicely, talking to them sternly, showing numbers, showing by example, pairing them up with other employees etc. seems to shake their "I showed up, where's my trophy?" attitude. Last week a guy told me he deserved a raise because he "turned the place around" and now it is more productive. I asked him what he has done to do this, and to show me the production numbers that back this up, but he never produced an answer. Just kept insisting that the place is better now with him there. He has been with the company less than 60 days and is a below average worker.
  They seriously need to understand that not everyone wins. This is the real deal here, and you have to perform within a set of reasonable requirements, or we'll find someone else who will. I'll work with those who are struggling and just need a little help. That's no problem. But my department (and others in the workplace) seem to be an endless stream of young folks with no work ethic and no concept of rules, appropriate workplace behavior or what real competition is.
  It is frightening more than it is sad. I think a lot of them will eventually outgrow this and straighten up, and I hope they do. But in the meantime, I'm almost getting reluctant to hire people under the age of 30 or so.
  Best of luck.
50. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-20 15:24 · Score: 1
  
  You hit the head of my biggest worry and concern for the American future. In the 80s and 90s, games in schools changed to "everyone is a winner", and "if you show up, you will get a gold star even though you finished dead last." This fake self-esteem claptrap has ruined at least one generation of kids. Kids need to learn what losing is like, and to do something about it. When Jill bounces around with her gold star and nobody else gets one, this trains kids to actually engage and compete (perhaps deal with cheaters because that WILL be a key real life issue), and maybe they would nail a star for themselves, as opposed to "esteem builders" which permanently damage the kids in later life, especially dealing with the lean and cunning competition once they hit the job market.
  I'm sure people might accuse me of trolling because I dissuaded from programming, but the economy that the kids will be facing is going to be a lot meaner and tougher than it is now, with either very niche marketplaces (embedded programming), or it is going to be a "service" economy with any meaningful jobs few and far between, people living off family, or being forced to criminal acts in order to feed themselves.
  So, kids here in the US are going to need to be taught how to be able to survive in a world when the pie is not growing, but getting smaller, as American wealth gets moved to the BRIC and Mexico, the only way they are going to even dream of a retirement is by prevailing against stiff competition that plays by no rules. Flexibility and knowledge is key, if not cunning.
51. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by mooingyak · 2012-05-20 16:08 · Score: 1
  
  I taught myself in the mean time
  That was very much the mode in those days.
  Self taught also, as no classes were available for me until high school. I wonder if my experience is average?
  
  --
  William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
52. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by mooingyak · 2012-05-20 16:17 · Score: 2
  
  High School just doesn't teach enough Math
  I wasn't aware that it taught math at all. Well, it teaches students how to memorize formulas, but that's about it. Let's try to improve schools before we "accelerate" any of the material.
  I remember sitting in my HS Calculus class, listening to the teacher explain a topic to the class that I already grasped. As she went over the specifics, I started to wonder why anyone would explain it that way. It was such a bizarre approach to the material. And then it hit me. She didn't actually understand what she was teaching, she had simply memorized it. It was a "This method will solve this problem for you. I don't know why though" approach. Rather unsettling experience.
  
  --
  William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
53. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by Eli+Gottlieb · 2012-05-20 16:18 · Score: 1
  
  Just because our per-pupil spending is high doesn't mean we spend a lot directly on each pupil. It just means we spend a lot, and then divide by the number of students. Much of the money appears to go to textbook publishers and administrators.
54. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by qu33ksilver · 2012-05-20 16:43 · Score: 1
  
  PU, PD, REPEAT 360(FD1 RT 1)... So cool. Love those days.
55. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by smash · 2012-05-20 18:29 · Score: 1
  
  Ditti. We started with LOGO...
  
  --
  I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
56. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by EmagGeek · 2012-05-20 23:02 · Score: 1
  
  At my old high school, athletic coaches make more than the teachers, and administrators make way more than everyone else.
  My wife is in school at Clemson University finishing her degree, and we recently found the website where SC lists what it pays people there. On the first page, there are probably about a dozen athletic coaches making $245,000 per year (and we can't forget football coach Dabo Swinney, who costs the State over $2M/year in total, and gets two brand new cars every year - despite the fact that the football program doesn't make one red cent in profit for the State). Most professors make between $90K and $125K.
  We have really fucked up priorities when it comes to HOW we spend our education dollars.
  I think one of our biggest spending missteps is that we pour so much money into trying to make all students the same, when it becomes very clear by the age of about 6 what the kid is going to be when he/she grows up. I was taking apart the Atari and asking for a 200-in-1 electronic project kit for Christmas when I was 4. I went to a Montessori school in New York City until I was about 8, and they encouraged me to pursue those interests, but then my parents traded the private school tuition for a new life upstate, and I started going to public school, which could not understand that I already knew math on what was their 11th grade level.
  Those idiots forced me to spend half my school time on arts and crafts, home economics, and other stuff that I had zero interest in, and it was a waste of my time and theirs.
  We need to put a system in place to identify where kids are going at a young age and put them into schools that allow them to pursue those interests. The people who currently control our education system seem hell-bent on stamping out a bunch of identical automatons, and it's just wrong.
57. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by progician · 2012-05-20 23:11 · Score: 1
  
  In that case, the it isn't a money problem, but an efficient spending problem. Teaching mostly isn't a money problem at all. I was brought up in a country with considerably less money available for education, and yet probably education was about the most successful project that our country ever had (so-called "socialist" country). Illiteracy was virtually eliminated, Maths, Science and Engineering was thriving... Ever since the change from popular democracy to market democracy, illiteracy jumped sky high, while education gets more money than ever before.
  It's the practical organisation of eduction that matters not the money. You need committed, knowledgeable teachers, a commitment to technological progress (pushing out religious, especially creationist crap out of the public education completely), creating social goals for children instead of selfish motives (the as teachers will get to see some sense in their profession), a commitment to the human race as such.
  The only way to make education thrive is to make it public accessed and funded and run (including the related matters like text-book distribution, via either printing or sharing digitally), and let the teachers and professionals (that is, motivate every single professional in the country to contribute to education, not just only the professional teachers). I also like to emphasise that the gadgets that kids are using today (phones, hand-held and normal game-consoles, etc.) are also part of the problem. These devices do not encourage creativity because they are sold as closed systems with hardly accessible hacking-facilities, which would contribute to development of the children. Encourage programs for free, and cheap solutions that could be available the largest number of children and what allows them to play around the devices themselves. Unfortunately, this is not a business goal, can not be motived through profit. Either communities must deal with this themselves or some citizen funded entity.
58. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by progician · 2012-05-20 23:13 · Score: 1
  
  Yep, this our shiny new consumer based education system. Isn't it wonderful? They say, this is the user-friendly way...
59. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by MightyYar · 2012-05-21 01:06 · Score: 2
  
  Those idiots forced me to spend half my school time on arts and crafts, home economics, and other stuff that I had zero interest in, and it was a waste of my time and theirs.
  We need to put a system in place to identify where kids are going at a young age and put them into schools that allow them to pursue those interests. The people who currently control our education system seem hell-bent on stamping out a bunch of identical automatons, and it's just wrong.
  I feel like these two sentences are somewhat contradictory - they are trying to expose you to varied subjects as opposed to setting you on an unalterable course. In the British system, they pretty much have your career pegged by the time you are 11 and you specialize from then on. In my wife's case, this essentially pushed her towards a J.D., and she ultimately hated it and went back to school for an M.D.
  I know that my wife's case is not any more statistically valid than your single case, but I wanted to point out that there may be some value to giving students a wide range of exposure and keeping their options open until they are adults.
  
  --
  W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
60. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by MightyYar · 2012-05-21 01:16 · Score: 1
  
  This is exactly my point - education in the US is not that great, but it's not because we are unwilling to fund the schools - in aggregate they are very well-funded.
  
  --
  W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
61. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by MightyYar · 2012-05-21 01:24 · Score: 1
  
  I dunno... I have a 6-year-old and I sit her in front of Khan Academy and she loves it. I love it, too - it is really fun to see her grasp these concepts for the first time. At the same time, so far all she has learned is counting up and down a number line and variations thereof. So far, more advanced lessons haven't "taken". I'm quite certain that algebra is too advanced for her at this stage. I'm sure I could teach her how to move things from one side to another in an equation, but she wouldn't be able to frame a word problem algebraically or handle the more puzzle-like concepts like factoring and simplification.
  So you are right... I'm not a neuroscientist, but I do have some real-world experience :)
  
  --
  W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
62. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-21 01:38 · Score: 0
  
  1950s Soviet Russia should be the model for education. Changing classes every hour doesn't help them to learn about their students. Homeschooling is the closest thing you can get to that in the US.
63. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-21 01:43 · Score: 0
  
  In aggregate, humans are brilliant animals capable of wonderful things like space flight.
  In aggregate, microbes are safe, and bacteria are our friends.
  Aggregate data is bullshit.
64. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by MightyYar · 2012-05-21 01:49 · Score: 1
  
  It's not bullshit - we spend, as a nation, more than enough on education.
  I don't claim to be an expert on education, and I don't know what's wrong with it. It could be that schools aren't funded in a fair manner. It could be that corruption is to blame. It could be that our incentive systems are all screwed up for teachers, parents, students, or all of them. But the simple fact is, throwing even more money at the schools is foolish. Spending more money than almost any other country, with fairly dismal results is not the sign of a healthy school system.
  
  --
  W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
65. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-21 03:38 · Score: 0
  
  Was this copied and pasted from some 2001 post? Or maybe a programmer worried about job security and scaring off competition? I'm pretty sure it's well-known now that off-shoring programming is a loser deal. Even on-shoring but using a shop often is a failure. And programmers are used across a wide swath of industries.
66. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by Quirkz · 2012-05-21 04:51 · Score: 1
  
  We got logo in the 5th grade, and a repeat in the 6th grade. I loved it, but thinking back I think my biggest obstacle wasn't learning programming itself, but struggling with typing. I can remember figuring out in a few seconds what I *wanted* the program to do, and then taking tens of minutes painfully putting down the text and going back to fix typing errors. It wasn't until I got a typing class in high school that I finally got good enough that typing wasn't painfully slow, and not really until college when I got exposure to the internet and the ability to chat online that I actually got fast.
  
  --
  The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
67. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by Eli+Gottlieb · 2012-05-21 06:28 · Score: 1
  
  I agree entirely, but organizing schools correctly is socialism. America can't have that!
68. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-21 09:09 · Score: 0
  
  Children should not be required to learn computer programming unless they express an interest in the activity. And using games as a means to engage the children in computer programming only works for those interested in writing games. Allow the students the opportunity to explore their interests. Why not force all students to learn sewing; a considerably more useful skill regardless of career choice.
69. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-21 09:53 · Score: 0
  
  Seriously-- there's no reason we shouldn't be teaching Algebra from the *very beginning*. I mean, come on.. what's the difference between 1 + _ = 2 and 1 + x = 2? You're figuring out the exact same thing!! The only reason I can think that we can't introduce Algebra from the start is that it scares the heck out of the teachers.
  "Agree completely. The high school math here in the states, I.e., algebra, trig, geometry and calculus is in no way "advanced" math and could be embarked upon years earlier." +1
  It's a crime. Calculus was great. By the time I got there, however, I was totally hopeless. Too many years of math in the American education system.
  Took an HTML class in 7th grade. At that age--not hard at all. Knowledge serves me to this day.
70. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by EmagGeek · 2012-05-21 12:33 · Score: 1
  
  The difference is that 1 + _ = 2 is taught as "magic," where you just "know" that 1 + 1 = 2. It's rote memorization of addition tables.
  1 + x = 2, subtracting 1 from both sides to get x = 1, is algebra, where the pupil knows what they are doing instead of simply recalling that 1 + 1 = 2 .
  What is sad is that algebra is incredibly simple to teach and learn, and the average 6 year old possesses the cognitive faculties required to become proficient in it.
71. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by JonySuede · 2012-05-21 12:40 · Score: 1
  
  I forgot to add that it is deeply recursive (most Spirograph, like those taught to kids using logo, are instances of L-system fractals) so it's interpreter usually supported tail recursion properly.
  
  --
  Jehovah be praised, Oracle was not selected
72. Re:What do you mean, "now" starting? by Thoguth · 2012-05-23 04:02 · Score: 1
  
  Some curricula do exactly that. My kids have been using Miquon Math for years, and I was surprised to see the worksheets have exactly that type of 1 + _ = 2 problems, even in early grades.
  
  --
  The requested URL /iframe/sig.html was not found on this server.
Statistics of motivation by imbusy · 2012-05-20 07:00 · Score: 5, Interesting

It would be interesting to see how many of us started out wanting to make a game/some graphics demo and then learning how to do it compared to some other motivation for learning programming. I started out that way myself.
1. Re:Statistics of motivation by zmughal · 2012-05-20 07:33 · Score: 1
  
  My initial motivation was learning about fractals, so, in a way, it was about building a graphics demo. However, I soon got into figuring out how to get my computer and graphing calculator to do my mathematics homework. That was where I learnt about breaking things down into fundamental abstractions.
2. Re:Statistics of motivation by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-20 08:01 · Score: 0
  
  I second that. At my high school, there was a policy that if you programmed a program onto your calculator. The thinking was that if you could program it into your calculator, then you obviously understood the material enough to do it without the program. However, before a test, you had to go through a process. This required getting a unique name from the staff and let them take a look at your program (my BASIC friends and I took a printout from the TI programming suite). Interestingly enough, they did not tell you if the program was right or not, they were really just looking for people using the exact same program to prevent copying. The reason I know this is the case is that my friend started programming in assembly and would submit it that way as I could barely understand what those programs did as he sat there explaining the source code to me, I don't think the faculty that reviewed them had any chance of getting it when all they had was it on a sheet of paper and no explanation. They were, BTW, a math teacher (who would have us reset the school calculators before class and then wonder why all the random numbers in the class would be the same on all the calculators), the computer teacher (who was a typist for 40 years before getting a teaching certificate the year before) and the vice principal (who would emphasize the word BASIC every time she spoke it and we used to joke that it was because it was in all caps).
  You know, now that I think about it. Once they gave us the special name, I don't think they ever actually checked to see that the program was the same. Either way, that is why I learned programming: real motivation to accomplish something that is otherwise rote, not just completing an assignment for class for a teacher who barely understood more about the programming than I did.
3. Re:Statistics of motivation by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-20 08:07 · Score: 0
  
  Same AC here. I screwed up the second sentence it should say: "At my high school, there was a policy that if you programmed a program into your calculator, you could use it on a test."
4. Re:Statistics of motivation by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-20 08:14 · Score: 0
  
  I absolutely started that way, and never got there. It was disheartening to want to make big, complicated games, and learning that any programming I'd learned was completely inappropriate for the job.
5. Re:Statistics of motivation by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-20 14:49 · Score: 0
  
  I too started out wanting to write my own games. When I was twelve years old my dad owned a TRS-80 with a couple of those text-based adventure games. The only one I remember is Bedlam. In it, you wake up in a padded room with some guy who thinks he is Napolean; your goal is to escape from the insane asylum. I wanted to create my own adventures set in my own worlds, wrought with hidden dangers and surprises that other people could experience. At some point I convinced my dad to take a BASIC programming course with me offered through the local Radio Shack. He dragged my older sister along, but she clearly hated it. By the time I started going to High School I had lost interest in computers and programming, and it remained that way well into my mid twenties. Somehow I became known at work as the guy who can make computers do useful things, and ended up at the university studying computer science and math. I've been a full-time software developer for over a decade now, and still look forward to writing code every day.
6. Re:Statistics of motivation by Anubis+IV · 2012-05-21 02:34 · Score: 1
  
  It's a running joke among many of my friends that every student in Computer Science got into the field to make video games, though most of them won't admit that publicly.
If it works, it works by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-20 07:01 · Score: 0

I'm a bit skeptical of dedicating grades 1-7 to teaching arithmetic, fractions, and getting kids' feet wet with algebra. Even before the Internet, that was a waste. Nowadays we can bet that kids in some countries are going to be learning STEM concepts much faster than ours, if we stay that course.
CoderDojo teaching kids to code by ei4anb · 2012-05-20 07:06 · Score: 4, Interesting

I help out at the local CoderDojo, it's like a youth club and we show them everything from Scratch through HTML & Javascript up to developing Android apps (for the older kids). The company I work for just donated 100 old laptops to allow kids without their own (or parents) laptop to take part.
Here's what it looks like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMODHilE4qk
A shrinking market by nurb432 · 2012-05-20 07:12 · Score: 1

great thing to get kids interested in early, so by the time they reach working age, there wont be job..

--
---- Booth was a patriot ----
1. Re:A shrinking market by RightwingNutjob · 2012-05-20 07:17 · Score: 2
  
  Just because the hardware's made in China (we'll see how long that lasts, but that's another issue) doesn't mean the software can be. Software in many cases can't be one-size-fits all. Whether your business is sufficiently different that the off-the-shelf accounting or inventory software doesn't quite cut it or you want your web page to look *just right* and don't feel like playing email tag with some minimum wage drone 12 hrs away from your time zone, there will always be a need to people right here who know how to code. Nevermind all the embedded work that requires being physically present to get it to work.
2. Re:A shrinking market by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-20 07:17 · Score: 1
  
  Shrinking market? Do you live in a mayonnaise jar? Right now there's a severe shortage of people who are competent at programming, and there's no reason this will decrease in the near term as we move more and more stuff online.
3. Re:A shrinking market by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-20 07:19 · Score: 0
  
  being able to program isn't always about securing a job. It promotes critical, analytical reasoning that is beneficial in many areas.
4. Re:A shrinking market by bmo · 2012-05-20 07:22 · Score: 0
  
  Just because the hardware's made in China (we'll see how long that lasts, but that's another issue) doesn't mean the software won't be
  Fixed.
  Manufacturing has headed to China. And engineering has been moving with it. Somehow the software won't?
  You're delusional and whistling by the graveyard.
  --
  BMO
5. Re:A shrinking market by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-20 07:30 · Score: 1
  
  And the United States is doomed, we should all lay down and slowly starve.
  What does this kind of thinking actually accomplish?
  China is doing very well, the US can too. We have a ton of exceptionally smart, talented people, and we need positive, forward thinking attitudes to keep them interested. Imagine the typical high school student mildly interested in computer science reading this discussion right now. What kind of message are you sending? You're basically telling him to abandon all hope and go into the service industry, and that there's no place for an advanced skill set in this country anymore.
  Please, if it's so bad, leave this awful graveyard of a country, learn Chinese, and stop trolling.
6. Re:A shrinking market by akgooseman · 2012-05-20 07:32 · Score: 1
  
  Learning to program offers much more to kids than the possibility of a future job.
7. Re:A shrinking market by Hognoxious · 2012-05-20 07:49 · Score: 1
  
  there wont be job anywhy for dikked who writing like you
  
  --
  Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
8. Re:A shrinking market by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-20 07:51 · Score: 1
  
  Right now there's a severe shortage of people who are competent at programming, and there's no reason this will decrease in the near term as we move more and more stuff online.
  if there is a shrinking number of competent programmers, why are networking groups filed with them? could it be that they are over 40, out of work for more than 3 months, no tattoos and have families? yes, there are also rans but I've found people with talent and wisdom within 15 minutes of working the room, people that I would have hired when I was a hiring manager.
  employers need to try different modes of working. for example I'm looking to find a part time gig (contract) where I can trade rate for learning. I want to learn more about HTML/CSS/javascript and map my UI knowledge onto that. I also find no greater learning incentive than "you have a client, you have a target, you are getting paid, now produce" Sadly I have not found such a gig yet. employers have a problem thinking out of the cube.
  so don't give me that people shortage lie. good people are out there. just open your eyes and be willing to update their knowledge.
9. Re:A shrinking market by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-20 08:13 · Score: 0
  
  Yeah, like... forgetting how to program when they don't use it. It happens to advanced math, science, and a variety of other subjects, and it'll happen to programming, too. Sorry, but teaching someone how to program won't make them magically intelligent.
10. Re:A shrinking market by nurb432 · 2012-05-20 08:22 · Score: 1
  
  Sure, there will be some people left coding, but in a practical sense the days are limited that makes its a viable career choice.
  For most people canned software is 'good enough' and RAD tools are getting to the point even a non programmer can create something usable on modern hardware. ( great, no, but usable ).
  
  --
  ---- Booth was a patriot ----
11. Re:A shrinking market by bmo · 2012-05-20 08:26 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  And the United States is doomed
  We are, unless things drastically change in politics and the boards of corporations. This is a matter of facts on the ground. It's not open to debate. It's happening.
  we should all lay down and slowly starve.
  We won't have any choice if things don't change.
  We have been handing technology, as a society, to the Chinese for decades now, with the delusional belief that all the high-end stuff will still happen here. I believe it started with Voc-Ed being a place to dump the "dummy" students. This is how I believe we lost the skills to make anything here - that we systematically decided that making anything = sweatshop and if you were smart, you didn't go into manufacturing, ever. We denigrated actual work for decades and anyone who worked in a factory making anything was therefore just some dumb monkey. And you can replace monkeys on one side of the planet with monkeys from another side. That's the thinking that got us here.^1
  But transferring the manufacturing base over to China makes it inconvenient for the engineering and software to happen here, so guess where it's going to move.
  Go ahead, guess.
  Engineers and scientists are already moving to Shanghai.
  Unless we stop the haemorrhaging and start building up our own manufacturing base here encouraging students to go into STEM without learning Chinese is a joke and a half.
  But I don't see that happening any time soon.
  --
  BMO
  Postscript: I was looking at a Popular Mechanics from the 1950s and there was articles that went on for pages on how to use a shaper and a tip on how to turn a taper using ball bearings instead of ordinary conical centers , and it was just *there* as if machining was a skill that many people had. You don't publish an article in a popular magazine where you deliberate write over the heads over your readers or write something they don't care about. It was expected that the readers of the 1954 Popular Mechanics^2 would find this stuff applicable. Today you would *never* find such an article in a mainstream magazine such as that.
  Footnotes:
  1. The war on work: http://www.ted.com/talks/mike_rowe_celebrates_dirty_jobs.html
  The first half goes on about castrating sheep. But that's the set-up for the second half, so watch the whole thing.
  2. http://books.google.com/books?id=Nt8DAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA126&dq=1954%20Popular%20Mechanics&pg=PA234#v=onepage&q&f=true
12. Re:A shrinking market by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-20 08:53 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Alright, you make some good points, but I'd argue that manufacturing jobs are leaving center stage anyway.
  Look around, we build factories that require a tenth of the labor they used to. We build entire shipping centers that are more or less automated. I'm not sure that we really need manufacturing anymore. If anything China is serving as an excellent stop-gap to ease the transition to a much different kind of society.
  I mean, when you get down to it, the problem is really that the amount of product per single skilled worker in a modern, automated factory is so large, that there quite frankly isn't a demand for the entire population to be employed. China has cheap labor now, but machines will become cheaper, and at that point the only thing left is engineering.
13. Re:A shrinking market by bmo · 2012-05-20 09:04 · Score: 1
  
  1. Not everyone can be an engineer.
  2. An engineer who does not how to manufacture is a pretty fuckin' poor engineer and makes it painful for everyone else who has to deal with his shit downstream.
  --
  BMO
14. Re:A shrinking market by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-20 09:15 · Score: 0
  
  I usually agree with you but I've been hearing the non programmer programmer schpiel for a looking time. Not happening until the computer can take natural language input and spit out good code. And when they're smart enough to pull that off, it won't matter anymore anyway.
15. Re:A shrinking market by inglorion_on_the_net · 2012-05-20 09:45 · Score: 2
  
  How do you mean "there wont be job"? I thought elementary school was for giving kids a basic set of knowledge and skills, not to train them for any specific line of work. Programming teaches analytic thinking, logic, and gives some insight into how computers work and what sort of things they can and cannot do for you. These are useful skills to have in life, even if you don't actually end up developing software for a living.
  
  --
  Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
16. Re:A shrinking market by indeterminator · 2012-05-20 10:07 · Score: 1
  
  Manufacturing has headed to China. And engineering has been moving with it. Somehow the software won't?
  The whole "outsourcing to cheaper labor countries" is only temporary, it will sort itself out eventually. Either salaries rise in China, or they drop at our end. At that point, producing near consumption starts to make sense again.
  Sure, it might get nasty in between...
17. Re:A shrinking market by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-20 10:18 · Score: 0
  
  Or you continue deficit spending until the big collapse comes. Then China takes over as the hegemon of earth and the USA becomes a miserable backwater place.
18. Re:A shrinking market by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-20 10:26 · Score: 0
  
  In a simple economic model, that is indeed the case. However, when the second country starts buying the assets (companies, properties, etc) rather than the goods of another country, the dollar of of the first country can stay propped up until until there are no more assets to buy.
19. Re:A shrinking market by bmo · 2012-05-20 12:14 · Score: 1
  
  "might" is a pretty big understatement.
  Put it this way, unless you have people who can afford your products, your products are not going to get bought. And captains of industry in the US have been ignoring this obvious fact stated in plain terms by Henry Ford himself. Manufacturing isn't always the largest part of the economy, but it drives a lot of other industries in parallel with it.
  Germany has always had a decent manufacturing base, and at this last downturn, they are still the strongest economy in Europe. Funny how that works.
  The whole "outsourcing to cheaper labor countries" is only temporary,
  This is wrong and stupid. It causes a cascade of talent loss that is not easily replaced. It is more likely to be permanent than anything else.
  --
  BMO
20. Re:A shrinking market by gr8_phk · 2012-05-20 13:15 · Score: 1
  
  great thing to get kids interested in early, so by the time they reach working age, there wont be job..
  The only jobs left are high-end jobs that require a LOT of training - doctors, dentists, lawyers, therapists - and the job of automating everything else. Believe it, the automators are going after those other occupations over the next several decades too. It's going to take a long time.
21. Re:A shrinking market by gr8_phk · 2012-05-20 13:26 · Score: 1
  
  Manufacturing is still important. You can't design products without knowing details of how they will be manufactured. Well you can try, but there is an interplay between physical product, electrical circuits, software, and manufacturing process. Even the MBA over at HBR are writing about how new products can not be created in the US. The classic example is thin films - which are in an ever increasing number of things from batterys to OLED displays and touch screens and much more. The problem is we outsourced TV production, so when that shifted to LCDs it was the other countries who developed large scale thin film manufacturing capability. Now it's hard to even research anything with such materials in the US because nobody does anything (read Makes anything) with them here. Another example would be IC fabrication - everyone outsource production (or part of their production) except Intel. If you can't make chips you can't make anything anymore - not even "cheap toys from China".
22. Re:A shrinking market by marcosdumay · 2012-05-20 14:15 · Score: 1
  
  Ok, let's forget that this is elementary school, where kids learn every kind of stuff that will make them adults, not professionals.
  You mean, there won't be a market? Why would that be the case? Computers will be less usefull? People won't have enough money to pay (and computers won't be usefull for the production of basic goods)? Is there a third possibility I'm not aware of?
  
  --
  Rethinking email
23. Re:A shrinking market by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-20 14:27 · Score: 1
  
  We used to have that in the US, where neither manufacturing or a "service" economy was important.
  People need work. Ultimately, the ideal would be everyone being an artisan or specialist, with some method of making their creations on a small scale, and if they sell, bringing economies of scale in for larger runs. Even if people didn't have cash, they could barter, and usually someone could get heads and come cooperation to make something cool.
  We used to have that in the US -- one person in a small town would have a store, another would mind the fence for zombies, still another would keep the vehicles in good repair.
  If there were a way to have fusion come around, where energy isn't the biggest throttle of the economy, the next biggest thing would be what people do. However, because we are shackled to oil and coal for the forseeable future with zero other alternatives, the future isn't bright.
24. Re:A shrinking market by Eli+Gottlieb · 2012-05-20 16:21 · Score: 1
  
  Engineering can go to China, but science won't (not for a while). Nobody trusts Chinese or Indian publications and institutions not to be rampantly fraudulent.
25. Re:A shrinking market by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-20 16:30 · Score: 0
  
  you sir are full of sour grapes. stop typing on slashdot and go start a manufacturing firm then. change the world. oh wait, that would require leaving your mom's basement. i love /.
  In summary, the worlds over, there's nothing you can do and you're whistling in the graveyard or whatever. I bet you're a blast at parties.
26. Re:A shrinking market by bmo · 2012-05-20 18:39 · Score: 1
  
  "Those Japanese will never make a car as good as the Americans."
  ---
  BMO
27. Re:A shrinking market by Hognoxious · 2012-05-20 18:56 · Score: 1
  
  So much of a shortage that they want ten years experience in things that have only existed for five, fluent Maltese and Latvian, grade three piano and ideally Scorpio or Sagittarius. Left handers only.
  
  --
  Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
28. Re:A shrinking market by RabidReindeer · 2012-05-21 00:03 · Score: 0
  
  Manufacturing has headed to China. And engineering has been moving with it. Somehow the software won't?
  The whole "outsourcing to cheaper labor countries" is only temporary, it will sort itself out eventually. Either salaries rise in China, or they drop at our end. At that point, producing near consumption starts to make sense again.
  Sure, it might get nasty in between...
  This is true. It has already happened in the IT profession in India, where instead of of working for one-eighth of what US equivalents make, they've demanded and gotten their pay boosted to about one quarter of what US equivalent workers make over the last decade. In another 20-30 years, they will probably have bettered things enough to make roughly equal what their US counterparts make. Allowing for the normal fluctuations of the markets.
  Of course, in the mean time, the USA will no have dropped from being a self-sufficient, exporting country to a dependent, importing country. And a lot of US citizens would have to endure poorer lives and continual under-employment.
29. Re:A shrinking market by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-21 01:14 · Score: 0
  
  2. An engineer who does not how to manufacture is a pretty fuckin' poor engineer and makes it painful for everyone else who has to deal with his shit downstream.
  Trollin' trollin' trollin', keep them doggies trollin'... (Also "fuckin'", just so you know that I'm a tough guy too.)
30. Re:A shrinking market by Eli+Gottlieb · 2012-05-21 06:30 · Score: 1
  
  Normally I would agree with you (I certainly do on manufacturing). However, scientific honesty is a matter of culture and values. The impact factor on Chinese publications won't go up until they start to deemphasize quantity of publications in favor of fewer, better publications.
  American science has actually been suffering the same problem and, presto change-o, has suddenly acquired a reputation for being fraudulent or unreliable on "certain subjects".
31. Re:A shrinking market by bmo · 2012-05-21 07:08 · Score: 1
  
  One point I tried hammering home indirectly in my other posts was that the Chinese are going to adopt western-style scientific research and engineering whether they want to or not. Whether *we* want them to or not. The Japanese and Koreans went through the same growing pains. To expect the Chinese to be somehow oblivious/stupid is hubris on our part. They are just people, after all, just like us.
  "'What one monkey can do, another can' - Ancient Simian Proverb" - Calculus Made Easy by Sylvanus P. Thompson, page 1.
  Western scientists and engineers are already moving to the Chinese metropolitan areas as part of their jobs. Some move permanently. The rubbing of shoulders with Chinese scientists and engineers is sure to change things. You cannot simultaneously wall off your society while engaging in business, science, and engineering with another culture and expect things to be the same. Even pure osmosis is at work here.
  Why do scientists and engineers move to Shanghai and such for work?
  Because the fact is, as an engineer or scientist working on GE's dime, for example, you can live like royalty in China at the price of having to learn another language.
  --
  BMO
32. Re:A shrinking market by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-22 06:45 · Score: 0
  
  dont waste your time. BMO talks to everyone like they are the problem and he's the only one smart enough to see it.
  everyone in america is like that. they all go through life claiming everyone else is stupid and lazy, yet somehow their country is falling to shit. funny that.
  he's so far behind, he thinks he's winning the race. or maybe he knows exactly what he is, and thats why he comes off as being so bitter and unhappy. either way, not worth worrying about.
  cheers
33. Re:A shrinking market by RightwingNutjob · 2012-05-22 16:23 · Score: 1
  
  All I can say is that Chevy's have had all-electronic throttle since the 90's and not a one of them magically accelerated of its own accord.
34. Re:A shrinking market by RightwingNutjob · 2012-05-22 16:26 · Score: 1
  
  Not happening until it can take natural language input and spit out natural language output telling you why what you said was bullshit and *here's* what you *really* want...
35. Re:A shrinking market by Eli+Gottlieb · 2012-05-23 17:17 · Score: 1
  
  You're missing my point. The incentive structure is lacking for Chinese scientists to adopt the values and methods of Western science. They simply aren't paid for high-quality studies with replicable results and high impact. They're paid to pump out papers and get cited, as much as possible. Instead of Chinese scientists adopting the Western way, both Chinese and Western scientists have been adapting the ultra-capitalist way: quantity over quality in a competition to the death.
  You'll have to resocialize science, on both sides of the ocean, to fix that.
36. Re:A shrinking market by bmo · 2012-05-23 20:52 · Score: 1
  
  I'm going to have to agree with you on that. I'm not sure about the scale, but publish-or-perish has led to a lot of junk papers.
  --
  BMO
Don't really need programming by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-20 07:17 · Score: 0

You really don't need to teach programming. If you teach good problem solving skills you've already accomplished the hardest part of learning to program. I've seen entirely too many people who know how to use proper syntax, but they can't write code to solve a problem to save their lives. Programming can be a good way of teaching problem solving, but it's not the only one.
Not a bad idea by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-20 07:20 · Score: 0

Okay, I'm down with this. Just make sure they get the kiddies started on a real platform.
Programming is treated as too "mystical" by whizbang77045 · 2012-05-20 07:51 · Score: 4, Insightful

Society seems to treat programming as though it were something mystical. In fact, it is simply learning how to think and express oneself logically, using a very basic (no pun intended) language. How is this different than learning how to read and write English effectively? We expect too many things to be hard, so we make them hard by our attitudes.
1. Re:Programming is treated as too "mystical" by Tr3vin · 2012-05-20 07:58 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Hey now, I make good money convincing people that what I do is something mystical. I'm sure many others here do too. Don't go and ruin it for the rest of us.
2. Re:Programming is treated as too "mystical" by DNS-and-BIND · 2012-05-20 10:13 · Score: 0
  
  No, it's just something that Whites and Asians do. It's discriminatory to divert school funds to programs that disproportionately affect privileged parts of society. You don't think so? Go ahead and try to argue this point before an inner-city school board. Justice for Trayvon.
  
  --
  Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
3. Re:Programming is treated as too "mystical" by russotto · 2012-05-20 14:01 · Score: 2
  
  Hey now, I make good money convincing people that what I do is something mystical. I'm sure many others here do too. Don't go and ruin it for the rest of us.
  I wouldn't worry about it. Math has the same rep, and it's been taught in schools for millennia.
4. Re:Programming is treated as too "mystical" by CmdrEdem · 2012-05-21 04:57 · Score: 1
  
  A cynical person might say that thinking logically is a lacking skill for most people. I would say that and more: I think logical thinking should be taught, but programming languages fall too much into "trends" to be of any use in teaching applicable skills for everyone. I think important concepts in programming (like algorithms in general) could be taught at the expense of some math subjects.
  
  --
  This combination doesn`t exist: ETIs that know about humanity and want to see us dead. Otherwise we wouldn't exist.
5. Re:Programming is treated as too "mystical" by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-21 14:15 · Score: 0
  
  "Don't feed the troll," they tell me. Whatever. I'll just leave this here.
generalize to problem solving by RichMan · 2012-05-20 07:58 · Score: 4, Insightful

Programming is not special. Programming is the literacy of problem solving.
Facing a required task and then using known tools to construct a method the achieve the required task in logical steps.
There should be less emphasis on "programming" and more on general problem solving. Learning the general method is better than learning the specific method until you need to become as master of the specific method.
Programming can be one aspect of teaching problem solving because programming is very structured. However problem solving skills in general need to raised a lot higher than general grade school level before real programming can be done.
1. Re:generalize to problem solving by Phroggy · 2012-05-20 11:43 · Score: 1
  
  Yes. This.
  Programming isn't an end to itself. Programming is a means to an end, and it's a lot of fun to pick an end and find a means to it. Kids need to learn that using their brains is fun, whether that means programming or something else.
  
  --
  $x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
  $x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
For me, the 70's by michaelmalak · 2012-05-20 08:02 · Score: 1

I took BASIC in the summer between fourth and fifth grade. It was the summer before the TRS-80 and the Apple ][ were widely available, so we learned on the instructor's home-built ALTAIR. Storage was on paper tape. OK, so it wasn't standard curriculum (although it was held at a public school, it was privately arranged with the instructor volunteering his time). But just four years after that, The Math Box put Atari 800's in every Fairfax County school. Rumor has it that salesman made $80,000 commission. It wasn't until a few years ago that I learned the rest of the world went Commodore 64.
Ignoring the Actual Problem by TemperedAlchemist · 2012-05-20 08:22 · Score: 4, Insightful

The problem isn't that we don't teach them algebra soon enough, it's that we don't teach them how to think (read: at all). It's not that mathematics doesn't teach people how to think, it does. But only in some kind of sneaky way, and people are assumed to have great logical deduction abilities like it's some inherent intuitive concept. But it doesn't work that way.
Unless you attended a rich and large high school, chances are your exposure to any level of logic is nil. Why is it only philosophy majors are the ones forced to take informal logic (and not even very much at that)? The only way you actually get an adequate exposure to formal education in rational thinking is if you're a logician.
But really I'm just deluding myself, who wants a workforce that knows how to think?
1. Re:Ignoring the Actual Problem by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-20 08:57 · Score: 0
  
  It's sort of self-evident: In order to teach children how to think, you'd need teachers that possess such skills themselves, and also the rare skills to pass on such skills. However, most (not all) teachers having such skills would never be teachers in the first place, thus our society with its questionable list of priorities, would never be able to make school a place where you learn to think, about life and taking responsibility, until change has to happen.
2. Re:Ignoring the Actual Problem by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-20 09:27 · Score: 0
  
  This makes me happy that all throughtout late middle school and high school my dad exposed me to a ton of informal (and quite a bit of formal) logic and critical thinking skills
— baby, —! by John+Bokma · 2012-05-20 08:28 · Score: 1

So, maybe soon a kid can finally fix the RSS feed? It's XML, not HTML :-(

--

Perl Programmer for hire
Leave them kids alone! by ElusiveJoe · 2012-05-20 09:12 · Score: 1

All you know you just a
another block of the Code!
Fresh meat for the grinder by Animats · 2012-05-20 09:18 · Score: 1

More fresh meat for the game companies who need armies of overworked and underpaid programmers.
Smalltalk anyone? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-20 09:44 · Score: 0

Logo and Smalltalk were invented before most slashdotters were born. This is suppose to be a geek board right? Or is this place now only for idiots who have no concept of computing history and like to read slashbi?
false by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-20 10:14 · Score: 0

if that was true then everyone would use PIC because they have the best peripherals. The ARMs and the ATmegas are roughly equal, except the ARMs usually come with 2x the SRAM and half the Flash compared to ATmegas in the same price range. Usually it's CPU, pins, and RAM that you run out of and not flash.
It's hard to get what everybody else uses because the hobbyists are split up almost evenly between AVR and PIC with everyone not in those two groups doing something else. And the professionals are divided up almost evenly among PIC, AVR, 8051, and ARM.
Agentsheets is closed source, proprietary , costly by jimmydevice · 2012-05-20 10:17 · Score: 1

I question using agentsheets (tm), at a cost of $45 to $99 a license when open source solutions like Squeak and BYOB are available for free.
This appears to be more an "enrichment" program for the owners of agentsheets.
What a great way to spend scarce funding.
Raspberry Pi sucks by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-20 10:24 · Score: 0

Pi isn't a microcontroller platform. It's an ARM SoC running Linux.
Also if you wait for Pi, you'll be waiting a long time. Beagleboard, Pandaboard, Boneboard, MX53 Quick Start Board and a few others are readily available and about 3x the real price of a Raspberry Pi ($35 isn't what people are really paying right now).
For cheapness there is the STM32 Discovery which is $8-$11.
Coming Full Circle by wynand1004 · 2012-05-20 11:02 · Score: 1

All of the discussion going on about teaching programming in schools is a great new/old trend. Like many posters here, I learned basic programming skills years ago in middle / high school. But then that all changed somewhere along the line.

School technology courses began to focus on turning students into secretaries - students learn Microsoft Office. If you're lucky, they'll teach design skills (PhotoShop, etc.) The other trend these days is about using Web 2.0 to enable collaboration, which is not bad in and of itself, but misses the mark. That's where programming comes (back) in.

There are a lot of great free resources out there. I have taught programming using Scratch to third graders, Microsoft SmallBasic to fifth graders, and JavaScript to ninth graders. There is also GameMaker, which has a free lite version that allows for drag-n-drop game programming. Microsoft also has Kodu, which let's kids make 3D games with a drag-n-drop interface.

A few months ago I gave a TEDxTokyo presentation on the subject (excuse the shameless plug), which you may find interesting, possibly even entertaining...

--
An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come. - Victor Hugo
"Perception" by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-20 11:52 · Score: 0

Great. Get people involved with programming - I'm all for that.
But the thing is - personally I do see it as really boring. That's my perception. I would have hated it if I had to do it at school.
I do linguistics and languages, I do music, politics, economics and history.... but programming is boring for me. I've tried it several times and it just didn't do anything for me. Those who will find it interesting will find it interesting. It's best to offer a broad range of topics/skills in an environment where children are able to pick up what suits them best. I failed math badly in school - and I've still never had to use any of it (over 10 years later). (Arithmetic being something related but different.) I also failed English because I had no interest in deconstructing Shakespeare and analysing something I was already proficient in. The time wasted doing things which I found boring and 'difficult' could have been better spent on subjects which I did find interesting and 'easy' (because the difficulty level of anything truly enjoyable typically becomes irrelevant).
Just some of my thoughts on the matter.
Depends horw its taught by gr8_phk · 2012-05-20 12:45 · Score: 1

Elementary math is memorization and learning a mechanical system of computing.

If you just drill in the procedure then yes. But I asked my daughter (6 years old in grade K) what 60 + 20 is. She didn't get it, but I asked things like "how many 10s in 60?" She said 6. I asked how may 10s in 20. She said 2. So I ask how many 10s in 80. She thinks, she then says 8. So what's 60 + 20. 80. This is all while we're driving somewhere, so no looking at numbers on paper or anything. If you think about it, adding 10's is the same concept as adding X's. Same for hundreds. No, it's not algebra. But I think if you present early concepts the right way it will make things easier later.
1. Re:Depends horw its taught by marcosdumay · 2012-05-20 13:58 · Score: 1
  
  I used pencils to teach algebra to my youger sister when she was trying to learn multiplication (that means, she was a bit older than 6). In the end, as I suspected, those procedures are way easier to grasp using algebra than directly memorizing the producs table.
  When I learned that, I used BASIC and discovered a few rules. But I didn't have a full grasp of algebra to help me.
  
  --
  Rethinking email
Been there, done that. by Plumber,+Programmer, · 2012-05-20 12:55 · Score: 1

These came out in the early 80's:

Rocky's Boots

Robot Odyssey

These are the games that taught me about logic gates and boolean logic.
1. Re:Been there, done that. by TheNarrator · 2012-05-20 14:01 · Score: 1
  
  Ha... I'm now a professional programmer but I knew something funny was going on when I was a heck of a lot better than everyone else in my class at Rocky's Boots back in the 80s. The one other guy who was good at it is also a programmer now.
It is never too early to program by GoodNewsJimDotCom · 2012-05-20 13:51 · Score: 1

I started programming before I understood what the words and symbols I was typing did. I was about 5 yrs old.
I didn't even understand written English. I just typed in what I read in a book.
Then I graduated to Print rockets.
Once I learned what IF/THEN did when I was 12, I felt the world open up.

--
God spoke to me
Mod the parent up by marcosdumay · 2012-05-20 14:11 · Score: 1

I'd mod you up if I had the points.
The GP makes it look like there is some world wide conspiracy to make children dumb. That's not the case, it is just that our society prioritizes other stuff, and most of the smart people aren't teaching kids.

--
Rethinking email
Can't we just get them 8 bit hardware by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-20 14:21 · Score: 0

Like what we started with, and get 'em hooked like the 8 bit hardware hooked all the rest of us? One day its the TS-1000 or the VIC-20. Then suddenly *BANG* .... blurp-blurp-blurp and you are hooked!
Re:Agentsheets is closed source, proprietary , cos by the+agent+man · 2012-05-20 16:42 · Score: 1

Do you really worry about the closed source? When did you contribute code to any of these projects? Have any of these systems actually been tested with thousands of students in schools? Is there proof that they are the motivational across gender and ethnicity? Haven they bee explored wrt actual learning taking place? Can teachers really used them? Do you have a good model for how to create sustainable solutions; you know, the kind that actually pays programmers to program?
And... there is a free version of AgentCubes (3D)
they want BA, MA, PHD over job experience / skills by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-20 17:08 · Score: 0

they want BA, MA, PHD over job experience / skills/
Grade School Programming by jhains · 2012-05-20 19:36 · Score: 1

In January 1978, my family moved to Saudi Arabia. I don't know who designed the curriculum for the Aramco schools, but we were learning Logo and BASIC in 1st grade on Apple ]['s. Although I didn't become a programmer as a profession, I've never forgotten the skills we were taught at such an early age. I send my son to a private school, and their so-called 'computer' class is a joke. The school has a room with several Macs, and at the 4th grade level, they are just learning to type and playing Minecraft. I wish they would start them on programming much earlier.

--
sig sig sputnik?
Homeschooling response by cpm99352 · 2012-05-20 19:47 · Score: 1

Not sure why this is news - homeschoolers have done this for years.

American slashdot parents - given what you no doubt experienced in public schools yourself (like myself) - why in the world are you subjecting your children to the same experience????
Re:Agentsheets is closed source, proprietary , cos by jimmydevice · 2012-05-20 20:46 · Score: 1

Yes, I do worry about closed source. When publishing a projects in agentsheet, a bug results in deletion of the project if it isn't renamed. In open source, that bug would have been fixed during development.
Scratch and squeak are featured on the OLPC. BYOB is used at Berkeley in their "The Beauty and Joy of Computing" non-CS undergrad course.
Everyone should care about what is being pushed on kids by the NSF, at a costs to taxpayers of $45 a seat, when better tools are available for free.
About agentsheet's "you have N minutes to finish the project" tool, Does that helps kids understand that only time counts and that quality and correctness are unimportant?
In the game business, I guess that's true.
Re:Agentsheets is closed source, proprietary , cos by the+agent+man · 2012-05-20 23:01 · Score: 1

I guess ignoring my rather hard questions is your way of answering them. Perhaps others should contribute to open source projects. You must be too busy. Also, since when are federally funded projects such as Scratch and squeak free to taxpayers? Your tax money is at work here if you like it or not. What part of "there is a free version of AgentCubes" don't you understand?
But programming IS boring (and hard)! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-21 04:51 · Score: 0

You can't transform something that is innately boring/hard/nerdy/etc into something exciting and easy-to-learn. An 11th grader taking Calculus I either loves it and gets it, or NOT. If a kid doesn't have a "logical mind", he/she won't be programming computers, end of story.
I learned everything on my own, and many, even most, programmers I know are also self-taught, because they *wanted* to learn. You can't really teach kids to want to do something IMHO.
Spelling by FishOuttaWater · 2012-05-21 04:56 · Score: 1

Not per-pupal, per-pupa.
Why did programming classes ever stop? by mystery+shopper · 2012-05-21 05:18 · Score: 1

I collect old computers and books about old computers. All of the high schools here in Canada had programming as part of the curriculum in the '80s, as other posters have pointed out. COBOL, FORTRAN and others were part of the daily schedule as well as courses in simply understanding how computers worked? Why on earth did the 'brains' stop this? My neighbor got a job recently simply because he knew some of the old languages. The financial company that hired him still uses a mainframe, believe it or not, and his knowledge came in handy. Even if you learn BASIC, you will have some idea of how programming works.
Art of Assembly by Dareth · 2012-05-21 07:12 · Score: 1

Art of Assembly
I taught myself Assembly before I took the class at the university. I really enjoyed the original draft of the book.

--

I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Algrebra first time in 8th grade by Dareth · 2012-05-21 07:16 · Score: 1

Yeah I remember seeing Algebra for the first time in the 8th grade. And I remember my first thought, "My calculator doesn't have any letters on it!"

--

I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Re:Agentsheets is closed source, proprietary , cos by jimmydevice · 2012-05-21 11:58 · Score: 1

That's a rather nasty retort. I guess protecting your realm trumps good manners.

Yes, I just participated in fixing a bug in the 8250.c driver in Linux. What have you done?
All of your posts are advertisements for Agentsheets(TM). I have looked at your slashdot history and have verified this fact.
Smalltalk, Squeak, Scratch, BYOB? all federally funded? That isn't what I pointed out, Pay attention! Those tools are free to schools.
The fact is, Agentsheets charges for their product, by the seat.
The problem is you and your fanboy obsession with a bad programming metaphor, not me.