151–160 of 234 posts
I think exposing kids to programming is a good thing. But when so many applicants fail the Fizzbuzz test, do you think there is something innate about coding? For other subjects, like math, you can get most people to do the basics, like add 2+2. http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/07/separating-programm...
I think people are shifting away from the point of the video and that's fine, and I don't mean to be "that" guy, but it is important to realize what these accomplished programmers are trying to say through the video. 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 ho…
"Zuck, Gates, Dorsey, Houston, etc. are all encouraging people to learn to code for this reason" Certainly the self serving reason for the push can't be overlooked. The more people that are pushed into coding the more of a chance that Zuck/Dorsey/Houston can find a superstar to hire. I'm sure in any industry (medical research as only one example) the people in that industry would love if more young people took a shin…
But also remember that Zuckerberg is now investing in young medical research and Gates has been a philanthropic investor for a long time--these guys are looking beyond their companies and show that they truly care about the world and solving the BIG problems that exist. They are literally world-serving through these investments.
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Fred George is interesting on this - see Programmer Anarchy. My view (and yes I am working up a blog post) is 1. Coding is the equivalent of literacy after 1451 (Gutenberg). 2. in say, one generation, any company not having literate people at all levels of the organisation, and not having then changed how they work at a fundamental level to take advantage of these programmers/business people will be at as severe a co…
I humbly disagree. Lets focus on one point. Literacy facilitated efficient information exchange. Likewise programming facilitated efficient information exchange. But, not everybody needed to program the Internet for this advantage. I think you are confusing a personal advantage and societal advantage. Certainly, we need programers but I am uncertain if everybody needs to be a programmer. I work a full-time software j…
The number of times in all my jobs where I've seen people working on problems that could be done orders of magnitude faster with a bit of coding knowledge, is beyond count.
Reformat that document? How about a Regex? Analyse this data? Automatic graph generation and statistical methods. Keep records updated? Database with automated queries. Always building weekly reports? Template substitution and HTML generation.
There are so many jobs, that would not be considered anything to do with programming, that can be made hugely more efficient with a bit of coding knowledge.
As this video says, for most of this you don't even need to know algorithms or data structures or the 'important' stuff for being a programmer.
You just need to understand 'SELECT date FROM records WHERE quantity > 10'.
Or 'println("Report Week Ending " + date.GetToday()))'
Or 's/\[[A-Z]*\]/(&)/'
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Fred George is interesting on this - see Programmer Anarchy. My view (and yes I am working up a blog post) is 1. Coding is the equivalent of literacy after 1451 (Gutenberg). 2. in say, one generation, any company not having literate people at all levels of the organisation, and not having then changed how they work at a fundamental level to take advantage of these programmers/business people will be at as severe a co…
I humbly disagree. Lets focus on one point. Literacy facilitated efficient information exchange. Likewise programming facilitated efficient information exchange. But, not everybody needed to program the Internet for this advantage. I think you are confusing a personal advantage and societal advantage. Certainly, we need programers but I am uncertain if everybody needs to be a programmer. I work a full-time software j…
The best way to teach problem solving skills is through computer science without a doubt. A smarter population will lead to more peace and prosperity for the human race.
Do I think that computer science can lead to a more peaceful and thoughtful society? Absolutely; therefore I think that it's crucial to teach it.
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> I'm just saying that just being a CS major does not make one a great programmer and likewise, a great programmer need not be a CS major. I'm emphatically not saying this, I'm saying that a degree is good for employment. Many places will outright refuse to hire people without at least a BA in computer science (or computer engineering, I guess? I am not aware of the related fields). Thankfully, investors care more ab…
Your first statement was that you need a degree to get a job. Having a degree gives you access to more jobs, but you can get a job just fine without a degree.
I have a few relatives who are well versed in computers but cannot find employment. I'm sure they would be reassured by your comment.
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I humbly disagree. Lets focus on one point. Literacy facilitated efficient information exchange. Likewise programming facilitated efficient information exchange. But, not everybody needed to program the Internet for this advantage. I think you are confusing a personal advantage and societal advantage. Certainly, we need programers but I am uncertain if everybody needs to be a programmer. I work a full-time software j…
He's not saying everyone needs to be a programmer , but everyone needs to be able to program . The number of times in all my jobs where I've seen people working on problems that could be done orders of magnitude faster with a bit of coding knowledge, is beyond count. Reformat that document? How about a Regex? Analyse this data? Automatic graph generation and statistical methods. Keep records updated? Database with au…
With that said, we mostly come up with these ideas because we are able to program, so yeah.
I really hope that barely-disguised copy of an LCD sound system song in there involved royalties being paid to the band.
It's turtles all the way down. I love LCD, but here are examples of things James Murphy lifted: the fall telephone thing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEOtckaZtLg#t=0m36s pretty distinctive way to say "i'm tapped" used in movement: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6MIChyCBAU#t=0m43s in general his vocal style and delivery alternate between mark e smith from the fall and brian eno. really not a bad thing in my book,…
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…
Can you explain to me what actual evidence there is that there's a shortage of good programmers? Good programmers still make less money than a good doctor or lawyer, indicating that those are even shorter in supply. Surely addressing that shortage would be a higher priority? Lots of people could use more legal services if the price was lower, and yet if someone wanted to hire a Harvard lawyer for $60k a year, we woul…
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Yawn. I would say the same about the glorious PhD professors that attempted to teach me. Even the best professors, who were actually pretty knowledgeable, would never really code at all, pushing that off to the grad students. Some people just don't fit into the way academia works, and making silly judgments like yours about them does nothing but entrench the status quo.
I agree, but you still have to read the book. Coding can not be learned by copy and pasting other people's code. All I was trying to say is for every 20 people that say they are self-taught only one of them can write a feature from scratch from a blank slate and explain the trade offs of why they used a hashset vs a list. The other 19 may be able to get something working by copy and pasting another section and spendi…
There's one set of them who can write new programs, build systems, and learn technologies they aren't familiar with, but put them on a team of 30 people for a typical enterprise project, chugging along at 10 lines per day of code, and they'll be bored out of their minds.
There's another set that can't function outside of an IDE or design new systems, have no idea how anything actually works, but they can slog through corporate stuff and follow orders well enough to stay employed.
Both are called "programmers" but they're practically different jobs. It's easy for us in the first set to look down on the second, but maybe we should just admit that they're different task categories altogether.