Telegraph Contributor Says Coding Is For Exceptionally Dull Weirdos

mikejuk writes "The UK Government is trying to figure out how to teach children to code by changing what is taught in schools. The Telegraph, a leading UK newspaper, has put the other side of the case: Coding is for 'exceptionally dull weirdo(s).' The recent blog post by Willard Foxton is an amazing insight into the world of the non-programming mind. He goes on to say: 'Coding is a niche, mechanical skill, a bit like plumbing or car repair.' So coding is a mechanical skill — I guess he must be thinking of copy typing. 'As a subject, it only appeals to a limited set of people — the aforementioned dull weirdos. There's a reason most startup co-founders are "the charming ideas guy" paired with "the tech genius". It's because if you leave the tech genius on his own he'll start muttering to himself.' Why is it I feel a bout of muttering coming on? 'If a school subject is to be taught to everyone, it needs to have a vital application in everyday life — and that's just not true of coding.' Of course it all depends on what you mean by 'vital application.' The article is reactionary and designed to get people annoyed and posting comments — just over 600 at the moment — but what is worrying is that the viewpoint will ring true with anyone dumb enough not to be able to see the bigger picture. The same attitude extends to all STEM subjects. The next step in the argument is — why teach physics, chemistry, biology, and math (as distinct from arithmetic) to anyone but exceptionally dumb weirdos."

Comments

Re:brace yourself

[TrollstonButterbeans]

The article is spot-on, but from the perspective of the present.

It used to be that you had to have incredible discipline to do math. Then they invented the calculation. Then they invented the spreadsheet (i.e. Excel ... but to the hardcore Lotus 1-2-3 or VisiCalc??).

Coding sucks today because our programming languages and our compilers require more machine understanding than problem solving ability.

And eventually that will change.

But today, the mastering the tools and intricacies is FAR MORE IMPORTANT than actually being able to describe the problem.

And like I said, eventually intuitive problem solving applications will emerge and trump programming languages.

I shouldn't have to know the scope of a variable, whether I want to allocate some memory, how many bytes and whether or not I want it static to solve a problem. But today, our computers aren't actually really that fast either. They just seem fast compared to the snail speed ones of the past. But someday ....