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Ask HN: What is the most compelling reason young people should learn to program?

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Re: Ask HN: What is the most compelling reason young people should learn to program?

#53

Post by cschep »

For young people at an economic disadvantage it can completely change the course of your life to work at a high tech salary for a decade. It can free you up to do the work/art/anything that you're more interested in.

But yeah I don't know if "should" is real here. If you're greatly compelled to do something else, go do that.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most compelling reason young people should learn to program?

#56

Post by photochemsyn »

Programming is difficult, and forcing young people to do something difficult that they don't find intrinsically interesting and compelling is mostly a waste of time and effort. Just because a parent wants their child to be able to play the piano with great skill doesn't mean they'll take to it.

However, learning to use computers for relatively simple tasks and as an aid in other areas makes a lot of sense. Take the concept of compound interest - an important notion for anyone who ever wants to buy a house. Learning how to write a simple script in a language like Python to calculate compound interest is going to be a useful life skill. Similarly, learning to write a simple script that backups all your stored photos to some storage media or other is a useful skill to have.

Notice this is very different from the old 'computer literacy' class concept that was all about teaching students that they needed to use Microsoft Office for everything, and that ideally they'd run Office on an Apple computer for all their needs. That was just a corporate marketing game.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most compelling reason young people should learn to program?

#57

Post by notacoward »

Because "programming plus $domain" is going to be the skillset to have for their working lifetimes. The other domain can be just about anything. Any kind of engineering, obviously, plus any kind of science, business, medicine, even law. (In fact, between mining legal opinions from the past and building algorithmic contracts in the future I think law is an especially good one.) Even in more trades-oriented work, a little bit of programming to plan and lay things out can be a competitive advantage. Unlike programming in tech itself, which tends to put us all on an update treadmill, programming in other domains is something you tend to do once and benefit from forever.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most compelling reason young people should learn to program?

#58

Post by omarhaneef »

There is this story, perhaps apocryphal, that someone asked Louis Armstrong: what is so great about jazz?

Supposedly, he answered: "If you have to ask, you'll never know."

Programming is not exactly like that, but every programmer I know of has spent hours and hours programming for fun, because there is a particular pleasure to it akin to writing, where you sit for hours and create/debug (puzzle solve).

Perhaps not everyone feels that way, but I think anyone can feel that way. It is worth giving a teenager a shot at that feeling.

It just so happens that this feeling is a gateway to making lots of change in the world, making money, participating in society and many other good things! This just happens to be such a great added benefit to this feeling that it should give you confidence that this would be a "good habit" for young people.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most compelling reason young people should learn to program?

#59

Post by pizza234 »

Programming teaches people to design solutions, and solve problems, in a structured and creative way. Concretely speaking, it gives the tools to solve some tasks very efficiently, but this needs experience.

However, forcing people (if that's the context; it's not clear), especially young ones, to learn something they don't have any interest in, is a surefire way to make them hate the topic in first place, and forget it after.

There are other means though, that could be tailored to one's interests, e.g. other engineering areas, or other science branches, or games (chess comes to my mind).

(of course, there's a small part of people who will find out they're actually interested, but that is the exception)

Re: Ask HN: What is the most compelling reason young people should learn to program?

#60

Post by pie42000 »

photochemsyn wrote: post #56

Programming is difficult, and forcing young people to do something difficult that they don't find intrinsically interesting and compelling is mostly a waste of time and effort. Just because a parent wants their child to be able to play the piano with great skill doesn't mean they'll take to it. However, learning to use computers for relatively simple tasks and as an aid in other areas makes a lot of sense. Take the c…

"Just because a parent wants their child to be able to play the piano with great skill doesn't mean they'll take to it"

And yet the beast, vast majority of kids who were forced to learn to play a musical instrument are grateful that their parents forced them to do it, even if they do not "take to it" i.e. 99.9% of kids. The ones who didn't get forced to learn an instrument regret missing out.

As a parent you are building a human being in your child. You can force them to play sports, play instruments, travel, go to museums, and study hard and learn useful skills. When they are 15 they will complain and wish you would be easier on them. When they are 30, they will thank you and pass on these gifts to their children.

If you let your kids laze around and do whatever, they will ignore you when they are 15, and wish they had stricter parents that forced them to do more things growing up when they are 30.

Obviously there is a balance and a right amount to push kids, but like most things in life, it's better to do too much than too little.

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