Slashdot Mirror
Kentucky: Programming Language = Foreign Language
jackb_guppy writes with word that "Legislation that would let students use computer programming courses to satisfy foreign-language requirements in public schools moved forward in the Kentucky Senate on Thursday." From the article: "Kentucky students must earn 22 credits to graduate high school, but 15 of those credits represent requirements for math, science, social studies and English — and college prerequisites call on students to have two credits of foreign language, [state senator David] Givens said.
Meanwhile, Givens pointed to national statistics showing that less than 2.4 percent of college students graduate with a degree in computer science despite a high demand in the market and jobs that start with $60,000 salaries."
Kentucky: English Language = Foreign Language
foreign to Kentucky. sure, go ahead. HS degrees are so valuable.
Technical salaries paid by the Commonwealth of Kentucky are approximately 40% below the regional market average. Perhaps the state senator should check with the state HR department.
I want to mock kentucky, because it's the right thing to do, but this actually kind of makes some sense.
Good to know if I ever need a federal government job...
Sheesh.
This is either someone trying to beat the system, or perhaps the system beating itself to some degree. Why is the plain meaning of "foreign language" in an English-speaking country even up for debate?
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
Only 2.4% percent, well yeah ... it's only CS people. Since when did technology development only depend on CS graduates? Last I checked, there are more and more focus/applied degrees every year which would probably take care of a good number of those positions. Not every job needs a theoretical background, and all of those job postings for "App Developers" probably don't require a hardcore degree a this point ...
Technical salaries paid by the Commonwealth of Kentucky are approximately 40% below the regional market average.
Not as bad as all that when considered within the context of the cost of living in Kentucky.
For example, consider what $300,000 will buy you for a house in Kentucky (and many other Southern states) verses in Western Washington State where I live. I, Puget Sound, $300K will buy me a two bedroom "fixer-upper" next to a crack house.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Government schools continue to be ridiculous.
My highschool required 3 years of a foreign language to graduate, 0 of which I had any interest in, and only 1 (the first) had any real-life applicability (spending a week in Mexico City).
Effectively, for me, two of those courses were a completely forced waste of time.
Taking more classes on programming/software development would have been much more useful.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
Not as bad as all that when considered within the context of the cost of living in Kentucky.
But only for very lame values of living.
I sucked at Spanish in high school, harder than calculus. I got around language requirements in college via some comparative religion courses (which worked out great as one teacher turned me onto Hermann Hesse, changed my life).
The only problem I see with this change is called it a Foreign Language. If it was Alternative Language I wouldn't see anything wrong with it.
I see learning a programming language, which I assume mean learning some programming, as highly valuable to anyone. If taught properly (I've never seen this), it can provide a solid logic base (and, or, not) and a deeper understanding of decision making (conditionals).
My wife had a total of 8 years of French and spent a semester in Paris. She hasn't used it yet and is no longer very fluent. As for applied knowledge, her spreadsheet skills are good, but she trips up on logic and conditionals.
Why is there a foreign language requirement anyway?
BlameBillCosby.com
I my college accepted my programming languages courses for their foreign language requirement -- and that was nearly 40 years ago. This is actually pretty common, though it goes in and out of fashion every few years.
"AN ACT relating to computer programming languages in public schools. Amend KRS 156.160 to allow computer programming language courses to be accepted as meeting foreign language requirements in the public schools; amend KRS 164.002 to define "computer programming language"; amend KRS 164.4785 to ensure that computer programming language courses be accepted as meeting foreign language requirements for admission to public postsecondary institutions."
I don't get the backlash, especially on a tech site like Slashdot (although the /. crowd is trending more towards the reddit / digg / mouthbreathers these days). HS language courses are the biggest waste of time. Do you actually learn anything in a HS language class? Just enough to recognize the language you are reading, maybe make fun of the weird shit they do in other countries, but definitely not well enough to be able to converse. These classes only exist as justification for rich kids (you know, the ones who /don't/ have to work) to take their annual European summer vacations subsidized on the taxpayer's dime.
A computer programming class makes so much more sense in that it allows people to learn basic logic and process management (as in, breaking down a big problem into smaller modules). This bill just expands the scope of what fills that "language" requirement.
This move makes absolutely perfect sense. Soon, everyone graduating from Kentucky high schools will have above average academic qualifications. Also, the senator is a genius and extremely good looking.
you can live in Kentucky like a god with 300,000 dollars. secondly as a resident and graduate of Kentucky schools i can tell you Kentucky educational requirements are a joke and funding is non existent or wasted. they think it's OK to have your kids in a 50 million dollar building be using textbooks from the 50's. they cut educational funding constantly while the congressmen keep raising their salaries and running off new companies with jobs we desperately need at the request of established players.
Programming a dishwasher is simple, doesn't need much of a language.
Although of course back in the early days of robotics people were thinking of general purpose humanoid style robots doing the household chores, including dishes. (like the Dad in Robots) and it would take some effort to program that task (its mentioned in Heinleins The Door to Summer
Not so much a problem with KY as it is a problem with KY politicians. Like a lot of places in the US.
heartfelt the good old all natural material for the new age of open honest communications & commerce. never a better time to consider ourselves in relation to every other one of us & our native creational centerpeace momkind. see you there guaranteed to raise all of our senses & spirits at once..
Many engineering types have trouble learning foreign languages. I believe a large part of the problem is that language teachers are not engineering types. They absorbed the language organically in a way that an "engineering brain" couldn't.
I think you could teach a foreign language much like a programming language if you could find a language teacher who's good a programming. So instead of teaching the language with situations (sitting at a dinner table, asking for directions etc), you could have a tutorial and a reference manual listing the syntax rules (including morphology) plus a lexicon of a couple of thousand words. Then, memorize it all, and you have a passable knowledge of a foreign language.
Not sure what the deal is with all the hate here in the thread. Isn't the Slashdot groupthink supposed to say that anything that exposes people to computers and programming is a good thing? Even when it's that nonsense of trying to teach primary grade-schoolers to code?
People are a lot less likely to take a computer programming language than they are a foreign language class in high school, but I'd say the computer programming course is more valuable to them. If they take the semester or two of foreign language, they will likely have forgotten it in a couple years from non-practice and even if they did want to study further will be having to start at year one anyway in college. If they never travel to a country where they speak the language what they do learn will be limited usefulness in life. It's another one of those subjects people study to be a more rounded person. But exposure to programming means learning more about computers in general and how to operate them, that means less idiots in offices hitting "reply all" when unnecessary or looking for the "any" key. And even those who decide programming isn't for them will come away with a better understanding (and possibly respect) for those that do go into programming.
http://xkcd.com/859/
Learn at least one foreign language*.
First of all, computer languages are hardly like human languages. The grammars are much simpler, but much more complex constructs are typically used in computer programs than in natural conversations. Computer languages are not spoken languages. Secondly, the point of requiring foreign language proficiency is to be able to understand foreign people, and not just language-wise. It enables you to learn about other cultures than your own without go-betweens. Thirdly, technology affine students are already more likely to have a curriculum with a strong emphasis on science and technology. Allowing them to skip a non-technical subject removes an aspect which is already underrepresented in their education. If you're trying to breed nerds, this is the way to go.
*: a language which is the mother tongue of a significant number of people currently living on Earth. Latin, Klingon and Python do not count towards this personality development objective.
And it is all your fault the second some screws with something and things go south.
Not worth 60k. Remember any NT 100.00 per hour. Pepperidge Farms remembers.
Quit forcing me to BETA pages, I'm sick of it.
Log in if you want to avoid the BETA site.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Which entirely misses the point of a broad education.
Taking programming courses is every bit as broadening as taking a language course. Just in different dimensions.
Indeed I would hazard to say you would retain more overall from a programming course than one or two semesters of a language course.
In no way are we dumbing down people allowing them to study computers more in depth over language.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I always wonder what the source and intention of these posts is.
Depends on where you are in Kentucky. Oh, everyone loves the narrative that Kentucky is filled with barefoot overall-wearing good ol' boys with a mason jar of moonshine on the creaky porch with a sprig of wheat coming out of the corner of their mouth, but everyone seems to forget that if you cross a river in Northern Kentucky, you are in the Central Business District of Cincinnati, Ohio; a fairly large city with significant history and home to several Fortune-100 headquarters.
Yes, $300k will go farther than Puget Sound, the Bay Area, LA or New York; but not as far as you would think.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
good luck next time you're in a foreign country trying to buy food using for loops and if statements
Actually, anyone can do just that these days.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So what if a programming class meets the foreign language requirement?
When I went to high school, a counselor encouraged students to take a foreign language if they intended to go to college. This was a rural area, and it was noted that foreign language classes are not necessarily for everybody. People who don't intend to work hard in school may not do very well with a foreign language. This implies, to me, that a foreign language was not required to graduate from that high school.
Just for the record, I did take a foreign language in another high school. However, I also proceeded to get college degrees, and I don't think my high school foreign language class ever came to play. (I don't think it affected me getting an Associate's Degree; once I had that, the Associate's Degree satisfied the GURs (General University Requirements) for a Bachelor's Degree. The remaining classes to get a Bachelor's Degree tended to be more field-specific: in my case, computers and math.)
Granted, it's a bit unimpressive if "languages related to computers" are treated as "languages related to foreign lands", as if computer technology or geeks are "foreign" for these people. Maybe, to remedy this, it would be better if the requirement became named something other than "foreign language". But besides this petty nitpicking of an argument, just what harm is expected from this?
Saying that the students are not properly prepared for the entrance requirements that will be expected of Ivy League schools is not a compelling argument if the students have such low standardized (SAT/ACT) scores that they wouldn't be admitted anyway.
So, I'll end with the core question that's being danced around:
If the foreign language requirement is so powerless that some people may get a Bachelor's Degree without fulfilling this requirement, then what's the expected big negative impact if some high schools allow this relatively toothless requirement to become fulfilled easier?
Seriously, there had be a "Y'all" joke somewhere.
Or moonshine. Or bluegrass.
Three Squirrels
So, if I write viruses, can I get a degree in biology?
So what exactly is the problem with Kentucky?
That's a good question. After all, not only does the best Bourbon Whiskey come from there, they produce a wonderful jelly.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
This sounds a lot like the "Pizza is a vegetable" nonsense I remember reading about a few years ago.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I wonder how this will play out lol.
You need two years to learn a foreign language (months if you're left stranded in a country where nobody speaks your language). Learning a programming language is a two weaks efforts.
I'm ok with this.
The Blade Itself
Computer languages are not spoken languages.
I agree, but that point by itself means nothing.
the point of requiring foreign language proficiency is to be able to understand foreign people
How is this not already accomplished through watching countless videos from people across the globe?
But really, the thing is that computer people will naturally have a much better grasp of this anyway over a lifetime just due to being better off monetarily, and traveling more while also having lots more flexibility in choosing places to live across the world. So skipping language now to help someone become a better programmer earlier means more options for them to REALLY learn about other cultures first-hand later.
If you're trying to breed nerds, this is the way to go.
If you're trying to STIFLE nerds, then your approach is great. But why NOT breed nerds? Nerds can easily self-expand after school if they choose, and a course or two of languages in school is not going to make them any more well-rounded than they would be otherwise...
We need more nerds, not fewer. Help someone excel as early as possible and they will benefit for a lifetime.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Drop some of the required frou-frou fluff like my middle-schooler has to suffer through like Black History and Wymyn's [sic] Studies and open up schedule space for more real academics of all kinds.
Bete'!!!
My karma is bad. Don't get too close!!!
Granted, Kentucky is not representative of the whole US, but a perfect example of how we repetitively embarrass ourselves internationally.
Most of the world is multilingual. Learning another language provides skills unrelated to coding. In addition to the obvious benefit of communication, it provides the student with a wider vocabulary and the ability to basically know the meaning of many, many new words they may hear while studying, without the use of a dictionary.
How many Europeans know only one language? How many Indians or Chineese? Virtually none that have education.
We've carried the big stick for too long, if you can't see that you need to have the ability to play internationally, you'll be stuck with a Kentucky education and sadly ignorant .
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
If you're not learning calculus from Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica in the original Latin, you're just taking shortcuts. Begone with you.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
They are just mad that their state abbreviation has become a sex lube.
If you live in a state with abbreviation KY, you deserve to get shafted.
However, anything that promotes the use of computer science and technology to students who are crap at languages (like I was) cannot be that bad.
langs = [
{
"name":"C",
"popularity": 49
},
{
"name":"Java",
"popularity": 53
},
{
"name":"JavaScript",
"popularity":82,
},
{
"name":"Perl",
"popularity": 3
},
{
"name":"PHP",
"popularity":64
},
{
"name":"Python",
"popularity":57
}
];
langs.sort(function(a,b) {
if (a.popularity < b.popularity) { return 1; }
if (a.popularity > b.popularity) { return -1; }
return 0;
});
if (langs[0].name == 'javascript') {
console.log("Tell me about it, seems whenever I go out drinking everyone is speaking in Javascript these days.");
} else {
console.log("Dude, I don't even know what you are saying");
}
jobs that start with $60,000 salaries? I've seen $48,000 in the newspaper. Maybe I'm living in the wrong town. lol
And yet, Latin was offered as a foreign language at my high school...
(You are right that it was sort of "cheating" the requirement, though!)
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I know it is popular to mock the Southern US, but lame values of living are relative. I live in rural Southern Alabama, which is probably not much different than rural Kentucky. I have a nice 2 story home overlooking a pond. My morning commute to work is around 20 minutes if you count dropping the kids off at school. I might pass 10 cars during rush hour. I know most of my neighbors for a mile in both directions. When I want to go on a walk in the park, my backyard has 130 acres of pine trees planted. Sure the pay scale is not as much as a similar job in other areas, but neither is the cost of living. What would $70,000/year get you in Chicago?
...barefoot overall-wearing good ol' boys with a mason jar of moonshine on the creaky porch with a sprig of wheat coming out of the corner of their mouth,
Throw in a pregnant nun, a few buckets of Milwaukees Best and a greased pig, and you got yourself a party, boy! Yeeeee-haaaw!
I have a completely opposite opinion. I think the foreign language requirement is BS. Maybe under the conditions that people who made the requirement were thinking of provided a good enough reason to make that a requirement; however, today that is NOT the case.
At least with programming they will be exposed to logic and having to think differently in a way that is not naturally human. Yes, it's unlikely they'll get proper programming experience to have the desired impact on them, but that already is the case for foreign language education. Thinking in programming code is going to impact them if they get to that skill level; just as a foreign language would. I also think people are too biased into thinking that people can only think in a spoken language - if you could get people to NOT think in a spoken language that would probably do the most.
English education is poor quality. People who used to learn Latin ended up way better off but that was killed in favor of living language -- many of the popular ones are so similar to English that it can't be providing much benefit other than perhaps the way they teach it exposing grammar - which is not really taught. Teaching proper English grammar again with the Latin based-concepts etc would be far more beneficial. They no longer taught grammar when I was in school (it was passive at that point, the teacher would have to correct it for you to even know of a rule... perhaps this approach would work if they made us read a whole lot more; that that didn't happen either.)
Cultures, geography, etc. should be taught (does social studies even exist anymore?) about multiple areas not just the one who's language you are learning (in my case, we learned almost nothing other than stuff we already knew from pop culture on Span or Mexico and I bet you half the students couldn't find Spain on a map and 1/5 wouldn't realize if you renamed Canada Mexico on a map.)
If you REALLY want or need to learn a language -- GO THERE. Everybody admits it is the best way to learn. Americans do not get 1 month vacation per year to travel around Europe; perhaps if they did... they'd at least learn some Spanish or French going short distances. If you want people to think differently by language exposure, pick something DIFFERENT-- like Chinese, not some popular European language.
Ethnocentrism is extremely high in the USA.
I would cover the basics strongly before adding lots of extras - we don't have good English, Math, or Science skills nationally. No, all those studies that cite mixed language exposure helping out leave out the fact that English can be taught in a way that has those benefits without all the wasted time. (It IS a waste when the main purpose is to lean better English-- it's like going across the street by going around the planet... sure you get a nice trip but it takes a long time even if you'd learn some geography...something Americans suck at.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
$300,000 in will buy a McMansion out in the suburbs of Pittsburgh.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Shhhhhh! I am OK with people not knowing how beautiful most of the southern US is. If they find out, they will ruin it.
KY jelly you mean?
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
Mhhh... can someone confirm that the Beta is nothing but some form of punishment for the Anonymous Cowards....
Wasn't it George Gilder who said that the only languages that anyone needed to know to be successful today are English and C++?
So what that Kentucky uses a programming language like BASIC to satisfy their foreign language 'requirement'? It's not like anyone speaks a foreign language in Kentucky. Except Spanish, and the Mexicans aren't going to know the difference between Kentuckians speaking KY_BASIC and KY_Spanish anyway.
10 ? "I'm smart, educated, trained, and ready for world-class productivity employment"
20 Goto 10
Was it Bill Gates who invented using the question mark as the PRINT token? If I recall correctly, he personally brought back to life the BASIC language by writing assembly language interpreters for every microprocessor available in the 1970s. Does he speak any foreign language?
(just as it's reasonable for Georgians to assume Athens, Georgia instead of Athens, Greece -- but they all damn well know the Greece version exists!)
However, most Americans will assume you are talking about Georgia in the United States when someone mentions Georgia, and will not know there is a Georgia in Eastern Europe.
Oh, everyone loves the narrative that Kentucky is filled with barefoot overall-wearing good ol' boys with a mason jar of moonshine on the creaky porch with a sprig of wheat coming out of the corner of their mouth
It's your own fault for coming up to New York with a banjo and picking up girls in Washington Square Park with your Kentucky accent and hillbilly stories.
My girlfriend clued me in that those stories they tell about screwing sheep are strictly for the benefit of credulous city boys.
Thinking it will get you a 6 block section in Detroit, but I haven't checked the prices lately. Mind you it's a bit of a fixer upper project.
You never know...
Because it be considered incomprehensible gibberish, not a programming language.
Average Salary of a Translator: 42,300.
Average Salary of a Computer Programmer I: 55,990
I can see why they want to push that into their curriculum.
suspect that it may be baysian poisoning, but they might be search string keys for NSA metatag searches. (Whether the submitter knows that or not.)
You never know...
I've learned a foreign language (English) and quite a bundle of programming languages (Java, Python, PHP, JS, Haskell, Lua, C++), and pretending that proficiency in one of the latter is remotely comparable to one of the former is idiotic.
Learning computer programming is indeed comparable to learning a language, but the effort (and the payoff) of becoming fluent in a real language is more aptly compared to programming concepts in general, or maybe mathematical logic, than any particular syntax.
.....when I our country wasnt drowning in debt. Thanks, boomer assholes!!!
Sorry, but I've seen rural Alabama and rural Kentucky. From my experience, Kentucky's doing significantly better.
Your ignorance answered the question as to why it's still mandatory.
If I'm ignorant, then you are in trouble since I'm the one supporting your assertion.
I never said language courses should not be mandatory. Just that it was OK to wrap them together with programming courses.
If you can't parse that, well then I'm not sure you should be throwing the word "ignorant" around so vigorously as it's swinging back a little too close there.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
US media emphasize foreign locales for effect. "London, England" and "Paris, France" are famous cities with a certain "Je ne sais por quoi" ( French speakers can either be offended or glad I bothered to learn what it means). In fact, there is a US film named "Paris, Texas" because most everyone would assume Paris, France otherwise.
I'm sure the average European won't recognize Miami, FL or Nome, AK without a footnote. Miami looks like the Carribean & Nome could easily be Siberia.
Being in Chicago, for one. ;)
Different strokes, but right now I'm in the middle of nowhere and it's fine if you have little interest in people, or entertainment, or restaurants, or a good variety of groceries, or having walking be a realistic daily mode of daily transport, or many other things. And of course the politics are more conservative, even though most of the people would at least be better off financially under liberals. The only reason I'm not going bonkers from this lifestyle is that I'm caught up in working (and it's work I enjoy), I still get out to do exercise several times a week, and I plan on leaving eventually.
In Chemistry graduate school we were allowed to apply a computer language to our two "foreign" languages requirement... in 1985.
Let me restate it. Apples-to-apples, you could take an MCTS 2 blocks from the capital and make 40% more. The Commonwealth hires people at slave wages, even for the low COL.
Due to an underwhelming selection of classes to pick from, I took five years of French and two years of Chinese during high school. That's a huge investment of time. But algebra only gets two years. Physics gets one. Geometry also gets one. These are all subjects that are immediately useful and transferable. If you're got a white-collar job, you're going to be using at least some of these skills.
Foreign language, though? You're working on something your entire high school career for the incredible odds that you will a) travel abroad and b) were lucky enough to pick the right language. I can't afford to travel within the United States, nevermind visit France or China. Fahgeddaboudit.
On the other hand, five years of computer and programming courses would have been something I'd use every day. Something that could have made me immediately employable. Instead of allowing children to acquire useful skills, however, we're obsessed with giving kids the classical liberal education, from back when a "learned" person was supposed to be a polyglot. It'd be great if we lived in a world where there were room for foreign languages, but I didn't get to go to college. I needed to get as much education as I possible could in high school. And instead of giving me something that would prepare me for life, I was stuck in with the kids whose middle class parents wanted them to be "well rounded" for college. I just wanted to graduate with something that allowed me to eat.
Someone needs to introduce legislation mandating education for legislators.
There's got to be a fried chicken joke in there some where.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
To let students heading to comp sci have a break.
The requirements are there, aka the system. To beat the system, aka break the rules for some, the debate is not about whether it is a foreign language. It is about waiving the requirement, which means filling a requirement with a substitute.
No one, other than you and people like you who like to overreact by taking things out of context, is saying that code is a foreign language.
I would prefer to focus on the $60k starting salary that will not exist for nearly anyone involved. And, why coding is more important than multicultural learning and basically brain calisthenics. Why the need?
To me, it's about patterns. Is there a Gang of Four linguists who have extracted patterns from spoken language? I have no idea, but to me, that's what it's about. When you learn a second or third language, you are forcing your brain to extract the patterns itself, which seems to have a strong impact on *everything* learned thereafter, a sort of filter. I assume it's something to do with the fundamental nature of language in our brains. Who knows, but for me, that's what it feels like.
Then the answer is simple. Change the hard requirement if it sucks instead of gaming the system via a metaphor.
When I went to school sport was not quite compulsory in senior. It could be exchanged for an afternoon at a tech college learning how to program the Z80.
Now stop for a moment and think: Why don't we have any people who are doctors in every field of study?
Interestingly, long ago the volume of knowledge was such that a single human could easily contain all of it -- or certainly enough to be considered an expert in everything. As your society progresses the amount of knowledge and information out paces your capability to know everything, and so you must specialize your knowledge and skills to continue advancement. It's a double edged sword: Science has no true divisions; The universe is unified. Overspecialization can leave you just as blind, but you must make do with the brains you've come into sentience with... for now.
Who is more of a hillbilly? The one who still thinks that human heads can store and apply infinite knowledge, or the one who realizes the relatively new field of computer science plus at least one programming language has a greater cognitive load than learning another culture's language? In the Age of Information where nearly every device has computational capacity, is it more advantageous to learn to speak multiple human languages or learn to communicate with machines? I guess it would depend on whether one plans on being a troglodyte or not.
Tell me, human, do you think it is more efficient to learn multiple human languages, or to standardize on one? Before you answer, consider that if you want to be a programmer you practically must learn English first. However, if you already know English...
"I hated having to take Spanish and resent it, therefore this is a great idea for the millions of people I have never met nor considered whom I assume will have the same difficulties I did, and for whom the obvious benefits of learning a foreign language are best hidden from the people who take programming classes not from curiosity but because they think they will get the advertised salary at any time in their career, and who by definition would be the ones who will benefit the most from forcible cultural exposure."
I know it doesn't sound like you said exactly that, but you did. And when you say "No, what I meant was..." all you are doing is rationalizing your explanation. Seriously, consider that maybe you really did mean pretty much this for at least 10 minutes before replying.
The people who take courses leading to med school, law school, techy, and MBA programs because of the lure of starting salary numbers statistically never get there. They change majors or drop out, and falling back on a well rounded education, on average, is much better.
A pharmacy school dropout is able to earn extra money at the call center job because she remembered enough Spanish to be able to support Spanish speaking customers, and the world is suddenly paying her for essentially no additional work. It's the preparation that counts, and you're voting to prepare everyone else's kids less.
In the University of California system 50+ years ago, a PhD candidate had to pass proficiency tests in TWO foreign languages. In the 1960s, that requirement was modified to allow the candidate to substitute a computer language for one of the foreign languages.
Honestly I've met more CS grads with no working knowledge of how to apply what they've learned successfully than those who could. The problem is the courses spend so much time teaching algorithms and how computers work at a fundamental level that they disregard or severely downplay actually writing software.
Counting knowledge of a programming language toward a language requirement makes as much sense as counting a knowledge of science fiction toward a science requirement.
If people bother to read /.'s FAQ, it tells you how to switch from beta to classic.
How likely is the language you learn in High School today going to be extent in 30 years. Consider Pascal and Basic.
Kids should learn computer languages in pre school while their brains are still plastic. I can just imagine the Sesame Street code lessons now...
I did this back in 1996 at a university in Florida. Had to get the dean of the program to approve but it made sense since I was an I.T. Major. This should be a standard option.
At what age do we decide who takes what route in specialized education? At what age should general education turn into specialized education? I think grade 12 is a good end point for general education, what about you? If the previous generation could get both a foreign language credit and a mathematics/logic credit why can't todays generation? They managed to become engineers in a specific field. Yes there are more specialized fields to chose from but why does it matter? Its scalable. Or are you suggesting too much general knowledge is being crammed into the k-12 curriculum?
My sheep clued me in that those stories they tell on Slashdot about girlfriends are strictly for the benefit of credulous basement-dwellers.
No left turn unstoned.
It's interesting to see how few people say that foreign languages come with foreign cultures.
American people (as a whole) are known for their lack of knowledge about the rest of the world.
Just because we use the term 'language' in "computer language" doesn't mean it's a real language.
Allowing people to learn a CS language instead of a real human language removes the little chance some people have to actually learn about other cultures.
(As I said above, I'm speaking about the US as a whole, of course a lot of people have more knowledge than that, but I'm sure you can easilly quote a few politicians, even presidents who couldn't tell their ass from their feet even geographically wise)
On average you'll find that the same work pays as good or better in a more expensive area (maybe better because for a lot of careers the "big" companies that can afford more competitive salaries are often in the city). So in most cases, your major costs (housing, food) should be the same percentage of your salary because your pay is adjusted for the area. However, national things like books, clothes, music, furniture, cars, airfare, etc. all cost the same wherever you live, so they'll be "cheaper" for you if you live in a more expensive town.
Put another way, 70k in Alabama is probably more like 110k in Chicago. You could pretty easily pull a 350k house on that salary, which gets you a nice 3-bedroom in a quiet neighborhood (according to a quick search). And now a new car is now 27% of your yearly salary, rather than 43% so you can upgrade almost twice as often (or buy more books, go on more vacations, or just save more).
That's not to mention all the cultural opportunities you give up living in Alabama instead of Chicago. I'm sure Alabama has some nice countryside, and I know it's not all Deliverance-style back-country. But it can't compete with Chicago in terms of world-class theater, museums, symphony, cinema, or restaurants either.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
They want cheaper programmers, and they'll get'em anyway they can. If that means sacrificing the quality of education for short term gains in computer science grads, go for it.
Also, $60k/yr isn't much money in a lot of places, and not just NY & San Fransisco. Yeah, it's more than McDonald's, but you won't be starting a family on that. People stopped going into CS because they saw they jobs and the pay going away.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
In the US, it would be a miracle if a single student could actually understand a foreign language that they studied in school because they only study for a couple of years at best. The old "yo hablo espanol" is about all you'll get. Encouraging kids to study computer science is a great idea.
we all know what Kentucky thinks about foreigners.
Shouldn't the subject be: Programming Language == Foreign Language ??
Esperanto estas la solvo - it solves the problem. It's not a foreign language as everyone owns it, not just foreigners; and not a computer language although it shares logical construction, 'beauty' and ease of use like the best programming languages; it is a blend of both. As for foreign languages teaching "mental dexterity" so does learning the Periodic table. Learning languages involves hours of practise with memorising ability being paramount; a skill difficult for many people. If all youngsters were taught in their native language and also one agreed simple international language such as Esperanto they'd have lots of memory space and time left to memorise important stuff in Science and Engineering. After all the human brain has only so much capacity before it decides it wants to go out and play.
Ethnic discrimination ... ,,,poor
Who is discriminating here? White people can be poor too, but you seem to think that only ethnic minorities are poor. Bigot.
Bookmark
The three foundations of learning. Foreign languages teach you different ways of thinking (the fundamental basis of the language is different). The farther from English the language is, the more you learn to think differently. You also have the opportunity to look at English - and it's built-in paradigms. You also learn about other cultures - from their standpoint. Finally, you learn languages that can be useful when dealing with international business (either over there, or dealing with customers who speak that language in your native country).
I note that virtually all non-US countries have mandatory second/third/fourth language requirements in school. Only in the US does it seem to be a problem. What does that say about US-ians?
Brilliant, so American tourists visiting Jacarta are at least able to speak Java, now.
I happen to live in Chicago... and that 70k would allow you to live a very comfortable life. Not on the gold coast, but Chicago (and Chicagoland) is a very large area with lots of opportunity.
Isn't it funny that a lot of people reading and discussing this submission are only capable of doing so because they learned a foreign language at school?
The first step towards recognition of Artificial Intelligence sentience personhood rights.
Learning languages involves hours of practise with memorising ability being paramount; a skill difficult for many people.
I've always been terrible at memorization but I managed to learn Thai and Spanish and several computer languages. Names, dates, phone numbers... I'm glad they invented smartphones so I no longer have to remember numbers.
I never saw the utility of Esperanto, since nobody speaks it.
Free Martian Whores!
My daughter lives in Cincinnati and works in a GameStop in Kentucky. Her description of he customers pretty much fits the stereotype, meth heads selling used (probably stolen) games, women in rags bring children in rags in and buying a brand new Playstation and the expensive games that go with them...
Free Martian Whores!
Maybe you could get rid of history, too.
I mean, it's not a job skill - what job do you need history for?
My schools ONLY offered French and Spanish, highschool had German and Italian but both programs were cancelled when by my sophomore year. I had no desire to learn either of these, and at 26 still have not needed either (and forgotten most of them anyway).
Why is it a bad thing to let something useful like a programming language satisfy that requirement?
Is 2 credits enough to make any kind of a real world difference?
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
I'm not much for learnin', and I don't have any guns. But rest assured I've drank my bit for the economy!
Haha yeah slashdot lets bash all the stupid poor farmers and make fun of them because all those idiots in fly over states are unworthy! On the other hand, students everywhere might get more use of 2 years of C++ or php than 2 years of Spanish. I know I would have used programming more in college and everyday life than Spanish, and if you need Spanish in everyday life you're going to learn it whether its taught in school or not.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Homework:
1) Use $COMPUTER_LANG to ask for directions to the bathroom
2) Use $COMPUTER_LANG to order dinner at a restaurant
3)Use $COMPUTER_LANG to extend an indecent proposal to a member of the appropriate sex.
Can't do? Then it ain't a language. Calling computer code "language" is just a convention to make colloquial speech easier.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
I've spoken with plenty of rural Kentucky natives who explained that they had mixed feelings about going back home during breaks in the University of Kentucky school year due to the attitude they get back home. Attitudes like - "You think you are so much better than us" and "if our town isn't good enough for you, you can just stay away, traitor".
There are HUGE psychological barriers to overcome to the extent that only the strongest-willed can work their way out of the poverty cycle. I can understand the perspective that a foreign language requirement just adds to the challenges. Realistically, it would be rare to find a capable teacher for any foreign language in these communities.
The "flexibility" that is mentioned in TFA is to allow these communities to use limited resources to get some of these kids to college. In certain communities the default expectation is education post high school, but in others the expectation is the disability/welfare dole. This expectation is found in both rural and urban communities with limited resources and limited local opportunity.
It's Latin with the grammar took out.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
>our major costs (housing, food) should be the same percentage of your salary
Not true according to economic theory. If a company could move to Alabama and reduce costs, they would. So for the most part the average payroll should be similar, just the majority of employees are willing to pay more for the privlege of living in the big city. My company gives me cost of living to move me, mostly because its more there desire. It can also be the few drag many. IE if a CEO worth 25M won't move from chicago for any amount, having to pay 50 lower people 40,000 more may still lower the overall payroll (or fill a payroll that couldn't be filled elsewhere.)
This is not new. In the 60's-70's some universities (Washington University in St Louis for one) allowed PhD candidates to meet their foreign language requirements by showing fluency in FORTRAN.
iTranslate needs an internet connection to work. When you are abroad that means either renting a local SIM or roaming charges.
Or just being on TMobile.
Or renting a mobile hotspot at the airport.
I didin't have any issues with network when I went to Japan.
Is there a port of Google Translate for iOS?
There are also plenty of offline translators available for iOS, especially if you are just talking dictionary...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"despite a high demand in the market and jobs that start with $60,000 salaries"
These things go hand in hand, let's keep it that way.
A programming language is technically not a "language" at all. The word "language" is used as a sort of nickname for what programming really is. That's like giving physical education credits for "web surfing" just because it has the word "surfing" in it, or biology/entomology credit for debugging just because it has the word "bug" in it.
> So what exactly is the problem with Kentucky?
Not so sure that much is.
I've lived in both the Valley and Kentucky.
The people in KY aren't as rich and there are fewer of them who think computers are central to their lives.
But they're nicer.
I've lived in both the Valley and Kentucky.
Which valley? There's more than one, you know, and which one is simply called "the Valley" depends on where you are. Out here, The Valley generally refers to the San Fernando Valley.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Poor != "incompetent to speak"
Ethnicity also != "incompetent to speak"
Language is that tool which we use to communicate the vast majority of what's important. Figuratively speaking, you can paint beautifully with it, employing nuance and mastery, or you can draw crude stick figures like an addled child, finger painting. Deep patois may provide that warm and fuzzy feeling of being a member of a regional clique, but it directly isolates the speaker from everyone else, and that is not a good thing.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Ahem. Repeat after me:
From Latin per se (“by itself”), from per (“by, through”) and se (“itself, himself, , herself, themselves")
Far too simplistic an example to make your case. Language can indeed cue culture. Spend a little time here to get a taste of some surface examples.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
"Less than 2.4% of students graduate with a degree in computer science..." And why oh why is that? Perhaps the lie that follows: "a high demand in the market and jobs that start with $60,000 salaries." Bullshit! The demand in the market isn't high. There are a glut of overqualified people, and salaries start at about $19/hour. Unskilled labour gets more. A few high profile executives have cried out that 'we need more', but the truth is that they want to flood the market so that they can pay far below minimum wage. The truth is that most companies have outsourced to India. The "Lights out Shop" has been around for years. No one local looks after computers anymore: its all remote from another continent. Architecture and engineering have (led or followed, I have a hard time keeping track). CXO's like to keep tabs on money, so accountants haven't suffered quite so badly, but shareholders will 'downsize' and 'rightsize' these occupations too. Finally, why have a local lackey when you can get an overseas guy at half price (or willing to work without bonuses). But I digress: the reason why only 2.4% get CS degrees is that 2.3% of them mistakenly thought they could get work in this field. Clearly they are mistaken.
Training drones, rather than educated, well-rounded citizens
To serve only self is the ultimate slavery.
Ethnic discrimination isn't cool just because they're poor, asshole.
No bias against the Kentuckinese.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Haha yeah slashdot lets bash all the stupid poor farmers and make fun of them because all those idiots in fly over states are unworthy! On the other hand, students everywhere might get more use of 2 years of C++ or php than 2 years of Spanish. I know I would have used programming more in college and everyday life than Spanish, and if you need Spanish in everyday life you're going to learn it whether its taught in school or not.
Seems like you could have benefited from many things, m ore than 2 years of Spanish. the Monty Python Argument Clinic, for instance.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Honestly, I went to a high school with over 1000 other students. I believe about 800 took spanish and the remaining 200 or so too French, Italian or German. The average student studied their second language for 3 years, some as many as 5. Of those students, less than 10 percent can communicate on a vacation to another country where those languages are spoken. Probably less than 2% became fluent. And yet, most of them graduated with good grades in those languages.
Second languages should be optional and should be a major boost on college applications. But to be fair, it's a waste of millions and maybe billions of dollars to educate in a topic which less people can perform well in than they do in mathematics.
First off- I'm from Kentucky, and I'm in IT. Not a programmer, but a network guy none the less.
Consider for a moment what the playing field looks like in Kentucky, in regards to economy and job availability. Our #1 cash crop is marijuana. #2 might be tobacco, but in some areas it's probably meth. Then you've got the mountains in the eastern portion of our commonwealth being leveled (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountaintop_removal_mining). Sure we've got horses and bourbon, but a quick trip to Bullitt County will show you that Jim Beam can only employ so many folks. So what do you do? You take a good look around and see that the world, and the jobs, are drastically moving towards the technology field (I'd say they are already there personally). So how do you prepare the next generation the best way possible to grant them the best edge going forward? You pump up your technology eduction. You lure kids into programming classes by allowing their participation to count towards their graduation requirement. Sure, a good chunk that actually continue on with a computer science degree will probably move out of state (Sunnyvale, Redmond, etc.). The thing is that some won't. Maybe we'll even get lucky and have some of those Kentucky transplants will move back and open companies closer to their families and their roots.
So complain if you want to, I can't stop you. Scratch your head, make a couple off-handed remarks about bluegrass, Ale81, or KFC. Just try and see what our legislation is really trying to do. Turn an agricultural and resource [exploitation] based economy/workforce and retrain it to a technological one by making programming classes a little more appealing to our high school aged kids. Sure the 'Deutsch' (German) classes I took were great and all, but learning some C back then would have been a hell of a lot more useful.
The rest of the country's students with only grade 12 did just fine. I know because I went to school in Ontario from Nova Scotia with only grade 12. About the only difference is that I did curriculum about a year earlier in some cases, and didn't have an opportunity to get credit/skip some intro courses.
Anyway, I would say for those few students that want to excel, they could take advantage of grade 13, but for most I suspect it was simply a crutch to limp along at a more retarded pace.
Desire works the other way too. More employees are available in the city because people want to live there, so the company has to go where the people are. And there are likely many companies competing for employees in the same field, so they have to pay competitive wages, which people generally view as accounting for cost of living.
Anyway, theory aside, the trend right now in a lot of fields is for there to be a marked cost of living differential reflected in salaries. A job that would pay 60k in Des Moines, IA pays 100k+ in any city on the west coast, and more like 120k-130k in NYC.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
Apparently this was done after declaring cyber space a foreign country.
Reminds me of the era of "counting ketchup" as a veggie in school lunches
They certainly did not follow systematic thinking, or know what internal documentation is. Some of it appeared to not only be spaghetti code, but written to become a mobius strip. OTOH to call a computer language a foreign language is ridiculous. They may be foreign to their way of thinking, but in no way do they meet the definition of a foreign language.