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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

#391

Post by peterjancelis »

SiVal wrote: post #383
eropple wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That said, how many working people have ever had to face the problem of getting a list of filenames into an email? A lot of my coworkers. They take a screenshot, thus offloading the hard part onto everyone who needs to get data out of their email. It's about as awesome as it sounds.

I have to laugh at this. I worked in strategy consulting, where my coworkers were all MBAs from Harvard, Stanford or, in our office, Tokyo University. We had many cases where people had tasks of various sorts that they would handle with the equivalent of this screenshot-of-the-data approach. I, a fellow consultant, often groaned when I saw such things and wrote little utilities for them, figured out how to dynamicall…

You should package up your tools and sell it to them on a subscription basis per consultant head. Make sure the total price is at least your gross salary and bake in a minimum subscription period. Quit your job, build all the tools you ever wanted and sell it to all other consultancies and their offices.

The powerpoint extensions I used in consulting were created by ex-consultants so it's not unheard of to do this.

Re: President Obama calls on every American to learn code

#393

Post by treenyc »

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…

One thing isn't inherently harder than the other. To put things in linear dualistic terms like

hard vs easy good vs bad moral vs immoral

can sometimes be over simplifying due to the normative nature of these concepts.

For someone who knows Vietnamese to learn Chinese is easy, but for someone who only knows English learning Chinese can be harder.

Each discipline has its' own linguistic domain. The difference between a software programmer and a rocket scientist is the rocket scientist knows a set of specific terms/vocabulary that distinguishes different parts of rocket, fuel, working process of aerospace and other stuff I don't know anything about. Not only does the rocket scientist knows all the terms, he/she also understands the relationship between each terms. It is mastery of this Linguistic Domain that make it possible for rocket scientists.

Programmer has mastery of a different Linguistic Domain and for some rocket scientists it may seem hard.

I do some what agree with you on the 'insecurity thing'. Although I think that is only a case in below stage 4 working culture (see Dave Logan, Tribal Leadership for reference on organizational culture stages http://www.ted.com/talks/david_logan_on_tribal_leadership.ht...).

Re: President Obama calls on every American to learn code

#394

Post by MichaelMoser123 »

i think he is saying the right things! I think there is a problem that many kids like to play games, but that they are not quite interested to look at what is going on behind the scenes (does that sentence make me a grumpy old fart?)

Part of the problem is that modern systems and also modern programming language are very powerful, have lots of features, but therefore are hard to learn. One of my pet projects is a programming language for learning how to program http://mosermichael.github.io/cstuff/all/pooh-lan/2012/12/11... ; Actually I had the same problem, I am adding and adding features to the language, now that makes its less suitable for the original task. I guess finding the right balance is not an easy task.

Interesting, does Obama know how to code?

Re: President Obama calls on every American to learn code

#396

Post by rimantas »

rolux wrote: post #265
jzwinck wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people won't acquire great problem solving skills with programming either. You need only look at a few new questions on StackOverflow to see that. I think your parent is onto something though, that the unique skill available by basic programming in symbolic logic, and perhaps logic in general. It won't come to everyone, but without programming it may be even less likely. The problem of course is that it takes pa…

I don't think it's about skill as such, rather about increased productivity. People are generally expected to be able to drive, and for many, this ability comes with benefits. I don't see why basic programming (file system, lists, loops, conditionals) should be any harder, or less useful.

Driving is physical activity: you turn the wheel the car turns. You see it you feel it. Programming is all dealing with abstractions, and for many that is really hard.

Re: President Obama calls on every American to learn code

#397

Post by scotty79 »

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…

I think learning to code is beneficial for purely non-techical reasons.

Programming is one of few activities left where you can't bullshit your way out of the problem. You have to make yourself actually understand the problem, figure out what needs to be done and do it diligently. And you have to repeat these three steps over and over. Either that or you fail in such a clear way that you can't bullshit yourself that it actually wasn't a failure.

Coding is in modern world the most interesting and accessible manifestation of physics. It's the best opportunity to learn firsthand the spirit of quote "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled."

Re: President Obama calls on every American to learn code

#399

Post by scotty79 »

jblow wrote: post #282
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 am 42 years old and I have never had to change a tire, not once.

Even bicycle tire?

Re: President Obama calls on every American to learn code

#400

Post by hrrsn »

tmzt wrote: post #325
aegiso wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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!"

Or take a series of screenshots (scrolling through the files as they go) which they then will paste into Word.

And then they'll print it out and scan it to you.

(This happens more often than I'd like to admit)

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