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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."
C'mon slashdot, aren't you better than this?
I imagine writing news editorials all day is only for exceptionally dull weirdo's as well. At least when my work is done there is something useful to come out of it.
The article is reactionary and designed to get people annoyed and posting comments
So it's flamebait and clickbait? So why post it here? There are plenty of dolts like him and we don't have to respond to them all. Don't feed the troll.
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BMO
So if coding is so routine, then everyone should know how to do.
I love how this asshole is saying code has no practical value, and yet the only reason said asshole has a job is because someone coded the OS, web server, browser, the routers and switches, and the website itself that he's posting from to claim this.
The thing about society is that every job is important. We need janitors as much as we need CEOs. We need specialist labor as much as general. I mean, we entered a new age in human history -- the Information Age, because most of us are now specialists of one kind or another. This dinosaur is still living in the Industrial Age where you only needed a few schmoot people, and the rest you could (sometimes literally) just feed into the machines.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
This would be the perfect example where articles could by moderated as "Troll"
Not really angry. More disappointed.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is why we don't get any kind of respect in management. Because that's what they see in us: The computerized equivalent of plumbers and bricklayers. The fact that they couldn't wrap their feeble minds around a tenth of what we have to understand intimately doesn't matter. What matters is that we're notoriously bad at marketing. Self-marketing, too.
I guess I'm not the only one who is amazed again and again how simple, trivial concepts can be impossible to grasp for allegedly intelligent people. And of course I consider what I can do fairly trivial because, well, let's be honest, it is. Still, there is an amazingly small subset of the human species that can even begin to understand what I'm actually doing. My move to management was quite an eye opener, and it showed me just HOW much people at the C-Level don't really understand about their company.
But they're good at self marketing. They're great at selling their ability that parallels the feat of being able to eat your lunch without spilling half of it on your tie as the biggest achievement in human history. Because, well, in a nutshell, "management skills" are trivial, at best. I was at first very intimidated by the idea that I should now "manage". Turns out it's not that much different from what you have to do anyway while you actually should be programming, just leave out doing some sensible work and you got it.
And that's simply what it boils down to: Techs are really bad at self marketing. We still mostly rely on getting the job done and getting it done well and hoping that people will notice. Bullshit, people don't care. People only listen to the loudmouth who keeps tooting his own horn.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"Better to focus on math, which is the hard part of programming."
How about focusing on logic? That's the real key to programming. Well, that and reading instruction manuals.
I have to tell a story... yeah... I'm old. My little bother was hot. He couldn't help it, girls just couldn't leave him alone. Someone convinced him to do modeling as a career for a while, but after missing shoots to enter skateboard contests, his modeling career was over. Still, Hallmark's "Hunk" calendar ran him as Mr April two years running.
Anyway, while he was screwing every girl who ever wanted a hot guy, I got my engineering degree. I dated the president of the math club, and spent a night in jail for hacking phone systems. One night during summer break, my brother had something to say to me. He said, "I respect what you're doing." I knew he meant he respects what I'm doing even though any reasonable person would not. I couldn't argue with the guy living every hormone driven teenager's dream, but I thought it was funny. I was preparing to make the world a better place, but I suppose being a girl's dream date counts.
We are geeks. There's something wrong in our minds that makes us happy spending time typing on a keyboard rather than chasing women. When I change the world in concrete measurable ways, the feeling is euphoric, and programming is the way I help change the world.
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
The computerized equivalent of plumbers and bricklayers.
Plumbing and masonry are skilled trades. An apprenticeship in either of those trades is a few years, easily the equivalent of a college degree. And that's just to get a journeyman ticket. So, yeah. Programmers are about in line with that.
But ... but ... it's the only thing that soothes the crushing existential pain. ;-)
And, for the record, I think it could be a generational thing -- because up through high-school, interest in computers was a very rare thing for all but the highly nerdy, and in university my comp. sci classes to begin with were pretty much made up of the socially awkward introverted weirdos across the board, at least the ones who passed; the rest some how ended up not continuing on. But over the span of a few years I could see differences and see that the classes had a slightly different makeup of people.
But in the early 80s, the people who were geeks, pretty much were the stereotypical archetypes. They hadn't yet invented the jock-geek subspecies I saw come a long much later, and the rocker-geek subspecies was a cultural impossibility at the time.
Believe it or not, for some of us (to varying degrees), that myth wasn't as far from the truth as one might think. Of course, the nerd umbrella also included that one autistic kid in the school, the music geeks, and the fat guy with adenoids. Not all the nerds were into computers -- but the egregious social awkwardness was unmistakable from orbit. ;-)
So, show some care -- for some of us, Breakfast Club is a surprisingly accurate depiction of the social strata in schools in the 80s. Some of us related to that 'myth' more than anything else, even if it is a little cliche. :-P
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Are you serious?
In a software company (in opposite to company where the IT department mostly keeps the software running) I'm really the one who's "work makes the company work" and it is really my work that the company is selling and turning into profit.
Betty does not have to do that much thinking when it comes to taxes. Some bureaucrat comes up with a maze or rules and she is good at navigating that maze. And adapt to a change in that maze every few year/months. So what if she went to college and has a degree? Does it prove anything? Most programmers have that too. What she, and many others, can't, in opposite to programmers, is to think for herself. Analyze a problem and come up with a solution. I don't fix the printer by going to a training program for a week and learning how to fix that particular model. I solve it by looking up the blink codes, verifying the connectivity, understanding how a printer works, etc.
Sure "companies have worked without computers for centuries". Go tell a company that it can exist without cars for a week. They can go back to horses if they need some transportation. Let us know how well that works.
My boss did not work his ass off to work up from the bottom. He comes from a family that supplied him with the investment money for the startup and he got lucky by being at the right place at the right time and making the connections. He was able to do that because he is better at self-marketing. On the other hand why would I have to aim for owning the company? Is that a holly grail or something?
I don't claim that I'm a better then a bricklayer or a plumber. I'm not that elitist. I've also seen a number of bricklayers and plumbers that produce a shoddy work. And those that don't are comparatively expensive to me. That's why I fix my own faucet too. Without having any schooling on that. And it does not drip.
Management? I do have their respect. I got unusually lucky. But be sure that mostly they do not "want it to work when you present it to them" and they do not want me to "do my work right". They want it to "sort of work". Yesterday. Under the budget. They don't care how well the code is structured because they can't "sell" that to a customer and they don't get to maintain it 10 years down the road. You don't get to put that in a marketing presentation.
In my opinion, GP is absolutely right. We suck at self-marketing. That's also why the OS made by the programmers for the programmers does not have double digit desktop market penetration.
For this, I had an old brass oil lamp on my desk. Usually when someone came with an idea like that I handed it to him with the suggestion to rub it and hope for the best.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.