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More Students Learn CS In 3 Days Than Past 100 Years
theodp writes "Code.org, backed by Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, boasts in a blog post that thanks to this week's Hour of Code, which featured a Blockly tutorial narrated by Gates and Zuckerberg, 'More students have participated in computer science in U.S. schools in the last three days than in the last 100 years.' Taking note of the impressive numbers being put up on the Hour of Code Leaderboards ('12,522,015 students have done the Hour of Code and written 406,022,512 lines of code'), the Seattle Times adds that 'More African American and Hispanic kids learned about the subject in two days than in the entire history of computer science,' and reports that the cities of Chicago and New York have engaged Code.org to offer CS classes in their schools. So, isn't it a tad hyperbolic to get so excited over kids programming with blocks? 'Yes, we can all agree that this week's big Hour of Code initiative is a publicity stunt,' writes the Mercury News' Mike Cassidy, 'but you know what? A publicity stunt is exactly what we need.'"
I'm pretty sure that the last 3 days are contained within the last 100 years.
Hour of code is not a bad thing, but this didn't create 12M programmers, much less 12M people who know computer science. They averaged 32.4 lines each.
And to think I wasted all those years of college courses to learn CS. Who knew I could have just done it in 3 days!?
I work on web apps, with DB back ends. I need to be able to set up the DB structure, create the queries, set the indexes, schedule the DB backups, then set up the web server, code the back end to get the data, write a frontend in javascript using knockout and ajax to make it responsive and usable. Since we have a small development team each of the three of us has to be able to do all of these steps. This is in addition to the ERP programming and interfaces I also do for this.
Is it even possible for new people to come along and learn all of this? I am able just because I learned as it came out piece by piece, but I keep wondering if new people will ever be able to do the full range of things. With a larger team you can split it up, but rarely do you get a team were each person is fully competent and unless there is someone who can call BS on any part of it there is potential for problems.
I also wonder if anyone in their right mind would bother learning all of this. When we interview people under 30 they are saying stuff like "I do Apple IOS programming and nothing else". I know there is a lot of ageism anti-old people sentiment expressed here on /., but when you actually need something done and can't hire 10 people to do it you can't hire these younger people.
That's an awful lot of "Hello World"!
Everything and its opposite is true. Get used to it.
Learning a little about programming and computers is not "CS".
A high-level tutorial is just that, and this is just marketing spin on teaching some computer literacy. It's admirable, but it isn't what they're claiming it is.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
They had computer 100 years ago ?
PC Gaming enthousiast that gives comments, opinions and reviews on Games. I'm just having fun with games while doing let
'Yes, we can all agree that this week's big Hour of Code initiative is a publicity stunt,' writes the Mercury News' Mike Cassidy, 'but you know what? A publicity stunt is exactly what we need.'
Need for what? It's just a way to deflect attention from the real agenda of h1bsrus.org. No, even worse, to convince people that there really is a shortage of programmers, and gosh we're trying to get more Americans to learn it (bonus points for your propaganda if they're minorities), but it takes time, and so we really really need to up the H-1B quota (temporarily, of course) by a million or whatever they want (ask for a million - settle for a half).
I can understand Zuck, et al, spouting propaganda to get out of their personally horrid underprivileged conditions, but what annoys me is the media buying into this crap. How about a little counterpoint that the only indications of a programmer shortage are the testimonials of people with a serious vested interest, and not any of those silly objective facts. Forget programming - what they really need to teach in schools is critical thinking.
I went to high school between 1987-91, and somewhere in there (I think it was my softmore year?) there was a computer class. We learned BASIC on computers which had green characters on a black screen (no windows), and if I recall used 8.5" floppies. There were also some TRS-80s there, but I didn't use them there.
Now personally, since my father owned a VAR that sold minis and mains by IBM, I had already had experience with PCs for many years by then. But that was literally over 20 years ago, in a mandatory high school class.
Was that really that unusual? 20 years later has the rest of the US not caught up with where my high school - in a town of 40k (at the time) - was? If so, then I have a new appreciation for the place...
I got all the way to college without any interest in CS (1980-ish). My older sister insisted "you need to take a programming class" so I added it to my schedule. 30+ years later I'm still programming.
Sometimes the most important thing making someone realize "I can DO that?" I like the idea that kids from "educational averse" cultures are being exposed to CS.
If they are programming iOS stand alone apps, why would they need to do anything else?
Because *poof* the next big thing came along. Sometimes you can earn more money by developing both an iOS version of an application and an Android version of an application. On the other hand, if every company you plan to work for is big enough to have a separate Android specialist, there's less of a urgent need to broaden your skill set.
Something about your analogy bothers me.
I mean, translating it to another field:
"Maybe a few of the students who actually spent 100 years learning history would be able to cause the holocaust."
or
"Maybe a few of the students who actually spent 100 years learning music would be able to write dubstep"
or
"Maybe a few of the students who actually spent 100 years learning nuclear engineering would be able to make Chernobyl"
Just what we need. More people putting out more crappy code. As if a large segment of programmers aren't already overpaid for the spaghetti they produce.
We don't need MORE programmers, we need BETTER programmers. There are enough programmers in existence (contrary to what those in the industry will claim) yet the abysmal state of software shows how poorly these people perform.
I would have no problem with a company paying a programmer $250K IF that programmer could produce good code on a daily basis. Instead, we have hordes of overpriced, egotistical, self-important hacks who believe they're worth more than they're paid and the shit we are forced to put up with every day proves it.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Apart from the fact that this whole thing is a horseshit, cynical gimmick designed to drum up public support for big IT corporations - especially in light of all the recent privacy and NSA scandals - under the guise of teaching inner-city yoots (because, gosh darnit, they CARE ) , there is also the entirely unforeseen side benefit of potentially creating a massive influx of new coders into the job market who will serve to fill the ranks of existing code monkeys who provide the sort of cheap and easily fireable labor that American corporations seems to crave so much..
1) If CS is so easy to learn, then why are software projects so hard? Like the crapwre that comes out of FB and healthware.gov?
2) If CS so easy easy to learn and so lucrative, why is there a so-called shorter of software engineers?
Now give them all work at Microsoft as programmers!
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
Wow, so you hold a seminar to show people what it's like. You give them a few tools, show them a couple of things and that immediately makes them Senior Software Engineers ready to tackle any business problem? No, it's more propaganda from two chodes who want to cheapen the profession. Software Development and Engineering takes years of practice to get right, sure you can teach mechanics in a few months and some would argue you can learn language X in 30 days but it's the application and knowing to use what tool at what time. Here's what's missing in this, did Gates and Fuckerberg hire any of these whiz kids after the class? Not one huh? Well Billy Bob and Fuckerberg put your money where your mouth is! If you think you can teach somebody in a few hours to be a developer, hire them give them a salary, benefits and a cube and give them a chance to prove themselves.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
I can report that my wife's 7th and 8th grade science classes LOVED the day of code program. Many started out thinking it was impossible to do any coding.. and ended up making some great discoveries. All the kids wanted to stay in the class and "code" rather than go out an play and eat lunch. At least for my wife's school, it was a huge success and hopefully some of the kids will be drawn into a profession they love...