Google-Funded Project Envisions Nation's Librarians Teaching Kids to Code (ala.org)

"We're excited to double down on the findings of Ready to Code 1," says one Google program manager, "by equipping librarians with the knowledge and skills to cultivate computational thinking and coding skills in our youth." theodp writes: Citing the need to fill "500,000 current job openings in the field of computer science," the American Library Association argues in a new whitepaper that "all 115,000 of the nation's school and public libraries are crucial community partners to guarantee youth have skills essential to future employment and civic participation"... The ALA's Google-funded "Libraries Ready to Code" project has entered Phase II, which aims to "equip Master's in Library Science students to deliver coding programs through public and school libraries and foster computational thinking skills among the nation's youth."

"Libraries play a vital role in our communities, and Google is proud to build on our partnership with ALA," added Hai Hong, who leads US outreach on Google's K-12 Education team... "Given the ubiquity of technology and the half-a-million unfilled tech jobs in the country, we need to ensure that all youth understand the world around them and have the opportunity to develop the essential skills that employers -- and our nation's economy -- require."

Comments

All of this banking on probability makes me ill

[Anonymous Coward]

"Surely, if we can get a billion people to code, we will eventually produce the source of Windows 10!"

Re:All of this banking on probability makes me ill

[Hognoxious]

I think a prerequisite for that is making evolution run backward.

Re:All of this banking on probability makes me ill

[gweihir]

That estimate is off by a few orders of magnitude. My estimation would be at the very least a few billion orders of magnitude.

Better to spend on education than salaries

[Anonymous Coward]

Corporate America sees a problem: not enough computer programmers, and a solution: teach people programming.

If salaries went up, along with job security, many self-starting adults would seek out the education they need to make that money. But we can't have THAT!

But without that, it doesn't matter how much education you do...once people learn the reality of the industry they will jump right out of it.

Them's the facts.

Re:Better to spend on education than salaries

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds more Fahrenheit 451.
We don't need librarians to protect books in a digital age.
We don't need books either.
Lets get rid of history books first and go from there.

Re:Better to spend on education than salaries

[Anonymous Coward]

Corporate America created the perception of this problem to drive up training/importing of tech workers and thus drive down the cost of employment.

Re:Better to spend on education than salaries

[Nephandus]

There ARE enough. They just don't want to hire, pay, or train (as in standard practices or specific house standards for full pro projects, NOT base coding abilities/knowledge we actually DO know) us. Instead, they hire false credentialed jargon spouters (who don't even own their own computers prior, much less are remotely computer geeks ever) from body shops called consultancies (an inserted, ironically costly layer to setup a racket), pay them less (paying through the consultancy has little to no rules, paying "consultants" junior level for intermediate or beyond level work is never prevented, captive labor doesn't want to get thrown back for rocking the boat), and half-assedly train them (Hell, have a local, with years of experience, train their own inexperienced replacements for his own higher level position in a few WEEKS) because they think it's a bargain to get shitty code on the cheap and don't comprehend how net costs actual work over time in the software industry, much less care about quality or security.

Re:Better to spend on education than salaries

[0100010001010011]

You are equating 'computer programmers' with 'people that can program'. A huge number of professions would benefit from people being able to script up something to reduce their work load.

There are companies still doing books in Excel by hand (not relying on any of Excel's built in functions). I helped someone in the mid 2000s that didn't know you could Sort or Uniquify a list in Excel.

It's not about making computer programmers it's about graduating engineers that can program, accountants that can program, MBAs that can program.

A long time ago not everyone learned to type. There were typists that were employed to type in what someone else came up with. Along the way someone got the idea that you could teach people to type and that typists would no longer be needed outside of some specific jobs. The same thing is happening right now with coding.

Source: I'm a Mechanical Engineer that mashes the keyboard to get my job done.

Re: Better to spend on education than salaries

[Anonymous Coward]

This. "500,000 current job openings."

All low pay, bullshit jobs.
There *ARE* at least that many *EXPERIENCED* programmers that are out of work or under-employed *TODAY*.

FUCK H1B.

Re:Better to spend on education than salaries

[Anonymous Coward]

I have at this point in my life worked on about 10 large projects. Thousands of man hours poured into them. All did decently and made the companies millions. Well over 300k people were using it at one point. Not one line of code is still in use. The only things that are still being used is by me because I do not need to re-write them at this time. But they probably will be at some point.

Code is eferial. It is transient. It leaves like a ghost never to be seen again. I can see why companies want to minimize the cost of that.

They will find however that just because everyone knows how to program does not mean everyone can do it. I am a very experienced at it and even I still have trouble with it. It takes time and solitude to do correctly. Instead we are trying to force creative art style bullpit design into it. So you get in the zone and are yanked out quickly because the dude 2 tables over has decided to have a conversation with 3 other people. Most people can do 1 thing at a time pretty well. Give them 2 things and they will do 2 things very badly. One thing that struck me when I first started doing this was how quiet most programming environments were. Its not like that anymore.

Companies also think if we just put them all together and add in rock stars good code magically happens. Half the time you have to spend a year just to get them to commit on whatever stupid idea they are thinking of. I can not read your mind and come up with 'good things' when you can not even describe what you want. Its little wonder they do not even know what to pay someone. As they are not even sure what the job should be. They think they want to 'improve' things but sometimes adding in a overcomplex bit of software can make things even worse. So they want a bargain on top of it all. I can understand it. Do not like it much but understand it.

Re: Better to spend on education than salaries

[Anonymous Coward]

They might. We do like to bitch here about the STEM bubble getting popped by cheap slave labor overseas, but at the moment, STEM is still a better career choice than most careers.

The only sure bet is medical if you can survive the loans and can get the grades.

Business has the best chance at max money, but most people in business make shit money and put in long, stressful hours with a ton of brown nosing.

Then there's pipe dream careers like entertainment (pop star, athlete). Good luck with that.

If not programming, then what?

Re:Better to spend on education than salaries

[Anonymous Coward]

Code is eferial

Eferial is my favorite packet sniffer, you cockney bastard!

Re:Better to spend on education than salaries

[Anonymous Coward]

The "500,000 job openings" is a lie. A complete, absolute lie whose sole purpose is to serve as an excuse to push for hiring more foreign workers.

If there is a shortage of workers, then why are you firing hundreds of your employees and replacing them with the same number of foreign workers? At lower wages, of course. Because that's the only shortage that actually exists -- a shortage of people willing to be treated like shit and be paid the lowest possible wages.

Re:Better to spend on education than salaries

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. It is not rational to make a long-term investment in the quality of a product that might have a short-term lifespan.

Of course, it is impossible to know which parts of a system will have that long-term life span, so the safest bet is to go cheap on the whole thing, and then come back and fix things later once we have seen what sticks.

Makes perfect sense until it becomes clear that the costs of coming back and fixing can be 10x or 100x more than they would have been if it had been written right the first time.

So...what... should we frontload all our development costs and spend a fortune making the system awesome, only to wind up needing to throw it away and replace it in a year?

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Re: Better to spend on education than salaries

[exomondo]

This. "500,000 current job openings."

All low pay, bullshit jobs. There *ARE* at least that many *EXPERIENCED* programmers that are out of work or under-employed *TODAY*.

Well somebody has to do the low pay bullshit jobs, if the experienced programmers don't want to do them then who is going to?

Re:Better to spend on education than salaries

[Anonymous Coward]

Corporate America sees a problem: not enough computer programmers to allow them to drive wages low, conditions lower, and treat said programmers as proto-slaves, and a solution: teach people programming.

There, fixed it for you.

...they will jump right out of it.

So long as supply is good, and so long as the job market elsewhere is bad, that doesn't really matter to our corporate overlords.

Re:Better to spend on education than salaries

[Anonymous Coward]

The "500,000 job openings" is a lie. A complete, absolute lie whose sole purpose is to serve as an excuse to push for hiring more foreign workers.

And yet this whole article is about training more local workers.

If there is a shortage of workers, then why are you firing hundreds of your employees and replacing them with the same number of foreign workers?

Because things like the network reliability don't actually go down, the things that go down are costs. If foreign workers can do the same job for a much lower cost then of course companies are going to do it, that's exactly why most of your stuff is made in china. Why do you think IT would be any different than manufacturing?

Re: Better to spend on education than salaries

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously, you are in management.
You do not want to 'get it', because your
job is to not 'get it'. Your job is to coerce
your underpaid techs to work lots of free
overtime so your budget looks good.

Welcome to the darkside.

You are the problem.

Re:Better to spend on education than salaries

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps an old fashioned book burning is in order? Can't have people misled by the truth.

Re: Better to spend on education than salaries

[Anonymous Coward]

Librarians. Evidently they don't have enough to do, so add teaching responsibilities. Or illegal immigrants, there's only so many labor jobs available that 'murkins won't do.

Re: Better to spend on education than salaries

[exomondo]

So I must be in management (FWIW I'm not) because I point out that experience programmers don't want to do low paid bullshit jobs? The fact that you think you would need to be a manager to work that out is probably the reason you're standing in the unemployment line.

Re: Better to spend on education than salaries

[AuMatar]

No there aren't. Not unless you're counting the retired by choice. I just went through a job search. I had more companies begging to interview me than I could reasonably handle. Salaries for experienced devs are hitting the 200K/yr range because there aren't enough of them.

What there are is way too many intro level people who take a bootcap or make a website or two and call themselves programmers, making it hard to find quality to fill low level jobs. But there aren't anywhere near enough seniors on the market at the moment.

Re:Better to spend on education than salaries

[AHuxley]

AC thats the issue. The "teach people programming" only works if a lack of education, scholarships, access to higher education exists.
People who are smart have the option to enter law, medicine, engineering or an other area and know of the conditions and wages in such professions.
Lots of people can do math, science but might enter medicine or law given their ability to study and access to loans or scholarships.
If the "unfilled tech jobs" exist that is an issue of wage. Start paying more and people will be swayed away from law or engineering or other subjects.
Pouring cash into communities to show average people what a computer is will not help. Robots and gui code will not remove the lack of interest in computers.
Smart people may like the law, medicine, the arts, languages, engineering. Thats what they want and thats the subjects they know will give then a good lifestyle and wage.
In past decades access to broadband, computers, quality low cost or free software might have been an issue. Its not an education issue. Pay better wages, offer better hours and computers as a topic might be flooded with more students.
Until then offering funding to people who will look at a computer, try some gui code and go back to subjects they are really interested in is not the best funding solution.

Re:Better to spend on education than salaries

[Hognoxious]

What difference would it make to you? You clearly can't read.

Re: Better to spend on education than salaries

[Hognoxious]

Such an example
Of a terrible Haiku
Seven lines, no season

Re:Better to spend on education than salaries

[Hognoxious]

A proper cockney (like Fiw Mitchew) would pronounce it as eferweeoo.

Re:Better to spend on education than salaries

[Anonymous Coward]

people being able to script up something to reduce their work load... I helped someone in the mid 2000s that didn't know you could Sort or Uniquify a list in Excel

So you're saying they should learn how to write their own VBA Sort before they learn the full Excel feature set?

Re:Better to spend on education than salaries

[fahrbot-bot]

Perhaps an old fashioned book burning is in order?

Why not? Samsung makes e-readers ...

Re: Better to spend on education than salaries

[thinkwaitfast]

Same here. Voluntarily retired, but get job offers all the time. Friend/former coworker quit a $125/hr job because he was "bored of it". And that was living in Iowa.

Iowa.

With a yearly cost of living of like $17. Anyway, he retired to California and is not yet 50 I don't think. Programing moisture vaporators (or real-time engine controllers, same difference) is not quite the same as throwing up a web page.

Re:Better to spend on education than salaries

[Anonymous Coward]

people being able to script up something to reduce their work load... I helped someone in the mid 2000s that didn't know you could Sort or Uniquify a list in Excel

So you're saying they should learn how to write their own VBA Sort before they learn the full Excel feature set?

No, quite clearly he is not saying that.

Re:Better to spend on education than salaries

[ShanghaiBill]

There ARE enough. They just don't want to hire, pay

The unemployment rate among programmers is at about 3%, well below the overall average of about 5%. I don't think there is any evidence for a vast untapped reserve of programmers sitting on the sidelines waiting for higher salaries.

Re:Better to spend on education than salaries

[AmiMoJo]

Tech's problem is that it doesn't have strong unions and advocacy groups. Medicine does, law does, and as a result conditions are much better.

Having more people trained in programming will help, if only by removing some of the drudge work from the more talented ones so they can make better use of their skills. What we need to ensure is that they are unionized, otherwise they will be exploited and discarded just like the rest of us.

Re:Better to spend on education than salaries

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, I worked at a startup in the early 80's and was at the company for over a decade. The core product is an enterprise class server product. The company and product still exist (obviously evolved with new features) keeps many thousands of employees working.

The code I wrote in 1982 in the core of the system, along with many tracebacks one finds in a core dump, are still completely recognizable. Each module seems to have about twice as many lines of code now as features have been introduced (sometimes via what looks a lot like cut/paste/edit), but most of the original lines, variable names, etc are still there.

And, that's very sad... 35 year old code should have had a major restructuring by now rather than decades of hacking stuff in. Sometimes more transient is a good thing!

(And, I agree about the "creative art style bullpit" design -- one reason I'm no longer in the business. Implementing reliable complex systems take painstaking thought to consider every conceivable failure scenario throughout the process -- from architecture to final system test. Three week sprints with designs done with little rigorous review don't result in stable systems.)

Re:Better to spend on education than salaries

[AHuxley]

Re 'What we need to ensure is that they are unionised, otherwise they will be exploited and discarded just like the rest of us."
Law, medicine, engineering and even some trades needing to be bonded, insured, licensed can keep wages up and ensure normal working hours.
So a smart person will not be swayed by gui code learning and access to new computers. The know for the same student loan and years of work computing is often not worth the debt, lower wages and hours. Set your own hours, better wages after years of study.
They know what they can get for their skills and academic effort and until computer work pays with good conditions in the US they will select better jobs.
The other method is to just make sure real computer work needs some form of US higher education like law or medicine.
Only a few years at a real US university could provide the trusted computer accreditation. Any computer expert who wants to code in the USA would have to pass the same US exams in the US after study in the USA. Merit tested with exams in the USA would keep wages at a better level. That would stop the wages drop from US brands finding cheaper workers globally.
More smart US students would then put computing as an equal to law, medicine, engineering knowing their study, debt and efforts would be secure from low wages and cheap foreign staff.

Re: Better to spend on education than salaries

[BarbaraHudson]

Why would anyone spend time and money to train for a low pay bullshit job? If you were a business, you wouldn't invest in projects that are low-income / no profit shit..

Re: Better to spend on education than salaries

[exomondo]

Why would anyone spend time and money to train for a low pay bullshit job?

That's the point, there are jobs there that nobody seems to want to do. If people have gone through a CS degree and feel that the sort of job on offer is beneath them then perhaps there is another way to train workers for those jobs that isn't as costly and time consuming. The work obviously needs to be done so what's your suggestion? More H1B visa workers to do them?

Re: Better to spend on education than salaries

[Anonymous Coward]

Studying law is even sillier than tech. Most people that graduate in law are under employed or doing a job that doesn't require a law degree. Medicine is okay, but the profession artificially limits the supply to keep wages up but the industry simply turns to ARNPs and decimated the nursing profession with medical techs to make up for it.

Re: Better to spend on education than salaries

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be on the internet, to respond to a comment on a topic about which you know little, but whose content has some minutely criticizable element upon which to pounce with some snark of your own. Oh great, now I'm doing it too.

Re: Better to spend on education than salaries

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a time when inexperienced and junior computer programmers would be hired into these "bullshit jobs" and their employers would train them in the specifics of the organisation. Today, it is expected an applicant already be a domain-specific and organisation-specific (products used) plus the applicant tracking system hell faced by anyone applying for these jobs.

Re: Better to spend on education than salaries

[gweihir]

Indeed. The good developers are out there, but they are few. Most "coders" are incompetent with no potential.
Read this:
- https://blog.codinghorror.com/...
- https://blog.codinghorror.com/...
If anything, things have gotten worse in the meantime.

Re:Better to spend on education than salaries

[Anonymous Coward]

I know several folks who stopped getting recruiting calls after 40ish. I bet there is a substantial reservoir of talent that's going untapped. Granted, it's totally anecdotal but I've had the discussion with at least 10 to 15 folks who are pretty awesome engineers.

Re: Better to spend on education than salaries

[hambone142]

And first to get outsourced to India.

Much like the University of California sending out it's I.T. to India whilst they produce Computer Science graduates.

Re: Better to spend on education than salaries

[exomondo]

I didn't criticize, I just asked the question about if there are hundreds of thousands of jobs that experienced programmers don't want to do then who is going to do them, the only response was "oh you must be in management".

If the jobs are there and experienced programmers don't want them, you don't want H1Bs to have them and you don't want to train local workers to do them then how exactly do you propose they get done? And no I'm not in management so don't bother using that to try and avoid the question.

Re: Better to spend on education than salaries

[Anonymous Coward]

The solution to that is to actually pay people for their work. And it would be a good idea to treat them like human beings as well.

Bottom line here is that the companies in most cases don't feel like providing a compelling offer to applicants and are rewarded with nobody worthwhile applying. They then try to get H-1B visaholders that are willing to put up with the bullshit so they don't have to pay people additional money to compensate for the bullshitness of the job.

Re: Better to spend on education than salaries

[Anonymous Coward]

> Today, it is expected an applicant already be a domain-specific and organisation-specific (products used) plus the applicant tracking system hell faced by anyone applying for these jobs.

So why are you worried about h1b workers or children then? If what you say is true then they arent going to be able to get those jobs either, in fact pretty much nobody is.

Re: Better to spend on education than salaries

[exomondo]

The solution to that is to actually pay people for their work. And it would be a good idea to treat them like human beings as well.

Ok what exactly are these jobs?

Bottom line here is that the companies in most cases don't feel like providing a compelling offer to applicants and are rewarded with nobody worthwhile applying.

What jobs are you referring to, how much are they offering and how much should they be offering?

Re: Better to spend on education than salaries

[ranton]

, it is expected an applicant who expects US-level wages already be a domain-specific and organisation-specific (products used) plus the applicant tracking system hell faced by anyone applying for these jobs.

So why are you worried about h1b workers or children then? If what you say is true then they arent going to be able to get those jobs either, in fact pretty much nobody is.

I added in the implied portion of his message, which left his message ambiguous if not understood by the reader.

Re:Better to spend on education than salaries

[ranton]

I know several folks who stopped getting recruiting calls after 40ish. I bet there is a substantial reservoir of talent that's going untapped. Granted, it's totally anecdotal but I've had the discussion with at least 10 to 15 folks who are pretty awesome engineers.

Not only anecdotal, but probably complete BS as well. Unless these people are living in an area with no market for software engineers, if they are out of work for more than a few months (unless by choice) they are mediocre at best. Two of the last three employers I worked for didn't even have a position for me when I was referred to them, they created a job just to not lose out on the opportunity to hire a quality software engineer. And while I am very good at my job, I'm not some kind of one in a million rock star either.

But echoing ShanghaiBill's comment, unemployment among programmers is nearly half the overall average, so regardless of our anecdotal stories the only objective facts out there show there is a pretty big shortage of quality software engineers.

Re:Better to spend on education than salaries

[ZenShadow]

Code is transient, in part, because it's badly written in the first place. If code was written to higher standards, less of it would have to be replaced over time.

Not true of all things, but definitely true of many.

Re: Better to spend on education than salaries

[Anonymous Coward]

>Bottom line here is that the companies in most cases don't feel like providing a compelling offer to applicants and are rewarded with nobody worthwhile applying.

So the work doesnt get done, their competitors eat their lunch and the company goes under. Who are these companies and what are these jobs? If the company doesnt want to spend money on good people then they will get crap people, crap products and crap financial results. There is no rule to say they must offer you the job you want at the price you want, if you dont like it you go somewhere else.

Nobody is going to pay you $150k a year to wash cars or make coffees or wait tables so these jobs get done by people who are willing to do the job for less. Such low level jobs exist in IT as well and somebody needs to do them.

Re:Better to spend on education than salaries

[Anonymous Coward]

BINGO.

They won't be happy until they have turned six figure jobs into burger flipper salaries.

Re: Better to spend on education than salaries

[Anonymous Coward]

Tech salaries are too low and haven't kept up with money printing. Avg starting wages should be around $400k-$500k outside of SF/Silicon Valley.

Re: Better to spend on education than salaries

[Anonymous Coward]

All it proves is that you are a shitty programmer who is good at rigging resumes, updating progresses at stupid linkedin every second and some. I bet you are below average, probably one of those indian chimps with an H1B degree.

Re: Better to spend on education than salaries

[Anonymous Coward]

Management: we get to hire and fire programmers by the truckload, good money, great severance. Nobody ever calls security to escort managers out of the premises because security likes to keep them jobs you know and slighting the rulers is one sure way to be unemployed forever. Of course it's not for everybody, too bad for you if you can't find a better job than code monkey. Oh well, we can't all be winners. :)

Re:Better to spend on education than salaries

[AmiMoJo]

Even the highest quality code will be abandoned if the person commissioning it didn't know what they really wanted, or failed to adequately predict future requirements. A lot of new code is written just because the old code doesn't work quite the way it needs to or there is some new technology that needs to be supported and starting from scratch is easier.

Re:Better to spend on education than salaries

[Nephandus]

And the UNDERemployment rate?

Re:Better to spend on education than salaries

[dcw3]

"Tech's problem is that it doesn't have strong unions and advocacy groups" /yawn. If you're in tech, and having trouble finding a job, then GTFO because you're clearly not capable. Show me someone in tech that's having trouble finding a decent paying job, and I'll show you an incompetent "tech". I've been in the industry for 40+ years, and hire plenty of good techs at good wages. Want to "fix" tech?...

We need lawmakers to stop companies from the H1B madness.
We need to put an end to the huge debt load we're weighing down kids going through college.
We need a national solution to the lack of pensions, and shitty 401ks.
We need a national solution to immigration and healthcare.
We need term limits and money/lobbyists out of government influence.

I could go on. Your unions and advocacy groups aren't going to fix this. And, for whatever it's worth, I'm a fiscal conservative who believes in smaller government.

Re:Better to spend on education than salaries

[Anonymous Coward]

*Your* code, yeah. Mine is still published in a dozen github projects, including some of my OpenSSH hack-arounds from the late 1990's.

Re: Better to spend on education than salaries

[Anonymous Coward]

"non-programming programmers"
Companies don't hire them because they can't find somebody competent. They hire them because they're obedient and have no ambition. I've worked with their kind and they're paid a fortune to be that way.

Re:Better to spend on education than salaries

[Anonymous Coward]

> that's exactly why most of your stuff is made in china. Why do you think IT would be any different than manufacturing?

It's not, and it's been rigged that way by payola from big corporations who can take advantage of globalization. The individual cannot afford to move around the world to wherever the cost of living is lower, so as to compete on wages.

Globalization is a scam that will eventually lead to ruin when the working class is completely tapped.

Re: Better to spend on education than salaries

[Anonymous Coward]

You're drinking the corporate Kool-Aid if you think there are any jobs in IT on the semi-skilled level of making coffee and washing cars.

The PTB want you to think that you are an easily replaceable cog and that anyone can do your job. Never mind the training and studying you had to do in order to know WTF you're doing... they're dead set on proving that ANYONE can do these jobs.

"See? We taught a second-grader to program! Managing a server farm can't be that difficult!"

Re: Better to spend on education than salaries

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is H1Bs are also taking the experienced high level jobs and displacing our older workers.

Re: Better to spend on education than salaries

[Anonymous Coward]

PC repair and help desk.

'Nuff said.

Re:Better to spend on education than salaries

[ShanghaiBill]

And the UNDERemployment rate?

Zero. Under-employment means people working part time while desiring full time employment. I have never heard of a "part time" software development job.

Re:Better to spend on education than salaries

[Anonymous Coward]

> Zero. Under-employment means people working part time while desiring full time employment.

Really. I've always heard it used to mean people working in a job where their skills and knowledge are not fully being utilized.

Re: Better to spend on education than salaries

[Anonymous Coward]

You think PC repair is as easy to learn as washing cars and making coffee? Give me some of what you're smoking.

Help desk is a different story - you can work that from a script, but that makes it a customer service job, not an IT job.

Re: Better to spend on education than salaries

[Anonymous Coward]

>You're drinking the corporate Kool-Aid if you think there are any jobs in IT on the semi-skilled level of making coffee and washing cars.

As somebody already said: PC repair jobs and help desk are perfect examples.

>The PTB want you to think that you are an easily replaceable cog and that anyone can do your job. Never mind the training and studying you had to do in order to know WTF you're doing... they're dead set on proving that ANYONE can do these jobs.

And when they employ somebody who doesn't know "wtf they are doing" and borks their ecommerce portal for a few days it's going to become pretty obvious what the problem is. Companies stupid enough to jump on this are going to suffer the consequences.

Re:Better to spend on education than salaries

[DeVilla]

There's a similar shortage in construction. I can't find someone to rebuild my from porch (for $1k total), to redo my baths rooms (for under $500 each) or to put a few good size rooms in my attic (what, $1.5k should be reasonable, right?). I also have a 2 story carrage house that need to be rebuilt and modernized with better wiring and wider stairs. (That should $3k tops, right?)

We clearly need more people trained in construction in this country.

Re:Better to spend on education than salaries

[Anonymous Coward]

> Code is eferial

What are you trying to say here?

Code is feral?
Code is effeminate?
Code is euphoric?
Code is effusive?

pfttt

[Anonymous Coward]

hahahahaha ahahahahaa
haaaaaahhhhhh

Who teaches the teachers?

[sconeu]

Who will teach the librarians to code well enough so that they can pass on that knowledge to the kids?

Re: Who teaches the teachers?

[Anonymous Coward]

And then what happens when they ditch the library job for a gig in Silicon valley?

Re:Who teaches the teachers?

[0100010001010011]

Why do the librarians need to know how to code? Librarians have never been a jack of all trades but were instead a knowledgeable source as to where to find the information. They didn't have every book memorized but could assist people in finding the book so they could learn on their own.

My local library has a 3D printer and while the librarians can answer basic questions they (in a much politer way) tell you to RTFM. "Equipping librarians" can be nothing more than introducing them to the fact that Code Academy exists.

Re:Who teaches the teachers?

[freeze128]

Worse, who will check all the library books back in when the librarians are busy teaching kids to code?

Re:Who teaches the teachers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you familiar with the idea of teaching a skill? No, it's not the same as "read this". To self-learn efficiently you have to be highly organized and motivated, and most kids aren't. I remember my first "computer science" class in school back in the early 80s. We "learned" to correct syntax errors in a BASIC program. On paper. The teacher was a math teacher, which is much closer to programming than a librarian, but definitely not a coder, and it showed.

Re: Who teaches the teachers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Netscape

Re: Who teaches the teachers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ozymandias, preferably. Nite Owl could probably do it.

Re: Who teaches the teachers?

[Anonymous Coward]

My kids blue ribbon high school has only checked out 95 books this year. Librarians have bigger problems than learning to code.

Re:Who teaches the teachers?

[c]

Who will teach the librarians to code well enough so that they can pass on that knowledge to the kids?

... and pay them for what their extra teaching and IT skills would then be worth over just being a regular librarian.

Re:Who teaches the teachers?

[jader3rd]

Who will teach the librarians to code well enough so that they can pass on that knowledge to the kids?

That should have been happening decades ago when the librarians were in school. To prevent the same problem occurring in the future, we should start teaching our children now.

Re:Who teaches the teachers?

[AmiMoJo]

All they really need to know is the very basics of how to get started and point people at Google's course material. Most people literally wouldn't know where to start, but given the right IDE and the right beginners' course they can learn by themselves.

That's how most people of my generation learned. Our computers came with some kind of development environment, even if it was just a BASIC prompt, and a manual. Modern computers don't come with either of those things.

Re:Who teaches the teachers?

[ShanghaiBill]

Why do the librarians need to know how to code?

They don't. But they do need to know enough to point kids at scratch.mit.edu and show them how to open the first Youtube tutorial. The kids can take it from there, with the brighter kids helping the dumb kids.

I teach programming in an after school program for 4-6th graders, and by the 2nd week, the kids are mostly on autopilot, learning at the own rates ... and some learn WAY faster than others ... doing 3D graphics and trying to write a Minecraft clone while the dumb kids are still trying to figure out how loops work. So a normal classroom environment where the teacher talks and the kids listen does NOT work.

Re:Who teaches the teachers?

[Anonymous Coward]

They'll bootstrap. They know how to read books and how to find them.

Oh wait, most of CS is learned by doing, not by rote memorization.

Re:Who teaches the teachers?

[0100010001010011]

I wish my local librarian understood this. I wanted to donate $200 in Arduino stuff to the Library and she kept on bothering me about how would I come and train the kids on it. Could I have classes etc.

I was the 14 year old kid that lived at the library (Only place with Internet in my county). You don't need to teach them anything other than point them in the direction of reading material.

Re: Who teaches the teachers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Rather beside the point: people look at a lot more books than they check out. Find text, study relevant section, put it back where you got it from.

Re:Who teaches the teachers?

[wwphx]

I interviewed last week for a Library Aid position at a local K-5 school, functionally I would be the one and only school librarian. It pays $9 an hour and I'd be happy to take it because it helps the local community, money isn't the objective here. I was informed that I would have the kids for 30 minutes per week per class to help them find books and material for their homework assignments. THIRTY MINUTES PER WEEK PER CLASS. Now, I've been doing programming and relational database since the mid 1980s. I've worked with every edition of SQL Server from the OS/2 version up through Azure cloud-based. I've taught classes before, including absolute computer novice adults, though I've never taught programming to kids. I used to be able to program in a dozen different languages, I admit some of those skills are kinda rusty. And Google thinks that in this age of high-stakes testing that there's enough time in a school day that kids can be taught programming when they have THIRTY MINUTES PER WEEK in the library?

Somebody's fooling themselves. Or I need what they're having. I'm more and more becoming a fan of the phrase "It will be a glorious day when our education system has the money it needs and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber." Of course, if DeVos gets approved to be the new SecEd, it will only get worse.

Wrong skill set

[QuietLagoon]

..."by equipping librarians with the knowledge and skills to cultivate computational thinking and coding skills in our youth."...

Do librarians really have the appropriate innate skill set, and desires, to teach kids how to code? This sounds like Google was looking around for someone to do the teaching, and someone at the meeting said, "librarians!," to which everyone agreed (in typical meeting style).

.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:Wrong skill set

[hambone142]

Most librarians are government "workers". I doubt if they'll take on any other challenges without a pay raise. The city next to me charges developers a fee for building libraries. However, that doesn't pay for the librarians so they shut the library down most of the time.

They won't allow volunteers to staff it because of union regulations.

How about teaching kids to type first?

[mykepredko]

As somebody who works with kids & technology, I'm convinced that things would go a lot more efficiently if kids could use a keyboard effectively along with knowing how to use a mouse.

Most kids are quite adept at working with touchscreen on a phone or a tablet, but put them in front of a keyboard and anything you are trying to teach them is lost as they search out basic letters and then try to figure out how the shift key works.

Re:How about teaching kids to type first?

[freeze128]

Also, don't call it "keyboarding", call it "typing". When you use your oven, it's not called "ovening".

Re:How about teaching kids to type first?

[Anonymous Coward]

When you use your oven, it's not called "ovening".

That's what I call it. I'm a master oveneer with years of ovening experience.

Re:How about teaching kids to type first?

[rudy_wayne]

An upvote for you, sir.

Re: How about teaching kids to type first?

[Anonymous Coward]

And there's a frood dude Who knows where his towel is! I myself happened to be a griller in the summer and a ranger in the winter!

Re:How about teaching kids to type first?

[hambone142]

I took freshman high school typing. I was the only male in the class way back when. I found it was one of the most-useful classes I ever attended.

I agree that in the computer age, typing is a necessity. Also, I used to type a lot of technical reports. It's obviously necessary for the same reason.

Re:How about teaching kids to type first?

[dcw3]

Also, don't call it "keyboarding", call it "typing". When you use your oven, it's not called "ovening".

Well, it used to be done on typewriters, and now it's done on keyboards. I'm not a fan of "keyboarding", but maybe "keying" would have been appropriate, except that word was already taken for marking up someone's car.

Re:How about teaching kids to type first?

[dcw3]

Ditto except there was one other male in the class with me and about 25 girls around tenth grade...probably around '72-3. Never thought I'd use that skill, but glad I learned, and had a blast competing with the other guy for speed, and impressing the girls.

FUCK YOU

[Anonymous Coward]

It's hard enough to find a job as it is, with companies far and wide offshoring. Teaching every fucking kid to code isn't going to help matters any.

Re:FUCK YOU

[ruir]

Doctors are too expensive. Lets teach all the kids...
Lets teach all the kids plumbing...
Hey, politicians are too expensive...lets teach all the kids politics...

Re:FUCK YOU

[Anonymous Coward]

It's hard enough to find a job as it is, with companies far and wide offshoring. Teaching every fucking kid to code isn't going to help matters any.

Seriously you're that bad at your job that you're worried that teaching kids to code is going to result in you getting replaced?

Re:FUCK YOU

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you really that insecure? The suggesting of teaching kids to code (and for the uninitiated like yourself just take my word for it that there is a vast difference between software development and just 'coding') you immediately take to mean somebody is saying "coders" are too expensive.

But that said I actually agree with your sentiment, if we can do things to get more children interested in pursuing medicine then that's a great thing. There are many skills taught in schools that expose children to the fundamentals of politics or trades like plumbing. Why do you fear investment in local skills so much?

Re:FUCK YOU

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not that we're bad at our jobs, it's that employers don't understand how valuable the skills and knowledge we've accumulated are. Not enough to pay for it, anyway-- it's a management problem. They think throwing 10 cheap programmers at a project will make it succeed better/faster/stronger than hiring 3 good, experienced programmers.

The lesson they missed is the one about how you can't get 9 women to produce a baby in a month.

500,000 job openings

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm in my 50s, with 30 years of programming experience in many languages and fields. Can't get hired because of age and I guess I want too much money. This is reality in this field.

So I suppose Google is really saying let's get kids to code so we can hire them at 20 and pay them peanuts. Then let them go when it's too expensive and do it all over again.

Re:500,000 job openings

[0100010001010011]

Have you considered that you don't have modern, relevant job skills?

How in demand are drafters? A drafter will tell you they're 'highly skilled' and it's because of their age that they can't get hired when that's not the case. We taught CAD to engineers a long time ago.

Listening to Slashdotters 'gui programming' is laughable, stupid, and will never work. Yet there are Simulink jobs everywhere across the US.

Just scanning Indeed.

3000+ FORTRAN Jobs: https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=...

3000+ COBOL jobs: https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=...

3000+ Simulink jobs: https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=...

~1000 Lua jobs: https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=...

Most of those are 60k+ and quite a few 95k+. So I'm at a loss as to how there can be so many open jobs and so many people claiming they can't find any jobs. Somewhere there is a disconnect and I'm going to guess it's that people don't have relevant job skills.

Re:500,000 job openings

[Anonymous Coward]

You see a person claim to be over 50, then immediately leap upon them as "archaic" and "obsolete" based on literally zero information. Then you put links to FORTRAN and COBOL jobs. Hilarious. Sounds like you need to update your definition of "modern".

Re:500,000 job openings

[AuMatar]

I was just on the market (new job started Monday). I told every company who asked me I was looking for 180+. I ended up with offers coming on over that. So it isn't the money. And while I'm not in my 50s, many of my new coworkers are. SO it isn't the age. Right now in this market if you can't find a job programming, PEBKAC.

Re: 500,000 job openings

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems like he linked to jobs that would fit the role of people here complaining they can't find a job.

If you can code in anything modern, you will have a job.

You might have to move though. What people complain about is they can't find a job within a certain radius from their house, which happens.

Re:500,000 job openings

[Oligonicella]

Just because a listing is for a COBOL/FORTRAN/etc job doesn't mean the company will hire an older, experienced applicant. I've been subjected to that myself.

Re:500,000 job openings

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Debugging skills are where the hot action will be; with all these librarian-trained programmer turning out spaghetti-loads of crap. Someone will need to clean up the mess, and get it working. Speaking off the Flying Spaghetti Monster, lots of folks go to church and Sunday school . . . why don't we have ministers, priests and the like teach coding? It makes as much sense as having librarian programming teachers.

I learned how to learn how to use a power drill and furniture spackle at carpentry school . . . so I can work as a dentist, as well. The carpenter taught me how to drill and fill holes!

Re:500,000 job openings

[Anonymous Coward]

I learned how to learn how to use a power drill and furniture spackle at carpentry school . . . so I can work as a dentist, as well. The carpenter taught me how to drill and fill holes!

Not necessarily. You say you learned how to learn those things. You didn't say whether you used that knowledge to actually learn those things. Therefore, we don't know if you know how to use those things.

And, this is an argument that librarian-trained 'coders' will never make. Yes, I'm a pedantic nerd. But so are the machines, so that's what the job entails.

Re: 500,000 job openings

[0100010001010011]

What people complain about is they can't find a job within a certain radius from their house, which happens.

It's not just the older crowd there. "Why can't I find a 70k engineering job in the middle of Chicago?" Well. Because Chicago isn't a haven for engineering. Cat, Deere, Cummins, etc are all doing their engineering out in places where there is a lot of cheap land for them to build facilities on.

You get kids fresh out of college wondering why they can't find a job within a biking commute from San Fran on Seattle when there are thousands of unfilled jobs in the states they make fun of as 'flyover country'.

Re:500,000 job openings

[0100010001010011]

FORTRAN runs the engineering world. Even Python+Numpy is just a pretty wrapper on FORTRAN subroutines.

A lot of high end simulation tools are written in FORTRAN and to adapt them to new simulations they need people that know FORTRAN and know it well.

COBOL is the same in finance..

Unless engineering or finance stops they are modern.

Every 'coder' that can mash a keyboard can put node.js and Python on their resume.

Re:500,000 job openings

[Anonymous Coward]

A few months ago I returned from a camping trip, visited several campgrounds. The proprietor of one place asked me a lot of questions about how I found them, what I thought of their web site, etc (it was OK but not great). She said she needed to figure out how to overhaul the site during the offseason.

I didn't take the bait because I have a FT job, and I didn't want to moonlight as a consultant or volunteer. Besides, I know nothing about web development. But, it was easy to imagine that there are tons of volunteer opportunities for web site development out there. It can be as much about training yourself on all the latest platforms and tools as it is about helping someone out. Then you should be able to deal with hiring managers with confidence and conviction - not "I know I can figure this out", but rather "I know exactly what you need and how to do it".

Just sitting there feeling sorry for yourself, that's just stupid. This is not 2009-2010 anymore.

Re:500,000 job openings

[Anonymous Coward]

If someone is over 50, and has years of say, C++ / C#. You're telling me they can't come up to speed on the framework of the day in a reasonable amount of time? That it makes more sense to let the job go unfilled or seek out someone with 2 years in the business and 6 months with that tool set instead?

You. Are. Part. Of. The. Problem.

Re:500,000 job openings

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a trick I've used: don't put your age on your resume. Remember that resumes are for highlighting relevant skills and qualifications and showing that you've done your homework about what the company does, not listing irrelevant factoids like what color car your drive and when you were born. There will still be age bias to deal with at the interview but at least you are there, able viewing reactions and hence able to work around prejudices to some extent.

Re:500,000 job openings

[Anomalyst]

In the same boat, most positions have me competing with 20+ much younger applicants and I dont think I'm asking for all that much money: $40K as a network/systems admin, I'd even take a slot as an entry level Java programmer.

Re:500,000 job openings

[EmperorOfCanada]

I have seen very few companies that were making a profit not hire someone because of their age. What I have seen is companies not hire someone because they just didn't add anything. What I have seen in all ages, but more in older people, is a rejection of things that have passed beyond "fad" and into best practices. Things like unit testing, modular code, modern OS usage, modern mixes of data stores that include things like nosql alongside relational.

Being able to program many languages is fine, quickly putting out a quality product that can hold its own against the competition is critical.

Although it sounds like you aren't guilty of the worst part of people who are in their 50s, One language for all solutions (usually Java or .net).

Re:500,000 job openings

[Anonymous Coward]

???? I'm 50 and working ruby/rails, node/react and go. Been working on purescript in my time off because I figure the pure fp is the next thing to be popular (I might very well be wrong, but it's fun anyway and has been helping me improve in many other ways).

If you're unemployed and a programmer, just pick something you want to work in and between firing off CVs, write code. Make it something that you would want to show people. If, by some chance, you end up unemployed for an entire year you'll have a pretty nice project to show off for your time. Although, if that happens, you really need to investigate whether or not there is something in you interview skill set/attitude that needs improving. Again, if you work on it a bit every day for a year, you'll be brilliant at it compared to most people. Or if you're not getting interview, work on your CV. Or work on your networking (go to meetups etc, etc). Unemployment needs to be treated as a job if you intend to be employed

Re:500,000 job openings

[Anonymous Coward]

> Debugging skills are where the hot action will be; with all these librarian-trained programmer turning out spaghetti-loads of crap.

Ahh, I see you've been using pypi.org!!! Or maven, or gradle.

Re: 500,000 job openings

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow are you out of date. People have moved on from Fortran to Cuda.

Re:FUCK YOU from an Operator

[0100010001010011]

It's hard enough to find a punch card operator job as it is, with companies far and wide buying auto feeders. Teaching every CS student how to type their code into a terminal instead of a punch card isn't going to help matters any.

It's hard enough to find a telephone operator job as it is, with companies far and wide moving to automated switchboards. Teaching every person how to dial a phone number instead of relying on the switchboard isn't going to help matters any.

It's hard enough to find a driving job as it is, with companies teaching everyone including WOMEN how to drive. Teaching every person how to drive a car for themselves instead of hiring a livery driver isn't going to help matters any.

Girls only, again ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are they funding teachers not to teach boys again, or have they apologised for that disgusting sexism ?

Re: Girls only, again ?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is nothing stopping boys from having gender reassignment surgery if they want to learn how to program with the grrls.

Vocational training for young kids is a waste.

[hey!]

Who knows what jobs will be available in twenty years, between AI and offshoring? Coding doesn't look like a sure thing at all.

If you are going to focus on a skill, focus on ones that serve in that kind of future environment: being able to pick up on human context and nuance; to decode, no just the literal level of communication, but implicit levels of communication. Because even if AI and foreigners take our coding jobs, somebody is going to have to lay out specifications, and that take imagination and subtlety.

And you know what would be really, really good for developing those kinds of skills? Reading and discussing books.

Re: Vocational training for young kids is a waste.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong! The key is to save all your money and live a simple lifestyle. That way, when it all goes to shit you won't be fighting for scraps.

Re:Vocational training for young kids is a waste.

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem isn't that more computer scientists are required. The problem is that computer scientists are bad at making good tools and user interfaces for non computer scientists. If everyone is a computer scientist then you no longer really need to have significant investment it making tools that are easy to use. And, for that matter, the users would be likely more tolerant of bugs and workarounds. It's not that we need more people making these tools; it's that the people making these tools today are lazy and want to close off the projects at 90% completion, and then trickle patches and firmware upgrades over the life of the product.

Why would I want someone in their 30s/40s?

[rsilvergun]

They'll have a family, so they'll want to get paid more and work less hours. Also by 40 they'll start having health problems that'll cut into their hours even more.

And we've already established they're not more experienced. In your scenario they just got trained up (probably on the cheap, my kid's in college and it's gonna take about $160k to get her through if I count food/transportation/etc. That's a nursing degree. Double that if she decides to switch to pre-med).

Because everyone needs to be able to code...

[cshotton]

This is silly. It's like saying the nation's librarians need to teach kids to perform appendectomies, or how to fly a jet airplane, or how to speak Swahili. There's no way that the majority of librarians are qualified to teach programming. If they were, they probably would be doing something related to writing software and not related to library science. And learning to code is no different than learning to engineer a bridge or learning to perform brain surgery. It requires aptitude in the student and competency in the teacher and years of hard work. Trivializing "coding" as if it were something like "typing" or "burger flipping" shows how out of touch the people proposing this actually are. Shame on them for wasting our time and money.

Re:Because everyone needs to be able to code...

[exomondo]

And learning to code is no different than learning to engineer a bridge or learning to perform brain surgery.

Rubbish. Learning software development maybe but not just learning to code. The idea that computer users would be comfortable controlling their machines by writing scripts and using the command line rather than always having to rely on a dumbed down GUI is a good thing!

Re:Because everyone needs to be able to code...

[Anonymous Coward]

This. As a professional programmer for over 30 years, the constant "everyone should code" thing is getting scary. I watch some fora where people who really only have half a clue are "putting together a website to ....". The code they post that they ask questions about is poor. Their grasp of how they need to go about what they are trying to do is worse than poor.

And yet, both they and I are considered "coders". If we were building houses, then perhaps I would be an architect and/or a skilled labourer in one or more fields (electrician, plumber, brick layer, carpenter ... whatever), while they might be at best someone who could put together a wobbly fence using screws which they refer to as "nails" the whole time.

I always wonder why our industry doesn't require people who build really important things (bridges, houses, websites which take your credit card) to have qualifications that people who build trivial things (a wobbly fence, a website which tells you all the possible anagrams of your name) shouldn't need.

Re:Because everyone needs to be able to code...

[Anonymous Coward]

This. As a professional programmer for over 30 years, the constant "everyone should code" thing is getting scary.

What are you afraid of? That some kid who learned to code in the library is going to do a better job than you and thus take your job?

I watch some fora where people who really only have half a clue are "putting together a website to ....". The code they post that they ask questions about is poor. Their grasp of how they need to go about what they are trying to do is worse than poor.

So they need to be taught how to do it well, they are seeking help and you are just dismissing them, do us all a favor and take your elitist mentality and just fuck right off.

And yet, both they and I are considered "coders". If we were building houses, then perhaps I would be an architect and/or a skilled labourer in one or more fields (electrician, plumber, brick layer, carpenter ... whatever), while they might be at best someone who could put together a wobbly fence using screws which they refer to as "nails" the whole time.

So your beef is just with people calling themselves "coders". If you struggle to differentiate yourself from these people just because they call themselves coders then your problem is much larger than you realize.

I always wonder why our industry doesn't require people who build really important things (bridges, houses, websites which take your credit card) to have qualifications that people who build trivial things (a wobbly fence, a website which tells you all the possible anagrams of your name) shouldn't need.

They do. It's part of the hiring process for jobs, it should be right there on your resume what your education is. Anybody can design a bridge and anybody can code, that doesn't mean you can do it well and saying "oh well we shouldnt teach them then" is just stupid.

Re:Because everyone needs to be able to code...

[0100010001010011]

I always wonder why our industry doesn't require people

Because you refuse to unionize.

If you want to have a certain level of quality and not get walked over by employers it's a way to do it.

That's how you determine the difference between a guy that is qualified to do electrical work on your house and some guy that thinks screws are nails.

Re:Because everyone needs to be able to code...

[AHuxley]

AC the rush to profit seems to be from 3 areas:
Books, robots and GUI code to help educate has to be created, updated, supported and have new books on how to teach code in new inclusive ways...
Great if your making the approved robot kit, have the book or will be doing the support.
Party political educators needing to be seen to set inclusive educational policy with code and computers been the new area.
Virtue signalling by getting robots and GUI code to push inclusive educational policy.
Re " to have qualifications"
That could go back to the 1980's with Ada in the USA and a lot of other code that needed university like software, hardware and network access.
The education change could have been the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... in the UK.
Give all students some access to a computer lab and some of them will code games, music, art, databases, math over decades. Nation building generations later with lots of computer ready students.
From both an education software side and the UK having its own hardware, education was going to produce work ready students over the decades for the UK.
Did the UK become the computer code centre of the world in the later 1980s and into the 1990's? Given all that early exposure to emerging computing?
The US seems to have taken that idea from the 1980's UK and added the spin of computers having to be inclusive.
Put computers and the best code in front of all students and many more students will be lifted into higher education. Get good jobs and bring jobs and wealth back into their local communities...

Re:Because everyone needs to be able to code...

[dcw3]

Doesn't it really depend upon if we're talking about software engineering, or we're just talking about basic coding? There's a huge difference between the two that the majority of people outside the industry just don't understand. And I know, coders need to be properly trained to avoid insecure code, and they should also be trained to write reusable, maintainable, well commented code. But, if a designer (I'm talking about large project work) hands off some pseudo-code to a coder, it should be trivial for them to implement, and code reviews should catch any gaping holes.

Re:Because everyone needs to be able to code...

[dcw3]

Just because you can put gas in the tank doesn't make you an automotive engineer. You still have no clue how the guts work.

Re:Because everyone needs to be able to code...

[dcw3]

"If you want to have a certain level of quality..."

How did that work out for the UAW? Oh, American auto quality was crap, and they had to be bailed out.
How's that working for the teachers union? Oh, public education is wonderful, isn't it?
How's that working out for sports players unions? Oh, we have wife beaters, and dog fighters, and roid rage, but it's all good.

If you're in tech and getting "walked over", there are plenty of companies hiring that won't do it. Move on.

Re:Because everyone needs to be able to code...

[0100010001010011]

Labor vs Trade union.

IT should be a Trade union. You should be picking up 15 year olds and giving them apprenticeships along with half day education. It's how Germany is doing almost all of their skilled trades and they're not having near the number of issues that we are with this sort of thing.

Re:Because everyone needs to be able to code...

[dcw3]

I'm very familiar with how Germany (having lived there for six years, and relatives living there) does it, and it's not all rosy. Don't do well on your Abitur exam, and kiss any professional career goodbye unless you leave the country. That said, I'm all for apprenticeship programs, but American companies need some incentive for them to make it cost effective. There's currently nothing keeping someone who just got trained from taking that somewhere else after a company has invested a pile of money in them...there needs to be a payoff for the company.

Re:Because everyone needs to be able to code...

[0100010001010011]

Don't do well on your Abitur exam,

Americans saddled with a ton of debt and a useless degree could be so lucky to have been told at an early age they weren't college material.

Re:Because everyone needs to be able to code...

[elgatozorbas]

There's no way that the majority of librarians are qualified to teach programming.

Apparently rationale behind this is librarians are boring and computer programmers are also boring.

Re:Because everyone needs to be able to code...

[dcw3]

Some yes, but for many you males, they're too immature that that age...I certainly wasn't ready until my early 20s. Your entire career path should never be based on a single exam. Many people end up going to other countries because they can't become doctors or other professionals because of a poor exam score.

Re:Because everyone needs to be able to code...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because you can put gas in the tank doesn't make you an automotive engineer. You still have no clue how the guts work.

Exactly the point! The only people suggesting the analogous situation of school-taught "coders" taking software development jobs are the fear-mongerers here. Just because you can code does not mean you are going to be developing complex software systems. You should be able to pump your own gas and you should be able to interact with your programmable computer via something other than just the GUI. You don't have to be afraid of people with basic coding skills taking software development jobs, having computer users with basic coding skills is a good thing because it reduces the dependence the populace has on these ever-dumbed-down GUIs that companies are turning out for computers these days.

The attitude here is just completely ridiculous, on the one hand there's this constant lamenting of the stupidification of computers but then as soon as somebody tries to teach users the fear-mongerers are out in force with the "they took our jobs" rhetoric.

Re: My new rap albumn for sale

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, rappers make lots of money, let's teach all kids how to rap...

Librarians can code?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you mean code as in "assign an alphanumeric code to a book"? I'm sure some kids will love that.

If you give kids enough drugs...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you give kids enough drugs, they'll code in the ER. That makes about as much sense as teaching everybody to code.

Re: All of this banking on probability makes me il

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, they've managed to produce gigabytes of shitty javascript code so far, so maybe a bunch more will do.

Drop enough bombs

[rsilvergun]

and you're bound to hit something. Especially with the occasional kid from a poor neighborhood who wins the genetic lottery and is naturally good at math.

Re: Drop enough bombs

[Anonymous Coward]

That kid is already contributing to OSS projects using a shitty pentium 3 based box that he's built from garbage parts at the age of 8, but he ain't getting that job either, cause he ain't got no money to buy himself a degree.

Re: Drop enough bombs

[thinkwaitfast]

I know quite a few who did

Re: Drop enough bombs

[QuietLagoon]

... and I know even more who don't.

.
That aside, the question is should google target librarians, or the collection of people who can actually succeed in this noble endeavour?

SWEET! Cheap code peasants!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing is better for the quality of a niche than flooding it with cheap product.

This isn't April 1st

[Anonymous Coward]

But someone at google is completely out of touch with reality. Perhaps they are living in la-la lonad, or in some sort of drug-induced fog.

The fire that starts itself...

[Anonymous Coward]

In my case, having the opportunity to code was sufficient. I suspect this is how hackers got started, and probably still get started. Yeah, instruction might help with specific tools and techniques, but the will-to-hack is either there or it isn't. I don't think we need more people who want a paycheck coding. Rather, we need people who code independently of whether they get paid to do it.

Or, shall we say, code well...

Re:The fire that starts itself...

[Anonymous Coward]

How true. I've met very few great developers who wouldn't do it for just a decent "living wage". Of course, everyone is willing to accept $200K a year when offered and expect that if their peers are making that. Great developers write software "because it's there" and would do as a hobby even if their "real" job was working as a cashier at Walmart because that paid more. It's nice when one's hobby intersects with a commercial need.

Waste of time

[sit1963nz]

By the time these kids leave school/university, AI will probably be doing 80% of the programming. We may as well be teaching kids how to make buggy whips. What we SHOULD be teaching kids is social science, citizenship, art, history etc etc because within 20-30 years most people will be unemployed. We will need psychologists , social workers, psychiatrists and the like to work with people who reject technology. The idea of "Working for payment" is going to die, it will be "Working for emotional/intellectual reward". Sure there will be some jobs only people can do, but they will reduce too as AI and robotics gets better. And we may see more modular stuff where it takes 2-3 times as long to assemble, but its easier for robotics to do it that way, again the removal of human intervention. This has nothing to do with the value of programming, its all about Geeks making Jocks fail at something.

Re:Waste of time

[Anonymous Coward]

> What we SHOULD be teaching kids is social science, citizenship, art, history etc etc because within 20-30 years most people will be unemployed.

Especially the ones who studied social science, "citizenship", art, history, and "education". The STEM students have consistently been paid more and have been better prepared for shifting cultural, sociological, and technological change. I see it every day, when I help support family members who "pursued their dream" and believed "they could become anything they wanted to be", and refused to learn basic economics.

And if I see *one more basement dweller* whose Mom brings them Cheetohs and who spends a decade barely passing classes at their local community college pretending they're "going into computer game design!!!" who doesn't actually bother to *learn a programming language*...... I love the kids, I love their parents, but I want to put them on a farm for 2 years so that they can learn "if you don't work, you don't eat".

Re:Waste of time

[Anonymous Coward]

its all about Geeks making Jocks fail at something
 
Do they even need our assistance?

Ima have some a that krak you smokin'.

Re:Waste of time

[gweihir]

When have I heard that inane prediction before? Oh, right, here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
It was bullshit 30 years ago and it still is bullshit.

Re:Waste of time

[dcw3]

Glad I read this before responding. I was hearing that shit when taking Fortran back in the early 80s.

If we can be serious for a moment...

[snarkasaurus]

The truth of the matter is that the public school teachers of the USA (and Canada!) collectively lack the ability to teach basic reading comprehension, basic arithmetic and basic interpersonal communication. We know this because the victims of their incompetence turn up in university year after year, unable to read, count or speak coherently.

Google is probably seeking an "arrangement" with the national teacher's union. Slide them some money, make another front in the Anti-Trump Crusade.

If the Republicans are smart, they will de-unionize teachers and eliminate the federal Dept. of Education. Sadly, I know they're not that smart. They'll try to Make A Deal, and get slaughtered. Again.

Re:If we can be serious for a moment...

[dcw3]

I'm not so sure it's the teachers so much as the lawyers, union, school board, etc. that prohibit them from having any actual discipline in their classrooms.

captain google is at it again

[Anonymous Coward]

âKif, equip these useless librarians with the ability to code, I'll want them all turned into hackers by midnight"

Re:captain google is at it again

[OneoFamillion]

Also, I'm not sure that I want the company that is about to start regulating the "truthness" of information to have power in libraries, the one place where people have traditionally been able to pick up ANY book about ANY subject, and decide for themselves.

Sucker berk

[Anonymous Coward]

Sucker berk is a fucking imbecile. He lucked out being in the right place at the right time and coined it in with his loansharking/wire fraud operation.

Everything he's done since has been an abject failure.

Sturgeon's Law ?

[Black Parrot]

Does it apply now, or after everyone learns to program?

Re:Sturgeon's Law ?

[gweihir]

Enough people think they are "coders" these days that it has been applicable for a while: https://blog.codinghorror.com/...

San Diego libraries are now homeless shelters

[shmorhay]

Librarians have enough to do. Libraries have become homeless shelters, and librarians have to deal with the demented and the despairing. In San Diego, the beautiful new downtown library now has roving security guards rousting the poor, especially those who dare to nod off. Same problem in the smaller branch libraries. Maybe a trip to visit and chat with some librarians would be in order. With all the cuts in hours and salaries, listen to them tell you what they need. Making them adjunct faculty could be a non-starter, given their already onerous workload.

Re:San Diego libraries are now homeless shelters

[Anonymous Coward]

So the plan is to get the librarians to teach the demented and despairing to do coding? Solving two problems at once.

Re:San Diego libraries are now homeless shelters

[Obfiscator]

I agree with you, libraries have bigger challenges.

However, this is a story about a Google-funded project. I can't imagine Google funding libraries to do things which are not related somehow to computers. While perhaps not every library has the time/interest to participate in this, if some do, more power to them.

Code = byteboi cuniform

[Anonymous Coward]

Machines like code not real humans. Why teach code as fundamental and regress our species 4000 years ? Strunk & White Anglo-Saxon provides more-than-sufficient communications for a yeomanry-centered north America.
 

Creative and Subtle

[high_rolla]

This seems to me like it was designed to look good PR wise but never actually succeed. Which seems to be the case with a lot of these "teach the kids to code" schemes.

Libraries do: librarians *don't*

[Anonymous Coward]

I've just worked with several recent graduates of library schools. The first one was sub-par academically and socially, and is scrambling to keep *any* job to keep food on their lonely table. They don't like working with kids, they don't like working with confused people, they want to be told by a manager what their next task is. For the money they would cost in salary and hiring extra staff to cover all the "mental health days", I could replace half the circulation of the library they're failing to perform usable work at with a couple of low powered, robust systems with access to JSTOR and good network connection, and cut their annual costs by at least one full-time salary

The other has an Ivy League computer science degree and decided to throw it away because they "didn't like the work", and pursued more degrees in library science and "education". Out of a 20 year workspan since college, they spent *2* years working at the beginning, another 8 years in grad schools accumulating degrees instead of even doing volunteer work to gain hands-on experience, and the other 10 years "exploring their career paths" and *refusing to submit resumes* until now, their degrees are obsolete in the world or education "agenda of the moment" bureaucracy and the world of library "let's have 12 meetings a week to figure out a 5-year plan for book preservation" when they're too damn busy to actually help visitors who wind up just looking it up on Google instead of touching a book.

And I got chewed out as abusive and privileged cis-white-male for saying "stop playing with resumes and fictitious career gameplans and *do the damn work in front of you*."

Re:Libraries do: librarians *don't*

[Motherfucking Shit]

I could replace half the circulation of the library they're failing to perform usable work at with a couple of low powered, robust systems with access to JSTOR and good network connection, and cut their annual costs by at least one full-time salary

And how, pray tell, will the patrons check out those robust systems and that good network connection and take them home? You seem to lack a fundamental understanding of what makes a library different from, say, Wikipedia.

Re:Better to spend on 2x jobs than 1 dead coder

[Anonymous Coward]

I quit the programmer racket after nearly 20 years. After years of excessive overtime more money became less interesting than doing something about why I had zero quality of life. What programmers need is a union - make 'em hire two bodies to fill two jobs.

Very true, until everything was on the internet

[raymorris]

> A huge number of professions would benefit from people being able to script up something to reduce their work load.
> There are companies still doing books in Excel by hand (not relying on any of Excel's built in functions).

That is a great example. In 1990-2000, VBA scripting was something that could be very useful to a lot of people. These days, the spreadsheet is probably in the cloud (on the internet), pulling data from some source on the internet. Having people who can almost barely code creating code for your business, including those web-enabled spreadsheets, will very likely end up with one of them making all your data from your spreadsheets available online.

As someone who learned to code in the 1980s, writing various types of macros and shell scripts that I ran on my computer, I feel for anyone starting to learn now. These days, most code is exposed to the web in some way, so it's attacked a hundred times per day. It's awfully hard to learn b safely in a business environment, when the smallest mistake will be exploited by hackers.

Re:Very true, until everything was on the internet

[exomondo]

Being able to write scripts to automate bits of work is a great thing, having the average computer user familiar with using the command line rather than relying on dumbed down GUIs would be hugely beneficial. Not to mention the skills are much more portable, you can write bash scripts on just about any platform for example.

Re:Very true, until everything was on the internet

[AmiMoJo]

These days, the spreadsheet is probably in the cloud (on the internet), pulling data from some source on the internet. Having people who can almost barely code creating code for your business, including those web-enabled spreadsheets, will very likely end up with one of them making all your data from your spreadsheets available online.

I'd have thought the opposite. Files on Windows rarely make use of permissions and it's really easy to attach one to an email or throw it on a USB drive. Few organisations have much control over all the random files their employees use. On the other hand web services always require a log-in and the better ones enforce per user permissions by default too. They are still vulnerable to copy/paste leaks but at least emailing a link will still require the recipient to have viewing/editing rights.

Just don't expose it on the internet

[raymorris]

> having the average computer user familiar with using the command line

Perhaps. Having the average computer user exposing their scripts to internet is very dangerous. Which made it much easier when I learned, before the www was a thing.

Re:Just don't expose it on the internet

[exomondo]

Perhaps. Having the average computer user exposing their scripts to internet is very dangerous. Which made it much easier when I learned, before the www was a thing.

I'm talking about command line as an alternative to GUI. What sort of scripts are you talking about?

Re: Vocational training for young kids is a waste

[Anonymous Coward]

But if you don't have cable t.v., how will you be able to keep up with Honey Booboo?

Local library

[Anonymous Coward]

The local library has 20 computers and hosts 'internet for dummies' classes, mostly for pensioners. So the librarian has to be quite skilled at using Windows and different browsers.

... the American Library Association argues ....

This is librarians arguing that they need to supplement the school syllabus and teach more than basic information system skills. Since information system skills aren't taught in school, it's strange that librarians are ignoring their own niche market to support the 'monkey see, monkey do' lessons from school so that students can operate a computer. I think librarians are supporting it so they can get corporate sponsorship via the 'Ready to code' program.

I have a better idea

[ooloorie]

The biggest problem with expensive professional services is in health care. So, instead of having librarians teach kids how to code, why don't we have them teach kids how to treat patients? Librarians are smart, aren't they? Surely the could teach anything from GP diagnosis to pathology, radiology, and brain surgery, right? They are librarians! And by increasing the supply of medically trained kids, we could then better satisfy the demand for doctors!

Capitalism?

[Anonymous Coward]

Classic capitalism. Google wants society to pay for these programmers education so they can benefit. Socialized cost, privatized profits. Never forget that.

Nice plan

[Anonymous Coward]

Flood market with more programmers where there is already a flood of both graduated and laid off coders PLUS outsourced overseas coders. Result . Lower wages.

more for librarians to do..

[e432776]

..seems to me our collective hands full enough teaching kids to read.

Can I opt out?

[OneHundredAndTen]

I do not want my kids learning to code. I want for them to learn mathematics, physics, etc. and to develop their critical thinking schemes. I do not want for them to be trained to become code monkeys.

Re:Can I opt out?

[0100010001010011]

Ok, so they've learned Mathematics, Physics and Engineering.

How exactly do you think they're going to get work done? I'm a Mechanical Engineer that uses code as a tool to get the job done. Coding is not a profession any more than hammering is. It's a tool to get another job done.

Re:Can I opt out?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'm a Mechanical Engineer that uses code as a tool to get the job done."

I may be wrong, but I don't think that means what you think it means. Are you doing scripts, and Excel macros, or are you actually doing some design, code and test of programs that re reusable. There's a lot more to coding than defining a few variables, putting them in a loop and spitting out an answer for your mechanical design problem.

But Librarians only know ...

[PPH]

... shhhhell scripting.

Why can't we

[Anonymous Coward]

Find similar ways to replace all the $200,000+ salaried CEO and management positions? How about also replacing the goofy actors singers etc. that earn millions from garbage?

Re:Why can't we

[dcw3]

"Find similar ways to replace all the $200,000+ salaried CEO and management positions?"

$200k? That's low level management here in the DC burbs.

It's gotta be the legal weed

[Anonymous Coward]

It's gotta be the legal weed, seriously have those jokers even been to a library outside of the bay area?

Tor exit

[Anomalyst]

Include a Raspberry Pi with an opensuse tumbleweed (rolling updates to stay secure) server with privoxy and hosting a TOR exit node. It could double or triple the number of nodes for a measly $580,000.
# of public libraries:
Central Buildings* 8,895
Branch Buildings 7,641
Total Buildings 16,536

What would have and did help me become a coder?

[EmperorOfCanada]

Looking back at my very early start as a coder I would say that it was solving real world problems for people and then being rewarded for doing so. Given the incentive to code, I learned, I did, and I kept getting better.

But just sitting me down with double linked lists would have bored the crap out of me and I would have probably resented coding and dumped it.

So what could help kids today? I would say a combination of making sure they have the resources, the ability to get mentorship when they need it, and someone to connect them to someone who needs some code.

Shooting off your cocksucker again troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I don't shoot my mouth off without knowing what I'm talking about" - by raymorris (2726007) on Thursday December 31, 2015 @09:29AM (#51215379)

Raymorris you shoot your mouth off f'ing up in 2 security fuckups https://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=5351503&cid=47379233/ & https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=5351503&cid=47374033/ + raymorris = scriptkiddie https://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=8895203&cid=51726265/

&

Tell us how ONLY 'newer script kiddie tools' have stringlength built in (when PASCAL had it for ages - my fav tool) https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=8472509&cid=51114383/ YOU BLUNDERING WANNABE!

APK

P.S.=> You like to talk behind others' backs like the gossiping bitch TROLL you are raymorris https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=9880997&cid=53312265/ well, here I am letting YOU TALK in those links, showing your FAILS wannabe ... apk