Ad Exec: Learn To Code Or You're Dead To Me

theodp writes "In a widely-read WSJ Op-Ed, English major Kirk McDonald, president of online ad optimization service PubMatic, informed college grads that he considers them unemployable unless they can claim familiarity with at least two programming languages. 'Teach yourself just enough of the grammar and the logic of computer languages to be able to see the big picture,' McDonald advises. 'Get acquainted with APIs. Dabble in a bit of Python. For most employers, that would be more than enough.' Over at Typical Programmer, Greg Jorgensen is not impressed. 'I have some complaints about this "everyone must code" movement,' Jorgensen writes, 'and Mr. McDonald's article gives me a starting point because he touched on so many of them.'"

Comments

Re:Right conclusion, wrong arguments

[iggymanz]

pffft. of far higher priority to most humans:

I think every one should learn public speaking, to help effectively communicate ideas.

I think everyone should learn to cook well for more than one person, there is nothing like "breaking bread" with others to build relationships from the most fundamental of human needs.

I think everyone should learn to play a musical instrument or make visual art or poetry, for that stimulates the parts of the brain that mere technical subjects do not.

I think everyone should study philosophy, for that is how humans have tried to make a conceptual framework to treat others and to live (religion being a subset of philosophy)

any of these things is far more important than making instructions for a binary computational device to process.