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New York Mayor De Blasio to Require Computer Science in Schools

nytimes.com

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Re: New York Mayor De Blasio to Require Computer Science in Schools

#51

Post by larrykubin »

dopeboy wrote: post #30
decisiveness wrote: post #5

>“The difficulty is getting enough teachers who are trained in it, and trained well enough to make it a good introduction to computer science,” said Barbara Ericson, the director of computing outreach at Georgia Tech’s College of Computing. “And if you are well-trained in computer science, you can make a lot more money in industry than teaching.” Seems to be the real problem here. What kind of negative effect might r…

Yep, this is the central problem and I'm disappointed the city isn't taking any steps in offering incentives to potential teachers. The hard truth is there's a huge opportunity-cost for a professional programmer to step into a ~$50k role. On a broader scale, what needs to happen is a TFA like organization for programmers that works with companies and source their employees for 1-2 year tours of duty. This org would t…

I am volunteering to teach in Seattle through the TEALS program (started by a Microsoft employee) for a couple of hours a week:

https://www.tealsk12.org/

We had a few summer training sessions to learn how to be effective teachers, and they have some lesson plans written out for teaching with Snap (a visual language based on Scratch). The high school in our neighborhood wants to offer AP Computer Science eventually, but we are starting with an Intro to CS class first. I agree that it will be hard to find professional software developers who will leave their job to become teachers, so it seems like we are relying on volunteers who have a good work life balance at this point.

Appreciate the blog post on your previous comment, sounds like NYC has its own similar organization. Anxiously awaiting school to start on Thursday :).

Re: New York Mayor De Blasio to Require Computer Science in Schools

#52

Post by kkalra »

dopeboy wrote: post #44
kkalra wrote: post #36

It's a good start but I think it better to focus on getting kids interesting in general math and sciences (of which computer science is a part). The next generation of entrepreneurs need to focus on solving bigger problems and not just focused on making apps. Of course all of it depends on how we can get kids more engaged and interested in learning (whatever subject that moves them).

I think what's being proposed here is both. I know it varies by country but atleast here in the US, kids learn the core subjects and then have a couple options for elective courses (music, basketball, etc). The objective of the mayor is to get CS into that elective list at all schools.

Agreed. Having that option is an absolute must. I've been a programmer for 20 years so I think this is a step in the right direction. The point I was trying to make is that in the last few years, there's been a lot of talk about getting kids interested in programming but there's a lot more to the sciences than just programming. We need to make general math and sciences more interesting to kids. Maybe programming will be that catalyst to leads kids to a love of math and sciences.

Re: New York Mayor De Blasio to Require Computer Science in Schools

#53

Post by alexvr »

By the time kids who are taught to program in K-12 enter the workforce, knowing syntax, computer details, and data structures will be a thing of the past or a thing for really hardcore engineers who have to use a strict language like Python. By that time, most common programming tasks will be a matter of writing plain English and testing the AI interpreters, and students will be stuck learning archaic programming just as they are presently forced to learn archaic and impractical math techniques that could be done very intuitively with a few lines of Python and arithmetic. I say this jokingly, but there may be some truth to it.

Re: New York Mayor De Blasio to Require Computer Science in Schools

#54

Post by cinquemb »

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #38
chongli wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you learn how to code, it'll still take you 6 hours at least to produce anything that would be even moderately useful. What? No way. I crank out extremely useful shell scripts in less than 5 minutes all the time. You don't have to use an IDE, compiler and some heavyweight framework just to be a programmer. Cobbling together a quick shell or Python script can let you do TONS of tasks that would be extraordinarily t…

We have user manuals and documentation for this. One need not devote a public school curriculum to it.

Tell that to very prominent VC's in NYC that have been blowing this horn for years in contradiction to your sentiments…[0].

I think public schools (and schools in general as an institution) face the same problem universities are facing: the obsolescence on such a mechanism to effectively and efficiently disseminate knowledge as more and more resources are allocated for signaling of such rather than acquiring/pursuit of it.

[0] http://avc.com/

Re: New York Mayor De Blasio to Require Computer Science in Schools

#57

Post by dopeboy »

larrykubin wrote: post #51
dopeboy wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, this is the central problem and I'm disappointed the city isn't taking any steps in offering incentives to potential teachers. The hard truth is there's a huge opportunity-cost for a professional programmer to step into a ~$50k role. On a broader scale, what needs to happen is a TFA like organization for programmers that works with companies and source their employees for 1-2 year tours of duty. This org would t…

I am volunteering to teach in Seattle through the TEALS program (started by a Microsoft employee) for a couple of hours a week: https://www.tealsk12.org/ We had a few summer training sessions to learn how to be effective teachers, and they have some lesson plans written out for teaching with Snap (a visual language based on Scratch). The high school in our neighborhood wants to offer AP Computer Science eventually, b…

That's awesome! I think TEALS has a chapter in NYC too.

Good luck for Thursday.

Re: New York Mayor De Blasio to Require Computer Science in Schools

#58

Post by danso »

bweitzman wrote: post #46
danso wrote: post #2

I imagine most of us programming now will be dead by the time (if at all) programming reaches some kind of universal acceptance; think of how long it took for literacy to become universally important, even though reading and writing was done centuries before Gutenberg. 20 years ago, learning programming wasn't as important because the technology just wasn't there to make it a good return on investment. But the value…

I think there's a fundamental difference between programing and literacy. Written language is a medium whereas programs are tools. Programming seems more similar to car mechanics to me. When the car was first introduced, everybody who owned one knew exactly how it worked and how to fix it. Partly because they were simpler and partly because the early adopter were just more interested. Over time, as the complexity and…

I have to disagree. A car mechanic is akin to a car as a tech support or sysadmin is to a computer. Some tech support people know far more than I do about fixing a computer, even if they aren't programmers.

It's been about a couple decades since I wrote my first for-loops and if-statements in Qbasic...but even though computers have grown exponentially, not just in pure power, but in influence and capability -- I use the exact same logic and thinking, every day, as an application programmer -- and very close to the same syntax.

Loops and conditionals (and functions, and so forth) are so fundamental to programming that it seems like anyone could learn them -- and use them to some practical effect -- in a few hours of following a few tutorials. But I haven't seen it in the beginners I've taught...It's a profound thing to communicate my exact intent to a thing that only knows, at its core, 1s and 0s...but it's not just the ability to write code, any more than writing is just the ability to make dark marks on a piece of paper. It's the ability to take thoughts and intents inside of me and communicate it to something fundamentally different from me, and yet be understood...in that sense, it's not so much different from traditional writing.

Re: New York Mayor De Blasio to Require Computer Science in Schools

#60

Post by crapolasplatter »

From what I have seen gov't typically does things for the benefit of the lobbyist and oligopolies and not the general public.

So I have a hard time not thinking that all this attention and push to teach programming isn't really a ploy to saturate the computer field with software engineers and programmers to lower their compensation.

IMO it looks like software engineers are getting compensated fairly well , perhaps to well and to close to executive and director pay. Increase the pool of software engineers and the less you have to pay them.

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