The problem is that this is specifically job ads, and it's targeting people for what they *are*, not their skills. Would some people comfortable with this be OK if the job ad was targeted as "Women only apply" or "No Jews"?... I'd like to think that would be a problem.
There is a distinction between 'knowing how to code' and 'coding for a living'. To far too many people, computers are basically modern magic.
IT powers the whole infrastructure of modern society, so having a basic understanding of the principles involved would benefit everyone. CS should be on an equal footing with the other sciences in schools for this reason and the fact that it is a great tutor for problem solving and logical thinking.
That this is all fairly parsable for the readership of this esteemed journal, however, transparency only goes so far for Joe Public. Assuming that someone has the wherewithal to run either setup.exe or apt-get, for most people their knowledge is likely to stop there, with the free or closed product being equally opaque. Ability to understand what you're seeing is also implied by the transparency argument.
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The problem is that this is specifically job ads, and it's targeting people for what they *are*, not their skills. Would some people comfortable with this be OK if the job ad was targeted as "Women only apply" or "No Jews"?... I'd like to think that would be a problem.
There is a distinction between 'knowing how to code' and 'coding for a living'. To far too many people, computers are basically modern magic. IT powers the whole infrastructure of modern society, so having a basic understanding of the principles involved would benefit everyone. CS should be on an equal footing with the other sciences in schools for this reason and the fact that it is a great tutor for problem solving and logical thinking.
That this is all fairly parsable for the readership of this esteemed journal, however, transparency only goes so far for Joe Public. Assuming that someone has the wherewithal to run either setup.exe or apt-get, for most people their knowledge is likely to stop there, with the free or closed product being equally opaque. Ability to understand what you're seeing is also implied by the transparency argument.