Number of Coders In Congress To Triple (From One To Three)

jfruh writes Last weekend, Tim Berners-Lee said that the UK needs more members of parliament who can code. Well, the most recent U.S. congressional election has obliged him on this side of the Atlantic: the number of coders in Congress has tripled, with the downside being that their numbers have gone from one to three.

Comments

IQ of congress

[deodiaus2]

Is at an all time high.
However, I'd rather have morons in power than smart guys. The smart guys can really screw us!

Re:IQ of congress

[GameboyRMH]

Was just gonna say this. I know a guy who can do all kinds of coding and believes that both evolution and climate change are not real. Another who thinks the moon landing was a hoax. Apart from these tinfoil-hatters, I also know some coders who are massive douchebags and even idiots.

Ability to code is no guarantee of good intelligence or character.

Re:IQ of congress

[GameboyRMH]

Addendum: Now that I think of it, if I had to choose between a politician who was a coder and one who wasn't a coder with no other information, I'd vote for the non-coder. Too high a percentage of the coders I know (or know of) are conspiracy nuts and/or egomaniac manchildren.

Re:IQ of congress

[mysidia]

I'm good with coders in congress; as long as they have debugging experience, and most of the bugs were in code written by their peers.

Re:IQ of congress

[VAXcat]

There was a time, a golden age most of you have never even imagined, when, to work in IT, you had to be very smart, well educated, and very dedicated to coding and computers. Sadly, that decades gone Xanadu has been replaced by legions of people just looking for a paycheck, who have never seen any other platform than Windows, and whose main qualification is that they have a certification or two. Makes me sad to look back on it...

Re:IQ of congress

[tnk1]

A world full of people like that means that a person of a skillset and interest that you are attributing to yourself should be able to find a very comfortable place.

I look at it this way. I'm not a fan of car salesmen. However, if I love cars, design a good one, and want to make a business out of it, I need car salesmen to sell the cars. Not all of them will love cars. Some of them will simply love making money or sales. They still help my dream to come true.

In theory, for every bunch of boot camp MCSEs out there, there needs to be at least one person who knows what they are doing. Although it feels like you may now be surrounded by careerists who don't love computing, those careerists ultimately make it possible for people who love computers to have a bigger niche to fit into.

The percentage of people who love computing against the careerists may be the same, or even lower than it was before, but the absolute number of enthusiasts has probably never been higher.

Re:IQ of congress

[perpenso]

I'm good with coders in congress; as long as they have debugging experience, and most of the bugs were in code written by their peers.

The problem is these coders will never see the 1.0 release before they are asked to vote on it. There are no opportunities to debug the first draft.

Re:IQ of congress

[rasmusbr]

I think it might be the creative aspect of it. The social climate of these conspiracy scenes seems to revolve around the idea that everyone will refrain from debunking each other's theories, even if they clash logically. So you get to invent your own take on the course of events and underlying motives of the different actors in the conspiracy and nobody gets to call you out on it.

When I was maybe 10 or 11 I used to enjoy fantasizing about secret tunnels and stuff run by ancient secret organizations, so I can kind of relate.

It helps to meddle with creative hobbies like visual art or music, or indeed creative writing if that's what you like.

Re:IQ of congress

[quantaman]

Addendum: Now that I think of it, if I had to choose between a politician who was a coder and one who wasn't a coder with no other information, I'd vote for the non-coder. Too high a percentage of the coders I know (or know of) are conspiracy nuts and/or egomaniac manchildren.

I'm guessing a high percentage of the people you discuss issues with are coders.

A high percentage of people are conspiracy nuts and/or egomaniac (wo?)manchildren.

Re:IQ of congress

[xaotikdesigns]

I'm sure these guys are smart too. Why, they even have degrees from ITT Tech to back up their intelligence

Well that's a start...

[nichogenius]

...now figure out how to get all that legal code to compile without error... and while you are at it, fix the thread locking issues that keeps coming up between Republicans and Democrats.

Re:Well that's a start...

[MightyYar]

They'll be too busy fighting over the space they get in the Capitol basement.

Re:Well that's a start...

[Creepy]

The problem is, the code looks something like this right now

#include <sys/types.h>
#include <unistd.h>

int dem = 1;
int rep = 1;

void main() {
    while (dem||rep)
    {
        fork();
    }
}

For you non programmers, that is a slight take on an old UNIX joke for taking down the mainframe before we had process limits. Pretty sure congress doesn't have any limits, and they certainly can't budget.

Re:Well that's a start...

[sconeu]

<PEDANTIC> main() returns int </PEDANTIC>

Re:Well that's a start...

[swillden]

<counter-pedantic>Not in C++.</counter-pedantic>

Eh? The C++ standard explicitly forbids "void main()". From the standard:

An implementation shall not predefine the main function. This function shall not be overloaded. It shall have a return type of type int, but otherwise its type is implementation-defined. All implementations shall allow both of the following definitions of main:

int main() { /* ... */ }

and

int main(int argc, char* argv[]) { /* ... */ }

Well 1 Real One

[glennrrr]

So 2 people who've gotten academic degrees in CS, but never worked professionally as coders, and one actual developer: the Republican Majority Whip Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana.

Re:Well 1 Real One

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone needs to tell Tim Berners-Lee that not all programmers agree on things such as patents, copyright, and the colour of the sky.

Or the spelling of "color"

Re:Well 1 Real One

[kwiecmmm]

All the "real programmers" do.

We all know that the color of the sky is: #87ceeb

Ah, define "coder" please.

[geekmux]

Given the average age of those serving in Congress, perhaps it's important to define the term "coder" here.

Sure it's always beneficial to have a few "geeks" as lawmakers, but I kinda doubt that someone who took a FORTRAN class a few decades ago is going to be providing much value towards policy governing next-gen internet technologies.

Re:Oh god, no.

[neonKow]

Every coder I've ever met has a black-and-white worldview

Hm... So I take it you're a coder as well?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Coding, maybe. Science for sure.

[Primate Pete]

Really, I don't need my legislators to know how to program, because I don't know that programming skills are what's needed to produce good legislation and policy.

Basic literacy in science, and the honesty to make evidence-based decisions would be much higher on my list of essential skills for congressvermin.

Coders?

[bigfinger76]

I think a few networking folks would be more valuable at present.

I don't just disagree on those things, but..

[s.petry]

“We need more people in parliament who can code, not because we need them to spend their time coding but because they have got to understand how powerful a weapon it is, so that they can make laws that require people to code to make machines behave in different ways.”

I key in particularly on their desire to "make people behave in different ways". I'm not a big fan of obvious social engineering, at least try to hide it.

Uh-oh

[PPH]

I can just see the Java and C# factions forming.

That will leave the task of writing legislation to the third guy. The one who codes in Malbolge.

Re:Uh-oh

[phantomfive]

I can just see the Java and C# factions forming.

It fascinates me that there are people who would prefer to build things in either language.

No Thomas Massie?

[XxtraLarGe]

Thomas Massie is a tech guy with a bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering & a master's in Mechanical Engineering from MIT, and founded SensAble. I'm sure he had to do quite a bit of coding in his time in school, and probably a bit while he was building his company as well.

Jared Polis

[michael_cain]

from Colorado founded an internet access and web hosting company while he was still in school. Started bluemountain.com and proflowers.com. Sold the three for upwards of a billion dollars. Might not be a hands-on tech guy, but certainly an early recognizer of the potential.

Re:Oh god, no.

[dgatwood]

The thing is coders are underrepresented as we have no reason to be there.

Actually, I would argue that science and technology committees should be populated almost entirely by people who understand science and technology, so to the extent that government is creating policy in those areas, there should be coders among the elected officials.