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Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, and Lately, Coding

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Re: Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, and Lately, Coding

#11

Post by jaredsohn »

maxerickson wrote: post #10
dasmithii wrote: post #8

As essential as computational literacy has become, I feel a bit uneasy here. Take mathematics for instance. What students learn in school is important, yes, but it causes a hatred toward math in general. In a typical high school, 90% of kids dread Algebra, Geometry, and PreCalc. These classes are miserable to them, and consequentially, they associate mathematics with their aversion from imposed education. Because of…

There should be a nonacademic track in math education, starting around 8,9, or 10th grade. It would focus on things like demystifying probability and balancing check books and other things that sort of fall under numeracy. I realize lots of people will like to complain that those aren't topics for school, but the current program in the U.S. is anyway watering down the academic track. People that have not yet seen any…

My high school had such classes; is this not standard?

Re: Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, and Lately, Coding

#12

Post by derwiki »

jaredsohn wrote: post #11
maxerickson wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There should be a nonacademic track in math education, starting around 8,9, or 10th grade. It would focus on things like demystifying probability and balancing check books and other things that sort of fall under numeracy. I realize lots of people will like to complain that those aren't topics for school, but the current program in the U.S. is anyway watering down the academic track. People that have not yet seen any…

My high school had such classes; is this not standard?

I can't tell if you're seriously asking. But yes, tons of schools (in the US) are sub par, especially once you're one hour removed from a major city. From what I hear from cousins in West Virginia, it's actively getting worse.

Re: Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, and Lately, Coding

#13

Post by maxerickson »

jaredsohn wrote: post #11
maxerickson wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There should be a nonacademic track in math education, starting around 8,9, or 10th grade. It would focus on things like demystifying probability and balancing check books and other things that sort of fall under numeracy. I realize lots of people will like to complain that those aren't topics for school, but the current program in the U.S. is anyway watering down the academic track. People that have not yet seen any…

My high school had such classes; is this not standard?

I think a remedial class is pretty standard and finance classes are pretty common, but if you look at common core:

http://www.corestandards.org/Math/

There are requirements for knowledge across the traditional academic divisions of Algebra/Geometry/Trigonometry.

I'm not arguing against teaching those things to as many people as possible, just observing that lots of people probably don't have that knowledge 2 years later and may be better served with more practical stuff.

On the other hand, I'm just some random person with a lot of opinions about education and little actual experience with it. A summary of my opinions is that a single social-promotion school track meant for everyone is completely awful.

Re: Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, and Lately, Coding

#14

Post by KC8ZKF »

thelastpizza wrote: post #9
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #2

We've said it before. We will say it again: Programming is the new literacy for the 21st Century. Charlemagne was the first and only illiterate Holy Roman Emperor. This current generation of business and political leaders are the only generation that can remain software illiterate. No, We wont expect Fortune 500 leaders to do production coding but we don't expect the Managing Editor of a newspaper to write articles e…

Disagree. What we call coding today will have virtually nothing in common with what they call coding, if they do at all, at the end of the 21st century. Just look at tools like Parse or Visual Studio Code Search. The future is going to be very, very different from the present.

You are seeing the mechanics of programming and missing the programming. Do Parse or Visual Studio Code Search change what a lambda expression is?

Re: Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, and Lately, Coding

#15

Post by bsaul »

As a sidenote, France happend to have exactly this teaching programs in elementary schools in the 80s. We had a language called "LOGO" running on thomson mo5. Instructions where "move the tortoise 20 front", then "rotate tortoise 90°", etc, and we would do pretty graphics on the screen and be happy.

Or at least that's how i remember it. A friend of mine who's now an history researcher told me recently how that thing disgusted him from computers for 20 years.

Re: Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, and Lately, Coding

#16

Post by wallflower »

bsaul wrote: post #15

As a sidenote, France happend to have exactly this teaching programs in elementary schools in the 80s. We had a language called "LOGO" running on thomson mo5. Instructions where "move the tortoise 20 front", then "rotate tortoise 90°", etc, and we would do pretty graphics on the screen and be happy. Or at least that's how i remember it. A friend of mine who's now an history researcher told me recently how that thing…

> A friend of mine who's now an history researcher told me how that thing digusted him from computers for 20 years.

Can you please elaborate? Was it the infantilism? Or something else? Does your friend pursue coding now?

Logo and other "beginner" languages are more about introductions to using computers to create, not about teaching programming.

Re: Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, and Lately, Coding

#17

Post by jaredsohn »

derwiki wrote: post #12
jaredsohn wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My high school had such classes; is this not standard?

I can't tell if you're seriously asking. But yes, tons of schools (in the US) are sub par, especially once you're one hour removed from a major city. From what I hear from cousins in West Virginia, it's actively getting worse.

Whether schools are subpar is a separate question.

I am saying that if you were in my high school and weren't expecting to go to college, there were courses designed for you across all disciplines to teach you practical life skills. However, I do think the school still required students to struggle through at least some of the standard curriculum.

Re: Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, and Lately, Coding

#18

Post by _random_ »

KC8ZKF wrote: post #14
thelastpizza wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. What we call coding today will have virtually nothing in common with what they call coding, if they do at all, at the end of the 21st century. Just look at tools like Parse or Visual Studio Code Search. The future is going to be very, very different from the present.

You are seeing the mechanics of programming and missing the programming. Do Parse or Visual Studio Code Search change what a lambda expression is?

Programming is math, even if some branch falls out of favour, at least the foundations will be useful.

Re: Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, and Lately, Coding

#19

Post by graycat »

Easy enough, but the bottlenecks remain:

(1) What real world problem to solve.

(2) For a challenging problem, how the heck to solve it.

(3) How to cut through by far consistently the worst writing anywhere in civilization -- documentation in computing.

E.g., I'm still mud wrestling trying to figure out why: (A) In program A, serialize an instance of a class. The result of the serialization is a byte array. (2) To check, in program A, deserialize the byte array and observe that do get the original instance back. (C) In program A, printout the byte array as hex. Transmit the byte array to program B. In program B, print out the byte array in hex and observe that it is just the same as it was in program A. (D) Deserialize the byte array in program B and observe that the operation ends with and exceptional condition. Why? Documentation clear as mud.

Just for my basic work, I have about two cubic feet of books, nearly all badly written, and 5000+ Web pages of documentation illustrating much of the worst mistakes in technical writing.

The bad documentation is by far the worst bottleneck.

The whole thing, the industry and the science, needs to take Technical Writing 101. First lesson: A word used with a meaning not in a standard dictionary is a 'term', and never but never ever, not even once, use a term without a prior clear definition with motivation and likely examples. And, for such definitions, sure, use hyperlinks.

(5) Organization and management of computing projects involving teams larger that, say, half a dozen people.

(6) Computer system construction, installation, configuration, backup and recovery, monitoring, management, and administration.

(7) Security.

Re: Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, and Lately, Coding

#20

Post by xmonkee »

wallflower wrote: post #16
bsaul wrote: post #15

As a sidenote, France happend to have exactly this teaching programs in elementary schools in the 80s. We had a language called "LOGO" running on thomson mo5. Instructions where "move the tortoise 20 front", then "rotate tortoise 90°", etc, and we would do pretty graphics on the screen and be happy. Or at least that's how i remember it. A friend of mine who's now an history researcher told me recently how that thing…

> A friend of mine who's now an history researcher told me how that thing digusted him from computers for 20 years. Can you please elaborate? Was it the infantilism? Or something else? Does your friend pursue coding now? Logo and other "beginner" languages are more about introductions to using computers to create, not about teaching programming.

Can be a couple of things

1. It intimidated him. Happened to some friends of mine. 2. He realized history is better than writing procedural code . Should have learnt haskell

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