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Programming Education: Selling People a Lie? (blogspot.com)
An anonymous reader writes: It's hard to exist in the tech world today without hearing the constant refrain about learning to code: "it's easy, we desperately need programmers, and everyone should learn how!" UK software developer Mike Hadlow disagrees, strongly. He says, "Formal education for programmers seems not to work very well and yet the majority of those who are successful programmers are mostly self taught. On the one hand we seem to have people who don't need any guided education to give them a successful career; they are perfectly capable of learning their trade from the vast sea of online resources available to anyone who wants to use it. On the other hand we have people who seem unable to learn to code even with years of formal training.
This rather puts the lie to the barriers to entry argument. If the majority of current professional software developers are self taught, how can there be barriers to entry? Anyone with access to the internet can learn to code if they have the aptitude for it. The evidence points to a very obvious conclusion: there are two populations: one that finds programming a relatively painless and indeed enjoyable thing to learn and another that can't learn no matter how good the teaching. The elephant in the room, the thing that Yvette Cooper, the 'year of code' or 'hour of code' people seem unwilling to admit is that programming is a very high aptitude task. It is not one that 'anyone can learn', and it is not easy, or rather it is easy, but only if you have the aptitude for it. The harsh fact is that most people will find it impossible to get to any significant standard."
This rather puts the lie to the barriers to entry argument. If the majority of current professional software developers are self taught, how can there be barriers to entry? Anyone with access to the internet can learn to code if they have the aptitude for it. The evidence points to a very obvious conclusion: there are two populations: one that finds programming a relatively painless and indeed enjoyable thing to learn and another that can't learn no matter how good the teaching. The elephant in the room, the thing that Yvette Cooper, the 'year of code' or 'hour of code' people seem unwilling to admit is that programming is a very high aptitude task. It is not one that 'anyone can learn', and it is not easy, or rather it is easy, but only if you have the aptitude for it. The harsh fact is that most people will find it impossible to get to any significant standard."
Seems to me that there's a disconnect in the way people think about programming versus thinking about math and logic. Might it make more sense to people to think logically and procedurally, then worry about applying that to a computer? Those skills are useful in life itself and are not limited to even mathematics disciplines, let alone computer programming.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Programming education should try to find people who have the aptitude to be good programmers and quickly weed out those who never will.
In my experience, from numerous Agile/Scrum/Kanban meetings, the concept was sound -- get people together, find out where everyone is at, find what is slowing stuff down, go on.
However, that works in Japan where there is a level of respect from employers to employees.
Here in the US, what was, "what did you do, what are you planning to do, and what is in your way" becomes "explain the pathetic amount of stuff you did", "make promises for next meeting", and "point the finger at someone else." The concept of a blocker, for example is used as a way to blamestorm, and ultimately, a way to find who gets shitcanned first.
As for development in general, find a niche. Mainstream development stuff is offshored, and if by chance it isn't, it is handled by H-1Bs that rotate out after 90 days so they can't get a chance at a green card. Even if you find a dev job, you have to program at least 1000 lines of code a day, or else you will get replaced by someone who will. Bugs? If it builds, ship the damn thing. Security problems? Security has no ROI, worry about it when the lawsuits happen.
I personally recommend people go law, accounting, or a trade. You cannot offshore a plumber, electrician, or lawyer, and there is no such thing as an unemployed attorney. No, one may not wind up as a senior partner at Ben Dover & C. Howlett Fields... but one can eke out a living.
Back In The Day, I had Geometry in High School. 10th grade.
I don't know what others Geometry classes looked like, but ours was proofs. All proofs, nothing but proofs. We never did anything with compasses, protractors, straightedges, etc. Just proofs. Day in and day out. First 6 weeks was vocabulary, the rest of the year -- proofs.
Strangely, at the time, we had Saturday classes -- just the way it worked. I had to go in to Geometry class on Saturday, all of the students did.
But on those days, the teacher would basically hand out worksheets and we would work problems. These worksheets typically had 3 problems on them.
I would finish those problems in 2 minutes. Literally, zing, zang, bing, bang, boom. Done.
For me, proofs in Geometry were trivial. As the year advanced, we simply adde more theorems and axioms to tap in to do the proofs, but the logic -- that was all the same. Since Geometric proofs are all about logic. Damnable, inarguable logic.
"Teacher, can I leave now?" "No! You must stay here the entire class." he'd shout at me as he was helping some other student. And we all know that student, perhaps it was you. The student who Did Not Get Geometry and proofs. They'd been sitting in that chair the entire year, and, never "grokked" it. All they can do is struggle.
So, it was no surprise that I took to computer programming like a moth to flame. I get it. I'm good at it.
And I know there are a lot of people who will not be. I did not know Geometry going in, heck I don't know it now -- it's been so long. But they did not have to teach me Geometry per se, they had to show it too me, show the logical relationships, how it starts, and that was it. After that, just feed me theorems. Operations that I can use.
I have no problem with children being exposed to programming. That's how you find people like me. But I think, with the ubiquity of it today, when you could program on your cell phone if you were so inclined, the people that will do well and attend those classes, will already know what they need to know before they even go in.
But it's like the Force. You have it or you don't. Some have it stronger than others, some develop it more easily than others. But if you don't have it, the Force won't be with you. No matter what Master Jedi you train under.