Ready CEO: Coding Snobs Are Not Helping Our Children Prepare For The Future (qz.com)

jader3rd writes: Quartz has an article written by the CEO of Ready, David S. Bennahum, about how public education should be embracing computer science, and how existing programmers don't like these efforts because they feel that doing so will result in kids being exposed to programming in a manner different then how they were introduced to it. Bennahum writes: "Writing software today is eerily similar to what it was like in the late 1950s, when people sat at terminals and wrote COBOL programs. And like the late 1950s, the stereotype of the coder is largely unchanged: mostly white guys with deep math skills, and minimal extroversion. Back in the Sputnik-era, people thought of programmers as a priesthood in lab coats: the sole keepers of knowledge that ran these exotic, and mysterious room-sized machines. Today the priesthood is a little hipper -- lab coats have long given way to a countercultural vibe -- but it's still a priesthood, perhaps more druidic than Jesuitic, but a priesthood nonetheless, largely comprised of white men." "Instead of attempting to lure code-literate teachers away from Silicon Valley, we need to revolutionize the way coding is done. Rather than fit the person to the tool, let's fit the tool to the person. Pop computing can help us get there, offering a gloriously diverse array of tools to match our gloriously diverse species. It's only a matter of time before the process of making software itself is transformed, from one that requires a mastery of syntax -- the precise stringing of sentences needed to command a computer -- to the mastery of logic. Logic is the essence of software creation, and the second step after mastering syntax.'

Comments

Why is this stereotype constantly perpetuated

[cyber-vandal]

Neither I or my colleagues are in any way anti-social or socially awkward. Being a developer is a job the same as any other.

"largely comprised of white men."

[TheGratefulNet]

BULLSHIT!

stop lying. this does not help ANYONE when you keep saying the same incorrect bull over and over and over (and over and over).

go to silicon valley. walk the hallways of a cisco or similar. breakdown is roughly 90% indian, 8% various asian and the rest is western-born.

white men? you gotta be kidding me. are you writing this from kansas or something? because where I sit, in the bay area, whites are the smallest minority. walk down cupertino and its almost all chinese. walk most places in the bay area, its all indian. you hear hindi and mandarin and some cantonese along with korean and vietnamese - but english - not much english anymore.

sick of this lock-out culture. if you are not one of the imports, you are not a first choice for a job in this area.

I wonder who keeps paying the liars to lie to everyone? is this swj gone full-retard? or is this just someone from outside tech areas who write from their ivory tower, totally disconnected from reality?

or maybe everyone who writes this drivel KNOWS its a lie but has the agenda to keep pushing MORE imports into comp-sci and asking for more h1b's to enter the US.

or, finally, its just a ploy to get clicks. they know it will get many of us angry and (like me) it caused me to write this and hit 'submit', which gets them clicks.

no matter what the reason is, I'm sick and tired of this crap.