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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

#341

Post by hobs »

mediaman wrote: post #337
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…

Besides what others have mentioned with respect to helping people discover an otherwise undiscovered talent for engineering, coding, if only at a more basic level, has a tremendous impact on average office workers' productivity. Consider a company I am intimately familiar with, which is a typical manufacturing company. There are accountants, customer service, salespeople, production schedulers, marketers, inventory m…

Exactly. This is the kind of stuff I talk about when I am talking with those who use technology every day to accomplish their jobs, but see it as a box that they perform tasks in and do not take part in automating their tasks.

I recently showed an account manager at my job how to use autohotkey. With that they (with very minor help) created a way to automate some irritating web form crap they do all the time to make their life simpler, faster, and with less annoying drudgery.

I think it is a part of the "dont know you dont know", where if they have the basic concepts, not a cs education, they can make the computer work for them instead of the other way around.

Re: President Obama calls on every American to learn code

#342

Post by kamjam »

davorak wrote: post #198
kamjam wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is exactly what I meant. I'm not pedantic enough about the "you and me" stuff, or even fully correct in my own punctuation and I'm a native English speaker. But knowing the difference between "there, their and they're" is very important for example.

It seems like you might be more concerned with people knowing how to communicate well. Knowing how to format their thoughts so that they will be understandable through conversation or text. The ability to adapt this formatting process to fit the audience they are trying to reach.

Yes, that also. As a programmer, half the battle in trying to understand an issue exactly what you have just stated. In my job the second part is also very true, tech speak for other developers, business/marketing for everyone else. But I've found this applies to all walks of life.

To me, programming comes down to breaking a problem down into smaller pieces, which is basically like algebra. My first internship (way back) required us to carry out a written test: here are some simple algebra equations, you have a basic calculator with one (or two, can't remember) memory bank, write out the exact exact key presses to solve the equations. To me it was simple, but apparently not to everyone.

It's stuff like this which the education system should already be teaching, work on improving that rather than trying to get _everyone_ to code. Coding is not for everyone, your doctors, lawyers, actors, artists and many others are not going to need it

Re: President Obama calls on every American to learn code

#343

Post by kamjam »

eru wrote: post #339
kamjam wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is exactly what I meant. I'm not pedantic enough about the "you and me" stuff, or even fully correct in my own punctuation and I'm a native English speaker. But knowing the difference between "there, their and they're" is very important for example.

That's mostly an issue with English spelling---which is an attrocious system.

Possibly, I presume you mean because it is not phonetic? But that is not going to be so easy to change... My biggest gripe of the modern school leavers is when dey ryt n txt spch & i hv 2 decifa evry wrd. That's ok in an actual text message, but I've heard of stories where it has been carried over to exams, CV's and the workplace.

Anyway, that's what grinds my gears :)

Re: President Obama calls on every American to learn code

#345

Post by aestra »

mikeleeorg wrote: post #200
aestra wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's some conflicting reports and I read a pretty good analysis a while ago that convinced me, but I don't have it, here's some light reading. http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/education/the-stem-crisis-i... http://www.businessinsider.com/the-real-truth-about-the-stem... http://gizmodo.com/there-may-not-actually-be-a-shortage-of-s... http://www.cbsnews.com/news/is-the-stem-job-advantage-a-myth...

Wow, very interesting. Thanks for sharing. It's also interesting (and perhaps, sad) to me how there are stories in Silicon Valley where a top engineer or two are offered massive financial incentives to join another company. Those stories are usually cited as examples of a technical talent shortage in the Valley, but in reality, they are exceptions, not the rule.

I really wish I could find the original paper I read on the subject for you. I just went looking for it again and I didn't find it. It was something I read randomly in my travels, it was really long and really well researched with lots of data. I wish i bookmarked it. I found some more interesting stuff though.

http://www.issues.org/29.4/hal.html

this one has more of an "agenda" behind it

http://www.vdare.com/articles/national-data-stem-shortage-sh...

Re: President Obama calls on every American to learn code

#346

Post by rmrfrmrf »

pearjuice wrote: post #60

>Starring Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, will.i.am, Chris Bosh, Jack Dorsey, Tony Hsieh, Drew Houston, Gabe Newell, Ruchi Sanghvi, Elena Silenok, Vanessa Hurst, and Hadi Partovi. Directed by Lesley Chilcott, executive producers Hadi and Ali Partovi. >Code.org owes special thanks to all the cast and the film crew, and also Microsoft, Google/YouTube, Facebook, Amazon, and Twitter for helping us spread the word What the f…

The fact that you think of programmers as a brotherhood tells me all I need to know, but I'd just like to add that the problem today is that there are an incredible number of mediocre programmers out there (many in this thread). I, for one, want it to get HARDER for mediocre products to make an easy living. The goal of teaching programming to children is to help kids decide if they even like programming. There are waaay too many kids in the US who have to wait until college to even learn programming formally.

Re: President Obama calls on every American to learn code

#347

Post by naunga »

Here's my two cents:

We should not be encouraging people to learn to program so much as we should be encouraging people to learn how to construct an algorithm.

That's the first thing you need to learn. Kind of like learning how to properly construct a sentence. You need to understand how to express a problem in a step-wise fashion.

There's a lot of talk in the technology industry about diversity. Adding more women, etc, but on a whole we need career diversity. Coders, writers, artists, actors, mathematicians, welders, plumbers, cooks, chemists, managers, politicians, and so on. Society takes more than just coders. So let's just encourage kids to get involved in finding a way to contribute that they might enjoy or at least find interesting.

Re: President Obama calls on every American to learn code

#348

Post by bmelton »

dinkumthinkum wrote: post #270
robomartin wrote: post #192

I'd rather have every American learn how to vote. Far more damage is being done to this country by ignorant voters. Far more benefit could be derived by having an intelligent, well informed voting population. The best way to protect your future and that of your children is to elect representatives that will truly do what's best. The economic implosion of 2008 had nothing to do with not knowing how to code, write, coo…

Which is worse, uneducated people voting, or libertarians? I'm not sure.

Unnecessary political trolling is unnecessary.

Re: President Obama calls on every American to learn code

#349

Post by nsxwolf »

Crito wrote: post #238
NAFV_P wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thousands of American adults and teenagers drown every year; something like 36% of Americans cannot swim. I'm not surprised with the high level of obesity in the US.

Obesity isn't as much of a factor as you might think. With proper technique, very obese people can swim (at least 24 yards, which was the bar used for that statistic) without much effort. Adipose tissue (fat) has a density slightly lower than that of water, so the primary concern is really keeping your head above water and not panicking (both of those are mostly technique, not really 'physical feats'). Once you've go…

Not to mention "America's obesity epidemic" in reality means "most people have a little bit of extra flab" (based on BMI), not giant super obese people who can't get through their front doors. Most "obese" people are not in any way physically impeded from swimming.

Re: President Obama calls on every American to learn code

#350

Post by siliconc0w »

The most important aspect is more to think like an engineer (software/system/data whatever). This lets you at least recognize common information problems:

Why does this document go to each person serially when it could go to them in parallel).

Why do we store all our important data in a word doc on a windows share where it's difficult to collaborate on it.

Why are the other business group repeating 50% of what my business group already does.

Why are we keeping so many versions/copies of this data - any changes to one copy is exponentially expensive as we have to update the other copies.

Why is it so difficult to keep track of projects/issues/tasks/action items/etc?

Why am I manually running this report instead of getting it automatically emailed to my team ever week.

Why is it difficult to communicate and collaborate to colleagues in different parts of the company.

etc.

So much modern "work" are really just repetitive information problems that are so common that they're easily solvable by existing tools. Likely free ones. You just have to be able to recognize them and apply the correct solution.

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