Excite Kids To Code By Focusing Less On Coding

the agent man writes "The Hour of Code event taking place December 9-15 has produced a number of tutorials with the goal to excite 10 millions kids to code. It's really interesting to contrast the different pedagogical approaches behind the roughly 30 tutorials. The University of Colorado's 'Make a 3D Game' tutorial wants to excite kids to code by focusing less on coding. This pedagogy is based on the idea that coding alone, without non-coding creativity, has a hard time attracting kids who are skeptical of computer science, including a high percentage of girls who think 'programming is hard and boring.' Instead, the 'Make a 3D Game' activity has the kids create sharable 3D shapes and 3D worlds in their browsers, which they then want to bring to life — through coding. There is evidence that this strategy works. The article talks about the research exploring how kids get excited through game design, and how they can later leverage coding skills acquired to make science simulations. You can try the activity by yourself or with your kids, if you're curious."

Comments

The Solution

[Frosty Piss]

A better way to promote programming to kids:

https://www.google.com/search?q=booth+babes&source=lnms&tbm=isch

Re:The Solution

[JMJimmy]

Dear Daughter,

Be inspired to code by dressing really slutty and letting a bunch of geeks you'd never go out with ogle you.

Your Loving Father

Re:The Solution

[cascadingstylesheet]

A better way to promote programming to kids:

https://www.google.com/search?q=booth+babes&source=lnms&tbm=isch

That would scare young male geeks into the next time zone (all the while bragging about what they would have done, had they, you know, not been unfortunately called away ...).

Re:The Solution

[JMJimmy]

Nothing to do with PC, it has to do with the fact that I'd want to teach my daughter how to solve problems through coding not how to sell her body. She wants to dress provocatively for her enjoyment, that's all on her, but I'd make damn sure she could use her mind to earn money. If anything I'd want her to redefine booth babe as the hot developer making the big bucks.

Re:The Solution

[Half-pint HAL]

Yes, that's the "politically correct" response.

The realist response might involve the fact that most females have no interest in programming. MOST.

That's not "realist", that's fatalist -- "girls aren't interested in our misogynistically dominated profession, so let's just appeal to misogynists instead."

Or we could just be less misogynistic.

Re:The Solution

[CodeBuster]

Be inspired to code by dressing really slutty and letting a bunch of geeks you'd never go out with ogle you.

Have you seen what your teenage daughter and her friends are wearing these days by their own choice? This is already happening so she might as well be inspired by it.

Re:The Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a DOUCHE BAG.

Re:The Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Your daughter is a fucking whore anyway, so why not capitalize on it? Do you have any idea how much cum she vacuums up every week?

Girls are completely wrong.

[Brett Buck]

Coding for it's own sake is *easy* and boring.

Re:Girls are completely wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

They like it better when it's hard—it's easier to take it all in.

Re:Girls are completely wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

But it seems hard to grasp that it's means it is.

Re:Girls are completely wrong.

[msauve]

Hello, World!

Re:Girls are completely wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

Throw your monads on the table surrounded with the girls who want to learn. Retain form and function while explaining and demonstrating the linguistics involved. Make it as concrete as possible. The first year students will love it.

Re:Girls are completely wrong.

[rtb61]

The best way of teaching coding is firstly in the manipulation of interesting simulations, firstly where the manipulation of inputs into the simulations alters the outcomes and then reviewing the underlying algorithms and how changes there further alter the outcomes. This provides access to much more complicated programs that in total are out of the intellectual reach of learning students but far more interesting, so while the whole program is far to complex, elements of it are within reach and draw the students to programming and the problem solving that can be achieved with programs.

Complex stuff, like weather modelling, which would allow a range of subjects to be taught simultaneously (programming, weather, physics, maths etc), can be very worthwhile simulation teaching exercises. Flight modelling also provides similar simultaneous learning opportunities. So rather than focus on boring coding, focus on problem solving than can be achieved by coding in complex detailed simulations, from social dynamics in city building to space launch and the human body and health, there are a range of interesting outcomes and many solutions that come together to achieve them.

Re:Girls are completely wrong.

[gweihir]

No, it is not. Or rather people that think this will never be good coders. That is why there is no way to qualify 10 millions kids to code, there are just not that many with the required talents and interests. Coding above a certain, very low competency level, is not a skill you can train people for. Add to that that smart people do not become coders today, due to bad working conditions, bad job security and being treated like shit by management.

This one here is still absolutely current. If anything, things are getting worse (yes, I do code reviews as part of my job): http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/02/the-nonprogramming-programmer.html

The last thing we need is more people that can barely code and fancy themselves programmers.

Re:Girls are completely wrong.

[Half-pint HAL]

Coding above a certain, very low competency level, is not a skill you can train people for.

Either that "low" level is a lot higher than you think, or our world is doomed. Coding is a matter of process-thinking, and any large company runs on process thinking. Getting people to code early as a core skill, rather than as a specialism, would have knock-on effects in all organisations employing more than a few dozen people.

Re:Girls are completely wrong.

[swillden]

Coding is a matter of process-thinking

It's a lot more than that. Coding is very different from the sort of process thinking you use to build processes executed by people, because computers are completely incapable of filling in any gaps or exercising any initiative. If you build company processes the way you write code, they'll be very ineffective, and if you write code the way you build company processes, your code will rarely work.

In addition, outside of code that defines business rules, coding involves huge numbers of details and abstractions of those details which are different from anything we encounter in the "real" world.

Getting people to code early as a core skill, rather than as a specialism, would have knock-on effects in all organisations employing more than a few dozen people.

If that were true, then former programmers would make outstanding managers and executives. I do know some software engineers who are outstanding managers or executives, and I know plenty who were great coders but lousy at management and leadership. Further, in my experience the correlation between coding effectiveness and managerial effectiveness is negative, though close to zero.

Re:Girls are completely wrong.

[Half-pint HAL]

Coding is very different from the sort of process thinking you use to build processes executed by people, because computers are completely incapable of filling in any gaps or exercising any initiative. If you build company processes the way you write code, they'll be very ineffective, and if you write code the way you build company processes, your code will rarely work.

Oh, if only. There's been plenty of times when I've identified holes or ambiguities in the company process, identified the most likely misinterpretation from the way it's worded and been told I'm just being picking and people will understand what it means... only to be hauled up a year later for not following the designated process when I did what was originally intended, rather than what the documents said.

Re: Girls are completely wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

Code these days consists of script kiddies tossing their latest pet project over the cube. Code quality has been in sharp decline since the internet allowed for patching. The world gets faster and everything gets shittier. The only difference these days is which jobs have the most cocaine addicts and stripper poles...those are the high class jobs.

It's not gonna get better until we train people in software testing, and that's apparently even more boring than coding. In the meantime we can make shiny turds, hoorah for progress.

Re:Girls are completely wrong.

[gweihir]

Coding is process design. Large companies run of following processes, not on designing them.

'programming is hard and boring.'

[Anonymous Coward]

Programming well is indeed hard for most, and most would find trying to do such a thing boring. Intelligent people are few and far between, and a grand majority of people just don't have the aptitude to be good programmers, or even mediocre programmers. Give it up, it's hopeless, Kenstar!

Re:'programming is hard and boring.'

[narcc]

Yeah, it's so hard that children can easily teach themselves. It's ridiculously easy. How many of the users here taught themselves to write code before they age of 10? Face it, it doesn't take a special mind or superior intellect to write code. It does not make you special. Get over it.

Re:'programming is hard and boring.'

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it's so hard that children can easily teach themselves.

Kids can easily teach themselves to program well? Then why do a grand majority of programmers suck at it completely? They're incompetent and don't have a deep understanding of any of the concepts.

Face it, it doesn't take a special mind or superior intellect to write code.

Maybe not if you're just talking about writing any sort of code whatsoever, but that's a pretty low bar to set for people, isn't it? It does take special minds and superior intellect to be great at things such as this, though.

Get over it.

You get over it. The hordes of shitty programmers aren't proving your point very well.

Re:'programming is hard and boring.'

[russotto]

How many of the users here taught themselves to write code before they age of 10? Face it, it doesn't take a special mind or superior intellect to write code.

Actually, it does. It's just that most people who have the knack can express it by age 10.

Re:'programming is hard and boring.'

[Decker-Mage]

Simple answer? The best people at that kind of work are puzzle-people. The only differences I have detected over the last forty-five years is what knowledge domain they are best suited for solving problems in this manner. When they decide to enter the field, computer science or engineering or programming (coding), they face a curriculum that is seriously disconnected with their passion around reasoning out and solving problems. It's a one size fits all curriculum that winnows the wheat rather than the chaff.

As with your example, I started when I was ten. My personal computer occupied the entire first floor of the Science building at the university. Everyone thought it was "cute" that someone so young was picking it up quickly. By the time I was 14 I was a teaching assistant and doing consulting. Back then, it was all about solving problems. That changed rather quickly over the next few years as the computer science, then computer engineering, even the set of courses within various departments were seriously over-subscribed. Then the curbs were brought in to reduce the number of successful candidates and to winnow out anyone except those who would tough it out. You also see this in pre-med and pre-law programs for the same reason.

There's no easy fix either. They can yell up and down about a shortage of STEM graduates but until the systemic restrictions are centered about actually selecting people that are "the best and brightest," it isn't going to change. Meanwhile, "our global competitors" are about getting people through to the job market with what they need to know rather than equipped with knowledge that is useless in real-world problems.

Re:'programming is hard and boring.'

[narcc]

I haven't met anyone yet with the interest but not the aptitude. I taught computer programming to adult learners for several years as an optional part of a computer literacy series. I had exactly two students fail to complete the course -- both because they refused to do any of the exercises. You can't learn to program without programming, just like you can't learn to drive without driving.

Programming is absurdly simple. It's been my experience that anyone can learn to write computer programs with surprisingly little effort. This terrifies some people. I'll let you puzzle out why.

Re:'programming is hard and boring.'

[Anonymous Coward]

Programming is absurdly simple.

I've found that most of the people who say this are crappy programmers, overly optimistic, or both.

Re:'programming is hard and boring.'

[Decker-Mage]

Programming really is absurdly simple as are all the forms of engineering (done all but two to date). It's the critical thinking that is required to determine the solution that trips most up as it isn't taught in any school I've run across prior to college where it is a core requirement. [Got an A+ myself. No surprise there.] If you can'[t decompose the problem to describe the solution using any of the maths applicable, and don't kid yourself every technique (iterative, functional, OOP, ...) they all found somewhere in maths, you're less than useless in this or any other maths oriented field.

The sad and sorry truth is that our school system does try every once in a rare while to teach critical thinking (e.g. word problems), but it's piecemeal without bothering to tie all the other classes in logics and maths to give these kids a head start. For years I would look at the maths and sciences tests administered around the world. Tough doesn't even describe them. The only way to survive them is to either have the solution sets memorized by practical experience or to know how to approach these problems in an aware manner.

AC: I seriously don't think I qualify as a crappy programmer (engineer) as I'm not typing this from a federal prison which is where I would have ended up by being a crappy programmer. [QA/QC is an absolute necessity.] I'm also not optimistic. Realist on my good days. Terminally depressed on the bad ones. Literally, terminally depressed.

Re:'programming is hard and boring.'

[Anonymous Coward]

You're thinking "accessible"....like the original "code", music. "Anyone" can start a garage band (i.e. code a battery app for a phone), but when's the last time you heard a key modulation on the typical radio station? Almost never. Every now and again you'll hear a key change, but it's a jarring jump to the new key, not a smooth modulation...modulating key requires talent...a, special mind.

Re:'programming is hard and boring.'

[Joce640k]

Face it, it doesn't take a special mind or superior intellect to write code. It does not make you special. Get over it.

Let me guess, you're one of the people who hire the 'coders' on the daily WTF?

Re:'programming is hard and boring.'

[gweihir]

And you are completely wrong. Becoming a good coder doe snot only require the customary 10'000h that are required to master any skill really well, if you do not have the aptitude and talent, no amount of trying will turn you into a good coder. There are very few good coders around. There is a large host of really bad ones and a much smaller one of mediocre ones. Most of them never get better during their whole careers. Then, very occasionally, you stumble upon somebody that actually understand what he/she is doing. That is so rare that it is glaringly obvious when it happens.

Re:'programming is hard and boring.'

[gweihir]

Indeed. One thing the industry has consistently ignored and the main reason why most software sucks badly.

Re:'programming is hard and boring.'

[Half-pint HAL]

Yeah, it's so hard that children can easily teach themselves.

Kids can easily teach themselves to program well? Then why do a grand majority of programmers suck at it completely? They're incompetent and don't have a deep understanding of any of the concepts.

Valid point. Self-teaching is a very hit-and-miss experience. Some self-teachers fail to identify important things and hence never learn them.

The prevalence of the (partially) self-taught programmer in the workplace basically points to one simple problem: a lack of school teachers who are capable of teaching programming. We've not developed enough of a teaching culture, so even good programmers find it difficult to put themselves in the learner's position and so they don't make good teachers.

Re:'programming is hard and boring.'

[jones_supa]

Yeah, it's so hard that children can easily teach themselves. It's ridiculously easy. How many of the users here taught themselves to write code before they age of 10? Face it, it doesn't take a special mind or superior intellect to write code. It does not make you special. Get over it.

Things were different when we could easily fire up a BASIC interpreter and hit one key to start the program. Today there isn't a single environment simple as that.

Re:'programming is hard and boring.'

[Anonymous Coward]

Programming really is absurdly simple as are all the forms of engineering (done all but two to date).

But we're talking about how difficult it would be for most people to program well, not how difficult it would be for motivated intelligent people to do so.

Re:'programming is hard and boring.'

[Anonymous Coward]

Valid point. Self-teaching is a very hit-and-miss experience. Some self-teachers fail to identify important things and hence never learn them.

It's not even just that self-teaching is hit and miss (teaching in general is mostly miss), but that even most of the fools pumped out by colleges are completely incompetent.

Re:'programming is hard and boring.'

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing that you've said there implies "absurdly simple". Problem decomposition is a skill that eludes many. It's also not all there is to engineering. A big part of engineering is identifying a reasonable solution given a series of constraints -- optimization problems with no unique solution. Especially when a set of constraints comes to contradiction (here if you can use your method to break down a constraint to simpler sub-constraints, and only violate a sub-constraint, it may be good enough). In my experience, that sort of problem is much less taught in schools, and it's almost the opposite to breaking down the problem since the solution has to be globally optimal given the full set of constraints rather than the sum of locally optimal solutions to each constraint.

What are you doing that would have put you in a federal prison for being a crappy programmer, instead of getting you fired from the sort of a job where being crappy is an indictable offense?

Re:'programming is hard and boring.'

[bbsalem]

Programming is absurdly simple.

I've found that most of the people who say this are crappy programmers, overly optimistic, or both.

Actually sight-singing the continuo lines from Bach's Christmas Oratorio, the orchestral score, either while listening to a recording or not is absurdly simple! Only if you brain happens to be wired for music and you have learned enough solfeggio to read the part at sight. So this is wrong, as is the assertion that anything is absurdly simple. Is remembering 40 moves at chess "absurdly simple"? It might be if your degrees are in math or CS and you have been playing chess since you were four years old. I know musicians who have been perforning since they were that age.

But brains are all different, so I could never remember many moves in a chess line while knowing people who knew all the variations of the opening, and they couldn't remember orchestral and vocal parts from music literature as easy as I could. BTW, I consider myself a bad programmer, even though I try to write code every once in a while. I don't have any illusions that it is my strength. As to if good programming can be taught, especially to adults who got it wrong, I have my doubts, just like it takes some native ability to do music, at least some pitch and tonal memory.

Re:5 y-o cold in his node

[turkeydance]

obviously should be "code in his node."

Re:5 y-o cold in his node

[Anonymous Coward]

That's great sam that you spent time with the fam and thus have to post this spam.

When you see your wife (LOLS) tell her thank you ma'am.

Clown Research indicates kids like baloons...

[Bob_Who]

...however Ronald McDonald has shown that a happy meal with a TOY works best.

Unless the toy its stupid and boring CODE.

Re:Clown Research indicates kids like baloons...

[Anonymous Coward]

..or requires ASSEMBLY

Re:Clown Research indicates kids like baloons...

[MikeBabcock]

I prefer ASSEMBLY to broken Makefiles ...

Re:Clown Research indicates kids like baloons...

[msauve]

Real men use machine language.

Re:Clown Research indicates kids like baloons...

[RightwingNutjob]

I think real men use plugboards, though oddly enough, most of the original plugboard coders in the 40's and the magnetic core ROM knitters in the 50's and 60's were women.

Re:Clown Research indicates kids like baloons...

[Bing Tsher E]

The coders of the 40's were women because the men were mostly at war. The people who 'wove' together the magnetic cores for core memory arrays were drudge workers. Precision drudge workers, but still just doing the same thing consistently over and over and over. The people who wrote the patterns that were then written into those magnetic core arrays were an entirely different group.

Re:Clown Research indicates kids like baloons...

[nigelo]

The best we could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth

For loops and printfs aren't fun

[MrEricSir]

If you want people to get interested in programming, you have to show them something interesting they can do with it? *gasp*

Personally I didn't get interested in programming because someone showed me how to do a for loop. I got interested because I could build games in ZZT or add my own cheat codes to gorillas.bas. (Those damn gorillas didn't stand a chance against my nuclear bananas.)

Re:For loops and printfs aren't fun

[Anonymous Coward]

"Can I put a boner array in my butt loop?"

If programming isn't fun, you're doing it wrong.

Re:For loops and printfs aren't fun

[Anonymous Coward]

Not fun? I think you may have forgotten your former self.

10 PRINT "YO MAMA"
20 GOTO 10

Re:For loops and printfs aren't fun

[Tablizer]

I got into programming because my friend talked me into taking an elective class in high-school. I was reluctant at first. But after I saw what it was all about, I realized how potentially powerful programming was: a wide variety of ideas that I could conceive I could turn into a "device" and shape it to my vision: the computer was a blank canvas and the programming language was a rack full of shiny new paints and brushes.......and it was fun and liberating, until the boss made me paint the corporate equivalent of velvet Elvises all day.

Maybe kids should just be forced to take a course until it clicks what programming is about. Some things just take getting over an initial hump of ignorance and confusion.

Re:For loops and printfs aren't fun

[hot soldering iron]

I hate to say it, but some people can't think even if forced to at gun point or with the promise of vast wealth. I (as an adult learner) was in a class of high school students learning CNC and manual machining. I told them about my father, a CNC programmer of over 40 years experience, and how his tax refund was almost always more than I made for any given year. The instructor backed me up, stating that he made a lot of his yearly income doing side projects and contract work during the summer.

I couldn't believe it. Some of these kids had "squirrel brains", as one so eloquently put it. Many of them dropped out of the class to become welders. It really was the best they could do. I was shocked at the demonstrated lack of (talent/drive/intelligence - pick one).

Give some people tools to build great cities with, and all they can do is use them to crack walnuts. I don't think I've been surprised by stupidity since those classes. Even the average Vo-tech student was smarter than the average high school student, due to additional filtering.

Re:For loops and printfs aren't fun

[jones_supa]

As a kid I once demonstrated some BASIC programming to a couple of my friends (two brothers) at their house, and when I started typing "PRINT" assignments, they said "we don't have a printer..."

Re:For loops and printfs aren't fun

[tlhIngan]

I hate to say it, but some people can't think even if forced to at gun point or with the promise of vast wealth. I (as an adult learner) was in a class of high school students learning CNC and manual machining. I told them about my father, a CNC programmer of over 40 years experience, and how his tax refund was almost always more than I made for any given year. The instructor backed me up, stating that he made a lot of his yearly income doing side projects and contract work during the summer.

I couldn't believe it. Some of these kids had "squirrel brains", as one so eloquently put it. Many of them dropped out of the class to become welders. It really was the best they could do. I was shocked at the demonstrated lack of (talent/drive/intelligence - pick one).

Everyone is different. Not everyone can figure out the logic behind code, or algorithms. There's a certain bit of skill required in being able to be told "I need to total up this list of numbers" and being able to take a conceptual leap to telling a machine how to do it precisely, step by step.

Just like on the CNC - you probably have the skills and knowledge on how to take the starting block and the final desired output and command the CNC to manipulate it to generate the output. And possibly the skill to realize which actions are redundant and just slow the entire process down. But to do so generally requires a level of spatial reasoning to figure out which bits you need, and how much you can remove at a time.

There are plenty of people who don't really get "thinking" type jobs and prefer more hands-on type jobs (e.g., welding). They probably can be extremely proficient and skillful welders too, and able to detect just by looking when a weld is bad. Or knowing how the sound the welder makes can tell you how good a welder someone is.

Different sets of skills, intuition and other things are required.

Coding is really the same - there are leaps of logic and skills that not everyone has. And it's not for lack of trying - we all love to rage on Visual Basic, but there's a language that DID try to make coding easy for everyone. Of course, look where it is today to realize that sometimes, everyone being a coder isn't a good thing.

Since when...

[Anonymous Coward]

Was programming ever not hard or boring?

Me thinks some little kiddies are in for a rude awakening when they realize their favourite games are comprised of nothing but hundreds of thousands of lines of "code". The real world doesn't hide C or C++ behind a pretty sugar coated UI. If they're not interested in programming, then they're not interested in programming. I don't understand why there seems to be this excessive push to force programming on younglings these days. It's definitely not for everyone, and the last thing we need right now is more dis-interested programmers who write crummy code because they're just there for the cash.

Re:Since when...

[Anonymous Coward]

The push is to get young girls into programming. Because if young girls can't do what a grown man can, that would imply that grown man are superior to young girl in at least one thing. And that would get the feminists mad. So keep pushing kids into stuff that do not interest them, because you go girl! Nothing is more important then proving men are inferior.

Re:Since when...

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one welcome our new young girl overladies

Re:Since when...

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. Programming was never "boring" to the right kids. We don't need the other kids.

Re:Since when...

[fermion]

I would say that coding, at the high level, it much less tedious than it once was. A lot can be done by drag and drop. Even the most tedious platform coding, for the Mac, has been greatly simplified. Of course much of this 'simple' coding does not pay very much.

From a pedagogical point of view, the idea is to teach techniques and process without overwhelming the immature mine with the details. It many cases this leads to meaningless games and trivial activities that don't really teach much. University of Colorado, who has done lots of great work in promoting this stuff, also has also done some stuff that is just games and requires a great deal of elaboration to make it effective.

One project that has been around for a while that is high quality is Alice. The project, like so many others, suffer from the 'magic bullet' phenomenon. To often people expect a curriculum to magically cause a student to learn content without a qualified teacher. This predates computers. It is why we such problems in so many elementary schools that leads to failure in high grades.

Coding is a process skill, a logical skill, and a discipline. It is not just knowing keywords, or which things to drag, or how to use an IDE. For a teacher who only has a passing relationship with coding, this is what it taught. For others the nuts and bolts, at an appropriate level, is the focus.

Re:Since when...

[doctor woot]

Programming was never "boring" to the "right" kids because those kids were creative and had the ability to imagine the possibilities provided by computers and the motivation to see them through. But with the outright failure of the American (and possibly elsewhere) educational system, it's not absurd to suggest that maybe we ought to foster this sort of creativity and innovative behavior in more people through different approaches to educating children. As it stands, academic subjects are taught as horrible distortions of their actual selves and not at all accurate representations of what the subjects are actually like. For example, my "computer science" classes in high school involved typing up code in HTML and learning how to send emails. If I hadn't known any better I would've dropped computers altogether. Same goes for math, physical science, etc.

  Even if we don't convince all too many kids to pursue academic careers, with a stronger social understanding and appreciation of the sciences we might just end up with, at the very least, slightly lessened pressure on scientists who are starving for research grants.

Re:Since when...

[VortexCortex]

It's definitely not for everyone, and the last thing we need right now is more dis-interested programmers who write crummy code because they're just there for the cash.

While I agree that just being in it for the cash is the wrong approach, I also vehemently disagree that programming is the last thing kids need. Kids need programming with their mathematics. Consider a Sigma symbol -- That's a fucking for loop you twit. Now, if we had just taught the kids how to do mathematics on computers instead of shitty little calculators then they could control the primary IO they have with the digital world: HTML and JavaScript.

Once you realize that programming is essentially applied algebra, then you must ask yourself why it the hell would you even consider depriving the kids of a meaningful way to utilize the mathematics you're trying to teach them? Don't you WANT to extinct that question, "Meh, When will I ever use this in the real world?" and the associated boredom?

Human. You are a damned tool using creature. Your younglings will naturally find intriguing useless concepts that they have no way of directly leveraging. I have trained children who are flunking out of mathematics to be A+ students by simply teaching them a bit of JavaScript and game design. It is the teachers that are FAILING like fools to hand out the tools. Someone must break the cycle. Every human with a computer that doesn't know how to tell it what they want it to do is hindering your progress as a species. In the Age of Information this is like not teaching them how to read and write.

Are you a scientist? I don't think you are. If you were you would realize you can't just say shit like "the last thing we need is ___" without testing the damned hypothesis first. Go suck a tailpipe, you are hindering your herd.

Re:Since when...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why have the best when you can force a 1:1 female:male ratio*?

We should simply assign people at birth to a certain job. If you allow people to choose they tend to choose what they want, instead of choosing whatever job will help us reach the soon to be mandatory* 1:1 ratios.

* not valid for low-paid, risky, or otherwise "bad" jobs.

Re:Since when...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand why there seems to be this excessive push to force programming on younglings these days.

It's not a matter of forcing everyone to become programmers, it's a matter of exposing everyone to subjects relevant to modern life, so that they can make informed decisions on what to pursue later in life.

Why teach geography in school? Not everyone will become travel agents. Why teach history in school? Not everyone will commit genocide. Why teach mathematics in school? Not everyone will become card counters. Et cetera.

Most items people use daily rely on a microprocessor to function - traffic lights, dishwasher, elevator, TV remote, smartphone... While there is for sure a set of kids who are naturally drawn to explore how these things work, there is also a large group of people who don't even know it is possible to influence how these items work. A computer is magic to them, when the computer does not work like they expect they conclude "computers are hard", feel stupid, and move on. What if even a small percentage of these people could be made to see that they can influence how computers work? This is what this program aims to do.

There is also a democratic aspect to this - if the population at large is oblivious to the fact that computer programming can be changed, they will accept lies or status quo with the simple motivation "the computer says so" - this could have implications ranging from trivial to catastrophic (hello e-voting...).

Re:Since when...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. I started coding because I wanted to code. I remember saying to mum "check this out! while (true) { print i++; }, see how fast the number is going up? how cool is that?" then my computer would crash because I had a memory leak and I'd reboot.

Another memory years later is when I tried to write my own recursive filesystem delete and instead of taking ~0.1 second it took many seconds... I thought "uh oh" and cancelled it. By then about one third of my data had been erased, including the source code I was working on, and I had no backup. I remember being totally geeked out how funny it was for hours before I started rebuilding my computer... lucky I didn't have any important data on there.

A good coder loves to code as a kid. If you don't love to code, then you shouldn't get into the career, because you won't be good at it.

Re:Since when...

[Anonymous Coward]

I loved to code as kid, and still do so passionately as hobby. But I am still a loser that never finished a project.

Loving to code is not enough. Also how the fuck did you crash and got memory leak in a infinite loop that only print i++?

Re:Since when...

[cheekyjohnson]

Why teach geography in school?

A good question. I think for most people, it's just a waste of time.

Why teach history in school? Not everyone will commit genocide.

That one is actually relevant to politics, so they can perhaps make better decisions about what powers the government should have and what powers it shouldn't. That's what I'd like to say, but it doesn't seem to be working.

Why teach mathematics in school?

Beyond the most simple math? I have no idea. We don't even teach it well enough for people to even begin to truly comprehend it, so I don't know why we bother at this point.

Re:Since when...

[narcc]

Are you a scientist? I don't think you are.

I'm starting to seriously doubt your credentials...

you can't just say shit like "the last thing we need is ___" without testing the damned hypothesis

That's not an hypothesis, not in the scientific sense at least, as it's not testable. Not for any given combination of 'we' and ___!

Re:Since when...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am with you here. Try to make some form of software development easy so you can introduce it to children seems like its ultimately destine to fail. I can't recall who said it originally but you the principle you should make a thing as simple as possible but no simpler holds.

Having kinds produce animations by drawing things and then using the functional equivalent of recorded Office macros is an application, and you are teaching them to use the application you really are not teaching them software development. Even if there is an ability to do a code behind and hack in a for loop.

Do you have teach basics like loops and decisions at some point, certainly but along with should come the ideas about planing, how this block you are writing is going to fit into the rest of program. What entities are involved in the task, are certain data elements always logically related, etc. You would ordinarily start pushing that sort of thinking pretty early on, even if you are not getting into the more formalized patterns and data structures yet. The ability to engage is "system thinking" is pretty much essence of software development, and in the end it really separates the monkeys who thread their applications together from a string objects(be they class instances in the OO sense, or procedural blocks) with awful coupling, terrible cohesion, redundant code, etc and actual developers.

Again I am not suggesting anyone tries to beat the JSP model into the heads of some six year olds; sometimes its to soon to teach good habits especially to someone who won't grasp reasons behind them but not teaching bad habits is still important.

My own story is I was child in the mid 80s. Dad work in an insurance office. At that time whoever had learned some Fortran in college and could pickup BASIC became any small firms software developer basically by default. I'd watch. I had no idea how the code he was writing worked but I could understand the very high-level concepts. "I have these records, I want them all to look like this, so that this operation can be performed, then I want ..." I could pickup on the idea he was braking the process down and tackling the components; that one things output became the others input etc. Then when I got older I started teaching myself ( with his help ). You tackle little projects like which box holds what trading card type personal stuff.

Then I went on to take electives in High School and study CS in college. Exposing kids to software development in the real world even if you are not teaching them to do it will build interest. When they see someone they know making the computer execute their vision and the process behind that even if not completely understood that will make the ones who have the potential to be any good at it get interested. They will see the power of it.

Just like getting kids interested in anything else like carpentry or cooking. They see an adult in their lives making something happen. They can get an idea of forms of thing, without the need to completely understand it.

Re:Since when...

[DarkOx]

Exactly This ^^^

You want to motivate someone to really learn something show them the power of the thing. If you try to teach programming or math by showing kinds "hey you make 3d animations" many are not going to be interesting; because many won't see value in the application. On the other hand convey this can open endless possibilities its a tool that you can use to accomplish YOUR OWN goals, and kids will take interest.

For one student that might be animating their favorite comic book character, but for another it might be reading in a bunch of statistics and optimizing a fantasy football lineup. So you do need to show them some applications in the real world, but a truly great teacher might let some of the students define what that application is, because that would prove to them and all the others, that isn't about calculating how many swimming pools you can fill in hour with a 3" diameter water pipe, and some given pressure. Its about being empowered to do what you want to get done.

Re:Since when...

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, I don't see how attempting to attract kids to programming will help. All they're trying to do is glamorize it. Everyone that I know never had a question as to what they wanted to do. There was never this "programming is too hard" crap. It was "ZOMG! Programming! That looks like fun!".

Like a kid looking at a bunch of Legos and knowing exactly what to do, people who like to program are drawn to it like a bug to a bug zapper. If you have to "convince" someone to be a programmer, I don't wan to be working with them.

The best thing they can do is have resources ready for the kids who want to, like possibly friendly Linux distros. I don't know about others, but when I was a kid, I tried Linux but I couldn't play Quake on it back then so I lost interest after a week of no Quake.

Re:Since when...

[Half-pint HAL]

Was programming ever not hard or boring?

It's not that hard. But perhaps the best approach to the "boring" bit is to point out that the alternative is even more boring. Rename 500 files to the new naming scheme? I'll just write a wee shell script, thank you very much. Others would do it manually.

Re:Since when...

[Half-pint HAL]

Consider a Sigma symbol -- That's a fucking for loop you twit.

The danger in using strong language is that it makes you look like more of a fool when you're wrong. Like right now.

You can implement a sigma-style summation using a for loop, but the underlying logic is totally different. Computer science may be a branch of applied mathematics, but the underlying nature of digital computation is not a direct model of classical mathematics. The sigma summation is just one type of "for all" expressions in maths, but these are fundamentally limited to be self-completed, and the order of evaluating the possible values is free. A for loop has a fixed order, and changes in one iteration can have side-effects on all subsequent iterations. Implementing the sigma summation in a FOR loop actually requires these side-effects, as you have to include an accumulator. To implement sigma without FOR-loop side effects requires a fundamental change to the software architecture, and is only truly possible with an infinitely parallel computer.

Re:Since when...

[the agent man]

Perhaps, before you make these kinds of statements, you should actually look at the research of the University of Colorado including studies showing that kids can leverage the MEASURABLE skills they got from game design to science simulation building.

Re:Since when...

[Anonymous Coward]

To implement sigma without FOR-loop side effects requires a fundamental change to the software architecture, and is only truly possible with an infinitely parallel computer.

Not...really. Everything you've said there is basically a constraint on the for loop. The free order of evaluation is a consequence of performing only associative operations -- so you get that in a for loop that limits itself to associative operations.

Once you guarantee associativity, having side-effects on subsequent operations is implementable in mathematics with recursively-defined variables.

The real risk is not order of evaluation, it's in making people forget that sigma represents an instantaneous value, not a process. The for loop is a process which can be used for, among other things, re-casting a sigma statement into terms that are more readily understood by humans. This is the sort of garbage you see on forums where they argue about whether 0.99999... is exactly equal to 1. People look at 0.99999... and they see it as a *process* of continuously adding nines to the end, whereas 1 they see as an instantaneous value. But actually, 0.99999.... *is* an instantaneous value, and the same instantaneous value as 1. You get similar problems with calculus where people learn about limits, and then start thinking certain static numbers which are *not* limits "approach" a value rather than representing exactly that value. The opposite problem happens when you introduce a mathematician to programming and you do:

y = 2 * x;
x = 5;

And they go cross-eyed when y is not 10, because x used to have a different value before these lines of code. In programming, the = sign is an assignment statement which is part of a process, rather than an instantaneous and universal definition.

(I know there are languages where y would be 10).

So this risk with for loops is that people will snap to seeing the summation as a process rather than a complete definition. Not even an infinitely parallel computer would get you that. But I would argue that people already see the summation as a process (infinitely parallel computers imply the process definition...), and that one thing we really need to teach people mathematically is to actually recognize the difference between those two things.

Re:Since when...

[Half-pint HAL]

To implement sigma without FOR-loop side effects requires a fundamental change to the software architecture, and is only truly possible with an infinitely parallel computer.

Not...really. Everything you've said there is basically a constraint on the for loop. The free order of evaluation is a consequence of performing only associative operations -- so you get that in a for loop that limits itself to associative operations.

This is still an implementation of a sigma summation, and not a true sigma summation. The problem is that the FOR loop only has one logical operating block, whereas sigma summation, product-for-all-i etc have two discrete operations: the expression ruled by the sigma, and then the summation operation (or multiplication, or whatever). As you say, they thinking's completely different.

Re:Since when...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, that's what school is all about: push kids into stuff that do not interest them. Some will complain about having to go to school instead of scrounging on their parents for free. Some will be anxious to go there. Some will pick up interest after a while, like a Stockholm Syndrome, while others will be absorbed instantly.

Anecdote: When I was in school, I couldn't be bothered with geography or history, or even maths or physics, but computers sucked me in from the get go. Others couldn't be bothered with anything. Children will never know what interests them if you don't push them through every aspect of knowledge first. Bizarrely, now that I'm in my 30s I am interested in history, geography, physics, and maths as well. I wouldn't want to take an exam in any of those, but I find them interesting, and get ideas all the time, and I go online to check if anybody else thought them up (turns out almost all of them were thought up in the 19th century, early 20th, already, and if I were to take a physics major I'd know all this stuff without having to reinvent the wheel).

Re:Since when...

[T.E.D.]

When I was a kid (back in the late 70's) programming was trivial. It was getting the programs to actually work properly that was an ungodly bear.

Today things are a bit different; getting programs to work has gotten a bit harder.

Programming IS hard and boring

[kervin]

I love to code and have been ever since I owned my first computer, but the kids are right. Programming is hard and boring compared to a lot of things they could be doing. So may we can try to help them understand why this hard and boring task is still worth their time. Instead of try to put lipstick on that particular pig.

Re:Programming IS hard and boring

[cascadingstylesheet]

I love to code and have been ever since I owned my first computer, but the kids are right. Programming is hard and boring compared to a lot of things they could be doing. So may we can try to help them understand why this hard and boring task is still worth their time. Instead of try to put lipstick on that particular pig.

Most things worth doing have their hard and boring stretches ... but when that program works, or that music plays beautifully, or whatever it is just comes together, there is a lot of satisfaction.

Re:Programming IS hard and boring

[msauve]

"Programming is hard and boring compared to a lot of things they could be doing."

Like digging ditches on a road crew? At least programming pays well and is respectable.

Re:Programming IS hard and boring

[RightwingNutjob]

You know, any task done well should logically have this property, but for some reason you never hear about the years of kitchen catastrophes that go into making an innovative world-class chef, or years of grinding practice that make a gold-medal figure-skating or gymnastics routine. Maybe there really is an image problem that's bigger than we'd like to admit.

Re:Programming IS hard and boring

[cascadingstylesheet]

"Programming is hard and boring compared to a lot of things they could be doing." Like digging ditches on a road crew? At least programming pays well and is respectable.

Great point.

When my previous job cut down their janitorial service to the point that we were in practice having to empty our own trash, I said that I had no problem with it, but did they really want to pay me programmers rates to take out the trash?

Re:Programming IS hard and boring

[gweihir]

For most of them, it is not worth their time as they will never get really good at it and work conditions suck. Good coders are idealists, all other intelligent, capable people go into jobs where they earn more money and are treated better. Unless we as a society start to treat good coders as a scarce and very valuable resource, things will not get better.

Caveat: Yes, I am a PhD level coder (among other things), and I write anything from assembly (mostly C these days though) to journal papers. And I am not employed in academia, there is almost no intelligent life to be found there in the CS faculties these days.

Re:Programming IS hard and boring

[reikae]

I hope you didn't mean to imply that digging ditches isn't respectable. It's not glamorous in the slightest, but I respect those who are willing and able to do the necessary dirty physical jobs.

Re:Programming IS hard and boring

[innerweb]

The real problem has nothing to do with whether coding is boring or not, it has to do with attention span and critical thinking. Most kids have a short attention span and little to no critical thinking skills anymore. Add that to the expectation of instant gratification and yeah, kids are not going to like any process without immediate feedback or required thinking. Stop dumbing down the world so the children with the least abilities can appear to compete at a younger age. Reality does not care. ALL children need to be pushed to be better.

Re:Programming IS hard and boring

[mjwalshe]

Actually I saw a two job adverts recently at a local employment agency window one was for a PHP developer the other for an experienced "ground worker".

The ground worker role was paying about £10k more than the developer one - and if you dont know Civil engineering jargon ground worker is the politically correct name for a Navvy

Re:Programming IS hard and boring

[msauve]

No, I had prison work crews in mind.

Where Have You Gone, Hypercard?

[theodp]

A nation turns its lonely eyes to you (Woo, woo, woo) Programming for the People

Re:Where Have You Gone, Hypercard?

[Anonymous Coward]

The WWW is HyperCard. Pages are Cards. JavaScript is HyperTalk. The Document Object Model is more versatile than Stacks ever were.

Right click in any modern web browser, choose Inspect Element, and a whole JavaScript programming environment pops up, complete with debugger. Programming for the People is available to anyone who wants it, and unlike HyperCard, web browsers are FREE.

Re:Where Have You Gone, Hypercard?

[femtobyte]

The graphical layout engine is still missing. Sure, you can get crappy WYSIWYG page layout editors --- but nothing that lets you start hooking up actual interactive functionality to objects without diving into the code (which might be spread over several programming languages and environments). HyperCard may not be the giant flexible solution-for-everything that HTML+JavaScript+etc.etc.etc. are, but it was still an order of magnitude easier to pick up from "never touched a computer before" to "whipping up interactive graphical database front ends."

Make Stuff Happen

[thatkid_2002]

This is no secret... And yet it's not really done enough. At Griffith University a language called MaSH is used to lower the bar and allow people to actually make stuff happen, while still being a good introduction to *real* coding (it's a subset of Java and a few specialised APIs). Simple text processing, simple graphics, simple robotic control. http://www.ict.griffith.edu.au/arock/MaSH/

Wants me to use Chrome

[drinkypoo]

What is it with all the stuff that wants me to use Chrome these days? Fine for an educational setting, of course. But this coding to the browser stuff is getting offensive. Is Chrome really that much better at graphics or whatever? And is Firefox getting fixed up, or what?

Re:Wants me to use Chrome

[MikeBabcock]

Chrome has a full application interface for writing apps in it, much like Android or iOS. Feel free to hit https://chrome.google.com/webstore and have a look at some.

Re:Wants me to use Chrome

[cheekyjohnson]

Fine for an educational setting, of course.

Really? I think it's most inappropriate for an education setting.

Re:Wants me to use Chrome

[drinkypoo]

Really? I think it's most inappropriate for an education setting.

It's fine because you can use Chromium. You've got a captive audience, you can tell them which browser to use. It sucks to have to change browsers just to view some content at home, though.

Not just kids

[Wonko the Sane]

I've never learned any language for it's own sake, and I've always been interested in programming as long as I can remember.

Every time I've tried to learn a language just to know it, it's about as successful as pushing a string. As soon as I have some goal I'm excited about where not knowing a certain language is getting in my way of achieving it, I learn virtually effortlessly.

Re:Not just kids

[MikeBabcock]

I tried learning LISP for its own sake and realized I had no actual use for it.

I love the idea of learning a language just to expand my programming vocabulary theoretically, but in practice its just dull.

Re:Not just kids

[Anonymous Coward]

EMACS MACROS!!!

Re:Not just kids

[Anonymous Coward]

> I tried learning LISP for its own sake and realized there was no use for it.

Fixed that for you. It was used to *cripple* the brains of my generation of MIT computer science people.

Re:Not just kids

[K. S. Kyosuke]

and realized I had no actual use for it.

You had no actual use for a general programming language? You must be living like a hermit, or perhaps you're herding sheep in some remote place, then.

Re:Not just kids

[module0000]

That's pretty sane - when I force myself to learn a language just to try it out, I usually end up forgetting it days later. When I really need to learn one for something specific though, it's fun, it sticks, etc etc etc.

Also, I like your name. Makes me want to go read....

Re:Not just kids

[MikeBabcock]

Troll much? Most programming languages are general purpose and once you know a half dozen, adding another is rarely that useful.

Re:Not just kids

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Troll much? Most programming languages are general purpose and once you know a half dozen, adding another is rarely that useful.

Let me quote Peter Norvig:

There is a myth that Lisp (and Prolog) are "special-purpose" languages, while languages like Pascal and C are "general purpose." Actually, just the reverse is true. Pascal and C are special-purpose languages for manipulating the registers and memory of a von Neumann-style computer. The majority of their syntax is devoted to arithmetic and Boolean expressions, and while they provide some facilities for forming data structures, they have poor mechanisms for procedural abstraction or control abstraction. In addition, they are designed for the state-oriented style of programming: computing a result by changing the value of variables through assignment statements.

Lisp, on the other hand, has no special syntax for arithmetic. Addition and multiplication are no more or less basic than list operations like appending, or string operations like converting to upper case. But Lisp provides all you will need for programming in general: defining data structures, functions, and the means for combining them.

There are actually very few languages that are general-purpose, once you start thinking about it. Have you seen an artificial intelligence system written in COBOL, or a hardware component designed/described in C++, or a numerical crunching program written in Perl? Very few languages have the capability to span the entire gamut of potential applications without jumping through hoops.

Re:Not just kids

[MikeBabcock]

I never said LISP was not general purpose; skimming much?

I only said that once one has learned a certain number of general purpose languages, adding another isn't very exciting. Another in this case would be LISP.

Quoting irrelevancies doesn't make you right.

Re:Not just kids

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I never said LISP was not general purpose; skimming much?

Reading comprehension fail much? Indeed you didn't say that Lisp was not general purpose, but I never said that about you. Instead you said "most programming languages are general purpose", which is demonstrably false - certainly for the commonly used ones - and that was what I voiced.

Also, your persistent use of the capitalized LISP suggests that the last time you've seen it was in the 1970s. Ever since the 1980s, nobody writes it that way (perhaps save for the kind of people who write JAVA and LUA).

Quoting irrelevancies doesn't make you right.

My quote was entirely relevant, but given the way it ran off your back, you must be a duck.

Re:Not just kids

[MikeBabcock]

You argued a point that inferred that you misunderstood me. Don't bother with your reading comprehension argument; its silly sophistry to get out of making an asinine remark I suspect. Please feel free to debate my 'most' remark but you haven't yet. You've instead debated everything but (likely but not necessarily because you like the language I said I found boring to learn). If you want to debate the 'most' remark you brought up, post something with numbers in it -- that's how 'most' is defined. If you wish to define special-purpose programming languages as generally as Wikipedia's entry on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain-specific_language then I'll just let you win, because including HTML and CSS as programming languages is beyond laughable to me.

I should have perhaps said that "the vast majority of commonly used programming languages are general purpose" since including esoteric randomness into an argument is often both irrelevant and circumspect but I didn't so there you have it.

My usage of LISP is very limited, and I'm the one who pointed that out in my own original remarks. Your comment about me not using it recently because I'm old enough to know it was originally always spelt in capitals makes me think you seriously lack the logical capacity for sophisticated conversation.

Also, 'like water off a duck's back' is most commonly used as a positive expression to show that a person doesn't get easily bothered by things. You used it correctly, but you seem to be trying to use it in the negative.

Unless whatever reply you come up with actually contains cogent arguments, I will not be replying again.

Chrome

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get why people make 'web apps' whose only advantage seems to be that they're cross platform, and then tell me that I should be using Chrome for the 'best experience'. It seems to work fine in Firefox, but perhaps something is subtly broken.

Re:Chrome

[Bobakitoo]

It's 1995 all over again! Except better because now we got hoverboard, flying car and dehydrated pizza.

Re:Chrome

[jwsarvey]

I don't know where you've been, but my local Pizza Hut's pizzas have been dreadfully dehydrated since at least 1995.

Here's another idea...

[Pro923]

How about take the kids that are actually fascinated by it, and do things to enrich them? Then when they're ready to work, make sure they're in a position to use their talent and gift - instead of putting them in the "everyone is equal crowd" where everyone goes to meetings and discusses the various wrong way to do things?

Moonbat memes replace reason...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just as global climate change is used to force people into accepting limits on freedom, the "camp code" is a cult attempting to drastically increase supply over demand so business has cheap labor. The "fail" is that "coding" takes talent...

Logic

[Anonymous Coward]

Logic got me interested in programming.

So all we gotta do is teach children that dad is stupid, the priest is a liar, and the government doesn't give a shit about them.

Wow, could they focus instead on UX?

[Blakey Rat]

That's the most hideously-designed site I've seen in a long while.

Take them to 1981 and give then an Apple II?

[tlambert]

Take them to 1981 and give then an Apple II or a Commodore PET? And a 100 different copies of "Compute" magazine so they can type in their own programs and get immediate gratification from a small amount of code?

Teach kids to cook by focusing less on cooking

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the wrong idea entirely. Just go back to basics and use BASIC, and kids who have an aptitude for programming will become entranced in no time by how they can get the computer to do what they instruct it to do. However much you appreciate the best points of [insert favourite modern language here], I've never seen anything that would have been so comprehensible to the young person's mindset and abilities as it was for me at the beginning of the home computer era, nevermind the fact that it introduces the most important aspects of programming languages.

Once you get to the stage where you've built your first game and are then able to adapt it and refine it, you're pretty much there in terms of being ready to get your foot on the first rung of the professional programmer ladder.

Re:Teach kids to cook by focusing less on cooking

[Half-pint HAL]

Yes! Teach them BASIC! Because it's not like a dumbed-down, logically crippled shadow of a real programming language, is it? GOTO FTW!

Sorry, but you've just fallen into the biggest educational fallacy there is: "it worked for me, therefore it is the best".

Re:Teach kids to cook by focusing less on cooking

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes! Teach them BASIC! Because it's not like a dumbed-down, logically crippled shadow of a real programming language, is it? GOTO FTW!

Sorry, but you've just fallen into the biggest educational fallacy there is: "it worked for me, therefore it is the best".

No, GP has a point. BASIC is a simple language, but powerful enough to do lots of stuff. You don't have to spend weeks or months learning the ins and outs of a fancy IDE, hundreds of pages of language constructs and API reference needed just to do simple I/O with strings for example.

Now, most of today's youngsters wouldn't be satisfied with just console I/O so I might suggest Processing as the modern day analog of BASIC.

Re:Teach kids to cook by focusing less on cooking

[Half-pint HAL]

Yes, but you could have a language that has simple I/O and isn't utterly bereft of good coding principles.

And Processing is an absolute car-crash. The basic principle is sound, but the execution was woeful. Brett Victor's detailed slating of Processing.js covers a lot of the inconsistencies and woolly thinking in the model.

Re:Teach kids to cook by focusing less on cooking

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, that Brett Victor guy is good. I'll have to check out his site more when I get a chance... if I remember the name...

December 9-15

[Brucelet]

That's a long hour.

Programming is a dead-end job

[Tablizer]

Why the hell the push to force more women into programming? Programming is a dead-end job. The stats and personal experience show a good percent move on to something else. Burnout, RSI, ageism, long-hours, etc. are real issues in programming. Women want stability because they often end up being the primary care-givers of families for good or bad, and programming is NOT stability.

If you like programming, that's fine, but don't expect to be able to stay in it for more than 15 or so years. Have a Plan B.

I'm just the messenger.

Re:Programming is a dead-end job

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the hell the push to force more women into programming?

The push to drive down wages in IT. Women generally make less than men, doing the same work. The would apply to programmers too. Gotta get the H1Bs, women, kids, criminals, etc all coding...everybody except white guys. We all know white guys can't code.

Re:Programming is a dead-end job

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

If you like programming, that's fine, but don't expect to be able to stay in it for more than 15 or so years.

I think you've just identified the reason. If the supply of programmers is burning out that fast, we've got to shove as many replacements in as we can, lest we face having to do something really drastic, like pay them more...

Re:Programming is a dead-end job

[Anonymous Coward]

Really,

I must be imagining my now 12 year career, with excellent prospects for all kinds of growth in all kinds of directions. I have done everything from writing SFTP servers embedded in an ISDN modem, to writing web front-end UI code, to web back-end datbase code. I have to tell recruiters I am not interested all the time as I currently have a job. I guess I am going to get fired in 3 years, and there is nothing I can do about it? Oh wait, I don't suck at what I do, I will be employed in 3 years, and in 10 years as well. I must be some freak of nature or something.

Re:Programming is a dead-end job

[Anonymous Coward]

4 years in and burned out well on my way to RSI.

Re:Programming is a dead-end job

[Anonymous Coward]

everybody except white guys. We all know white guys can't code.

That's right, blanco. Now quit your uppity whining, move your ass aside, and let da real bitches do the real programming.

Re:Programming is a dead-end job

[Tablizer]

The industry is cyclical. Good times now may not last. The future is difficult to predict.

Statistically, the odds are against one. Maybe you are the exception, I can't tell. Plus, how does one know whether they will be one of the lucky/special ones, or follow the historical (typical) route when choosing a career?

Civil Engineering looks like a better bet:

http://improvingsoftware.com/2009/05/19/programmers-before-you-turn-40-get-a-plan-b/

Re:Programming is a dead-end job

[Anonymous Coward]

we've got to shove as many replacements in as we can, lest we face having to do something really drastic, like pay them more...

My God! Are you crazy, son?
-Plutocrat Society

Re:Programming is a dead-end job

[Tablizer]

You forgot to include cannibals.

Re:Programming is a dead-end job

[russryan]

Not so dead an end. I have 35 years as a "coder" and am still loving it. I make good money by anyone's standards, and look forward to each new challenge. The field is always evolving. I'll be speaking at my daughter's school next week to share my perspective with middle school kids. Bottom line? Figure out what you love and do it. It just might be programming.

Re:Programming is a dead-end job

[Tablizer]

4 years in and burned out
well on my way to RSI.

That's from all the -1's you give me

Re:Programming is a dead-end job

[cascadingstylesheet]

Really,

I must be imagining my now 12 year career, with excellent prospects for all kinds of growth in all kinds of directions. I have done everything from writing SFTP servers embedded in an ISDN modem, to writing web front-end UI code, to web back-end datbase code. I have to tell recruiters I am not interested all the time as I currently have a job. I guess I am going to get fired in 3 years, and there is nothing I can do about it? Oh wait, I don't suck at what I do, I will be employed in 3 years, and in 10 years as well. I must be some freak of nature or something.

(Shhhhh) ... no no, he's right, no jobs here. Nothing to see, move along ...

Re:Programming is a dead-end job

[Anonymous Coward]

These days, if people are sticking to "programming" for 15 years, that makes it one of the longest lasting professions you can train for in college. People in other lines of work are changing their profession every 5 years, not every 15.

Re:Programming is a dead-end job

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been a programmer for 5 years now. Got my first and only job immediately out of college during the recession. These 8 hour days are killer! At least I get 1hr 30min of paid break time. Yay, my insurance hasn't changed going into next year. Hmmm.. how to use this 2 months of paid vacation time.. I know! 3 weeks off during x-mas! Gaming, here I come! I wonder what my raise will be next year, averaging 10%/year so far. They did say something about a promotion. hmmm..

You may want to look into a better job if your's is too much of a death march.

Re:Programming is a dead-end job

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a programmer, systems analyst, systems architect, and consultant all rolled into one. They actually all complement each other. I get to work on a project from start to finish and I find it quite rewarding to see my code helping people. The only problem is you become "the guy" for every question in the future. On up-side to becoming "the guy", it is also teaches you how people may use your designs differently than expected, and what parts could have been done better.

I hope I can keep this up until retirement, or something similar. This is fun!

Re:Programming is a dead-end job

[Half-pint HAL]

Why the hell the push to force more women into programming? Programming is a dead-end job.

Yeah, and they should stop teaching kids how to write, because writing is a dead-end job.

Do you see my point? Programming is a skill that can be applied to many jobs. If you can program, you can write macros and scripts to automate day-to-day office tasks such as file archiving. If you can program, you can create a little bit of code to do your accounting and stock-taking rather than building a confusing and error-prone spreadsheet. Programming is not just for programmers.

Re:Programming is a dead-end job

[Anonymous Coward]

Programming is a dead-end job. The stats and personal experience show a good percent move on to something else.

Compared to which gem of a profession? People have come up with laundry lists of complaints about every career out there, along with "I would advise my son or daughter to choose a different line of work."

Re:Programming is a dead-end job

[Anonymous Coward]

That's from all the -1's you give me

Five digit /. ID and you're still getting negged by AC's, instead of the other way around? Maybe you should find a different career.

Re:Programming is a dead-end job

[swillden]

If you like programming, that's fine, but don't expect to be able to stay in it for more than 15 or so years. Have a Plan B.

Your experience is completely at odds with mine. I'm 45 and have been a professional programmer since I was 18 (I started writing code at about 12). I work with many guys who are in their 50s and 60s... they're excellent engineers, and compensated very well for their experience and knowledge.

Granted that I work with the upper tier of professional programmers, but it is far from impossible to have a long, satisfying and financially rewarding career writing code. You have to love it, you have to be good at it (which is pretty closely correlated with loving it), and you have to have the talent, intellect and education (which needn't be formal, but formal CS education is generally best).

In the job market right now, if you're good it doesn't matter how old you are, or in many cases even what you smell like, the industry is absolutely desperate for talent.

Re:Programming is a dead-end job

[Tablizer]

Do you see my point? Programming is a skill that can be applied to many jobs.

I have to partly disagree. Sure, you can automate some of your own stuff with Excel scripts, etc., but there's a limit to how far that can take you. Before you dive into an org's app code repository, you need to spend a fair amount of time to know its conventions, specific languages, database layouts, etc. You can't just flick in and out of it. One has to be more or less "embedded" in the org's code to handle it effectively.

While I do recommend everybody take some programming, that's different than assuming bunches are going to make a career out of it, which seems to be what they are pushing women to do in TFA.

Re:Programming is a dead-end job

[Tablizer]

As I linked to near by, Civil Engineering seems to have a notably higher retention rate than programming.

ok

[msauve]

"It's really interesting to contrast the different pedagogical ...This pedagogy"

Protip: If you want to try to impress by using big words, learn more of them.

Re:ok

[Anonymous Coward]

I think we should through all these pedagogues in jail and throw away the key. It could be your kid they come after next!

/Poe's law

Re:ok

[DrPBacon]

Everyone loves a good pedagogue. What better way to give children hope for the future than to reassure them that they'll never have to think all that much?

VB

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows tools are actually pretty good at removing the minutia of professional coding. Access is a great learning tool. You can create a normalized database, forms, and reports without spending a lot of time coding. Since it's all built in, kids can create a fairly sophisticated full-blown app.

The best way to get interested in something is to have a success pretty fast.

Why there are so many sucky programmers

[ulatekh]

Kids can easily teach themselves to program well? Then why do a grand majority of programmers suck at it completely?

In my experience, sucky programmers are the way they are because...they didn't learn to program as kids.

I did, and was shocked when I entered college (late 1980s) to find that the vast majority of my peers in the CS program had never touched a computer before going to college. They majored in CS because they thought they could get a good job and make a whole lot of money. Love for the craft (or any actual aptitude for programming or engineering) was never part of it.

The next problem is that, when they get out of college and enter the workforce, they bristle at the idea that there's anything else to learn. After all, they went to college, and they know everything. I'll never understand that...I have to learn constantly just to stay relevant. But most industry programmers developed lots of false confidence by bashing around toy problems in college, and try to be just as sloppy and short-sighted in their paid work.

Finally...because bad code is not a life-or-death thing like bad work in other fields is. Can you imagine chemists as sloppy and incompetent as the average industry computer programmer? They'd either poison themselves, blow themselves up, or dissolve themselves before long. Oh, how I wished I had stayed with chemistry.

Re:Why there are so many sucky programmers

[Anonymous Coward]

In my experience, sucky programmers are the way they are because...they didn't learn to program as kids.

And for many, they couldn't, because they have no aptitude for it. Being a good programmer takes talent and critical thinking skills that most people simply don't possess.

Re:Why there are so many sucky programmers

[JMJimmy]

And even when you do, you can't get a job because everyone wants a rockstar developer who can do it all when in reality it'd take a team of 6 specialists to do what they expect 1 person to be able to know/execute perfectly and quickly.

Re:Why there are so many sucky programmers

[mlts]

When I was running through CS (graduated in 2008), the students knew they would have to fight tooth and nail for positions. They had to be better than the offshore coding houses, and/or the H-1Bs.

So, a lot of them not just did well in class, but went off on internships, both paid and unpaid, as well as went and got their name on some OSS project.

The people that went through CS were the die-hards... there were no illusions about getting some cushy ABAP job. Instead the students focused on trying to actually be usable pieces in a dev team puzzle. The people who were not that dedicated switched their majors to general business.

Don't bother teaching Americans to program

[ulatekh]

Everyone knows that there's no future for American computer programmers. I've been scrounging since the dot-com bubble burst. That was followed by the outsourcing phenomenon, the guest worker/fake job ads phenomenon, and the perfect-fit phenomenon.

That's why kids don't want to become computer programmers. Because they're not as stupid and gullible as you think.

Re:Don't bother teaching Americans to program

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't had any trouble at all and get contacted by recruiters frequently. I got a new job when the economy nose-dived after applying to only a handful. I recently left there for a job and once again only applied to a few. I am a decent, but I am not some super programmer that Google would hire.

what a great way to guarantee job security for us

[Anonymous Coward]

what a great way to guarantee job security for us programmers. Sounds like the crap they fail at in public schools where they generate lots of 'excited' but functionally illiterate children now read fro a wonderful job at a fast food franchise.

Maybe kids who are 'skeptical' of conputer science should search for other less difficult professions and a future of voting for democrats

hmmm.

[johnsnails]

You are using all of the necessary types of blocks, but try using more of these types of blocks to complete this puzzle. Taken from the first lesson... Even with the IDE in front of me I couldn't understand what it was trying to tell me.

Teach kids logic

[Anonymous Coward]

You could tech kids logic, but then you run the risk of a new generation revolting against the government I suppose...

jsfiddle

[johnsnails]

I skipped ahead... now I need an 'JSFiddle' equivalent for this.

i.e. Attract the stupid kids who can't code

[Anonymous Coward]

i.e. Attract the stupid kids who can't code to get the extra money from them. Pat them on the head and tell them they're programming when they script a couple lua events to make them keep taking "programming" classes.

Site has issues, but the fix is easy

[istartedi]

I'm using Chrome with NotScript and Flash Blocker. Even when I permitted the scripts and Flash, that 3d frogger thing was bogged down and unworkable.

That's OK though. All they have to do is go to their own web site and learn how to code.

Job Vacancy - 10 million

[Anonymous Coward]

Galactic overlord implementation of this internet and planet control and domination / human enslavement and destruction plans have failed -- the milk has become too sour tasting and all bliss has again been lost. Recent plans to recover losses are now underway and newly established hive-mind Coding Borg Queen currently seeking fresh meat and young minds for re-building a future-human astral milk house. Our fleeting promise coming to you in whispers is, in exchange for allowing us to sap your children, who have the potential for ability to dream into shape the song line star wormholes from DNA secretions - we will provide you with a steady diet of [your] government's cheese so you can afford pay your health insurance and bills. Compenation for supplying Borg Queen with your children will be provided in the form of self-created paper money based on an arbitrary double standard - or our new BitCoin crypto-currency that floats ALL BY ITSELF - no really - IT'S TRUE! Easy money parents - you don't have to do anything - we only want your children! C'mon parents... let's get all the children exited about CODING - you will have more time and money for your selves!!! ACT NOW during our TWO children black hole special - good until then end of your gregorian calendar year 2013! Supply us with two children eg. make a deal with our black holes - and we will see to it that your credit rating get reset back to 850 AAA no questions asked! We are so POWERFUL!!!!!

It's

[antdude]

It is/has? :P

Difference with other STEM?

[Kwyj1b0]

What is the difference with other STEM subjects? For example, I liked learning calculus (ok, I didn't really learn calculus in the mathematics theory sense - measure theory and stuff - till grad school) in high school, though mainly I liked the use of calculus to physics (projectile motion, mechanics, electrostatics). Now, you might consider physics a "cool" application, but it really isn't - it is just as cool as say, building Pascal's triangle. If anything, I can see the results of programming almost instantaneously. I hated actually doing experiments with my hands (like proving Newton's laws using a block of wood and a weight).

So why is there this perceived need to make "coding" fun? It is as fun as any other subject in STEM, no more, no less (blowing things up in the chemistry lab is different; now that was cool. I thought - rightly or wrongly - that I had no aptitude for it because I couldn't figure out (at a high school level) what might happen on paper before doing the experiment for most things, like flame colors or what might give the best explosion).

Fortunately, away

[Animats]

Having once written for HyperCard, I'm glad it's gone. It had some syntax in common with COBOL. ADD 1 TO N is valid COBOL and valid HyperTalk. The data access in Hypercard (put the second word of name into last_names) was worse than COBOL.

If you used card names instead of card numbers, the program ran much slower.

Re:Fortunately, away

[mlts]

HyperTalk was oddball, but HyperCard was a decent way to get a non-technical user to be able to present data in a usable form, then expand from there.

I could easily do similar with a Web page and some backend scripting, but there was something fairly nice about HyperCard's instant gratification where once the script was in, it was ready to go. No makefiles, no compilation, the source was the object code.

I would not be surprised if we saw a modern version of Hypercard come around again, because done right, it would function both offline, online, and perhaps even partially online where frequently used cards would be cached.

Exctite them by making it *fun*

[globaljustin]

Coding can be fun.

I think the problem lies in how we define the act of "coding" and in what context we present the activity, combined with a misunderstanding of what people actually think is "fun".

Coding is a powerful tool. It is how humans control virtually all complex machines.

Kids love complex machines, but I think the break point is what machines we teach them to program and what behaviors the programming automates.

People, especially kids, like playing video games, so it stands to reason that teaching them to program their own game would be an excellent way to get them into coding. It totally makes sense. I'm not saying not to do it, but it's not working as TFA points out. For one thing, making a simple "game" in an artificial environment isn't actually that fun...because teaching kids to make their own version of "Starcraft" is way too complex there aren't many options.

I think coding simple machines is the solution, enabling more creativity and real-world interaction, without losing the coding aspect. For example, coding a basic motion sensor that makes an output.

You can get basic light/motion sensors for fairly cheap actually (toys have them) and combine that with an output that either triggers something to play a sound, turn on a light, etc.

A next step would be using a rasperry pi type interface...then linking it with all kinds of stuff...

Advanced lessons would be making a motion detector that turned on a light, turned on a radio, and triggered a program on a computer to send a tweet...

Something like that would give them the basic tools to really go crazy...

Re:Exctite them by making it *fun*

[Prune]

I take issue with the premise that coding should be made fun in the first place. In a world where, within a couple of decades, machines will program themselves, I don't think coding or any other technical (let alone blue collar) field is an appropriate thing to invest in learning--and I say this as a gainfully employed computer "scientist". When I have kids, I would probably discourage them from specializing in such subjects (though general knowledge is another matter). As someone posted on slashdot once, when a civilization gets above the level of mere subsistence, culture is pretty much the entire point of human existence.

News Flash: Game programming less boring

[Lendrick]

Most people get into programming in their childhood do it because they want to make games. Why did it take a research study to figure this out that writing games is less dry and dull than dumping someone into Java's cargo cult boilerplate class definitions and telling them to write hello world?

I would venture to say that making games is a good way to teach adults how to program, too.

for good reasons, IMHO

[globaljustin]

kids don't want to become computer programmers. Because they're not as stupid and gullible as you think.

I completely agree with this, but for a completely different reason which kind of contradicts the premise of your reason.

IMHO, there is a bright future for American computer programmers. We're needed more than ever, and good ones are harder to find per capita. Pay is good.

However, the problem is the **work environment**

Coding work sucks, but all work sucks. I was a snowboarding instructor for 5 seasons and **that** even sucked b/c we had to be teaching fatass Texan rich dudes how to stand up on the board instead of going out and riding to improve our own skills or get footage for sponsors.

All work sucks.

The shit part about coding that makes it wise for kids to want to avoid it is that in most of the industry the coders are highly paid slaves.

REAL CODERS HAVE TO DO ALL THE WORK.

Just look at Snapchat. Or have a gander at this borderline psychotic but not a joke job ad for a web coder for Penny Arcade. That's why young people don't want to code.

American business rewards all the worst things...the incentives are all going in the wrong direction. As to your personal situation and why you've been scrounging since the dot-com bubble burst...well, it could be alot of things. Maybe your idea of "scrounging" means turning down a job a Microsoft because you dont want to work for the man...maybe youre a true genius who makes everyone even the bosses look bad so is ostracized...hell, idk...but I don't think your experience is representative, however I do agree that the issues you identify in hiring are all legit problems.

Re:for good reasons, IMHO

[Anonymous Coward]

American business rewards all the worst things...the incentives are all going in the wrong direction.

Start your own business and put the proper incentives/controls in place?

Maybe that's not allowed.

Re:for good reasons, IMHO

[ulatekh]

IMHO, there is a bright future for American computer programmers. We're needed more than ever, and good ones are harder to find per capita. Pay is good.

I sure hope you're right. I've got another ~25 years before I can take Social Security (assuming it still exists then...big assumption), and fear the day that age discrimination ruins my remaining chances to stay employed.

[H]ave a gander at this borderline psychotic but not a joke job ad for a web coder for Penny Arcade.

That's awesome. I've bookmarked that in my "job search" folder.

As to your personal situation and why you've been scrounging since the dot-com bubble burst...well, it could be a lot of things. Maybe your idea of "scrounging" means turning down a job a Microsoft because you don't want to work for the man...maybe you're a true genius who makes everyone even the bosses look bad so is ostracized...hell, idk...but I don't think your experience is representative ...

No, "scrounging" is more like having to (repeatedly) uproot my life and move hundreds of miles just to stay employed...a few years back, I left Southern California, where I've lived all my life, to take a job in Sierra Vista, Arizona, with the U.S. Army. So obviously I'm not that averse to working for "the man", nor am I unwilling to live in the middle of freaking nowhere. Now I live in Phoenix...another extremely undesirable place to live.

I hate the word "genius". What that really means is I have to do all the hard work myself, and that no one can help me. I'm no genius; I just work really hard and read a lot. Then I get stuck cleaning up everyone else's mess. That's enough to make everyone else look bad. But what else am I supposed to do? Not notice how bad things are? Not know how to fix it? Not work hard to fix it? Seems like my so-called co-workers have those bases thoroughly covered. ;-)

I'm glad to hear my experience isn't representative. I wouldn't wish my career on my worst enemy.

Re:for good reasons, IMHO

[globaljustin]

hey man thanks for the response. it was interesting to read your job experiences, especially what happens when you're 'too good' at the job.

as another person pointed out on this thread, you could start your own biz

that's what I'm doing and I got to be honest it feels great!

like the other comment said, since I see an area in biz where the incentives are backwards, I should **capitalize** on it...and I am trying now.

anyhow good luck to you...I do think that you are not alone in some of your work struggles, as I said coders are treated like well paid slaves...

Re:for good reasons, IMHO

[ulatekh]

hey man thanks for the response. it was interesting to read your job experiences, especially what happens when you're 'too good' at the job.

Glad you appreciated it. If you'd like a more verbose description of what my jobs are like, check out this comment.

as another person pointed out on this thread, you could start your own biz

In my experience, that just trades taking crap from the boss, to taking crap from customers. Besides, I've tried to start my own business before...in retrospect, Asperger's Syndrome mostly explains why I didn't succeed. I'm just not good at dealing with people.

since I see an area in biz where the incentives are backwards, I should **capitalize** on it...and I am trying now.

More power to you. Good luck.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Teach practical solutions to real-world problems.

[Ukab the Great]

Teach the kids how to write a labor-saving screenscraping app that automatically logs into an adult website and in a short amount of time downloads an unthinkable amount of Pr0n.

Coding?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is NOTHING exciting about coding. Please protect the kids!

How is the licensing section?

[Anonymous Coward]

I admit I don't even bother to look, it's surely entirely missing...

Motivation

[jandersen]

I don't think this problems is limited to 'coding', whatever that means. It is easy to learn something, when you are motivated; so finding things that motivate students is crucial. Personally, I am not convinced that making games is the best motivation - initially it will sound very interesting, but as soon as it turns out that the game you are able to make is not going to be the all-singing, all-dancing version of your favourite game, the motivation is replaced by disappointment.

I suspect it is a lot easier to start with something more realistic, that the student is already interested in. From my own background: when I was about 12 or 13 years old, I got very interested in astrology (yes, I know, I know, but that's not the point here); however, it was difficult and expensive to get hold of the all-important tables of planetary positions. So, I taught myself to write BASIC programs for the school's computer, I learned enough about how the planets moved to satisfy my limited understanding, and I made a program that would calculate planetary positions of a sort. From there it was easy to continue - the first step is always the hardest.

A little postscript for those who are jumping up and down over my mention of astrology: yes, I agree that it is bogus. However, it motivated me at the time, and I still have a certain fondness for the subject. And I still read my daily horoscope - otherwise, how else would I know how I feel today?

Re:5 y-o cold in his node

[joss]

I tried node on my 5 year old, but she started screaming "I want my threads back you cruel bastard, this async crap is giving me a headache" (we're working on her anger management issues) but now the social workers are involved and if I don't get her continuation passing style soon (the 70s called) I'm going to find myself in deep water.

nand2tetris.org

[sydbarrett74]

Why do we not hear more about nand2tetris.org and the wonderful work Mssrs Nisan and Schocken have done? They teach computing concepts from first principles, and in a way that's fun and engaging. I say this is perfect for introducing a gifted youngster to the wonderful world of computing.

It's only hard and boring because...

[3seas]

If it were easy and fun, everyone would be doing it for themselves.
But the Software Industry knows this and avoids anything that will gravitate towards the self recursive act of programming to automate complexity for and by the end users.

Programming can and should be a lot easier but like the Social and earning position of the Roman Numeral Accountants, those in the software industry (both sides - FOSS and Proprietary) do not want this because it will remove their earning and social position (while making genuine software engineering a real industry), Roman Numeral Accounts diminished upon teh introduction and acceptance of the Hindu-Arabic Decimal system (making make easy enough that everyday people can do math beyond what the Roman Numeral Accounts were able to.
Current Software Development Industry methodologies cannot achieve programming at the Holodeck level. To do so requires redoing the understanding of the honest foundation upon which all abstraction are created and used. See: http://abstractionphysics.net/pmwiki/index.php

Honesty is a bitch, because those against it make it so.

Re:5 y-o cold in his node

[Anonymous Coward]

Show her tasks and async in C#. You get the best of both worlds!

Pedagogy

[Anonymous Coward]

You only used pedagogy twice in that paragraph. You clearly could have used it more. Use a big word 7 times to make it your own. FAIL!

Here's another good alternate...

[Anonymous Coward]

This looks pretty good; but I'd say it's a bit more for the 10+ age range. As I type this my 7 year old is making programs with Scratch, http://scratch.mit.edu

Scratch is far more friendly for younger kids.

The 1st computer game I played got me hooked.

[QilessQi]

This was back in the 1970s, when I was just a kid. It was a purely text-based moon landing game on a mainframe -- REALLY text-based, played via a "terminal" consisting of a keyboard and a dot-matrix printer. The computer printed out how much fuel you had and how fast you were descending; you had to enter a number indicating how much fuel you want to burn, and then the computer would recalculate and print out the new velocity and fuel level. Repeat. The idea, obviously, was not to crash.

A few years later, when I learned BASIC programming on a Commodore PET, I started writing my own games along the same lines. In high school I had my own business writing educational software for the Apple ][, working for the guy who had taught me programming.

Coding has always been fun for me. I think because at some level I associate it with the games I was able to create, and the LEGO blocks I loved to play with. Imagining something, and then building it -- just because you want to.

Yep.

[Anonymous Coward]

All these kids that these programs reach will think programming is fun at first, and as soon as the educational emphasis shifts to real computer science, most of them will just switch majors.

Those that remain and enter the working world as coders will quickly switch careers once they learn how the industry treats them.

Only the natural born programmers will actually last very long, as is the case right now.

Re:Yep.

[Half-pint HAL]

All these kids that these programs reach will think programming is fun at first, and as soon as the educational emphasis shifts to real computer science, most of them will just switch majors.

Is that a problem? Why should programming be the sole preserve of CS grads? (grad (en_UK) = major (en_US)

The guys who get the interesting programming jobs usually have another specialism anyway, like my friend who studied astrophysics and now programs space craft maneouvering routines...

Re:Yep.

[mlts]

That is something I have to agree with. We need more coders and innovators. The fewer people in the field, the more stagnant it gets.

We need more people that can use programming as a creative tool. Right now, programming has a bad rep, being viewed as the domain of offshore programming houses and bargain basement H-1Bs. However, cool new things have to be programmed by someone.

ROFL

[Anonymous Coward]

The push has only one goal: to increase the labor supply. That is *it*.

Some programs target girls for two reasons: 1) they represent a minority in the industry, and therefore look like a largely untapped supply of potential laborers. 2) Political sentiment is that females have fewer opportunities largely for cultural reasons, and so this trend is being actively resisted.

Proving men are inferior might be on the minds of a few specific people, but such an interest does not and cannot garner the kind of funding that has been spent on programming education programs like this one.

This is about economics, plain and simple. More available labor means more productivity at lower cost, so, do what you can to make programmers out of non-programmers.

Re: ROFL

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is a completely false economy. An industry flooded with mediocre programmers with no drive will produce bad code. Now you need even more programmers and QA to clean up the mess. It's more like having 50 or so students running around the operating theatre with sharp scissors. Meanwhile the surgeon is getting pissed.

Girls are right

[DanielOom]

Programming is hard and boring, because of the effort to make it free from bugs and errors. Still programming can be fun.

POTD

[Anonymous Coward]

..for stupidity. Seriously, this is the most ridiculous >0 post I've seen here in a while, and that's saying something.

Brilliant

[mysidia]

How about we get kids excited about solving maths problems without having kids solving maths problems?

We can give kids a ruler, a compass, and a protractor instead: and just see what neat things they can create

Re:5 y-o cold in his node

[Anonymous Coward]

Please use capital letters to begin sentences to not look like a caveman.

Re: 5 y-o cold in his node

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if C# survives the next 5 years - which seems unlikely. It's better to teach a good mix of BASIC, Java, C, C++, Lisp, Erlang, Javascript, Python, Lua, Ada, Cobol, Pascal, x86, Brainfuck and Intercal. One of those is bound to survive...I just hope it isn't Brainfuck.

The drive and artistry is different now

[Anonymous Coward]

I taught myself BASIC on my C64 in the 80's and moved on to 6502 assembly. It was an especially easy time to get excited about coding because the power was all there at your fingertips, and more importantly ... it had never been done before. You could see people just like you on the cutting edge on the various demos we passed around. And the best part is the building blocks for how to do it were right there in the user manual that came with the computer.

One of the problems vexing modern coding is that payoff isn't there. Even if you're the biggest fish in your fishbowl, you have no possibility of ever hitting something as impressive as, say Star Craft 1 or original Halo, much less something current like Bioshock Infinite. Not without 2 dozen friends on an open source project ( which is valid ) or toolkits that do all the heavy lifting for you. And if you do that, then are you doing something else. Artistry... game design, whatever you want to call it. Cool, definitely... coding? no.

This is why coding for mobile platforms has become so interesting lately. They're currently under processing power constraints so there's a brief golden age re-emergence of home coding. I'm sad that it will be brief, because I think it's a wonderful feeling and everyone should experience it.

The most value that a kid can get out of coding is 1. thinking critically about the steps to accomplish a goal. 2. understanding logic and evaluations 3. understanding variables and arrays 4. understanding how to identify patterns of behavior that could be substituted for a common function/subroutine. These things have value in all aspects of life. /sigh... I'm old

much in grade school is boring

[Anonymous Coward]

We teach math and other subjects for 12 years and never have the expectation that every minute should be an exciting adventure of happy joy for the students. Learning to write the alphabet or add integers is not particularly fun but we expect that, regardless of what the kids think, that they must learn these basic skills to be functional in today's world.

Computer science, rather, is tacked on sometime just before grade 12 as something "the kids should know about since we live in the age of computers." Further, we don't even have any expectation that they really learn it, just that they be a bit exposed to it as long as they enjoy every minute of it. So we package it as fun, fun, fun and make them draw some shapes with the mouse and make a game because games are fun.

In grade 12 math, we are already teaching pre-calculus (and calculus in some schools) which are some of the most useful ideas ever created by man ( & Chemistry, Biology, Physics too!). But in computing (basically our present incarnation of the practical application of math in our technological society), we teach kids to make some shapes and make some games because we need to make it easy? Does this strike anyone else out there as being a little off?

We are so far gone here when it comes to computer education, I'm not sure we even know which direction to walk toward anymore. The rest of the world is rising and history will one day have a note about our age as "the time when the North America's education system could not cope with the rapid rise of computing and were subsequently left behind".

We 'could' fear this it will happen one day, but things are moving so fast that it has already happened!

If you take some time to read some of this report, you will be blown away:

http://www.oecd.org/site/piaac/publications.htm

This is a very comprehensive analysis (2013) of where different countries stand with regard to math, literacy and technology.

Did you know that the USA scores pretty much at the bottom of all modern industrialized nations when it comes to math? Did you know that the average high school student from Japan has about the same level of literacy, math and technology skills as that of someone with a 4-year bachelor's degree in the USA?

Clearly what we need more of is classes that "excite kids to code by focusing less on coding".

I believe that if there was ever a sign for the decline of a modern civilization, it would be at the time when education became synonymous with entertainment.

humans programing machines to program machines

[globaljustin]

yo, thanks for the response

In a world where, within a couple of decades, machines will program themselves,

hold on there cowboy!

everything that machines do is dependent on human choice...humans *chose* to program machines a certain way...

the behavior you describe: "machines will program themselves" is actually not physically possible in the logical sense...it's like saying "gardens will plant themselves"

you're mixing concepts...specifically, the concept of "program" and the concept of "self"

the behavior you *actually* are describing is humans programming machines.

that's a nitpick, but an important one b/c you whole argument is formed along that premise...

I think you're making a false distinction. "teach kids X or Y"

I say "teach kids X and Y"

learn a blue collar skill, learn the concepts of coding so you can apply as needed to specific tasks, learn a science branch, learn literature

all of it

Re:humans programing machines to program machines

[Prune]

If strong AI (in the non-Searle sense) is possible, then machines will program themselves--whether you call it learning or whatever. Over many cycles, there is limited reason to expect that any initial guidelines or constraints put in by the human programmers will persist.

What I really wanted to address is your comment to "learn a blue collar skill, learn the concepts of coding so you can apply as needed to specific tasks, learn a science branch, learn literature". There is too much to learn, put plainly. Knowledge has grown tremendously, while our mental capacity has not. During Newton's time, one could reasonably know all scientific knowledge in the world at the time; these days, specialization within ever more narrow subfields is becoming extreme, to the point where I know a microbiologist specializing in cancer research (my stepfather, actually) who could not make a sense of a microbiology paper in another sub-subfield. Having both breadth and depth is impossible. If we leave the technical aspect of things to machines, we can concentrate on the creative/cultural ones, where we will be ahead for a longer time, and it's not really a competition (i.e., we don't have to worry about the machines obsoleting us in that respect, since they can have their own culture).

Re:humans programing machines to program machines

[globaljustin]

well thanks for the thoughtful response but I must disagree on both points ha!

i appreciate hearing about your stepfather's personal experiences, and I don't think that's a good thing at all...the whole idea that to "make it" in academia you needed to find some interest area and then drill down as specifically as possible was/is killing academia

the thing is, even though the idea is wrongheaded, the advice itself isn't always horrible advice, because from a purely practical standpoint it was what your future boss might expect you to do

it's like saying to a young female musician, "Hike that skirt up and act slutty"...it'll *probably* increase album sales...right? but is it really good long-term career advice?

as for talking about strong AI, I philosophically disagree with the premise of "strong AI" as you apply it...and really I disagree with how all of CS applies the Church-Turing Thesis. I do not subscribe to the universal computability function per se, and view programing and machines as absolutely not extant in nature which are objects created by humans and nothing more ever.

but back to academia and learning, I really don't think that there is "too much to learn" I don't know how to prove it in this format but almost every academic I've known had wildly divergent side interests that they were proficient enough in to make a living...art, music, some sort of craft work, writing on some non-academic topic, etc.

I don't know what that means to your point, other than to repeat that I think the "drill down" concept is rooted in a false dichotomy twisted up the ivory tower and perpetuated by the top-down management model & oversized egos. I think any person intelligent enough to do PhD level work can also develop w/e "blue collar" skill they would want. Also, any person who can do "blue collar" work skillfully enough to make it a long-term income requires, in my experience, an understanding of complexity that demonstrates high intelligence.

I guess I'll finish by repeating that I too mourn the fact that PhD's are so 'specialized' that they become almost useless outside their specialize area.

Re:humans programing machines to program machines

[Prune]

Actually, any physical system, be it brain or computer, is more limited than the universal Turing machine abstraction. By the Bekenstein bound result from QM+thermodynamics, there is a finite upper bound on the maximum number of distinguishable quantum states that are possible within a region of space with a finite extent. From this it follows that any physical system's processing of information, whether that is an algorithm on a computer or thoughts in the brain, can always be simulated by a sufficiently large non-deterministic LBA (linearly bounded automaton), which is less powerful than a TM. It also bears remembering that QM and QFT are both computable, implying that, if they really are appropriate models of reality (which almost no physicist will disagree with), reality is computable as well.

Ever heard of Logo?

[YoungManKlaus]

Awesome language for kids imo.

That's the way it's supposed to work

[vmfedor]

Teaching people to code by first teaching them a programming language is like teaching them about hammers before explaining that we're trying to build a house. Your programming languages are your toolbox, nothing more.

Perhaps the 'gee-whiz' factor of seeing the code first breeds more interest in children than the engineering process but to my mind it seems that we need to be teaching kids from the top-down if we're interested in creating a generation of good programmers. When kids learn HTML, CSS, and Javascript and then get their first website project written for a client (e.g. modifying the school website) they're shocked to learn that they're not going to be using cutting-edge libraries and that the vast majority of work is more boring frustration than actual magic. Young programmers, in my limited experience, do not like finding out that they don't get to use whatever tools they want to play with at the moment.

You can teach almost anyone to program but developing software solutions is something entirely different.

Who created the Internet and Web as we know it?

[kmoser]

The Internet as we know it was created by brilliant people who worked with the equivalent of Stone Age tools, and yet they had no problem a) enjoying what they were doing and b) creating awesome things. Why do we suddenly need to glamorize programming by giving it a video game facelift? Is the population getting exponentially dumber? What happened to all the smart people?

Depends on where you start

[phorm]

Most people I know who "liked" coding started with a good base example program that was laid out easily enough to pick apart and alter. You may not understand the whole thing at first, but there's enough that you can make changes and see the effects.

Coding is boring when you reach those points where you're floundering about and can't see any visible result of your work. Picking apart working examples is great for building interest and getting one started in coding.

pregnancy

[globaljustin]

Don't say "turing" anything b/c that whole thing just muddies the waters & explains nothing.

any physical system's processing of information, whether that is an algorithm on a computer or thoughts in the brain, can always be simulated by a sufficiently large non-deterministic LBA (linearly bounded automaton), which is less powerful than a TM

in order to "simulate" a human brain as described above, you have to *know how the whole system works*

we don't...not even close...we have barely scratched the surface on really understanding the brain and consciousenss...we are just beginning the mission of mapping all brain connections...then we still just have correlations...

in some **far flung** future, where we have materials science unthinkable right now, have mapped brain connections, and understand how all of it works....**even then** we haven't accomplished "simulating" the human brain as you describe

we would have to simulate all the biological processes....we can't even conceive of a non-biological analog to the brain except in abstract b/c we have no idea how it really works

then it becomes a function of **time**

a human brain develops continuously in real time over **years**

all of this...it all makes your point about "universal computability" completely moot...

if you want to create an independent autonomous human brain....you can wait 500-1000 years at least, or you could just...you know....get someone pregnant