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Ask HN: What is the most compelling reason young people should learn to program?
31–40 of 122 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is the most compelling reason young people should learn to program?
#32So that they can see through the BS explanation of “glitch” and call out the news for never digging deeper.
Re: Ask HN: What is the most compelling reason young people should learn to program?
#33Knowing how to write code in any specific language is ultimately a fairly useless skill except in a handful of jobs. Unless you're someone who is either a developer or a spreadsheet user the chances are pretty high you'll sail through life without even seeing a line of code. However... the parts of programming that are useful to everyone are applied logic, critical thinking, and 'debugging'. Being able to break down…
debugging mechanical engineering is quite similar, just more expensive ;)
Re: Ask HN: What is the most compelling reason young people should learn to program?
#34How does one instill a value with a young person a concept that takes half a life to discover?
I overuse 'flossing' as an analogy for anything that takes a long time to appreciate the value of. I've tried to promote flossing with various narratives - that its prideful, that it steals money from dentists, that it's the last people do but the first they should.
I always figure that the floss analog is falling flat, that it's not amusing or easy to understand or relevant as an analog, but I always come back to ulterior, that I just have no clue how to instill a value with a person that can only appreciate through decay.
Anyways I have no idea how to transfer these ideas to young people and since its the only way to 'give back' that I know, I'm feeling really useless.
Re: Ask HN: What is the most compelling reason young people should learn to program?
#35Because it's a form of literacy. If they don't want instinctively to learn is because educational institutions aren't making it interesting or engaging.
It's important because it allows us to instruct computers to do things on our behalf. The only infinitely versatile tool in human history.
Why should they only use their computer for browsing & word processing?
Re: Ask HN: What is the most compelling reason young people should learn to program?
#36Because they're interested in it.
There aren't any other reasons to learn it.
At all.
Re: Ask HN: What is the most compelling reason young people should learn to program?
#37Because more professions are increasing coding proficiency requirements.
- artists - you should be able to automate blender, photoshop, etc as needed
- finance - python increasingly required
- science - juptyerhub notebooks for data analysis
You don't have to know computer science, algos, and "correct" software arch. but you should definitely start getting comfortable with programming.
Re: Ask HN: What is the most compelling reason young people should learn to program?
#38It’s like learning a second language.
You learn programming language to talk to computer
Re: Ask HN: What is the most compelling reason young people should learn to program?
#39Knowing how to write code in any specific language is ultimately a fairly useless skill except in a handful of jobs. Unless you're someone who is either a developer or a spreadsheet user the chances are pretty high you'll sail through life without even seeing a line of code. However... the parts of programming that are useful to everyone are applied logic, critical thinking, and 'debugging'. Being able to break down…
debugging mechanical engineering is quite similar, just more expensive ;)
I think there's a key difference that puts programming a bit further ahead in my opinion - you can make a backup with software. You can 'undo' what you've tried, or reset the whole thing. In general with physical things you can only move forwards, and potentially you can make things way more broken than they already are. That's a useful lesson in itself, but if people are learning it's good that they're not scared of making mistakes. It's a lot harder to make things catastrophically broken with code (despite my best efforts).
Re: Ask HN: What is the most compelling reason young people should learn to program?
#40 1) To gain an appreciation or the gist of programming. I mean, most careers these days involve technology, software. Many non developers have to use "low code" software.
2) They might discover they DO like it and pursue a career in it. I think this is no different than other skills or disciplines. Give something an honest try first.