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Why Coding Is Not the New Literacy
An anonymous reader writes: There has been a furious effort over the past few years to bring the teaching of programming into the core academic curricula. Enthusiasts have been quick to take up the motto: "Coding is the new literacy!" But long-time developer Chris Granger argues that this is not the case: "When we say that coding is the new literacy, we're arguing that wielding a pencil and paper is the old one. Coding, like writing, is a mechanical act. All we've done is upgrade the storage medium. ... Reading and writing gave us external and distributable storage. Coding gives us external and distributable computation. It allows us to offload the thinking we have to do in order to execute some process. To achieve this, it seems like all we need is to show people how to give the computer instructions, but that's teaching people how to put words on the page. We need the equivalent of composition, the skill that allows us to think about how things are computed."
He further suggests that if anything, the "new" literacy should be modeling — the ability to create a representation of a system that can be explored or used. "Defining a system or process requires breaking it down into pieces and defining those, which can then be broken down further. It is a process that helps acknowledge and remove ambiguity and it is the most important aspect of teaching people to model. In breaking parts down we can take something overwhelmingly complex and frame it in terms that we understand and actions we know how to do."
He further suggests that if anything, the "new" literacy should be modeling — the ability to create a representation of a system that can be explored or used. "Defining a system or process requires breaking it down into pieces and defining those, which can then be broken down further. It is a process that helps acknowledge and remove ambiguity and it is the most important aspect of teaching people to model. In breaking parts down we can take something overwhelmingly complex and frame it in terms that we understand and actions we know how to do."
IMHO the primary ingredient is diligence, just like everything else. Everything else is secondary. I think the idea that only certain people can be programmers is as silly as saying only certain people can be physically fit. Yes, some people will naturally be better at it than others, just like when it comes to physical fitness. The notion however that only a select few may enter is both ignorant and also party responsible for so few people entering the field. There are brilliant mechanics and terrible mechanics, brilliant doctors and terrible doctors, this is more a function of people and their level of effort and less a function of difficulty of material. I was a teacher assistant while studying CS and from my experience laziness was the #1 killer of students, both "smart" and "dumb". I always thought there was something tragic and beautiful to see someone naturally "ungifted" in intelligence whomp someone who was naturally gifted with intelligence just because they tried harder.