191–200 of 368 posts
> You know what, though? Cobol has a great data-description language. If you spend a lot of time formatting dates and currency, and so forth, it’s got you. (If you’re curious, search for “Cobol Picture clause.”)
https://www.google.com/search?q=%E2%80%9CCobol+Picture+claus...
What am I supposed to be looking at here?
It's 2015. The audience of this article shouldn't even exist. The reader, as described in the article, is a VP who has so little understanding about what it is his company does, that the only meaningful abstraction he can mentally picture is that of his employees "burning barrels of money". Imagine an auto company VP who says "I don't know anything about engines and drivetrains and all that technical stuff. All I kno…
The company sells products. The website with a shopping cart is not the primary purpose of the company.
The company may in fact sell automobiles.
> It’s amazing any of it works at all.
It's 2015. The audience of this article shouldn't even exist. The reader, as described in the article, is a VP who has so little understanding about what it is his company does, that the only meaningful abstraction he can mentally picture is that of his employees "burning barrels of money". Imagine an auto company VP who says "I don't know anything about engines and drivetrains and all that technical stuff. All I kno…
You're living in a pretty isolated world, my friend. I'd say 90% of my friends would be the audience for this. I've been coding 20 years, most of my friends are successful, grad-degree educated people in a variety of fields, and some of them are even my coworkers. Who is supposed to teach people what code is? Our schools? Who with a CS degree and programming experience would willfully choose to teach in the USA's edu…
But this:
"it wouldn't help the economic position of Apple, Google, FB, or Microsoft if everyone knew what code is and how it works. It strengthens the tech economy's stranglehold on society when code is treated as something inscrutable."
Is just cynical. Tech companies aren't so fragile as to depend on general ignorance among the human population. If more people understood code, these companies could create more code. I think you point to an underlying misconception that some how technology is just a barrier to entry, and doesn't provide intrinsic value. But I do not believe this to be true.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would say that Photoshop is a toolbox of predefined tools. If using that is coding, then people are also coding when they choose and use a screwdriver, some sandpaper, a hammer and some glue in succession from their physical toolbox to get a job done. That the operations happen electronically and that they are implemented as complex mathematical transformations of pixels doesn't change that. Excel isn't much differ…
So, Excel is not coding, but an Excel sheet can have bugs?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're living in a pretty isolated world, my friend. I'd say 90% of my friends would be the audience for this. I've been coding 20 years, most of my friends are successful, grad-degree educated people in a variety of fields, and some of them are even my coworkers. Who is supposed to teach people what code is? Our schools? Who with a CS degree and programming experience would willfully choose to teach in the USA's edu…
> Who is supposed to teach people what code is? Our schools? Who with a CS degree and programming experience would willfully choose to teach in the USA's education system? Grade school teachers aren't expected to be specialists in the field they teach. They're expected to be specialists in teaching. Usually they have a bachelors (or masters) in education and maybe another degree, but it may or may not be the thing th…
In every European country I've lived in schools are generally split into primary and secondary. Primary school teachers are general educators whose primary skill is teaching but who do not need advanced knowledge in any particular subject. They usually have the same class all day, which gives them a deep insight into students' progrewss (although from a kid's point of view, if you don't get on with your teacher then school may suck). In secondary school teachers may teach more than one subject but they're required to have studied their primary subject at university and done some additional study in other subjects they teach, as well as additional study in educational methods. So your math teacher has a math degree, your history teacher a history degree and so on. People who plan to teach usually develop themselves academically in two subjects, sometimes three if they're closely related or you have special experience. For example: http://www.teachingcouncil.ie/_fileupload/Registration/Gener...
California seems to be moving towards this model too: http://www.ctc.ca.gov/credentials/leaflets/cl560c.pdf
The downside of this is that if a particular teacher is sick and another has to take the class as a substitute, the substitute teacher just babysits, or comes into class with a homework assignment from the sick teacher that should be doable during the class period. The upside is that in general students are keenly aware that teachers know what they're talking about and are considerably more expert in the subject than would be possible using the assigned textbooks.
I've ranted on HN before about how destructive of educational ends the practice of using 'Teacher's Editions of textbooks with scripts and answer keys is. It degrades teaching to a branch of bullshit artistry, and students who take a subject seriously can quickly detect a lack of true expertise.
Obviously this short comment isn't meant as an accurate descriptor of the whole state of the US education system, just the legacy of the non-specialization referred to in the grandparent comment.
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Yes, it will tell you that at the end, and mock you if you arrive there too quickly to have read it all :).
Does this brilliant webpage not know the concept of skimming and related approaches?
Ignoring the content, the structure of this article is amazing. It feels like an entire magazine in a single essay. The background animations that change as you scroll, the contextual content (try scrolling really fast). I'm not even all that keen on the bright oversaturated aesthetic, but it's just so cool. I'd love to see a short piece on how they made it.
Have you seen their error pages? http://www.bloomberg.com/lookathis
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're living in a pretty isolated world, my friend. I'd say 90% of my friends would be the audience for this. I've been coding 20 years, most of my friends are successful, grad-degree educated people in a variety of fields, and some of them are even my coworkers. Who is supposed to teach people what code is? Our schools? Who with a CS degree and programming experience would willfully choose to teach in the USA's edu…
I think that Parent made the observation that it is sad that in our information society people (in responsible positions (regarding ICT)) don't know about the fundamentals of the information society. At least, that's what I took from it and I concur. We, as a society, should have started integrating computational thinking (Wing, 2006) as a core competency in the k-12 curriculum from the late 1980s onwards. We didn't.…
In 2015 my teenager will start High School in a small, rural, school district and each student has a Chromebook. No, I don't know what they will be used for besides googling information, but times are changing.
I emphasized small and rural for a reason.
It's 2015. The audience of this article shouldn't even exist. The reader, as described in the article, is a VP who has so little understanding about what it is his company does, that the only meaningful abstraction he can mentally picture is that of his employees "burning barrels of money". Imagine an auto company VP who says "I don't know anything about engines and drivetrains and all that technical stuff. All I kno…
As someone who got their start on DOS and BASIC back in the 80s, I say you raise a pretty good point. There are so few languages depicted in this web brochure that it does not illuminate anything.
So many people stopped learning in the 80s that the 50s are starting to catch up with them again.
This is the stuff that cardboard box forts are made of.