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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

#301

Post by rhizome »

rolux wrote: post #247
grellas wrote: post #217

Speaking as a non-coder, but as one who did minimal things with programming-like higher-level stuff ranging from the old DOS batch files to VBA and some dabbling with SQL, I am curious whether real engineers believe the idea of broad literacy in coding truly would be valuable and, if so, how exactly. I am not speaking as a skeptic, just as one who does not readily see the point and wants to know. Of course, we are in…

Just like the "prescribed foreign language course in middle school", a bit of programming practice may widen your horizon, and help demystify these seemingly opaque machines and networks. It's about practice, not "knowledge" per se. Basic tasks, like: I have a folder full of files, how do I get the filenames into a text file or e-mail? Five-liners in high-level languages, the equivalent of asking for directions in a…

The irony about your very valid benefits of having basic programming knowledge is that music programs, which have been proven to provide benefits in math and language and just general smartyhood, are the first to get their budgets cut in any given budget battle. That said, how many working people have ever had to face the problem of getting a list of filenames into an email?

http://www.pbs.org/parents/education/music-arts/the-benefits... (not my favorite source, but there are plenty of pointers to this data out there)

Re: President Obama calls on every American to learn code

#302

Post by thenerdfiles »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #167
United857 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We teach writing as a required subject in schools, without the expectation that everyone is going to be a professional writer. We teach science without the expectation that everyone is going to be a scientist. We teach physical education without the expectation that everyone is going to be a professional athlete. These are all good life skills to have even if you don't learn enough to make it your career. So it shoul…

We should also be teaching how to change a tire, how to cook basic nutritious meals, personal finance, etc.. “A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a compu…

I agree with this quote, but "microspecialization" is the appropriate response. You might specialize on Tuesdays by one skillset, and specialize on Wednesday by another.

I think the following assertion adds a significantly interesting context to this entire debate[0]:

    All programming is Web programming.
Basically, our daily lives depend on the Web. If you do not understand the [process] of what constitutes the Web, you will be utterly mystified and frightened by it. You don't need to know how to change a tire in a practical sense, but if you cannot understand it conceptually...

For example, bank hacks and e-mail hacks. Do you need to understand how to code to change your password? Surely not. Do you need to know how to code in order to change your password in a relevant way? Probably. And doing that involves knowing how to code, in that one learns something minimally about a very interesting concept: abstract dictionaries.

[0]: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/08/all-programming-is-...

Re: President Obama calls on every American to learn code

#303

Post by Taylorious »

I for one welcome anything that exposes people to programming. I don't think it will necessarily transform the US economy or anything, but I think it will be genuinely good for people to have the exposure. K-12 and college students are taught all kind of things that may not click with them or be relevant in their daily life when they get out of school (plenty of people never use math or writing skills in their actual job/life). What I'm getting at is even though many people won't "get" programming or will simply have no desire to pursue it, exposing them to it wont kill them. There are also people who never thought of programming but try it and it does click with them.

At my university the intro CS course counts as a language. Since many degrees require a language course, lots of non CS students take it so they don't have to take French etc. A surprising number of strong CS students in my senior class started out in another major, took the intro CS class for their language,and then ended up switching majors! One person was going for nursing before he switched to CS and is now doing graduate level research as a CS undergrad and will be going to get a phd in CS and math. You'd think the guy has been programming since he was in diapers.

Unfortunately CS is one of those subjects that a lot of people are never exposed to and will never know if they love it or have a knack for it. It seems like most of the CS majors I have encountered are people who are either computer/math nerds or people were big into gaming and got into programming for that (most of them end up giving up on game programming for well known reasons). I think your average person sees CS as something only math/computer nerds can do and as something that is really hard and math intensive. If they actually had a gentle introduction they may love it and may even be good at it. Lets not kid ourselves, most programming isn't something only super geniuses can do.

Re: President Obama calls on every American to learn code

#304

Post by [deleted] »

matthewmcg wrote: post #236

Steve Jobs in one of the Bob Cringley interviews: "I think everybody in this country should learn how to program a computer--should learn a computer language--because it teaches you how to think. It's like going to law school. I don't think anybody should be a lawyer, but I do think going to law school would actually be useful because it teaches you how to think in a certain way, in the same way that computer program…

[deleted]

Re: President Obama calls on every American to learn code

#305

Post by russell »

If we define programming as the stuff that we on HN do for a living with C, Java, JavaScript, and the like, then teaching every American how to code is a futile goal. Something on the order of half of all CS majors fail the introductory CS course. There is a really eyeopening paper by Saeed Dehnadi and Richard Bornat[1] that has a test that can be given BEFORE the course that demonstrates fairly well who will pass and who will fail. There are 5 fundamental concepts that it tests for

- assignment

- statement sequence

- iteration

- recursion

- concurrency although that is not needed for basic literacy

Read it. It's an eye opener.

[1] http://www.eis.mdx.ac.uk/research/PhDArea/saeed/paper1.pdf [Jeff Atwood's link in Coding Horror 7/14/06 is broken]

Edited: formatting

Re: President Obama calls on every American to learn code

#306

Post by aegiso »

rhizome wrote: post #301
rolux wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like the "prescribed foreign language course in middle school", a bit of programming practice may widen your horizon, and help demystify these seemingly opaque machines and networks. It's about practice, not "knowledge" per se. Basic tasks, like: I have a folder full of files, how do I get the filenames into a text file or e-mail? Five-liners in high-level languages, the equivalent of asking for directions in a…

The irony about your very valid benefits of having basic programming knowledge is that music programs, which have been proven to provide benefits in math and language and just general smartyhood, are the first to get their budgets cut in any given budget battle. That said, how many working people have ever had to face the problem of getting a list of filenames into an email? http://www.pbs.org/parents/education/music…

> That said, how many working people have ever had to face the problem of getting a list of filenames into an email?

Few, because when tasked with a problem that this could solve, most people would immediately throw up their hands and give up. This is the biggest obstacle of all.

"Which pictures are you missing?" "I don't know, I'm not going to flip through them all!"

Re: President Obama calls on every American to learn code

#307

Post by grellas »

grellas wrote: post #217

Speaking as a non-coder, but as one who did minimal things with programming-like higher-level stuff ranging from the old DOS batch files to VBA and some dabbling with SQL, I am curious whether real engineers believe the idea of broad literacy in coding truly would be valuable and, if so, how exactly. I am not speaking as a skeptic, just as one who does not readily see the point and wants to know. Of course, we are in…

(Appending this to my own comment as a way of acknowledging the comments made in response to my question)

I stand convinced that, though the majority of people will not be necessarily learn to code in the sense of developing full-fledged programs, there is much to be gained by exposing young people generally to the concepts behind programming and to encourage them to learn these concepts: this will inspire some to make programming their work and it will benefit all by giving them at least a basic working literacy about how the digital world around them actually works.

Thanks to all for your thoughtful and instructive responses. HN is truly a great forum.

Re: President Obama calls on every American to learn code

#308

Post by [deleted] »

meowface wrote: post #293
rolux wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like the "prescribed foreign language course in middle school", a bit of programming practice may widen your horizon, and help demystify these seemingly opaque machines and networks. It's about practice, not "knowledge" per se. Basic tasks, like: I have a folder full of files, how do I get the filenames into a text file or e-mail? Five-liners in high-level languages, the equivalent of asking for directions in a…

I would say a general computer knowledge course would serve people better than trying to learn a programming language they'll probably never use, or want to use. Basic IT, networking, security, and simple scripting would probably serve the general public best.

[deleted]

Re: President Obama calls on every American to learn code

#310

Post by Steko »

MichaelGG wrote: post #211
Steko wrote: post #132

Kevin Drum (spoilers: knows how to code) had the best take on this: http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/12/no-everyone-do... But wait. The link leads me to a fairly routine presidential video in honor of Computer Science Education Week, in which President Obama encourages kids to take computer science classes. "It's important for our country's future," he says. But I imagine he's cut dozen of videos for every…

Eh, lots of people end up using information systems incidentally to what their main task is. I wrote a script in 20 minutes to automate some email->shipping labels work and saved someone about 5 hours of work a day. As more people start using datasets in some capacity for their "real jobs", being able to automate things becomes increasingly important. The amount of insane labor going on using Office boggles my mind.…

"I wrote a script in 20 minutes to automate some email->shipping labels work and saved someone about 5 hours of work a day"

I see a number of anecdotes like this and they all seem to miss that their actual anecdote is actually something like: I saved a non-coder X hours by drawing on my thousands of hours of experience.

No one disputes that knowing how to code would be useful to many people. What's being disputed is how useful it is for the time everyone would have to invest. Perhaps it would be more efficient to have professional coders going around and helping automate tasks for admin people than it would be to enroll all the admin people in coding classes.

Maybe everyone should know how to brew delicious coffee or maybe only the coffee aficionados will do that and the rest of us get by with a combination of whatever dreck our Mr. Coffee at home spits out and by handing our money to baristas the rest of the time.

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