Slashdot Mirror
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."
A better way to promote programming to kids:
https://www.google.com/search?q=booth+babes&source=lnms&tbm=isch
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Coding for it's own sake is *easy* and boring.
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.)
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
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.
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.
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.
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.
Table-ized A.I.
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.
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
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.
"[I]t is a wise man who admits the limits of his knowledge or skill, and that pretending either causes harm." --Terry Go