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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

#121

Post by Sakes »

badman_ting wrote: post #90
theseoafs wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure, except we talk all the time about how bad hiring practices are in our industry, how bad we all are at discerning talent. So I don't really see this being a positive thing for existing developers (increasing supply and pushing wages down), though who's to say we deserve the situation we're in presently? In what way does high school kids learning to write simple Python scripts affect your career as a software d…

If you agree that teaching people to code will result in more professional software developers, which seems reasonable to me, we'll have more of them and the cost of any one of them will be reduced. And again, the skill thing is diminished because we all suck at figuring out who the talented developers are. I'm not saying we should hoard the coding knowledge or whatever -- that cat is already out of the bag. But if t…

I think you will find more people applying to be CS majors, not necessarily graduating with CS degrees. The weed out classes at the better colleges will put an end to anyone striving for a CS degree that shouldn't have one.

What I would expect is that the myth of just get some high school kid to do it would finally end if everyone had an idea of how high the skill cap is for coding/design.

Plus it'd be a lot easier for me to talk to people, which would be nice. It seems the only people that really get along with me these days are technically informed.

Re: President Obama calls on every American to learn code

#122

Post by mhurron »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #35
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 love your parallel between car maintenance and coding, and I have repeated it many times myself. I think changing a tire is a reasonable thing to expect every driver to be able to do. Likewise, I think understanding SSL errors is the kind of thing every computer user should be able to do. Not code, necessarily, but understand something about this system you trust with most of your life.

So how is learning to code going to help with basic computer use skills? One does not imply the other.

Re: President Obama calls on every American to learn code

#124

Post by api »

dnautics wrote: post #42
api wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Can't have high-paying jobs. That would empower people. We are very rapidly moving toward a time when the labor battles of the late 19th and early 20th centuries will have to be re-fought. History is clearly showing us that the alternative to activist labor is feudalism. In "natural" markets, multiple overlapping network effects cause nearly all wealth to flow to a very tiny number of strategically positioned or…

how's that state-subsidized going to college working out for everyone? Or state-subsidized home ownership?

They worked for a while. Now new approaches are needed. Everything is like that. Human progress requires both a continuous input of energy and a continuous state of change and innovation. There is no formula for progress of any kind that can be applied unchanged forever.

Re: President Obama calls on every American to learn code

#125

Post by gfodor »

Crito wrote: post #83
gfodor wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the long run the ability to understand and manipulate information via automated instructions (ie, coding) will almost surely end up being as important being able to capture down and consume ideas (reading and writing) or manipulate abstract quantities through symbology (mathematics.) It's a fundamental skill that is plain to see unless you are so entrenched in the contemporary details of things like programming la…

The joy I find in programming is no more a reason to encourage people to learn to code than the joy of plumbing is a reason to encourage people to learn to plumb. People can find joy in nearly anything, that isn't something special that coding brings to the table. Power and leverage? Yes, coding gives you those things, in certain domains, but I do not buy the argument that teaching coding is the most efficient way of…

Consider that in 100 years we will still have people performing some derived concept of "coding" today, whereas all of our plumbing will probably be done by the machines which are created by those people.

Coding is an abstraction on top of an ever more essential skill: directing automated symbol manipulation. It seems foundational and those fighting against it are best likened to the subset of monks who surely saw writing as a skill to be learned only by a select few and not as some universal, fundamental skill all people would need to participate in society.

Re: President Obama calls on every American to learn code

#126

Post by daigoba66 »

dnautics wrote: post #48
chiph wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The job is brutal. Look at photos of Bush Jr. before & after -- same thing.

it's only brutal because those jokers take themselves too seriously. If I were president, I'd pay myself a minimal salary, go on extended vacation, veto everything, and the only responsibility I'd take upon myself would be that big fat red button.

Ironically it is congress that sets the president's salary. Thus you must get congress to pass a bill which you then must sign. That's a lot of work!

Re: President Obama calls on every American to learn code

#127

Post by logfromblammo »

entendre wrote: post #103
oracuk wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a couple of assumptions built into your proposal that I would want to see some data to support: 1: Computer programming competes with foreign languages in high schools and colleges. 2: The economic value of programming languages is greater than the economic value of foreign languages. Your last sentence also suggests you are comparing apples and oranges, a grade of a foreign language that is dropped against…

1) I don't know what country you're from, but in America here is how it works: In general, competitive colleges require at least two years of foreign language classes in high school. Stanford would like to see three or more years, and Harvard urges applicants to take four years. When a college recommends "two or more" years of a language, they are clearly signaling that language study beyond two years would strengthe…

US universities should really ditch the general language requirements and leave it up to the college or department within the college to decide whether it would even be useful.

Air traffic controllers and software programmers only need to know English. Business students intending to work for a multinational need at least one more language, and they should be from this list: Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese Chinese, Japanese, Russian, German, French, Portuguese, Korean, or Standard Arabic.

The vast majority of graduates of US universities who are from the US will never need a second language other than Spanish, and they won't even need to know it all that well.

Re: President Obama calls on every American to learn code

#128

Post by VLM »

kunai wrote: post #19

Call me a cynic, but I'm really indifferent to this entire "everyone should learn to code" nonsense. There are so many mistruths that Code.org is spreading that it's shameful. Let's get down to the biggest one: that with a "little bit of math and science" you can build the latest video game or write an app. Buzzer #1. It doesn't take just "a little bit" of math. It takes a TON of math. Reading CLRS took me a month to…

"Only that nobody in their right minds would tell people to make mechanical engineering a part of the curriculum"

At the elementary school level, my kids attend a psuedo-STEM school and sadly you're not too far off the mark. Its pretty much that and civil.

Civil is actually a good one for kids. Give them a beach and some water buckets and shovels and they're happy for days if not weeks. Some clay and dirt works even better although filthier. Its pretty much outdoors only due to the mess, so the kids are stuck with a mostly MechEng STEM

Re: President Obama calls on every American to learn code

#129

Post by platz »

kunai wrote: post #19

Call me a cynic, but I'm really indifferent to this entire "everyone should learn to code" nonsense. There are so many mistruths that Code.org is spreading that it's shameful. Let's get down to the biggest one: that with a "little bit of math and science" you can build the latest video game or write an app. Buzzer #1. It doesn't take just "a little bit" of math. It takes a TON of math. Reading CLRS took me a month to…

And yet the vast majority of programming jobs do not require knowing CLRS and Knuth. Let's not confuse theoretical with practical knowledge.

Re: President Obama calls on every American to learn code

#130

Post by NAFV_P »

Crito wrote: post #31
avenger123 wrote: post #18

This "learn to code" meme is getting tiresome. Why not focus on the more critical skills in life that are more applicable to most people. Here's a big one: 1. Learn to communicate. Improve your writing and speaking skills.

Well presumably because we already are telling people to learn how to write and communicate. Public schools spend more time on those topics than probably any other. Furthermore, advocating mastery of one skill is different from advocating basic literacy in another skill. This said, I agree that "learn to code" is tiresome. Why aren't cries of "learn basic electrical engineering" as popular? Or, if we want clear socie…

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.
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