121–130 of 151 posts
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Drifting off on your carefully-tagged tangent: Basic medical procedures like CPR, the Heimlich Maneuver, using an epipen, applying a tourniquet, etc. ?
It was tagged in sarcasm, but to expand upon the dodgy analogy couldn't you argue that's just the medical equivalent of basic computer literacy?
I think I just don't understand a growing population on HN. Since when is programming about building websites? Or desktop apps? Or making money? What happened to ars gratia artis?
Why not empower people to spend their leisure time or their artistic pursuits in a new, challenging way?
I'm actually kind of tired of hearing, "there's no other field that lets you create something from nothing" vis a vis programming. Look: I LOVE coding. I LOVE programming. I think it's fun and challenging, etc. etc. But it's not the only creative outlet that has ever existed. Have you considered a pencil and a paper? Crayons? Markers? Paints and a canvas? A hammer, some wood and some nails? "Ah, but that requires som…
I think everybody should visit Reddit, for one simple reason: knowing how to make a meme is hugely empowering. I can’t think of many other skills that enable you to create something from scratch and reach as many people as knowing how to set up a simple rage post. Just last week, I was able to come up with an idea and then photographed my cat in 2 ways. That photo was then seen by about 10,000 people in a couple hour…
Your point in the wider discussion aside (sure, population-wide imperatives are a dangerous rhetorical device), I actually think actively participating in the Reddit rage comic community can be a very valuable experience. It will teach you how to tell a story and communicate the humor of a situation using a simple image editor. You can watch the real failure-learning happen in [1]. Thinking your work is comedy gold a…
And that on the Reddit comments the ordering of the panels is debated.
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During my internship at a manufacturing company, I knew enough about VBA to record a macro in Excel (just record, no actual coding involved) to automate ~10 minutes of work I had to complete monthly and included step-by-step instructions for how to run the macro and what the macro did. When I came back a year later after graduating, I learned the process was again being done manually because my replacement did not ha…
You hit on an important point: curiosity. Most of the best programmers are deeply curious, and I don't think that can be taught, though I do believe it can be cultivated from an early age. On the other hand, showing people how to safely experiment in ways they can be sure won't screw things up may be very empowering and allow them to express their creative drive.
My parents did not do that. Even today, they pride themselves on the fact that when I used to asked them a "What would happen if..." question, they'd be like "Why don't you try it out". Sure I may/may not have got myself in a sticky situation, but the point is they didn't shut me down. Also, if I ever broke something (which was fixable) my dad would actually open that damn thing and fix it during the weekends, talking and explaining to me what the things inside do. Sure I may be only 7-8 or even 10-11 but hey that adds more to my curiosity.
At their angriest, my parents have assessed the situation to check if it's fixable by a human at my age/capacity and given me a stern "fix it" look. Boom, that was a blessing in disguise as well because now I'd be all like "Shit, how DOES this work".
[Note: I'm neither married/not have kids...yet]
The problem that I've seen with others/their parents/their children is that they get annoyed quite quickly. And when you shut down a 5 year old, you can clearly see the pained expression on his face.
They simply lose interest in everything and end up becoming drones. And they're afraid of doing anything new because they worry if they screw it up, their parent will come home and beat them up.
I'm actually kind of tired of hearing, "there's no other field that lets you create something from nothing" vis a vis programming. Look: I LOVE coding. I LOVE programming. I think it's fun and challenging, etc. etc. But it's not the only creative outlet that has ever existed. Have you considered a pencil and a paper? Crayons? Markers? Paints and a canvas? A hammer, some wood and some nails? "Ah, but that requires som…
Singing
Dancing
Standup comedy
Story telling
etc.
So yeah, saying programming is the only field that we can create something from nothing is just hogwash.
I used to teach physics and the kids who didn't love it would often ask why they had to learn it. I didn't give them any baloney. I admitted that the vast majority of them would never need it professionally. I did point out that logical thinking was important and physics would help them with that. But I think the truth is that science, like most other aspects of a good education in the "arts and sciences" is actually…
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3. You never dispute or even address the main point behind Atwood's article - that while programming is great to learn, the trend that 'everyone should learn to program' as a base skill along with reading, writing, and math is ridiculous. It's nowhere near as important as these other skills, and he makes a number of other valid points as well which I'm sure you don't disagree with. You argument was simply that progra…
As computers permeate more of our everyday lives it becomes necessary to understand them on some level. You can say the same thing about any number of technologies that permeate our (western, and increasingly developed) lives - plumbing, electrical, cars, landscaping etc. While it's true that we should have some understanding of these technologies (checking the fluid levels in a car, snaking s small pipe, running A/V…
With only an intuition for basic mathematics, the ability to read, and maybe a layman's understanding of fundamental physics one can come to understand enough about carpentry and plumbing to solve their own problems.
The same isn't true for computers. We don't teach computation in schools. To learn programming you have to scratch your own itch or wait until you get to college (in most places). There's no intuition about computation, no fundamentals that are taught and widely adopted. The average person doesn't sit down at their computer and understands what is going on, even in some small intuitive way, when they save their spreadsheet or click on a link in their email that takes them to their banking site (and subsequently they cannot even put together why, months later, they are the victim of bank fraud). Without even a basic understanding of the fundamental principles of computation these people have no idea how this technology is affecting their lives.
I'm not saying that everyone needs to be a professional programmer any more than everyone needs to be a master carpenter. We don't teach math in early education in the hopes that every child becomes a mathematician. We do it because it gives them tools to navigate their world and overcome the challenges of modern life. So too must we teach them computation. We don't want them all to become programmers but it is useful to know so that they can have the intuition to solve their own problems and start using computers as tools.
