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President Obama calls on every American to learn code

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Re: President Obama calls on every American to learn code

#111

Post by robbyking »

jmduke wrote: post #21

A lot of people are getting attached to the "every American" aspect of things, and I think its important to note the distance between "knowing how to code" and "becoming a programmer." Amateur programming (for lack of a better term) like basic Python for data analysis or HTML/CSS to work on Wordpress sites (Hell, one of my friends who's a Social Media Manager learned Python to create some QoL scripts for her day-to-d…

I agree. For example, my cousin is an artist, and building a web portfolio with functioning store was a requirement for graduating.

Re: President Obama calls on every American to learn code

#112

Post by capkutay »

jmduke wrote: post #21

A lot of people are getting attached to the "every American" aspect of things, and I think its important to note the distance between "knowing how to code" and "becoming a programmer." Amateur programming (for lack of a better term) like basic Python for data analysis or HTML/CSS to work on Wordpress sites (Hell, one of my friends who's a Social Media Manager learned Python to create some QoL scripts for her day-to-d…

Very well put! There should definitely be a layer between software engineers and people who can 'code'. Hopefully there will be a way to categorize these types of contributors so enterprises and the job creators of the world will know how/when to staff them.

Re: President Obama calls on every American to learn code

#113

Post by NAFV_P »

sciguy77 wrote: post #12

I have to say, coding is definitely not for everyone. A rather specific kind of person (such as myself) is drawn to program computers. While I enjoy it most people I know would not. Certainly having the option to take Intro and AP CS courses (both of these are available at most public high schools) is great, but "calling on all Americans," to code seems a little excessive.

While I enjoy it most people I know would not. There is a distinction between satisfaction && enjoyment. I find coding more satisfying than enjoyable.

Re: President Obama calls on every American to learn code

#114

Post by theseoafs »

gfodor wrote: post #53
gum_ina_package wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obama said a fundamentally ignorant statement that seems even more ignorant considering all the technical problems with Obamacare. Hacker News is just pointing this out.

Encouraging kids to try to become astronauts is not an ignorant statement despite the fact that becoming an astronaut is really hard. Telling kids to try to design iPhone apps or make video games is much less so. It's a shame that HN can't recognize what is fundamentally a good thing: a statement from the president encouraging curiosity and proficiency in computer science and programming. It's incredible to me that t…

> Perhaps it's an insecurity thing, and they are afraid if others learn their skills they may no longer be in the position of power they are in now?

Most of the objections seem to boil down to this. For better or for worse, HN is an entrepreneurial community, and everyone seems to be approaching this with an ultra-logical "this policy will decrease my worth by $X" approach. Post this video on a forum that's geared toward, say, developers of open-source software and see how different the reaction is.

Re: President Obama calls on every American to learn code

#115

Post by superuser2 »

avenger123 wrote: post #18

This "learn to code" meme is getting tiresome. Why not focus on the more critical skills in life that are more applicable to most people. Here's a big one: 1. Learn to communicate. Improve your writing and speaking skills.

But that's not STEM so it must not be valuable or worth supporting. /s

Re: President Obama calls on every American to learn code

#118

Post by warmfuzzykitten »

oracuk wrote: post #91
pvnick wrote: post #73

I frequently disagree with the president, but he really hit the nail on the head with this one. I've been saying for a while now, if we were to replace high school and college foreign language requirements with a computer programming language class, you would propel America way ahead of everyone else (more-so than now) in terms of industry and innovation, and do wonders for the economy, all within a decade. Think abo…

There are a couple of assumptions built into your proposal that I would want to see some data to support: 1: Computer programming competes with foreign languages in high schools and colleges. 2: The economic value of programming languages is greater than the economic value of foreign languages. Your last sentence also suggests you are comparing apples and oranges, a grade of a foreign language that is dropped against…

In the US, meeting the foreign language requirement doesn't require actually learning a foreign language. I know many people who took the obligatory college prep Spanish who can't respond to "Buenos días." This is a better argument for improving foreign language education, though, than replacing it with computer language education. And, frankly, if the latter were taught as poorly as the former, it wouldn't be worth the trouble.

Re: President Obama calls on every American to learn code

#119

Post by bpyne »

badman_ting wrote: post #90
theseoafs wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure, except we talk all the time about how bad hiring practices are in our industry, how bad we all are at discerning talent. So I don't really see this being a positive thing for existing developers (increasing supply and pushing wages down), though who's to say we deserve the situation we're in presently? In what way does high school kids learning to write simple Python scripts affect your career as a software d…

If you agree that teaching people to code will result in more professional software developers, which seems reasonable to me, we'll have more of them and the cost of any one of them will be reduced. And again, the skill thing is diminished because we all suck at figuring out who the talented developers are. I'm not saying we should hoard the coding knowledge or whatever -- that cat is already out of the bag. But if t…

I doubt President Obama came up with the campaign on his own and I very much doubt "pushing down labor costs for software development" is even on the list of reasons. Labor costs may ultimately come down, but it won't be due to some devious collusion between the IT industry and him.

It's more likely that this campaign to encourage programming is aimed at multiple problems from a better understanding of the tools necessary in the 21st century to making young students interested in the field again. Just possibly there is a long term hope in him that the USA can cut down its reliance on foreign help for software development, thereby, keeping jobs in the country.

If I was in his shoes, I would be concerned that the USA seems to be relying on foreign graduate students for its research in technology. Until domestic students are interested in the field again, the reliance cannot be reduced.

Re: President Obama calls on every American to learn code

#120

Post by VLM »

gum_ina_package wrote: post #16

Maybe if everyone knew how to code, we could fix healthcare.gov.

Being able to code "hello world" is almost useless, but knowing something about scalability would help. Even if nothing more than "its important".

I bet healthcare.gov is full of algorithms that scale just great as long as there's only one state, and one insurance provider, and one healthcare provider (which is a concise subversive political statement of exactly what's wrong with the American sick care system)

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