Revisiting Why Johnny Can't Code: Have We "Made the Print Too Small"?

theodp writes: In What is Computer Science?, the kickoff video for Facebook's new TechPrep diversity initiative, FB product manager Adriel Frederick explains how he was hooked-on-coding after seeing the magic of a BASIC PRINT statement. His simple BASIC example is a nice contrast to the more complicated JavaScript and Ruby examples that were chosen to illustrate Mark Zuckerberg's what-is-coding video for schoolkids. In How to Teach Your Baby to Read, the authors explain, "It is safe to say that in particular very young children can read, provided that, in the beginning, you make the print very big." So, is introducing coding to schoolkids with modern programming languages instead of something like BASIC (2006) or even (gasp!) spreadsheets (2002) the coding equivalent of "making the print too small" for a child to see and understand?

Comments

Dice,

[Anonymous Coward]

Please stop shilling for Facebook. You do it endlessly. No one likes Facebook or its douchebag in chief.

Statements are too long

[Anonymous Coward]

The statements are too long.
Writing a working program should be as easy as:

LOL
LMFAO
ROFL

Therefore I suggest we teach beginners assembly language and exchange the mnemonics for common texting short forms.

Re:Statements are too long

[Anonymous Coward]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOLCODE

Re:BASIC

[91degrees]

"Dijkstra's a dick"

-- 91degrees

Influential and important to CompSci, certainly but that doesn't mean he wasn't a bit up himself at times. Not everything he says is gospel.

Basic logic and flow control

[Richard_at_work]

Kids should be introduced to programming using marble runs and physical switches or conditionals. Get them interested in the toy aspect, introduce rewards for working out how to achieve goals, and gradually introduce virtual modelling of the physical layout as complexity increases - they will gradually move completely to the virtual model, and then you can introduce the next stage of exposing the code when managing click and drag objects becomes a hassle.

Baby steps. Literally.

Re: Basic logic and flow control

[bill_mcgonigle]

Lightbot is the phone app version of this. My boy loves it - it's roughly LOGO for 2015, and he's working on subroutines that call other subroutines now. Except he doesn't know that (we did basic IO and loops, verbally with pseudocode, on a long car ride prior to getting Lightbot). It's more fun than the VIC-20 assembly that was my only option at his age.

Academic: does this theoretical problem exist?
Market: download the free app.

Maybe Johnny just doesn't give a fuck

[NotDrWho]

Maybe Johnny wants to choose his own fucking interests, instead of having them imposed by a corporate oligarchy only interested in cheap labor.

Who Cares?

[sycodon]

Johnny can't cook a souffle, Johnny can't make a dove joint, Johnny, can't fix a car, Johnny can't set a broken arm, Johnny can't balance and income statement, etc.

But there is at least SOME people that can do it. These are all disciplines/careers that people elect to pursue. Not everyone needs to know how to code. That's stupid. Does everyone need to know how to design, cut, and sew together a pair of pants?

Does knowing how to code make it any better when Windows or Windows apps go toe up? Really? Are you going to debug Windows or Mathematica because you took a coding class?

Re:BASIC

[plover]

They run around and talk too fast, but the effects soon wear off.