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SOTU: Community Colleges, Employers To Train Workers For High-Paying Coding Jobs
theodp writes: Coding got a couple of shout-outs from the White House in Tuesday's State of the Union Address. "Thanks to Vice President Biden's great work to update our job training system," said President Obama (YouTube), "we're connecting community colleges with local employers to train workers to fill high-paying jobs like coding, and nursing, and robotics." And among the so-called "boats" in the new "River of Content" that the White House social media folks came up with to enhance the State of the Union is a card intended to be shared on Twitter & Facebook which reads, "Let's teach more Americans to code. (Even the President is learning!)."
President Obama briefly addressed human spaceflight, saying, "I want Americans to win the race for the kinds of discoveries that unleash new jobs – converting sunlight into liquid fuel; creating revolutionary prosthetics, so that a veteran who gave his arms for his country can play catch with his kid; pushing out into the Solar System not just to visit, but to stay." He also called once more for action on climate change. Politifact has an annotated version of the transcript for more background information on Obama's statements, and FiveThirtyEight has a similar cheat sheet.
"we're connecting community colleges with local employers to train workers to fill high-paying jobs like coding
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
We'll be training kids with a two year degree to fill in jobs that don't exist. If you thought that another kid with a BA in communications was having a hard time just wait until we have thousands of kids who can do Hello World in Java and VB flooding a market that doesn't really exist... At least we can still count on everyone crying that we need more H1Bs.
Coding isn't a high paying job, and isn't what the country needs. A community college course that teaches how to code in a particular language, rather than teaching systems development, pays about the same as flipping burgers and produces systems like TJ Maxx, Target, Home Depot, and healthcare.gov.
Teaching millions of people computer code is like teaching everyone medical codes - it doesn't do them any good, and it doesn't do the country any good.
The pay for nurses in the US is pretty much on par with those in the UK.
( BSN average salary is in the ~$70,000 range I believe )
The pay is decent enough, but a fraction of what a MD makes.
with over time and some specialties like anesthesia a nurse can make in the $120,000 range which is like top 10% of all income earners. but generic nurses aren't that well paid anymore because so many people went into the field in the last decade
"I want Americans to win the race for the kinds of discoveries that unleash new jobs – converting sunlight into liquid fuel;"
What next? Flying unicorn cloning?
I didn't graduate high school but still got my equivalent diploma and have been programming for about ~5 years now.
In that time I've been contacted by Google twice (both times they lost my resume in the trash), applied to some other places and have had a few technical interviews.
I've also been refreshing my applications to burger king and other minimum wage places in my town and I've still had more conversations with CTO's than I have with fast food managers.
I don't even have a point to make. I just find that very interesting.
I stand corrected. It looks like US BSN are higher paid than their UK counterparts.
The more people you teach to do X, the more of them will end up at the far end of the bell curve for competence at X, and those will be, to stay in your analogy, the rocket surgeons of their time for X.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the light cone.
You do have to be reasonably smart, though. Healthcare is not Walmart.
..."we're connecting community colleges with local employers to train workers to fill high-paying jobs..."
This is what community colleges do. Just exactly how is intervention by the federal government supposed to help? The only change is going to be an increase in the number of administrators the colleges hire to deal with the federal bureaucrats. The next step will be to offer the schools money. Then they'll hire even more administrators in order to suck properly at the federal teat. Finally, the federal government will use their dependence on federal money to impose ridiculous rules and regulations, that require even more administrators.
We've already seen how federal "help" has screwed up the American university system. Tuitions have increased by 200% to 300% in the past 20 years (that being the first example I pulled out of Google).
You know the line: "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help you". Time to run screaming in the opposite direction.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Wow.
Never thought I'd see a day where POTUS would have a technical leg up on every judge presiding over the fate of coders.
When is National Train the Trainer day going to hit the calendar? Might as well, since training is being pushed this hard.
https://www.aapc.com/medical-c... Assigning the correct (and maximum revenue generating) procedure code to medical insurance claims is a critical business requirement for all health care providers in the US. This is a clerical job that requires a certificate training program and is often combined into a 2yr associates degree.
True statement, but you're talking about a Nurse Anesthetist. A Masters Degree level nurse and a specialized field as well. You can even go a step further and become a Nurse Practitioner, but now we're talking a PH.D level education.
I would expect anyone who wielded a Masters Degree in any meaningful field of study to have similar wages.
Most places are looking for BSN's these days at a minimum. You can still find jobs for LVN's and RN's, but most are transitioning to the BSN. ( Bachelor Degrees ) So if you want a career in Nursing, ( not that I expect many here on Slashdot will ) figure on doing the BSN program.
Suppose that's true, if you teach a million people medical coding, two will end up being doctors. And the rest end up unemployed because we only need a few thousand medical coding people. How is that good, to have 998,000 people waste their time (and your money)? Everyone would be much better off putting 1/100th the money into medical school scholarships - you end up with more doctors and nobody wasting their time, and you still have your money to spend on something useful.
Similarly, we need people who know systems architecture, comp sci, information security, electrical engineering, materials science - all of these disciplines are needed to build the systems of the future, and all pay well. Scholarships in these areas would be useful to the student and to the country. Teaching everyone a coding language doesn't advance anything they need or we need.
There are plenty of fields where a community college education is useful - welders, for example, earn more than code monkeys, starting with just a few weeks of schooling. In two years, they can get certified to do underwater welding, aerospace, etc - all of which pay much better than coding, because they are more useful than coding without understanding software systems design principles.
then go back to your school and learn to spell THAN! Better than, greater than, easy huh?
Chuckle.
You have to be VERY smart. I watched my other half go through Nursing school and the material / coursework is no joke. Your Science-Fu better be way up there. Especially Biology, Anatomy, Micro-Biology and Chemistry.
Lest we forget what this country was founded upon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
I teach Computer Information Systems at a community college, which includes some programming courses (C++, Java, JavaScript & PHP w/MySQL, etc.), and some non-programming courses on general computer use. When I teach a programming course, I teach it with the idea that the students I have need to be competent in order to succeed when they move on to a 4 year college. What ends up happening is about 1/3 will stop coming to class after about the first few weeks of school--just long enough to not have their Pell Grants and other financial taken away. Then they go off to party/play video games/whatever. About another 1/2 will struggle, complain that there's too much homework, that the homework is too hard, but they either don't post messages on the course message board, or they do it the evening before the homework's due. They also tend to skip class if they didn't get the homework done. Then about 1/6 excel in the course. They show up every time, do most of the homework, and try to assist other students who are struggling.
I've been teaching for 5 years now and this has been a consistent pattern. The first & last groups are typically composed of traditional students, and the middle one is mostly non-traditional students. I think the reason why NT students struggle so much is because they're shuttled into CS/CIS but have no technical background. They're told "go into computers, that's where all the jobs are", then they take the classes & struggle. I try to accommodate them as best I can, but there's only so much hand-holding you can do.
So basically from my anecdotal experience, you're going to be pissing away money on about 5/6ths of the students you're sending into the field. The number of successes may increase when this program kicks into gear, but that's not really going to be a good indication. "Why's that?" you ask. The answer is simple: There will be more smart students at community colleges who probably would have gone to a better 4-year school if community college wasn't "free".
I want to see everyone have as much success as possible, but the truth is, some students would be better suited for going straight into the job market rather than go to college. Most of the students in the lower 1/3 I mentioned previously either lack the intelligence, (but mostly) the maturity, or both.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Those who end up on the far end of the bell curve won't be those who stop at a 2 year degree in "coding" at a local community college. The very best developer I know has a masters degree, 25+ years of experience, and STILL spends more time learning.
My objection to things like this are the false belief it instills that all you need to do to learn to be good at this is go to community college for a while, where you'll be taught by other people who aren't good at coding. If they were good, they'd be doing it, not making peanuts teaching community college. The second false belief is that it's a ticket to a high paying job. High pay comes with scarce skills. If you send everyone to community college and they actually do become good at coding, it won't be a high paying job.
We should send everyone to a 4 year school and teach them basic economics so they'd understand things like this. Doctors don't make a lot of money because their jobs are important or it costs a lot to train one. They make a lot of money because when you need one, you'll pay whatever you have to, and because there are a limited number of them. In the ideal world, we'd call that 4 year degree high school. It's terrible that people entering the real world don't understand this stuff, and it's why the US electorate falls for nonsense like this time and again.
In the UK its a common myth that doctors have it better than nurses.
It might be that way once you get to the upper echelon of doctors, such as surgeons, consultants etc, but for the bulk nurses have it much better.
Nurses have protected breaks, doctors are required to respond to calls regardless of what they are doing - which means you have 2 minutes to eat a meal in.
Nurses have protected working time limits, doctors do not and can work up to 75 hours a week (the EU Working Time Directive was supposed to curtail this, but what actually happens is your working time is averaged out across your entire working year, including 4 weeks of holiday...)
Nurses can offload all responsibility to doctors, and doctors cannot refuse that responsibility - a nurse can write "doctor informed" in the patient notes and absolve themselves of all problems later on.
On a typical night shift in a hospital with 600 beds, there were usually 2 - 3 nurses per ward (30 patients or so), and 2 or 3 doctors for the entire hospital, excluding A&E. Which means treating patients at either end of the mile long hospital is fun...
My wife worked out that, if you just correct for hours worked, she was paid worse than a porter in the hospital, let alone a nurse.
He speaks of how we need folks in technical positions, yet we pay a professional ballplayer ( pick your sport ), a CEO or a celebrity a salary that is so above and beyond what a " programmer " makes, it's ludicrous. The CEO of my own company makes as much in one year as myself and ONE THOUSAND others just like me.
Most kids don't understand the odds of their becoming a pro ball player. All they see is the dump trucks of cash we give them and the lifestyle they get to live because of it. Couple that with the fact that showing any sort of aptitude for intelligence in school ( High School anyway ) will get you four years of misery and guess how many kids are going to be interested in following the path of a professional coder ?
You want folks to do the " important " jobs ? Start by showing how important they are when it comes to financial compensation.
It's a start. While you learn how to code you can actually start doing it as a hobby, which (as others have pointed out) is more or less required practice to reach a decent level of proficiency which no course will ever give you.
We don't expect an architect fresh out of college to design a skyscraper, nor a guy with a new medical degree to perform complex procedures on his own, nor a newly graduated MBA to run a division. (Sometimes it does happen, with crap results as a rule). By the same token, someone starting out in coding shouldn't be made responsible for critical parts of the software, design work, etc. They need coaching and training, same as in any other highly skilled profession. The problem is that, unlike other professions, there seems to be a lack of time, budget, or even perceived need to provide such coaching to new coders.
By the way, I think coding should be taught to (more or less) everyone in high school. Not with the goal of teaching them to code, but because coding teaches and trains other skills that are valuable in many other professions: problem analysis, troubleshooting, logic, etc.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Legions more people who are getting into programming just because they heard there was money in it...even though they have no talent, interest or passion for it...
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
Actually, you are mistaken for assuming than any educational effort that is national in scope doesn't start with speechmaking and "propaganda". Bright ideas that occur in a vacuum twinkle out quickly. Its only when those ideas are amalgamated and become an enterprise or new field of study and disseminated widely do they really make a difference.
"It gives the impression that a high-paying job is relatively easy to get, and that's just not true."
I didn't get that impression at all and suggest that your thoughts and biases about what the president said gave you that impression. There was nothing in his remarks that implied it in a logical sense, although the president is almost certainly correct. If you can get more people coding, there will be better coders and some will get paid better than if they did not have such skills. Not all code leads to new insights into the structure of the universe or changes how the world works. Nonetheless, one can make a lot of money just coding financial transactions for a great many businesses, nothing earthshaking in terms of novel or brilliant code, but the stuff economies are built and run on nonetheless.
I applaud the President for this initiative as it gets people thinking about coding and computer science, as well as other technical professions. Sure beats more tax breaks for the wealthy as the solution to all the world's problems.
infowars
Let's see... space ships... [illegal] aliens... complaining against the government... OK, I see what you did there.
Well, I did expect you to figure it out. You even caught an angle I hadn't thought of. But we're all here to learn.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
"How about instead of focusing on teaching everybody how to 'code' we start teaching people how to apply logic to solve problems? "
What are you trying to do, destroy News Corporation's business model?
Nonsense. If you train a million doctors the worse that could happen is that you have nearly a million paramedics, some trained to do many of the simple or relatively specialized tasks that doctors already farm out to their nurses and aides already. The result would be no excuse for such high health care costs and wages for doctors, since much of what they currently do could be done for far less by paramedics or even in some cases by robots or medical devices.
Lets end the nonsense that the status quo is the best we can do.
In the 1990's tech was big. So we hired any sap who had vague credentials to do the work. 100k a year to work in front page and call yourself a web developer. A bunch of hacks who worked in VB only and called themselves programmers. Creating an infrastructure where Systems Crashes were common and massive security holes.
2003 the tech bubble burst. Luckily a lot of the dead wood left, but then they went into real estate, where they rode that bubble, until it popped, due to inadequate work, and rushing for the fast buck.
What the employers need are high quality workers who care about their work. However there is a gap. Cheap H1B labor who are so cheap that you can just get your quality up by throwing more men in it, then there is the skilled person. Who will work up and go to bigger and better things. Because a small companies cannot afford a star performer.
But there isn't a good gap of dependable workers. Perhaps pushing for a 2 year program may fill that gap. Or it may just bring up the get rich quick group of people back in the 1990's
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
> Don't knock a community college education. It's not always a bad thing. A lot of it depends on the student, too. There are undoubtedly people that took those same courses and got nothing out of it.
I'm not knocking community college at all. In fact, I work on non-university courses for a living.
This is my point: ...
> But most of my useful course load was relational database design, low-level systems courses
So everything but the vocabulary aka code courses. You apparently learned at least little systems design, etc., which is what I'm saying is far more important. You got an AAS in (whatever fancy name) basically, programming. Just as learning medical codes doesn't make the student a doctor or nurse, and learning the vocabulary of anthropology doesn't make the student an anthropologist, learning the vocabulary words (code) of computer systems development doesn't make the student a systems developer.
I'm all for community college courses with names like "Relational Database, Theory and Practice". One that teaches just the code, the grammar of "CREATE TABLE", without teaching the normalization rules, just results in someone who can create horribly crappy databases that break and cost a low of money overhauling the system later. Much like teaching someone how to use a air ratchet and sending them off to work on engines, without teaching them how engines work.
Watch as the GOP and their ilk will generate countless efforts to belittle the President's efforts at job creation here. They must in order to mask the reality that they offer nothing substantive as an alternative other than more tax breaks and benefits for the already wealthy. The modern GOP represents the debt holders, who want to hold the US economy hostage to their dictates and insure that the bulk of other's labors benefit the "job creators", but not the people actually doing the work.
You could see it in Ernst's response. All rhetoric and no concrete plans for anything. The concrete will be attached to the ankles of the working man in the backrooms filled with GOP and corporate lobbyists, who will draft the legislative language for them.
Snort.
Maybe you have to be smart to get through nursing school in the UK, but speaking as a medical student in the US I can assure you that being smart has very little to do with obtaining an MD.
That is, unless you conflate intelligence with "drive plus the ability to memorize disjoint facts". There's precious little reasoning involved.
Hell, I heard my classmates whine about dealing with a posterior probability equation that was a second order polynomial and the prof promised we would never have to deal with anything that wasn't a perfect square. You know, Algebra II stuff from before high school. I know one med student who applied only to med schools that didn't require him to take Calculus I. He's a second year med student now, chugging along fine. FWIW, the last course I took that required any reasoning rather than brute memorization was Organic Chemistry II, as an undergrad prerequisite for med school.
Excuse me, I have to get back to the equivalent of memorizing the phone book now.
> Nonsense. If you train a million doctors the worse that could happen is that you have nearly a million [more] paramedics
Not really, but let's assume that were true. The US needs a of 239,000 paramedics, and already has 235,000. So of the million you think you'd end up with, 99% would be unemployed. Excellent example of the thinking process of modern liberalism.
Funny you should mention that example. I work on an EMT/paramedic course. It has very little in common with medical school for doctors, and it's sure not all about medical coding. If you want paramedics or EMTs, train them in emergency medical practice. Don't train them in medical coding. Their is a vocabulary section, but for EMTs there are also lectures on theory, skills practice, etc. For paramedics, a huge portion of the study is about contraindications and interactions of various drugs. Teaching them medical coding doesn't help them one bit to get a job as a paramedic.
That contributed to reluctance of MIT and Stanford to create Computer Science departments then. Excellent computer scientists like Knuth were around, but hiding in Math or EE departments. A person seriously interesting in just coding and not all the side course forced upon for a B.S. degree sometimes went to DeVry or ITT instead.
So do we go full circle again? Coding is now a trade for CCs? It may be important to distinguish coding, software engineering and computer science. I know some great academics who couldnt get a usable product out the door in their life. Graduate degrees may be important for some aspects of CS and not others.
True, but the State of the Union is a notorious platform for the President to spout feel good intentions to the American people that never amount to anything. Hydrogen powered cars anyone?
I read that state of the union speeches were a big thing under President Franklin Roosevelt. I don't feel the content of speeches has been important in my life time. Maybe the pageantry is important?
The only thing I remember from a SOTU is the hydrogen economy and a man on Mars. It feels like I could make money betting against SOTU pronouncements. So why all the fuss?
Doctors memorize facts so they can put two and two together. The nurse keeps track of what they've been doing to you or giving you.
The doctor may save your life, but it is the nurse that will keep the doctor from killing you on accident.
My boss went to one of those "community college" type places and even he doesn't like the kind of workers they produce. Obama is basically demeaning all of those occupations. He's making it sound like you can jump into those things with minimal preparation and it's not really true.
Those "thery heavy" Universities acually prepare their students much better. Although it may also be simply a selection bias.
More serious types may not take the easiest path they can find. They might seek out the most interesting one.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Hydrogen powered cars anyone?
Fucking weak sauce... Where's single payer health insurance?
Watch as the GOP and their ilk will generate countless efforts to belittle the President's efforts at job creation here.
Why not - they have already taken credit for the improving economy.
Where the hell is Barry Goldwater when you need him?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
we need more science training and research into alternative and renewable energy sources. that's what will help america best -- using tech to save the planet for capitalism
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
It is interesting that "pushing out into the Solar System not just to visit, but to stay" is part of a speech that emphasizes keeping Earth habitable. This is opposite to the SF "Run Away! Run Away!" meme. Given how long space colonization will take, this is actually the reality. Earth must be preserved to have the time and investment available for an ambitious effort.
No. Not in my experience. The nurse will just happily go along with what they are told to do because many of them simply aren't that bright or talented. Some aren't even particularly diligent.
If you are someone that is likely to be harmed by more trivial examples of medical malpractice, then you have to fend for yourself.
Beyond that, what will likely protect you from the medical profession is mind numbing levels of procedure control and oversight.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Quite likely, but I don't get your point. You illustrate that formal education isn't required to excel. I never said it was. Some amount of learning happens in 2 years of community college (been there, done that). I've never met Carmack, but I suspect what he's learned about software vastly exceeds that. Unless I'm wrong, and he's some sort of idiot savant, you aren't actually disagreeing with me.
The end game comes shortly.
Either the US figures out that wealth and income need to be spread more widely so that more demand is created and business grows because of that, rather than via ever more convoluted and harsh predatory financial and business behavior targeted upon their customers and the rest of the world, or it is toast.
That is all.
That is all.
John Carmack likely "STILL spends more time learning".
He is likely a better example of that than ANY of us.
That's the misleading thing about "undereducated" types in programming. They may lack formal education but may have a good deal of practical experience. They may be self taught.
That's different than some schmuck that some day decides they need a career change and ask you how they can get into computing with the least effort possible.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
My objection to things like this are the false belief it instills that all you need to do to learn to be good at this is go to community college for a while, where you'll be taught by other people who aren't good at coding. If they were good, they'd be doing it, not making peanuts teaching community college.
That's not necessarily true. There are many folks who are quite good teaching at the CC level. Many are PhDs and want to make a bit more money while working on their post docs. Others want a bit more income, because normal programmer jobs in many places don't pay six figures. Many want to share the knowledge that they've acquired over twenty or thirty years of software engineering practice that's sadly discounted by most employers. And they're usually a damn sight better at design and teaching than the latest moron standing up an RR instance on a web server while building the latest social media bullshit app.
The real problem with the whole "Let's teach everyone to code" idea? Not enough coding jobs, even if you did train this many people. How about we train everyone how to fix cars? Then we can all make money fixing everyone else's car! Oh, wait...
That is all.
Yeah look at how far we've come with only 60 years and $200 billion taxpayer money of intense research in the area. 50 years ago, solar could only power a calculator. Now it can power a mobile phone. Well, it can provide almost 1/10th of 1% of the power for a mobile phone, anyway.
What alternative energy needs isn't MORE of the same fail, but some different thinking, primarily getting rid of the preoccupation with turning light into electricity. Solar works great for heating. The sun is a million degrees, after all, so simply piping water through a black pipe gives you hot water for showers - simply, cheaply, reliably, and cleanly. In a few places, geothermal is available and that works for making electricity. If we'd devoted 1/10th as much time and money into workable alternative energy like solar heating as we put into solar-electric, we'd probably have all of our heating and cooling needs provided by clean, reliable sources. We need to move forward on stuff that works.
Although it may also be simply a selection bias.
I'd argue college is 50% or more credentialing inborn capability. The value of a college degree is that 1) you proved yourself capable enough to be accepted by that college and 2) you made it through four years without dropping out.
Evidence for (2) is that there is a huge salary difference between someone who completes 99% of college without getting a degree and someone who gets the degree for completing 100%.
It looks like US BSN are higher paid than their UK counterparts.
US doctors and nurses are paid about 50% higher than OECD equivalents even after adjusting for cost of living.
When governments are more involved in the medical field, they have the power to reduce salaries.
According to Wikipedia, he's hanging around the Episcopal Christ Church of the Ascension in Paradise Valley, AZ. You might be able to dig him up there!
Thank you! Thank you! I'll be here all week! Tip your servers. Try the veal!
That is all.
Much higher (my ex-wife has a BSN, and pulled in $75k/yr in 2005 while working at a VA Medical Center in Utah... she made so much more than I did at the time, I could have qualified for alimony payments if I were female...)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
> If only we paid doctors a tenth as much, the world would be able to afford to hire the other 90%.
That sounds like a great sound bite for the Occupy crowd. Let's have a look at that. You propose "a tenth as much". Currently, the median salary for physicians is $188,440. One tenth of that would be $18,844. The median cost of malpractice insurance is $32,000. So a doctor would get paid $19k, then spend $32k on insurance. With no paycheck, in about three to four weeks they starve to death. Yep, another perfect example of liberal "thinking:.
Arithmetic - learn it, use it.
You are comparing students who clearly are there just to get the credit for whatever reason and not pursuing CompSci as a degree to students who are majoring in it. Presumably people who want to learn to code are not just there to show up and retain their Pell grants. I am reading this as a false equivalence logical fallacy. It's also a very negative perspective on the untapped potential of today's youth.
That's the way it started. It's only recently that the Ivory Tower types have gotten pretentious about the situation.
Very few people, even "rich" people, can spend money without considering what they are going to get for that.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I'll tell you what, here's a proposal for you, liberal AC. You're good at coming up with complaints and dreaming up cool ideas while you're stoned. Not so good at 3rd grade arithmetic though, so your ideas for the great society have people starving to death on the way, because you didn't count the cost. We conservative bean counters are better at arithmetic, but not so keen on taking 'shrooms and dreaming up utopian daydreams. Maybe we can work together to combine our strengths.
How about next time you get really, really high, write down your awesome vision of the future, where you'd like to end up. Don't bother with how to get there, that's not your strength. Maybe paint a picture of what you'd like the world to look like, if writing isn't your thing. Then show the picture of your dream to us bean-counting logic-using republicans and we'll come up with a workable plan to get as close to your dream as practicable. We want eat as close as you'd like, or as quickly as you'd like, but we also won't all starve to death like we'd do if you did the planning.
If you can get more people coding, there will be better coders and some will get paid better than if they did not have such skills.
It helps just to know what coding is. There is a graphic artist working in the office next to mine. She once mentioned that she had 2000 images to resize, and it was going to take her a week to do them all. I gave her a one hour lesson on "what coding is" then I spent five minutes writing a perl script that was able to resize all the images in less than 30 seconds. She still can't code. But now, when she has a tedious and repetitive task, she knows to ask a coder for help.
Your time will arrive
Fair enough. My experience of CC teachers was variable. My calculus teacher was atrocious. I had an English lit prof who thought it was reasonable to have students read aloud. I dropped that course in a heartbeat. I had a good biology teacher, and my Anthropology course was excellent. I seriously consider teaching CC myself now and again, mostly because I think I'd like it and, as you say, have some experience I want to share. Sadly, they require a masters in the field you want to teach. I have one, but not in math or comp sci, the areas I'd most enjoy teaching.
Exactly. Thanks. It's even a little worse, because code is infinitely copyable. 1 mechanic can only work on so many cars. Some number of developers wrote iTunes, which I happen to be using now. How many devices can their work be used on? All of them. Given the sorry state of a lot of software today, what we need is not more developers. It's better developers (or managers, or processes, or audits, etc. I get that it's a lot more complicated than just blaming the developer.)
President Obama's arrogance and lawlessness is unprecedented in that office.
It's cute how wrong you are. :3
Because as we all know the demand for programming is infinite....
Let's teach more Americans to code.
Everybody and his dog who happens to be an Excel whiz or a Word macro expert is arguably a coder. As are a lot of people who call themselves programmers. Do we want more of that skillset? Or do we want more people who can take a longer, more structured, project-oriented view and who write maintainable, extensible programs? I'm asking the question in all seriousness.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
And for this you received:
1 a blowjob
2 a pack of beer
3 a promotion
4 none of the above
Where's the Constitutional amendment giving the federal government the authority to setup single payer health care?
--Shawn
you've obviously never taken any time to research and come up with an original thought, let alone research anything to substantiate the trash you repeat from far right-wing nutbags
It's OK honey. Calm down or you'll blow a gasket. Let's pick one claim and substantiate it, shall we? In my post (on which you heaped such opprobrium), I claimed that Obama previously said he would lack legal authority to change immigration law on his own as president. Here's a source that doesn't fit the category of "right-wing nutbags" that claims the same, with quotes and links:
http://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2014/dec/05/michael-mccaul/michael-mccaul-says-obama-said-over-20-times-he-la/
Note that this fact checker is disagreeing with a conservative count that Obama said this 20 times, and points out that only about 15 of them are solid examples. At any rate, it's not a one-off misunderstanding or misstatement, it's a solidly documented example of the president's lack of integrity. Wouldn't you agree, O Coward Without Cognomen?
...and you get websites like Healthcare.gov I love that this post appeared right above the latest security hole in that site. You can't just train to be a 'coder' -- (good) software engineering requires very high intelligence, keen mathematics aptitude, creativity with a quantitative bent, and a potent imagination. Ditto for robotics. I'm all for outreach and promoting STEM interest in schools, but only if it's understood that not everyone is cut out for a cerebral career path. Those that aren't cut out for it will, sadly, probably wind up as highly paid managers of programmers
> everyone has a computer so they should know the basics of programming
I agreed with that statement 20 years ago. Now, everything is constantly communicating with the open internet. Playing at programming your own systems, without actually knowing what you're doing, carries a thousand times as much risk today than it used to.
To continue (stretch?) the medical analogy, we can usefully distinguish between "for external use only" and surgery, messing with the internals. Messing with the internals is much, much riskier than taking care of the exposed surfaces.
Or if you prefer, buying drugs vs designing your own drugs. It's good to know how to buy the right medicine (and software). It's much riskier to synthesize your own drugs (or internet-connected software).
"I want Americans to win the race for the kinds of discoveries that unleash new jobs – converting sunlight into liquid fuel; creating revolutionary prosthetics,..."
1. I would love to convert sunlight into liquid fuel too.
2. Developing new technology is great. But it seems odd that the main purpose of developing it should be the jobs it creates and not the fact itself that we have liquid sunlight and cyborgs, which can improve our lives independently of any new jobs.
3. Hey, it's not even primarily about the jobs, but it's a nationalist race for America to win (and everyone else to lose?). And no, the technology is not for the rest of mankind, just for Americans.