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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?"
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>
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.
[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.
I think the I.T. industry is going through the same growing pains as every other industry that has ever existed. As a manufacturing engineer with a bachelor's in mechanical engineering and a master's in industrial engineering and also being a volunteer with the GNU project (just giving you some background), I can tell you that programming and computer science literacy is no where near the most important skill to have in the real world.
Construction, for example, if a much more fundamental skill, yet shop classes have mostly gone away. Being able to repair a dry wall, fix a broken cabinet or replace the compressor on an old fridge are much more important in your day to day life than being able to code a text editing tool. Let's face it, the level at which these classes will be taught, kids will be lucky if they can even do that.
K-12 schools should be focusing on the fundamentals. You specialize at a later state in life. Math, science, reading, writing, etc are much more important that coding. These curriculums should be reinforced, instead of taking focus away from them for the newest fad.
Long hours and no vacation are a sign of too many ready to offer their work (replacing you), not the oppoaite. If there was a ahortage companies would offer higher salaries for less work to gain a competitive advantage in recruiting good devs. In ither words if you want vacation and less hours, move up where there is less competition and you get to have more say on your work hours.
Logical thinking absolutely can be taught. Before computers were widespread it was often done by the teaching of Latin, which like a good programming language is very regular and well structured.
If find that self-taught programmers often lack the ability to think logically and methodically, especially when debugging, so I teach them. It's a method, you start from first principals and validate your assumptions, and then check each possible cause of the problem in turn. You make changes and observe the results, updating your assumptions and redefining the problem space as you go.
This can all be taught in class. I think it would be of great benefit to most students, along with some philosophy, comprehension and critical thinking skills.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Well said. How about cutting right to the core and simply teaching logic to younger kids? As a EE major I begrudgingly took a formal logic class from the Philosophy dep't in college (straightforward proofs w/ standard symbology and sentence analysis, not mushy ponderings). Turned out to be one of the most enjoyable classes I ever took.
In retrospect it wasn't that "heady" and could definitely be taught to first graders if wrapped as an ongoing game or some other expression that would allow them to keep building on the previous lessons. Latin could be formulated in an equally imaginative way.
I can't help but think that the phrase "computers are taught in school" will always be limited to teaching syntax. Bridging the gap between typing stuff in and recognizing the logical basis is too roundabout. If presented correctly logic is something both kids and teachers can concretely piece together. "Computers" will follow naturally after that, as will the bigger issue of critical thinking.
What's with all this bullshit "I can't take time off" astroturfing? It's blatantly a lie -- the idea that someone is somehow in such high demand that he can't take a vacation yet doesn't have enough power to tell his employer to fuck off and go anyway violates basic logic -- but I'm trying to figure out the angle. What's the motivation for posting it? It's as if the poster is trying to create the public perception of a shortage in order to justify H1Bs or something, but it's too stupid to be persuasive.
At any rate, I'm a software engineer and have always worked a normal 40 hours/week and used all my vacation. If you can't do the same, that's your problem!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz