Tech Leaders Encourage Teaching Schoolkids How To Code

rtoz writes "Code.org has released infographics and a video to explain why students should be taught to code in school. They've gathered support from leaders in politics and the tech industry. Mark Zuckerberg says, 'Our policy at Facebook is literally to hire as many talented engineers as we can find. There just aren't enough people who are trained and have these skills today.' Former U.S. President Bill Clinton adds, 'At a time when people are saying, "I want a good job – I got out of college and I couldn't find one," every single year in America, there is a standing demand for 120,000 people who are training in computer science.' Bill Gates said, 'Learning to write programs stretches your mind, and helps you think better, creates a way of thinking about things that I think is helpful in all domains.' Google's Eric Schmidt is looking beyond first-world countries: 'For most people on Earth, the digital revolution hasn't even started yet. Within the next 10 years, all that will change. Let's get the whole world coding!'" Part of the standing demand for computer science jobs may be influenced by bad policies from tech companies, like Yahoo's ban on working from home.

Comments

Cheap labor trained with tax dollars

[Animats]

More "we want cheap labor trained with tax dollars" whining from industry. If there were a shortage of programmers, salaries would be going up. They're not.

Re:Cheap labor trained with tax dollars

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. If there was a shortage, people wouldn't be getting fired for being over 30. People who actually can program wouldn't be blown off for interviews after applying because they didn't have every keyword on their resume. Just more justification for more H1Bs into the country to pay them next to nothing.

Re:Cheap labor trained with tax dollars

[Anonymous Coward]

People don't refuse programming jobs because they didn't learn how to do it in grade school.

People refuse programming jobs because they hate programming, and don't want to deal with the regular long hours, stress, and complete lack of job security that programming comes with.

Teaching more kids to program won't produce more people who want to do it for a living, but feel free to try.

Making the job worth learning the skill for, on the other hand, will motivate people (old and young) to self-educate. Of course...that might cost something....

Re:Cheap labor trained with tax dollars

[Anonymous Coward]

Most people are capable of being programmers, but they aren't capable of being good programmers. Most people just weren't born with the level of intelligence necessary to be such a thing, and evidence of this is everywhere.

Re:Cheap labor trained with tax dollars

[crazyjj]

Here's a video to show you how tech companies in the U.S. today "recruit" American programmers.

Re:Cheap labor trained with tax dollars

[DiSKiLLeR]

There's PLENTY of job security in programming (and all tech jobs) and salaries HAVE been going up.

You're just living in the wrong place.

America is not a country that has job security. Go to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, anywhere in Europe, and enjoy plenty of holidays, great pay and great job security.

Re:Cheap labor trained with tax dollars

[srichard25]

I have been in the programming job market for more than 10 years and I am convinced that many big businesses artificially manufacture "shortages" just so that they can get H-1B Visas to hire foreign programmers for much cheaper. A local big business had 20-30 programming jobs on their website. I applied to many of them. Some of those jobs matched up word-for-word with my resume, yet I didn't get a single call back. Instead, we hear of a ton of new hires coming from India. Most of them moved into a new apartment complex right across from the big business. So many, in fact, that the apartment complex became known as "Little India". You can still see them walking across the street early in the morning and then back again very late at night. They work very long hours, are not able to simply change companies at will, and work for a lower salary. And all the big company had to do was claim that they couldn't find any US citizens to meet the job requirements.

Bullshit

[crazyjj]

Zuckerberg says, 'Our policy at Facebook is literally to hire as many talented engineers as we can find. There just aren't enough people who are trained and have these skills today.' Former U.S. President Bill Clinton adds, 'At a time when people are saying, "I want a good job – I got out of college and I couldn't find one," every single year in America, there is a standing demand for 120,000 people who are training in computer science.'

Yeah, and those "jobs" wouldn't just be a fiction to get more H-1B Visas, now would they? Of course not, they're all legit, of course.

Bullshit

[DoofusOfDeath]

Mark Zuckerberg says, 'Our policy at Facebook is literally to hire as many talented engineers as we can find.

I'm calling bullshit. I work with plenty of very good developers, and none of them has been contacted by Facebook. If he really wanted to meet them, all he'd need to do is offer a yearly salary of $200k. He's apparently unwilling to do that.

my whole class was taught to program in high schoo

[codepunk]

My whole class in high school was taught how to program. The dirty little secret though is genetics play a key role and only a couple of us had any aptitude for it. Most people can be taught to program in some fashion only a few however will every be any good at it.

Critical thinking before coding

[fredrated]

Critical thinking seems to me to be the missing education; teach people to think and when they get to coding it will be easy.

Re:my whole class was taught to program in high sc

[Anonymous Coward]

And... there you have it. Every kindergarden class has toy xylophones and drums. Most of them don't have a Mozart. A few of them have future part-time musicians. The rest just make noise.

Re:my whole class was taught to program in high sc

[AthanasiusKircher]

Most people can be taught to program in some fashion only a few however will every be any good at it.

What's your point? If you aren't good enough to be a professional at something, you should never try it or even be exposed to it? Let's shut down all the Little League games -- "the dirty little secret though is genetics play a key role and only a couple of kids on any team (at most) have any aptitude for it. Most people can be taught to hit a ball in some fashion only a few however will ever be any good at it."

If kids are never encouraged to try something out, they'll never figure out what they might actually be good at. And many activities teach useful skills regardless of whether the participants are "any good at it" -- baseball might teach coordination, teamwork, whatever, programming might teach critical thinking about problems, etc.

I fail to see what deserves "+5 insightful" for noting that some people are better at a particular skill than others, or might have a particular aptitude for it... or -- heavens! -- might actually just work hard at it because they're interested rather than being genetically predisposed to be a good programmer.

(Whatever the hell that means -- I don't think computers have been around long enough to put evolutionary pressure on humans to develop a gene for "good coding." And if you're making a claim about how you're required to have a particular IQ or other intelligence marker we claim a genetic basis for, well, I know a lot of people who are incredibly intelligent but terrible at programming, which is a particular skill that seems to require all sorts of personality and intelligence traits to do well... if you've found a genetic marker for "good coding skills," please let us know!)

Anyhow, as the Gates quote in the summary says, good programming does require critical thinking skills and logical thinking. We used to do things like this in schools when we required kids to do proofs in geometry classes, for example. How many kids did we ever expect to become theoretical mathematicians?? A much smaller number than we think might end up doing some coding some day.

Good thinking skills can be transferable. And "genetics" doesn't determine everything about your life.

That's nothing!

[walterbyrd]

Where the average person can easily memorize a seven-digit phone number, most good programmers have memorized pi out to at least 15+ decimal places.

Pfft. Never mind 15 decimal places, I have memorized the entire 26 letter alphabet!