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Jeff Atwood NY Daily News Op-Ed: Learning To Code Is Overrated
theodp writes: Responding to New York City's much-ballyhooed $81 million initiative to require all of the city's public schools to offer CS to all students, Coding Horror's Jeff Atwood has penned a guest column for the NY Daily News which cautions that learning to code isn't all it's cracked up to be. Atwood begins, "Mayor de Blasio is winning widespread praise for his recent promise that, within 10 years, all of New York City's public schoolchildren will take computer science classes. But as a career programmer who founded two successful software startups, I am deeply skeptical about teaching all kids to code." Why? "If someone tells you 'coding is the new literacy' because 'computers are everywhere today,' ask them how fuel injection works. By teaching low-level coding, I worry that we are effectively teaching our children the art of automobile repair. A valuable skill — but if automobile manufacturers and engineers are doing their jobs correctly, one that shouldn't be much concern for average people, who happily use their cars as tools to get things done without ever needing to worry about rebuilding the transmission or even change the oil." Atwood adds, "There's nothing wrong with basic exposure to computer science. But it should not come at the expense of fundamental skills such as reading, writing and mathematics...I've known so many programmers who would have been much more successful in their careers if they had only been better writers, better critical thinkers, better back-of-the-envelope estimators, better communicators. And aside from success in careers, we have to ask the broader question: What kinds of people do we want children to grow up to be?"
He's right that we need rounded people as programmers - but we are more likely to get them if the possibility of being a programmer is accessible to a wider range of people than at present. That's the virtue of this approach; it opens the prospect of programming as a career to a wider range beyond us geeks and nerds!
On the other hand it may make us unemployable as ordinary people nick our jobs...
Feel free to kick me in the nuts!
it's good to teach kids science...
Not everyone should or should want to become "programming literate", but it's not supposed to be like learning how to read and write. There is more to learning to code than coding itself. There is plenty of science at school that people never use in their adult life, but it's useful to have some understanding of how the world works, how others work, and each subject bring a new way of thinking - a different way of thinking is brought with coding and that's useful to everyone.
I disagree. Today, nearly all kids are given the opportunity to participate in school sport. Not all will go on to be famous athletes, but most will benefit from the experience. Personally, I was an introvert and lousy at sports, but the school sports program instilled in me the importance of physical fitness and a love for nature and the outdoors. The program also taught me about personal limitations, strengths and weaknesses: I was smart, but certainly not good at some things! Didn't feel like it at the time, but that was a healthy too, I think.
If it acquires resources on instantiation like a duck, then its a shared_ptr<Duck>
pleading for money from Microsoft, etc.
Once upon a time students learned logic by studying Aristotle and Plato. I learned logic by way of mathematics. Programming could provide another way.
People still write books even though there's more books out there than a person can read in their lifetime. Software will keep on being written. Considering it is a low cost endevour to start a software business, it is good for lots of people not willing to take monetary risks.
Coding is great because it gives a person a real appreciation for math. Though, I already see the transition though that a person who knows which apps to use for a project can be more valuable to general companies than someone who writes custom apps. Until we invent natural language inputs, there will be a use for a coder, but even after then, we'll just be coding, but in natural language.
God spoke to me
We all want students to be well-rounded, right?
Well why should that not include a crack at programing?
I see his point that Reading/Writing/'Rithmatic are all very important. The thing is, programing if it appeals to you, is a way to get better at all three of those things - because you are learning aspects of all three in an applied, not theoretical, way.
Coding helps organize your thoughts in a way not dissimilar to how you might want to arrange thoughts for writing. Coding ABSOLUTLEY helps reading because my God do you use Google/Stack Overflow.
Arithmetic is just kind under there sneakily embedding itself into all your code, especially if you do any GUI and animation stuff at all.
So I say it makes for a great experiment to expose all kids to programming, and see what happens as a result. It certainly couldn't make the schools any worse than they are to introduce a subject that demands logical thinking to succeed.
If it doesn't work well for the kid, good to find that out now and rule it out as a possible interest early. But it also may get some kinds started much earlier than they would otherwise.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Sure, we don't teach kids how fuel injection works, but they'll be driving cars when they're old enough
We also don't teach them how to drive in school. That's something done outside of school.
Perhaps that was a bad analogy?
Comp sci and maths should be combined. Algebra/trigonometry have applications in 3D graphics and it's a lot easier to understand the maths when you apply it.
Students may not need to write code, but they should be able to read it and follow basic logic. Unlike the fuel injector, computers are found in every product.
Programming should not replace literacy in math, reading, or writing. However, many students are apparently failing at those subjects anyway! At least that is what the testing regimen claims.
I posit that the students are being taught the wrong content in the first place. What is more applicable in life, the quadratic equation or amortization? Anyone who lost their house recently can answer that question.
Two possible scenarios:
Walled Garden Scenario: Only programmers, scientists and engineers need how to program. "Normal" people wont even be purchasing a "PC" anymore. An iTab or Androbot Phone will suffice for them.
Open PC Scenario: Everybody can benefit from "learning to code". Even if you are a PC gamer, a secretary or a chef. No explanation required, I hope.
But the trend is quite clear.
Here is hoping for a cyberpunk dystopia...
People that really want to learn how to code will do so at their own will, either by learning it themselves from a young age or pursuing it at a higher level of their education. I agree with atwood in that formative learning years shouldn't be hindered with CS schooling. Though a small skim of it's history is in order, it really shouldn't take up student focus off of reading, writing, and maths.
I think it is a good idea to know how fuel injection works. I have a book on the K-Jetronic which I had in my Lotus and understood pretty well how it worked, which helped in tearing down the engine and doing a full overhaul and getting it back together and running again.
In today's modern cars, understanding how the Fuel Injection System works IS coding.
I don't think every body should have to be a star programmer, but exposure to programming will help a person to better understand how to use their computer and why it works the way it does. Just like understanding machine language will make you a more efficient 3GL and 4GL programmer.
I don't think that everybody should have to learn to code if they don't want to, though, and I don't think we ought to be singling out people that specifically don't want to learn coding and offer them lots of extra incentives to do something they don't want to do. Rather, we should spend all the money on people who DO want to learn coding.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Programming is a trade. It is specific to a language and OS. I learned Integer Basic on Apple ][ Plus and that did me no good because when I got to college, the new thing was procedural programming. And then when I graduated, it became OOP. Or something - I cannot keep up with the buzzwords these days.
My point is that programming shouldn't be taught at the K-12 level. They should learn the basics - like Natural sciences. And considering the pathetic knowledge of most Americans about science, we should be concentrating there instead of creating cheap coders for Facebook and other companies who want cheap labor.
Education is about learning to learn and critical thinking not a trade like programming - and no, programming does NOT teach critical thinking or even logical thinking aside from the basic truth table. Philosophy is much more valuable than any computer science course in the grand scheme of things. And so is art and music. Programming is like auto mechanics - valuable, but not part of a well education.
I've worked professionally, and as a freelance. I can assure you that computer literacy is a must, especially when IT is short-staffed, or when the immediate supervisor(s) are technologically illiterate. This is a long-term fix, so don't expect real results until about 12-13 years from now.
[Not that I'm actually that guy, but...]
I want your children to grow up to be automobile mechanics so that repairs are dirt cheap and mechanics become entirely interchangable cogs.
I want my children to grow up to be upper level executives at Firestone, Midas, Monroe, NAPA, etc.
By 2030, all coders will be female, and all will be right with the world.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
Anybody going into a hard science, engineering etc should have this tool at their disposal.
They don't however need to be taught programming in school. Just like turning wrenches, those that will take to it, will find their own way. Money spent on 'the rest' is wasted anyhow.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I agree that we should not be teaching kids low level coding. What we should be doing is teaching them high-level coding, but it's still too controlled/classified for that to really be possible right now IMHO.
You can't outsource a mechanic's job because he needs to be where the cars are.
Yeah, I know he was involved with Stack Overflow, and he has a blog that's really hyped for some reason, but is there anything else of note that he's accomplished?
I'm talking about major accomplishments on the scale of what Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, Guido van Rossum, Lennart Poettering, or Patrick Walton have done. You know, things that have massively changed the software world.
Does he have any achievements at their level, or are his achievements more at the Eric S. Raymond level?
You want them to grow up to be programmable, not programming.
Regarding children, I mean why would we want them to know what's going on... of course we know better...
You can't outsource a mechanic's job because he needs to be where the cars are.
You can outsource most of it, and that's really already happened. Most neighborhood automotive rebuilding shops have disappeared. Machine shops have dwindled in number. So now, rebuilding tends to happen on a larger scale. More and more of what mechanics do is just swapping assemblies.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
We had computer programming in high-school (Turbo Pascal). I took the class - it did not inspire me. I already had the passion to code on my own time at home. With the Internet and cheap computers today, kids will find their own way.
I took Automotive in high-school as well as technical drawing and music - guess what? Those programs did not inspire me to become an excellent amateur pianist, backyard mechanic or semi-pro electrical CAD technician that I am today. It's all about the person. If my school didn't have programming, I would have been doing it anyway. My school didn't teach aviation, but I went out of my way on my own, sought the necessary (serious training) and now I fly aircraft.
The concept/argument of introducing someone who "wouldn't have otherwise been exposed" seems a little ludicrous to me. If the person doesn't have the natural drive or interest, I'm sorry - you're just making it harder for legit folks that deserve the job to get one because recruiters now have a tougher job filtering out the morons.
Do an intro class of computer programming for the kids - don't spent a too much on it. The education system sucks at teaching anyway. Fix that first, then we can talk.
($0.02)
I wish my school offered more than 1 class in BASIC in the late 90's. I wish they offered more electives in many other subjects as well. About the only electives were art and foreign languages. My senior year I took 3 art classes and Latin.
Which of course is more workers for less money. All these initiatives were called for by the likes of Google, Facebook and Microsoft who need code monkeys a dime a dozen. The indians are not going to cut it any longer because they are starting to demand higher salaries, and despite that are mostly just cheap, coders not so much.
Facebook and Google of course are used to throw a lot of money and resources at a problem, calculating that more chances yield more & faster return. Try everything and you'll find a solution in the end. That is exactly what they have managed to convince the political staff to do, throw lots of money at the problem (of having too high average wages in their view), calculating that if you 'educate' 100000 in basic dev skills chances are a few thousand will stick around and become devs for them to hire. To be sure, they already hire kids from college, when they are still impressed by all the startupy culture, free lunch and after hours events. And most of all, cheap, without family and ready & physically able to put in something close to 24x7. We have a word for that.. Slavery.
We need to expose the Zuckerbergs of this world for what they are. Morrons and psychos looking after their own interest to the cost of society.
Not that stuff but truth tables (for computers operating on 0/1 true-false on/off logic).
APK
P.S.=> Had to take it myself. It's hard (for me @ least it was), but some folks take to it like it's a game... apk
The "teach kids to code" effort won't realistically bring most of them beyond the "script kiddie" level of programming. The vast majority of them will not go on the be computer science majors, and many who do will very quickly learn that they dislike the more applied level of computer science, and switch majors. This is largely a token gesture to help appease the wealthy tech industry leaders who are trying to increase the supply of software developers in order to pull salaries down. It won't work out as they plan, but it shouldn't cause much harm, either.
On a personal note, being forced to play sports in school instilled in me a healthy hatred for authority, and a default disrespect for people who publicly represent themselves as athletes. It wasn't until my parents allowed me to take martial arts that I discovered anything about "sports" that was worth my effort. I still exercise three days a week now, including cardio and strength training, and the mandatory "sports" torment I was made to endure at school had nothing to do with it.
Have you tried shutting it off and starting it again?
If the schools were already doing a great job at teaching kids the stuff they've always tried to teach -- in other words doing a great job in their core job duties if you will -- and wanted to take on this additional challenge/responsibility, I'd say, great, have at it.
This is the same line of crap we heard in the 60s and 70s, that everyone MUST learn a foreign language. If you don't use it, you are going to loose it. A total waste of training.
I know I can have a new job in less than a month. There is no "allowed" when it comes to my vacation time. At best I'll say "I'd like a week off sometime in the next month, when would you prefer?" That said I'm from a country with such things as labor laws: they MUST give me paid time off, it isn't optional.
My wife was a school attendance clerk.
She could do the word docs, and the Excel, and she could use the predefined reports that the attendance software provided.
Enter the new software, Infinite Campus. It put the control of the reports in the hands of the end user.... big mistake.
Rather than learn to code the new reports themselves, which means every school might have different reports, she simple quit, along with many others, teachers and staff, who just did not want to deal with it.
Had she been taught programming in High School, like I was, she could have easily learned the pseudo-sql language needed to make your own reports.
Alternatively, you could argue that a system with totally undefined reports was a bad idea, and I would agree, but that is what the school district did.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
The car analogy breaks down here. A computer is not like a car. It is something like a package of five engines, 5 sets of tires, six transmissions, several seats, a few truck beds, and some chassis elements. You can put together anything from a pick up truck to a bulldozer to a formula 1 race car with the provided kit. And coding is how you put together whatever you want. Most people put together only golf carts. But companies put together specialized vehicles and without knowing coding the managers would manage it very inefficiently.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
If you see coding as something you use to build GUIs, sure his fuel injection analogy might more or less apply. But you can also use coding to automate everyday tasks in almost any job, dramatically increasing your productivity. Depending on your working environment you can do this using bash, Python or even Excel macros. But you do need to unlock a certain way of thinking of what you are doing that is what these coding classes should aim for, in my opinion.
This is a false dichotomy. We can teach computer skills as well as math and science and reading and all the rest. I agree that all students don't need to become master hackers, but I think a bit more computer literacy, taught young, isn't a bad idea. And I'm sure they can find time to squeeze that in without disrupting the other subjects.
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
Knowing some mechanic on how to fix your car is nice, but unless you have a shop with tools, not many will fix their own timing belt. For programming, there is no "doing a little programming to fix a problem"
What is going to be replaced by teaching programming? There are many children where teaching programming will be worthless to them, if they are not at math, they will not be good at programming because you need logical thinking to program.
There is a limited amount of student time and brainpower (and also taxpayer money). Those human limitations mean we have to select what to put into that limited student brain. I don't think computer programming should be in there.
Our industry is founded by people who have the urge to learn to code, one key at a time, and spent many months, often years, to upgrade their skills
They did not have to be 'caught' by others - they are successful because they are self-motivated
To say that those 'rounded ones' needed to be caught is thus a misnomer --- as many of those awaiting to be caught do not possess the self-motivation to be successful in the first place
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Human knowledge is doubling at about every three years. That implies that we need to cram a lot more education into our students which is a difficult if not back breaking demand. Obviously nations like Japan traditionally are quite severe in the demands put upon children. Americans would see their system as child abuse. But against that we have a strong counter point. If you want great trumpet players you must train many thousands of trumpet players for several years for the great ones to rise from the mundane players. Programming should be about like that. If we train 30 million young people to very high levels of programming we will see programming super stars emerge. We very well may need those super stars to survive as a nation. If that seems extreme then simply consider that drones use a lot of computer programming and if an enemy has and edge your drones are dead meat. Our air craft will soon fly without humans on board. Naval war ships are being designed to operate without human crews. There is no way to send reliable messages from afar to such war weapons. It has to be done by heavily protected, internal computers. Programmers will need to have the highest level of skills to keep us ahead of other nations.
If someone tells you 'coding is the new literacy' because 'computers are everywhere today,' ask them how fuel injection works
I'm a system programmer/administrator w/30 years experience *and* i know how fuel injection works - port and direct. Knowing at least a little about a lot of things has helped me in my life and career more than, I believe, would have knowing a lot about a few things. Along with that, and perhaps more important, is really, actually knowing your limits.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
There's nothing wrong with basic exposure to computer science. But it should not come at the expense of fundamental skills such as reading, writing and mathematics
But so many people struggle to see what the point is of the math they learn beyond arithmetic. But if they had a semester/year of programming before taking algebra, many of the struggles that they have with math between arithmetic and calculus will be gone. Teachers won't need to think of story problems to try and help students realize that math is used. The students will already know how to apply many mathematical principles because they've used them, or see how they can be used, in their programs.
"You can't outsource a mechanic's job because he needs to be where the cars are."
But you can reduce them to minimal wage parts exchangers and button punchers and that's exactly what's happening.
Learning programming is worthwhile for the logical thinking skills it involves: I'm all for making it available. The problem is that putting such an emphasis on it, at the expense of other useful subjects, is going to backfire for those who can't learn it.
It's not PC to say so, and there are lots of "experts" who insist it ain't so, but programming is a talent that not everyone has. Anyone who has been in the business knows that, unless they never interviewed new people and never worked with anyone who hadn't already proved themselves. Anyone who went to college for CS knows that: there are always good students who try but just can't be taught to do the work. Genetic, or some unknown environmental factor, or whatever, it's a fact beyond debate.
I have no idea what the percentage is in the general population, but there are going to be smart, productive people who can't do this particular thing, and they're not only going to be wasting their own and their teachers' time, but they're going to be labeled as failures because of something no one can change.
You'd have to learn to think clearly AND how to interact with others that are disagreeing with you.
The computer doesn't care how you interact. It can't go soft on you. It works or it doesn't.
Soft human logic can be useful too, but that hard computer logic can be revelatory. And you get soft interaction logic a lot of other ways through life, hard computer logic not so much - or at least, through a dark filter as a user of computers. Programming gives you such a greater clarity of what logic demands.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If someone in a role is is important to the success of the company, then you can't do without someone in that role.
There's an annoying difference between being important enough to be refused time off, because someone doing that job has to be there, and being important enough to be given more instead of just replaced when the problem is raised.
It's a common thing that if a place is mismanaged badly enough that only one person can do a job that they will be such cheapskates that they will just replace the complaining single point of failure with a different one.
"Growing a spine" may mean being prepared to walk out of the place without getting a chance to clean out your desk or get tools. It's not as simple as the sitcom or movie scenario suggested by turbidostato above. Hero in your own mind perhaps but replaceable work unit number 43 to HR.
In 10 years India and China will completely take over the programming world. It's sheer economics. Cost conscious CEO's will just outsource all the jobs.
The Math teacher,the Science teacher or the Gym teacher???
Russia had mandatory CS classes for 30+ years. Look at where are they now
The answers lie in socialism, believe it or not. When there is a harmony achieved by people sharing the code there will be more time to get well -rounded.
We don't need coders -- We need people who know how computers work.
We need classes to teach people what the difference is between the OSes. We need people to know what https is. We need people who know why to VPN, what security is, and how to protect their info on the internet. We need anti-phishing anti-419 courses. Indeed, teaching C/S to the English teacher is wasted, but perhaps they knowing how the internet works is not lost?
Yes, there are a few programmers who teach themselves. But for the most part I suspect it's like most skills - we develop as we go along, absorb good and bad habits. Enabling a few more to engage with being a programmer to the point where it's conceivable must be a good thing. We need 'ordinary' programmers, as well as the hobbyists who taught themselves and are self starters.
On the basis that you had holiday owing? That sort of organisation deserves to be given a VERY hard time by its slaves when they can get to revolt.
... but I know enough about scales that I can find the notes and I also know that they are historically grown - much like the computer keyboard. I also can sing and recite some classic songs from Schubert and Loewe. I learned all this in school, in regular music class. I also learned poetry and what a jambus rythm is. These are all small but valuable cornerstone of my education.
Long story short: No one in his right mind expects everybody to be able to code a well-architected appserver or an asynchronous website that runs on all browsers or whatever. Or, hell no, how to deal with those bazillion quirks modern IT comes with. ... That is the job of people who are grown up and earn their money with this sort of thing.
What people should learn in school is the difference between a variable and a value and a constant/literal. They should also have some basic concept of a digital network such as the internet and what a client and a server are and what their differences are and how these two relate to each other. CUAS and a few regular expressions or simply knowing that such things exist would be neat too. If they can write an if statement and roughly know how a function looks in some easy but useful PL such as Python - that would be something someone knows after having "accelerated IT" in school as a kid or something.
The big problem is that even professionals today don't know the CUAS, don't know how to use the clipboard or that a computer is there for automating stuff and that somewhere within their word processor there probably is some function for a more adanced search & replace. This is the problem we have to fix. If members of the bundestag are to dumb to handle computers and the entire site gets infected by malware and bots - that's an exact result of people not even learning the very basics of computing - something someone would learn in less than two hours in their initial lesson with a computer professional.
Bottom line: Proper computer classes in school won't magically transform society into an utopia, but teach children the very basics of how to handle computers and smartphones and tablets and "cloud-services" correctly. And that would be a very big plus.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
It's been interesting over the years watching the industry trying to establish qualifications and standards, and seeing them look very silly because technology advances overtake the rules that used to provide the basis for those rules. For example once upon a time there were very separate categories of programmers and systems designers. This was because programming screens and reports took a LONG time - so the designer drew pictures of what the screen or report should look like and left the programmer to produce them over the next month. These days that sort of thing takes minutes, so there's no point in separating the roles. Of course this does mean that unsociable geeks get to be expected to interact with clients - which may not be the best experience for either side; be nice to your uber-geek - they get you out of holes...
It's ridiculous to think that they are forcing kids to learn computer science. Not everyone wants to go that route. Personally, if I had been forced to do electronics, physics, etc. I'd be put off so much by school that I would have dropped out early to get a job. At the end of the day early school (primary/high) counts for very little in prep work for the real world. In all honesty, you're better of dropping out early and heading to TAFE for a year or two to specialize more in the field you wish to get a job in and then hitting up Uni afterwards (if needed).
Just like music, language skills and art, programmers benefit from learning core computer science skills in early childhood.
Sure, an adult can learn these things. Will they ever be as good? Will an adult who learns how to play violin in adulthood ever be as good as someone who learned as an adult? No.
However, we live in a technology-driven society now, and unlike where the value of the occasional child violin prodigy could be questioned, there is no question that if even one child out of the thousand who take these introductory computer science classes excels at it, the world-changing innovations they could potentially achieve make the entire exercise more than worthwhile.
Also, if you asked a plumber if everyone should learn plumbing, or a mechanic if everyone should learn how to fix their car, they would similarly say no -- it's in their vested financial interest to keep the field small.
I don't know why large publications / websites keep giving these people oxygen in the face of such an obvious conflict of interest. Ask a computer science professor from a respected college if THEY think kids should learn these skills and I guarantee you'll get a different answer.
While I see where the author is coming from (I've probably even used such an example in similar conversations), if I'm forced to assess my own grade school education that took place during the 80s and 90s, I really wish that I had the opportunity to learn coding much earlier than late junior high or high school. If you're only just starting to get a taste of applied mathematics and applied science by the time you're a young adult then you're already behind where you could/should be. Learning programming (or other engineering fields) is an excellent way of reaching a large group of kids whom otherwise may be having a difficult time understanding the value in the fundamentals. I've always known that mathematics and science were important, if not simply for the fact that everyone had told me so since I was young enough to read, but I don't think I *really* understood that until I got to university. The difference wasn't that I was any smarter or more mature, it was the fact that the application of the tools and knowledge gave context and perspective in a way that grade school never did but easily could have.
It should be obvious to most on here why a car analogy fails in regards to opportunities with programming and automation.
Also, you might notice that:
- regarding cars: currently only a few big motor companies are making money by *making* cars. Most of the other people that make money with cars, make that money by *using* car. You don't need a special custom car built for your business.
At most, you need your company/start-up/mom-and-pop-shop's logo on the car, and that's about it.
Thus from that point of view, indeed teaching all student how ignition works isn't the most critically important skill.
- regarding computers: that where the difference starts. Not only do big companies make money by *writing* code (Google, Facebook, etc.). Also all the small player that make money with computers need some kind of specific code.
Start-ups, small shops, etc. usually need at least some solutions custom developed for them. Might be as simple as a webshop setup for a small familial business, might be an ad hoc web platform for a new kind of service.
The company/start-up might not do it all on their own, but they at least need to have a vague idea about what could be done, and there's need for someone to actually write/develop the thing in the first place.
In short, against the car analogy: it seems there's a lot more money to be made by small entrepreneurs by harnessing their ability to develop an App or a web platform, than by harnessing their ability to understand how ignition works.
Now, you have to factor a few other things in the mix:
- IT jobs are the first that companies try to outsource. (with variable success. but that won't prevent that the company will first thing to hire someone in new dehli before thinking of hiring junior who happens to have learned coding in school and has some experience making apps)
- technician able to fix cars are required where the cars are physically present. Mechs able to fix cars aren't going to be easily outsourced.
So in a way Jeff Artwood was right but for a reason he didn't think about: kids need to have an idea about coding as much as they do need to have an idea about a car's internals: both might get handy.
- There's still tons of money to be made by small entrepreneur designing App, webservices, etc.
- There's job security in being able to fix cars.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
See subject: Why else post as an unindentfiable ac otherwise on your part, troll?
APK
P.S.=> Thanks for proving my point in my subject-line for me above, moron - & until you've done more, better, + earlier than I have of good note in the art & science of computing? You're full of shit... apk
A thing my CS professor liked saying was: "Computers are stupid, they only do thing people tell them to do". Having an understanding that a computer isn't a magic box but a machine humans developed using methods that utilize patterns that seemingly are alien to the human mind would be more helpful.
Still,some basic programming skills should help understanding that computers are bloody fast at processing repetetive tasks but still won't do anything that someone from the CS field would call intelligent.
My teenagers were taught how to drive in (taxpayer funded, feeder pattern, majority-minority) public High School. They were also taught epistemology - and also how fuel injection works, and also basic coding...
Apparently kids in the elite schools don't get a thorough education? Weird. Guess they don't need it, though.
Writing a simple script is more of a skill than checking your oil. Its more like changing your oil. You don't have to be an automotive expert to do it, but you need more than a trivial understanding of what you are doing.
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
What a fucking snob. Everything wears and tears including life and no amount of engineering is going to make that magically go away. You will still need auto and refrigeration mechanics, electricians, carpenters, etc.... Critical thinking is already etched into our brains and if this wasn't true humanity would not have survived this long. Language and Mathematics are tools and nothing more.
The problem is that they don't teach the actual computer language itself and this is what frustrates a lot of students. Either teach algorithms in another class or after students are finished understanding the actual computer language. Even computer programming books are a waste of time.
There should be enough CS in the general eduction system to do two different things: give all students an appreciation for what software can and can't do and how it works, while identifying and channeling the small number of people who will be able to take it up as a career.
I don't expect most of those people learning how to code to actually become professional programmers. But as they will be using and working with software a lot, it would be useful for them to have an idea of how code is compiled and executed by the processor. Like it's good to understand why a combustion engine needs fuel and why the different types of fuel matter. We don't all have to be mechanics, that stuff changes anyway, but the basics are useful.
Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
Is not to teach everyone to code, leave that to the people who have a passion for it. What we need sorely is an engineering principle that applies to coding practices to ensure basic flaws are not introduced into production code. We need a government watchdog in effect to ensure our life-critical, personal, and financial systems are at a minimum passing a minimal sanity check and are routinely upgraded.
It's expensive, granted. But honestly, I feel safer know that every bridge I drive has multiple sets of eyes performing checks and someone taking liability for the design - I don't get that feeling for any software I use or web service I visit. That needs to change.
The main point really is that the basic education system in North America is so broken that adding anything new to it could only make it worse -- even with the best intentions. Thus, the key is to revamp the stupid system instead of arguing that all the new things are not necessary because the existing system has not been working.
The educators -- that would be the teachers at the basic education levels -- are for most part being controlled by pencil pushers that design stupid rules. On top of that, because teaching is such a less than glamorous occupation, not many intelligent people are really doing the most important jobs of tending to our future. What we have very often is a stressed teacher in an uninterested classroom teaching things that s/he barely understood. Taking things online or from the cloud does not make things better -- even with the best teacher lecturing from the cloud, it's the local one that keeps track of students progress and interacts with questions from students, and good questions could get wrong answers.
It's a horror to hear that in teacher's schools, the way to decide how to add fractions is by a vote -- of course, what came on top is to add the numerators and denominators separately, for the simple reason of being convenient! Or, to hear that the true correct way toward pedagogy is to emphatically NOT be interested in the subject that one teaches, so that the students get an objective point of view. For example, a history teacher should not have a particular interest in a certain period, instead, s/he should be completely disinterested -- what an inhuman suggestion! It has become a growing trend that showing passion in a classroom is dangerous -- because the tender youth may not be prepared to be passionate about things just yet!
We are breeding robots in our children's minds in schools -- at least in the public ones -- in the sense that they don't have much solid foundations to base their decisions on, other than somebody else told them so. The people that give orders in the education system in fact don't understand a thing about the science of teaching -- all arguments are philosophical, sociological, psychological or whatever soft sciences they find useful. The point of educating people is to turn much of the mental work into subconscious, so that the precious little conscious we have can be used to learn / explore more, and the cycle repeats -- in which case the subconscious becomes the foundation on which to build their thoughts and consciousness. BUT that was ranted against as "rote learning" -- and now there is no way to make sure if the kids know the multiplication table by heart before they start learning adding fractions, and some of them really don't! Then we have kids taking much more time than necessary on stuff that should have been a snap, because for every single little step of progress, they will need to use their conscious to do it. Think of having to drive a car when even moving the smallest of the muscles takes conscious activity from the brain, and one should get the picture.
The kids are being lied to in the education system.
Since no one else is saying this exactly:
Yes, we should absolutely teach our students how a car works, and how to repair it. They will almost all need cars. They will almost all have cars. All of those cars will break down in some way, at some point.
If, as today, they don't know how the car works, they're going to get cheated by the mechanic. Mechanics try to charge you the most money possible every time you visit them. That is what they do. Even the relatively honest ones use bad statistics to get you to spend money to avert the very low-probability future risk of some relatively minor future inconvenience. The really crooked ones will eat you alive. It happens all day, every day.
It would be an excellent use of education funds to have a one-semester class on how to diagnose car problems.
If you want to really rage about how crappy the real world thinks programmers are, check out "Girls Can Code" on the BBC.
The most patronizing, sexist and demeaning (to programmers) piece of drivel ever to have graced a major broadcaster.
Mr. Larry Luck was my senior (12th Grade in America) Math teacher. Brilliant guy and loved teaching. This is a long, long, long time ago, but he saw the computer revolution coming. In fact, his exact words were, "you should learn this now because computers are coming to your desktop." Everyone knew computers were refrigerator sized boxes in cold rooms where guys in lab coats and horn-rimmed glasses fiddled with buttons. But we humored him. He didn't try to make us coders, but he did spend two week teaching us about computers and about code. We coded some simple programs; absolutely trivial. It was BASIC running on a shared system at for the Minneapolis Public schools' system using a teletype.
The point is you don't need a lot introduction to code to get started. I learned enough to recognize an opportunity to become a programmer because of these two weeks. That's what school should do for you. Unless you go to a trade school or a professional school (Law, Medicine, etc), school should broaden your horizons, not limit them.
Thanks Mr. Luck!
I'm not trying to be unidentifiable like you. You're just some fool I've destroyed before so you troll me that way (you know it, I know it - heck: Anyone would!).
* LMAO @ U!
(What's it like to be such a LOWLY "skulking worm" that has to hide vs. the light of my greatness compared to your sliminess?)
APK
P.S.=> Kneel worm! Oh, that's right - YOU ALREADY CLEARLY ARE, having to hide your identity since you KNOW I'd just toss whenever it was (probably many times) back in your face where I utterly crushed you! apk
1) computer science does not equal coding
2) shop class, including some automobile repair, was a required course in my high school. Also home ec. Both have come in handy, although I am not a professional mechanic or seamstress.
3) computers, including some coding, was also a required course when I was in high school, twenty some years ago.
One can only hope that the managers are now employed in posts more suitable to their level of skill, like road sweeping.