51–60 of 234 posts
Loved seeing them bring in celebrities outside of the tech world to share their experiences/passions for code. Chris Bosh was a complete surprise to me but made me like him even more.
School courses will do nothing if people don't have access to programmable computers. And they don't have - Windows doesn't ship with Visual Studio, OSX and Linux are irrelevant, iOS and Android don't come with SDK CDs and demos. Now, of course, you know that these tools exist, and I know too. But most people don't and to them programming simply doesn't exist. Teaching these people quicksort in school won't be of muc…
I really wish people didn't spread this kind of message. Think job security guys! Come on!
Also, a key aspect of a good programmer is experience. If kids start early say for example at age 12, by the time they are 18, they have 6 years experience already. Think about the things you can do with that much experience? It could lead to innovations in software far beyond what we see right now.
Loved seeing them bring in celebrities outside of the tech world to share their experiences/passions for code. Chris Bosh was a complete surprise to me but made me like him even more.
The gap between CS majors and software jobs is misleading. You don't need a CS degree to become a decent programmer. Still, if there's such a shortage of good programmers (and I agree that there probably is) then why aren't we playing this to our advantage? A senior engineer can't afford a house in the Bay Area or New York, and our status is low-- we still work for managers; we're a defeated tribe in this way. Most o…
p.s - I did not read your post.
FOr me the reasoning is simple: * reading and writing code is basic literacy for the information age * One generation hence, any company that is literate (almost all employees write code, the use of code runs through all its processes) will have enormous competitve advantages. Or rather any company that is illiterate will have enormous competitive disadvantages * So Software will eat the world. * but in the process f…
> reading and writing code is basic literacy for the > information age No. Just like everyone being a car mechanic is not the basic literacy of the automotive age. "Everyone learns to code" is a pipe dream.
The analogies will always break down but really, in this day and age, an adult in the Western world who cannot drive is socially and econmoically disadvantaged. (chooses not to is likely a different thing - for half of 20 years in London I had no car and biked / tubed everywhere. Now, my day would be impossible without a car. Sad but true)
I mean how many 17 year-olds do you know who say, "Learning to drive - who needs it?"
I think it's interesting that initiatives to teach programming mostly reach to kids. A big chunk of my peer group is 30 year-old underemployed humanities students. If they were interested, I'm sure that most of them could be not-underemployed. Though TV takes its toll.
If you listen carefully, most of the interviewees are simply attesting to Steve Jobs' quote at the beginning: "Everybody in this country should learn how to program a computer...because it teaches you how to think." The second part, the ability to think, is a skill that people must have AND use in their everyday life to be successful in whatever they do. Zuck, Gates, Dorsey, Houston, etc. are all encouraging people to learn to code for this reason, and because programming is an extremely empowering skill--not just in one field but in all...if you want it to be. The fact that programming can be used in all fields is why there is such a huge push for people to learn. It is a self and world-empowering tool that is simply being encouraged to be taught/learned by the incoming generation.
The current generation needs to realize that programming exists everywhere, just as we are taught that subjects like math, biology, chemistry, physics, and history are. There is a HUGE distinction between learning to code just for the sake of getting a job or improving the economy and learning to code because it can empower us to THINK and then DO. Not to be philosophical, but part of societies' problems has been always knowing what problems exist, but not actually doing anything to solve it--until now. Programming, more than anything, accelerates our ability to solve problems, little or big.
In a world where so many problems exist, programming is many times the means to achieving the solution. And that is why these successful programmers are pushing everyone to learn.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Still, if there's such a shortage of good programmers (and I agree that there probably is) then why aren't we playing this to our advantage? A senior engineer can't afford a house in the Bay Area or New York, and our status is low-- we still work for managers; we're a defeated tribe in this way. Most of us don't have the autonomy to choose our tools or decide whether to use or replace old legacy code. Shouldn't our…
I think you're off the mark, because you're always "working for someone else". Details change, but ultimately there's no difference between "mak[ing] something that is useful" and working for others. Sometimes the terms are great, and sometimes they're awful. The implicit assumption is that "working for an established organization" must imply "working with miserably low levels of autonomy". I'm not sure that I agree.…