Raspberry Pi's Eben Upton: "Programming Will Make You a Better Doctor"

cylonlover writes "After a handful of days of furtive suggestion, spring made its presence felt in London today, where the second Technology Frontiers conference got underway. The Economist-organized event sees leading technologists and cultural figures take to the podium in front of some 250 ideas-thirsty business persons. Among them was Raspberry Pi Foundation founder Eben Upton, who extolled the benefits of learning to program for all professions. He went into some detail as to the inception of the Raspberry Pi and the need for more computer programmers."

Comments

Dammit Jim

[Spy Handler]

I'm a doctor, not a programmer!

Raspberry Guy: "Programming will make you a better doctor."

You green blooded, inhuman...

I can imagine

[Hentes]

-Doctor, my kid is sick!

-Have you tried turning him off and on again?

Re:I can imagine

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

-Doctor, my kid is sick!

-Have you tried turning him off and on again?

That's not a programmer, that's an MDSE-certified health professional...

And in other news...

[fireman sam]

Solving problems (programming) can help improve problem solving skills.

Re:And in other news...

[weilawei]

This. I haven't read TFA, but I'll venture a guess that's what Eben was getting at. Critical thinking is useful in virtually all fields of human endeavour. Programming just happens to be a form of applied problem solving that isn't inherently domain specific.

Re:And in other news...

[interkin3tic]

Could also be "knowledge or skills that are not particularly common in your field is often a commodity."

In my field (cell biology), you could say the same thing about calculus, statistics, programming, or people skills. Most cell biologists have good lab bench skills and an ability to think about cell biology and come up with good ideas. The ones that have a good handle on cell biology, lab techniques, AND calculus, or statistics, or programming, or people skills are much more rare, and often more valuable.

Re:So why do I need a Raspberry Pi?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

You can just download Python and learn to program just fine with that. I don't need a piece of hardware for that.

It is actually a bit curious how dubiously suited the rPi is to its theoretical objective(compared to the obvious strategy of just running freely available software on the ridiculously powerful beige wintels that clutter the world); but how much of a giant kick in the ass it gave the 'dev boards that aren't either weedy microcontrollers or $1500, just call our sales team' market.

Re:Learning electronics

[Sarten-X]

Interesting. I was thinking the opposite.

I once studied law, intending to become a lawyer, then realized that would make me a lawyer, and I wanted a career where I could sleep at night. So I became a programmer, and I've spent many nights in front of a glowing terminal... but I digress.

I feel that learning a bit of law has actually helped my programming. Lawyers spend much of their time picking which rules best apply to a particular circumstance, while programmers pick which algorithms are best suited to a task. Lawyers then submit their case to a judge for consideration, while the programmers simply run the compiler. Lawyers work around contract loopholes by covering them with other clauses, and programmers work around (some) bugs by covering them with better-written wrappers.

Many problem-solving disciplines use similar skills. Programming, being nearly pure logic mixed with a bit of language, can contribute marginally to a wide variety of other fields, including medicine, law, or even politics. It is important, however, to not become too obsessed with the programming approach. A perfectly-written contract that programmatically describes an agreement can still be thrown out by a judge if he thinks it isn't fair.

When the only tool you have is a hammer..

[OhANameWhatName]

.. everything starts to look like a nail.

I agree with Upton

[kilodelta]

A few years ago I got to do program reviews in local high school in Rhode Island. In one class they were learning the Microsoft Office suite.

All fine and good, but on that particular day they were working in Excel. The teacher had them doing a payroll spreadsheet. Ok, that works. But then the teacher mentioned the cheat sheet to get the tax amounts.

Based on that I asked the teacher if there was any intention to teach these kids Visual BASIC for Applications (VBA). The teachers answer was that you needed advanced math to be able to program a computer. I wrote this on my report and said that it would actually benefit the kids understanding of mathematics if they knew how to program in MS Office apps. I also said that the act of programming would actually enhance their mathematics skills. Let's face it, for most programming the math you need is to know the basic four functions, maybe modulo, E notation, and exponents. Pretty basic stuff.

So start getting these RasPi boards out there - start getting kids interested in programming on them. You might be surprised what you get out the other end of a project like this.

Re:I agree with Upton

[RobinH]

Yeah, but nobody was buying cheap Android phones to do that, but they are buying RPi's to do it. So either there's something different about the device (unlikely) or there's something different about the way it's being presented. It's simply better marketing. That doesn't mean there wasn't a need for better marketing. Sometimes you need to present it as a completely different product to get people to accept it (think Windows 7 vs. Vista).

Re:Learning electronics

[Kjella]

Most skills have some marginal crossover benefits, the question is rather what is the opportunity cost in time. Do you become a better programmer by learning a bit of law or more programming? Does the lawyer become a better lawyer by learning a bit of programming or more legal theory and case study? You need the width of knowledge to work with others, but you also need the depth to really know your stuff. Or rather I feel it's the other way around, if all you know is IT I can have a business-to-IT translator give you work but if you don't have any in-depth skill then you're almost usable to lots of things, but only almost. And if you got width and depth, well you're probably too busy even though you'd be perfect for my project too. It's a team sport, make the players you have exploit their strengths because you'll never get around to fixing all the weaknesses.