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Rikers Inmates Learn How To Code Without Internet Access (fastcompany.com)
An anonymous reader sends the story of another prison where inmates are learning the basics of programming, despite having no access to the vast educational resources on the internet. Instructors from Columbia University have held a lengthy class at New York's Rikers Island prison to teach the basics of Python. Similar projects have been attempted in California and Oklahoma.
The goal wasn’t to turn the students into professional-grade programmers in just a few classes, [Instructor Dennis] Tenen emphasizes, but to introduce them to the basics of programming and reasoning about algorithms and code. "It’s really to give people a taste, to get people excited about coding, in hopes that when they come out, they continue," says Tenen. ...Having an explicit goal—building the Twitter bot—helped the class focus its limited time quickly on learning to do concrete tasks, instead of getting bogged down in abstract discussions of syntax and algorithms.
Who is going to hire someone out of prison with a record as a programmer. It is tough to get hired as a gardener with a record.
Bah, when I learned programming there weren't "vast educational resources on the internet".
It's been done.
Since when the hell have we reached the point of "zomg, someone learned something without teh intertubes"??
Because if other people haven't learned to basics of coding over the last few decades without the use of the internet, I'd be completely shocked. The internet is not a pre-requisite to learning, as much as people seem to think it is.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Go back in for the free doctors that cover more then the ER, Medicaid and maybe soon even Medicare (more doctors as not taking that).
Also no more of this out of network BS.
Hell, I learned a whole about computers without computer. I was 18 when I could afford one, a ZX Spectrum.
Say it ain't so!
My god, there's crual and unusual punishment, but making they have to read from a book - where's Amnesty International when you need them??
How does this idiot think everyone up until the 90s learnt to code?
Only the basics? I learned the BASICs, Pascals, Modulas, and Cs without the internet...
no more ciphers on toilet paper
I learned to program when there was no internet you insensitive clod!
It's pretty cool that there are educational resources for prisoners. Keeping their minds occupied on doing something productive is good for rehabilitation, something the prison system is sorely lacking.
However, and this is me being a cynical asshole, guaranteed there's no out-of-pocket payment for these classes, so one would think that it's just less painful to go to prison to get an education than go to college. (Yes, I know I'm vastly oversimplifying the long-term issues here, among them the cultural issue of not wanting to hire an ex-con; there's also a long-winded point to be made about crippling debt here that I'm too lazy to reach for.)
Some people don't believe in fairies. I don't believe in The Patriarchy.
Why have them write a Twitter bot if there's no internet access? There are thousands of interesting problems to solve with a computer code. Why that one?
Why Python? Why not Racket or Scheme? If they're cons, then they should have a language with some name appeal. But seriously, it's time to go functional. I've always considered Python as a stop-gap emergency replacement of Perl. Good. Now we need to find a more permanent solution.
How is this newsworthy at all? I learned programming as a kid from a book in the last 70s, before even BBSs were a common thing. LOTS of people learn that way. Hell it's actually better in many ways as you don't get distracted and can focus.
Coding and programming are two different things (they are related, but they are different). Coding is learning the syntax of a language and the mechanics of implementing a solution to a problem. Programming is analyzing a problem and determining what computational steps are needed to arrive at a solution.
In the mid 70's, my high school offered a FORTRAN programming class out of the math department. It was a full school year class that met daily. For the coding aspect of the class, we had one shot a week on the computer. On Friday we would hand in our punched cards and on Monday the teacher would return the cards and the compile/run printouts (the computer we used was the school district's main system). The time we spent actually coding was done outside the class room.
The majority of the class however was learning how to program. Coding was a secondary aspect of the class (typically one day a week was going over specific FORTRAN concepts). Our first assignment was to break down the steps one used to make a phone call (step 1, walk over to the phone, step 2 pick up receiver, step 3 listen for a dial tone, step 4 if no dial done ...., etc.). We discussed and went over problem solving, algorithms, and how to break a problem down into it's discrete steps. Sometimes the problem was able to be solved without a computer (just analyzing the problem gave the final solution). Our coding assignments were usually stripped down problems that demonstrated that we could actually implement the solution (if I remember correctly, the biggest coding assignment was maybe 50 or so statements long).
In the parent article, it sounds almost the same. They are being introduced on how to program.
In today's environment, there are a lot of coding frameworks that have pre-canned solutions that address many typical programming requirements. So it's easy to approach solving a problem by learning the frameworks and connecting the pieces together. The real programming has already been done within the framework. This is both a blessing and a curse. The blessing is that a lot of people can code a solution to many real-life problems without needing to really understand the programming aspect. The curse is that the solution will more then likely be bloated, and computationally inefficient.
The internet really helps with coding, it acts as a helpful reference for finding frameworks, the syntax of languages and little coding snippets.
I think it's a really good thing to try to help prisoners learn a skill. Anything that reduces recidivism is a good thing.
However...have they thought of where these inmates would work when they came out? You can't get a job with the vast majority of companies if you have bad credit, let alone a criminal record. Everyone wonders why the recidivism rate is so high -- this is one of the reasons. If you can only get crappy off the books jobs, you're more likely to return to crime because it pays better.
This is the major problem with the age of easy, cheap record checks. The second you're involved with the police at all, even if you're not convicted, your resume will immediately be tossed in favor of someone who doesn't have a record. Basically, sentencing someone to prison is permanently writing them off no matter for how long or for which crime. The inability to get meaningful work later on, combined with being housed with violent angry people for a long time doesn't make for a well adjusted person when they do get out.
An anonymous reader sends the story of another prison where inmates are learning the basics of programming, despite having no access to the vast educational resources on the internet.
Wow, you don't say. Just like I did for the first 20 years of my life. Amazing.
We had these things called "books"...
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I learned in the 1960's. There was no internet to learn from.
How do people think people learned anything before the internet? It's amazing that humans ever made writing systems and internal combustion engines, without the internet, eh?
Yes, it is quite amazing that we achieved all we did with so little. That's why history is a fascinating subject. In many ways a lot of what was happening during World War II was just as technologically sophisticated as what we do today, and they didn't even have much in the way of analog computers to help them.
However, I'm sure people who lived in the early 20th century felt it would be equally difficult to get work done without written language and the printing press. It's hard to imagine someone building a catapult or even a hut without a way to write down equations expressing geometric relationships and Newtonian mechanics, but I'm pretty sure humans already had a significant technological edge over the rest of the animal kingdom long before we had writing, and certainly before we had written symbolic representation and methodical study of mathematics.
Commonplace knowledge and technology may not seem amazing to us today, but the way that it came about -- the way it was discovered and developed -- is always amazing to learn about, because it's the story of pioneers, the story of people who reached far beyond what was ordinary for their day, and brought something new, memorable and worth keeping track of in the historical record, to humanity. And they often did it without access to some of the most fundamental communication tools we have available today.
One wonders if, centuries from now, a student of history might consider it noteworthy or remarkable that we were able to engineer computers of such complexity as we have today, without access to... well, whatever principles or practices of communication that we haven't even begun to grasp, yet, but will one day become the new normal.
I hope so. I don't think humanity should ever give up the practice of recording history and remembering what got us to where we are today. As a species, we're already very irresponsible with our lives and our resources, extremely prone to repeat past mistakes, and forgetful of the perspective that history brings us, even though history itself has seen more public attention, more scholarly effort, and more funding in the present day than it ever has before. It's scary to think of a future where we simply stop caring about history and just look toward the future. I hope that doesn't happen.
I'm not crazy! :D https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Kinda jives with the institutional theme of this article...
No? :(
I know that you're speaking in-jest, but there are some actual practical reasons for using computer networks in learning. Acccess to shared resources that can be continually updated instead of printing hundreds of thousands or millions of books every few years, access to more material than one would have previously had available in a library or otherwise on-hand, etc. Unfortunately most of those are overshadowed by the general purpose nature of the machine and of the software used to access the educational content; it is very easy to do anything other than the assignement when the computer can do thousands of things other than the assignment.
Offline assignments make a lot of sense for beginning-level learners where they need to learn the fundamentals of the tool before they start looking-up more advanced features. That holds true for many uses of the tool- word processing, spreadsheets, CAD, programming, graphics manipulation, even ironically, web page design- establishing fundamentals before switching to a lookup-mode of use means that those fundamentals get written-in to the brain. Start off being able to easily look-up the fundamentals and one has a harder time retaining them down the road.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Teaching inmates to program is admirable, but has anyone considered the drawbacks to that plan? IT in the U.S. is getting squeezed from all angles. Teaching these individuals to code is fine, but the jobs may not be there after they are released. Now you have someone with skills to perform a job for which no-one wants them. Unless there are plans in place to get them jobs at the outset, their skills may languish or be turned to other endeavors from old behaviors.
Just wondering if anyone has a thought on whether this would encourage better programming? I've always taught myself by jumping in and just figuring stuff out. I've sat own and absorbed a lesson on how to program. Is there merit in this?
I did, he was a corporate VP by the time we got bought out. It costs more to screen them, but they tend to stay a lot longer than the entitled generation, are willing to learn new things, and are a lot more resourceful than our standard employee with a CS degree. My experience has been largely in the programming field, with most of the convictions drug related, and we've only had about a dozen. Hell, one who worked with me for 5 years went to one of the defense contractors and got a security clearance; I was interviewed in his clearance process. There are plenty of organizations who are willing to hire a good employee in spite of a criminal record. There are, on the other hand, a bunch of ex-cons who haven't decided to change their lifestyle, so calling references is crucial.
I taught myself programming before the Internet using those things we called "books", specifically, Jim Butterfield's machine language programming books for my Commodore 64.
They should get a grant for a private WOW server and teach them to "farm" gold.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Maybe they can start classes in a women's prison.
you could be able to CURE CANCER | CREATE COLD FUSION | understand the US TAX CODE but if somebody will not hire you because you have a "Ticket Of Leave" then you are cooked.
Imagine having an army of programmers you barely have to pay? Prisons regularly exchange "resources" depending on what state projects the private prison operators have managed to win/undercut. Adding skilled programmers into the mix will give benefiting companies much better margins than outsourcing to China/India/Eastbloc.
They had to replace the "Hello world!" lesson with "Hello D block!"
Have gnu, will travel.
Companies that want lots of cheap programmers, and that have no liability for the security holes in their app.
Which is to say, all of them.
Worried about getting bogged down? Got something better to do for the next five years? Shouldn't prisons just become full-fledged universities and be done with it? Isn't that the rehab hope?
How do you think they learned enough programming to CREATE the freaking Internet in the first place?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
I see all of you privileged programmers talking about learning programming from a manual. I learned from reading source code. The kid down the street taught me how to control->reset and list BASIC programs on the Apple II, and I used those listings to figure out how to write my own programs. This was a really, really poor way to learn programming. So it's nice to see people having so many resources today. I don't think the prisoners should be allowed to use Python though, as they're supposed to be in the process of being punished. Something like Java would be more appropriate.
There will be no compiling pages of copypasta one does not know the meaning of and after writing the program they'll actually remember how to write it rather than just remembering what to type into google to find the required stackoverflow answer with the snippets they're looking for.
It is now a thing for people to learn something without being able to google how to do it.
Non sequitur: Your facts are uncoordinated.
Hey, I learned to code without access to the Internet!
go to prison, lose your most of your civil rights, but get free instructor led courses from college professors - FROM COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY no less! Since some of you are saying why - they will never get hired anywhere anyway, kinda begs the question, why are they wasting the resources - I'd LOVE a Columbia University instructor to teach me programming (or anything for that matter) FOR FREE too, but I'm not willing to "do the time" to get that added benefit. seems like a big ol' waste of time.
I knew Rikers had a bad reputation, but that just sound brutal.
Seriously, couldn't they opt for hard labor or some alternative?
This could be a really slippery slope. I can just imagine a power mad warden giving some poor bastard the Malbolge spec for light reading while in solitary.
Tell us why you don't think your life matters! We are genuinely concerned!
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Ah yes. The good times!!!!! There is nothing like the fun of looking at a string of hex and cross referencing with the CPUs manual to disassemble a routine.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Pretty much anyone using a computer before 1990 experienced this phenomenon.
True story. Offline theoretic self-education can certainly work. Especially with kids. Limits create creativity.
My anecdote: :) But i saved my programs, and later when someone told me about "qbasic.com" i was up and running ofcourse.
In fact, as a kid without a compiler or internet, that was how i learned programming QuickBASIC. By just studying an old reader that i found. I tried all my programming in "edit.com" but i couldn't run it.
Making more experimental programs for fun.
Hivemind harvest in progress..