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Personal computers: does everyone need to learn programming? (1984)

nytimes.com

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Re: Personal computers: does everyone need to learn programming? (1984)

#11

Post by ghaff »

thisisnico wrote: post #8
ghaff wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the one hand, it's easy to dismiss any new proposal with the argument that "we've heard this 20 times before and it's never worked" and you'll usually be right. But public clouds, for example, aren't really like histrical timesharing. Because the underlying tech, capabilities, and demand are so different that things really are different this time.

One of the big differences between now and then is network capacity. Once we've gone past basic text and into 3D, Photo, Video, Timesharing could not work effectively over the internet at the time, the bandwidth wasn't there yet. The only way to continue was to bring the hardware home. Now that we have the network capacity to handle almost anything, we're seeing things go back..

Yes, connectivity is a huge difference. On the other hand, as there's more and more data-intensive activity happening outside the data center, we're actually seeing a general trend away from everything happening "in the cloud" as was being promoted in the late 2000s. See e.g. Nick Carr's The Big Switch.

Re: Personal computers: does everyone need to learn programming? (1984)

#12

Post by Jtsummers »

mistersquid wrote: post #10
Kednicma wrote: post #4

I like the bit at the end about studying the classics in Latin and Greek. It helps me see that "language" is not quite the right word for programming systems, and that this wrong word choice has led to writers falsely thinking that learning to program is like learning a second language. But a language is tied to its execution context and semantics. This leads to either dividing up languages into "natlangs" and "conla…

> I like the bit at the end about studying the classics in Latin and Greek. I did not see a reference to the Classics, Greek, or Latin in the article…

It wasn't explicit, you had to read into this statement (that studying Cicero was studying Latin):

> In fact, though Cicero could never compete with computer games when it comes to ''making learning fun,'' conquering the conjugations of his lost tongue probably makes a lot more sense when it comes to learning to learn than sifting through GOTO statements in Basic, unrelated to our living language.

Adding on, picking on this particular phrase "when it comes to learning to learn": I took Latin and Old English in college, two indispensable (/s) courses for my life (they were actually fun for me, but of greatly limited utility). The main thing I did learn in both (especially as languages and the classics were not my field of study) was how to study. Those were the courses where I finally picked up using flashcards properly, making good notes, etc. just out of necessity (versus my math and CS courses which were, generally, "easy" for me without much effort, I took to them more naturally).

Re: Personal computers: does everyone need to learn programming? (1984)

#13

Post by Kednicma »

mistersquid wrote: post #10
Kednicma wrote: post #4

I like the bit at the end about studying the classics in Latin and Greek. It helps me see that "language" is not quite the right word for programming systems, and that this wrong word choice has led to writers falsely thinking that learning to program is like learning a second language. But a language is tied to its execution context and semantics. This leads to either dividing up languages into "natlangs" and "conla…

> I like the bit at the end about studying the classics in Latin and Greek. I did not see a reference to the Classics, Greek, or Latin in the article…

Quoting the article:

> In fact, though Cicero could never compete with computer games when it comes to ''making learning fun,'' conquering the conjugations of his lost tongue probably makes a lot more sense when it comes to learning to learn than sifting through GOTO statements in Basic, unrelated to our living language.

Cicero wrote in Latin, and is generally considered one of the most influential writers to do so. He also was strongly trained in the Greek/Hellenistic traditions and copied many ideas from there into Latin. I think that the author is exhorting the reader to learn Latin rather than Basic, and more generally to learn the classics rather than modern mathematics. For what it's worth, I think we need to study both; we need more Pirsigs, Hofstadters, and Carrolls, who have studied both classical philosophy and also modern computer science.

Re: Personal computers: does everyone need to learn programming? (1984)

#14

Post by astrobe_ »

thisisnico wrote: post #8
ghaff wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the one hand, it's easy to dismiss any new proposal with the argument that "we've heard this 20 times before and it's never worked" and you'll usually be right. But public clouds, for example, aren't really like histrical timesharing. Because the underlying tech, capabilities, and demand are so different that things really are different this time.

One of the big differences between now and then is network capacity. Once we've gone past basic text and into 3D, Photo, Video, Timesharing could not work effectively over the internet at the time, the bandwidth wasn't there yet. The only way to continue was to bring the hardware home. Now that we have the network capacity to handle almost anything, we're seeing things go back..

I am not sure why networking and could computing is in this thread. This is certainly the last thing you want to try or use (except for Internet access and all its learning resources) when learning to program. And it won't let you become as familiar with common computers logic as programming, say, a Tetris.

Re: Personal computers: does everyone need to learn programming? (1984)

#15

Post by ghaff »

astrobe_ wrote: post #14
thisisnico wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the big differences between now and then is network capacity. Once we've gone past basic text and into 3D, Photo, Video, Timesharing could not work effectively over the internet at the time, the bandwidth wasn't there yet. The only way to continue was to bring the hardware home. Now that we have the network capacity to handle almost anything, we're seeing things go back..

I am not sure why networking and could computing is in this thread. This is certainly the last thing you want to try or use (except for Internet access and all its learning resources) when learning to program. And it won't let you become as familiar with common computers logic as programming, say, a Tetris.

It depends on what your objective is and what you're trying to accomplish.

For a lot of people trying to just accomplish some specific goal, learning to program in C (as per the article) is probably not the best approach unless they're into OS kernels or embedded programming. Instead, they might well be better off stitching together some cloud services of various types. Not everyone has as an objective passing a leetcode whiteboarding interview at some ad tech company.

Re: Personal computers: does everyone need to learn programming? (1984)

#16

Post by mistersquid »

Kednicma wrote: post #13
mistersquid wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I like the bit at the end about studying the classics in Latin and Greek. I did not see a reference to the Classics, Greek, or Latin in the article…

Quoting the article: > In fact, though Cicero could never compete with computer games when it comes to ''making learning fun,'' conquering the conjugations of his lost tongue probably makes a lot more sense when it comes to learning to learn than sifting through GOTO statements in Basic, unrelated to our living language. Cicero wrote in Latin, and is generally considered one of the most influential writers to do so.…

> I think that the author is exhorting the reader to learn Latin rather than Basic, and more generally to learn the classics rather than modern mathematics. For what it's worth, I think we need to study both;

Agreed.

Thanks for pointing to Cicero as one of the Classics. I know this but completely glossed over the connection, too busy thinking about the then-nascent software industry.

Re: Personal computers: does everyone need to learn programming? (1984)

#17

Post by cwoolfe »

Writing software is easier in 2020 than it was when I started in 2002. Coding education is more accessible, Coding platforms are more inviting, languages are more forgiving, IDEs are more helpful, we have millions of answers on stackoverflow, and there are open-source libraries that have probably implemented whatever irks you. That being said, for the professional, I have found no substitute for the academic rigor of a good CS curriculum to shape how we think about organizing and engineering code well.

Re: Personal computers: does everyone need to learn programming? (1984)

#18

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

Kednicma wrote: post #4

I like the bit at the end about studying the classics in Latin and Greek. It helps me see that "language" is not quite the right word for programming systems, and that this wrong word choice has led to writers falsely thinking that learning to program is like learning a second language. But a language is tied to its execution context and semantics. This leads to either dividing up languages into "natlangs" and "conla…

This is the "I like tinkering with cars therefore everyone should be a mechanic" argument.

There's no justification for it. Maybe 20% of the population - at best - is even capable of that kind of programming. [1] Most people simply don't do symbolic abstraction at that level, and forcing them to try would create resentment, not literacy.

And "conlangs" are indeed different to "natlangs." There's definitely a case to be made for teaching everyone at least one extra language. But the kind of abstract thinking required for conlangs is adequately covered by basic STEM.

There might be a case for some very basic experience with programming in schools. But expecting the entire population to be able to do it at a professional level makes no more sense than expecting the entire population to have the same skills as qualified doctors, lawyers, architects, or pilots.

[1] There are fewer than 30 million developers globally, out of a population of nearly 8 billion.

Re: Personal computers: does everyone need to learn programming? (1984)

#19

Post by 082349872349872 »

Eloi don't need to learn programming: "[by] the time you became truly proficient at programming, chances are that whatever you set out to write would be available in some form from a software publisher."

Morlocks might want to learn programming, not because it's useful for eating Eloi, but because they're the sort of people for whom "purchasing an automobile for a cross-country trip [and] first [studying] cartography, then [proceeding] to obtain aerial and satellite photographs of the proposed route, and finally [drawing] a detailed map for the whole journey" sounds like a brilliant yak shave.

(Sandberg-Diment has left out the parts where obtaining the satellite photographs involves SDR hacking into downlink telemetry and drawing the detailed map first requires implementing a geometric-algebra based direct-to-framebuffer renderer)

Re: Personal computers: does everyone need to learn programming? (1984)

#20

Post by cgh »

GuiA wrote: post #2

I originally posted this (in 2013! reposted today prompted by HN's second chance pool) because it struck me how, with very few modifications, this exact article could be republished today. I find it fascinating that we can be having the same arguments that people a half century ago were having, with little to no awareness that we're repeating the exact same things. It makes me realize that perhaps software is not as…

Small nitpick: 1984 was significantly less than a half century ago. But otherwise yes, the greater point is history tends to teach us nothing.
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