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Code is not a foreign language, and high schools shouldn't treat it that way

nytimes.com

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Re: Code is not a foreign language, and high schools shouldn't treat it that way

#131

Post by jonny_eh »

xg15 wrote: post #130
sorenn111 wrote: post #101

It is clearly not a foreign language, but it might honestly be a better substitute for most students' time. In the US, a foreign language can be a great thing to learn, but with our failing math and science teachings, perhaps shifting towards CS instead might be a good idea for helping many high school kids prepare for a STEM dominated job market. From the article: "It stems from a widely held but mistaken belief tha…

How about wanting to, I don't know, travel to and work in foreign countries one day?

Having a CS education can help pay for that, and help you get work visas. I'm not sure how studying Shakespeare can help though.

Also, learning French won't help you in Germany, but learning JavaScript will help you land a job there if you speak English (a friend of mine who doesn't speak German moved there to do just that).

Re: Code is not a foreign language, and high schools shouldn't treat it that way

#132

Post by sushisushisushi »

sorenn111 wrote: post #101

It is clearly not a foreign language, but it might honestly be a better substitute for most students' time. In the US, a foreign language can be a great thing to learn, but with our failing math and science teachings, perhaps shifting towards CS instead might be a good idea for helping many high school kids prepare for a STEM dominated job market. From the article: "It stems from a widely held but mistaken belief tha…

I have nothing but humanities degrees (literature and foreign languages), and took zero CS courses while in college, and yet I have a comfy job as a software developer, because once you learn how to learn, learning how to code is trivial.

No, I'm not sending rockets into space, but I'm very happy with the education that I received and how it informs my approach to my work and my career.

The idea that you need a BS in Computer Science to have a career in software development or IT in general is simply incorrect. I have had gaps to fill, and had to approach my career differently from somebody fresh out of a CS program or bootcamp, but my non-CS education has never been an obstacle for me personally.

Re: Code is not a foreign language, and high schools shouldn't treat it that way

#133

Post by sushisushisushi »

B-Con wrote: post #115
citizenkeen wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes me sad how little we value education beyond gainful employment.

The fine arts are great, after you've put food on the table and a roof over your head. Most people are much happier to have stable employment than esoteric knowledge. The economy and society are better for it too. School's primary purpose is to prepare people to be functioning members of society.

History, language, civics, etc. are not esoteric. They have been considered fundamental to basic education for centuries. They're also pretty necessary if you want to have a functioning democracy.

Re: Code is not a foreign language, and high schools shouldn't treat it that way

#134

Post by nategri »

B-Con wrote: post #115
citizenkeen wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes me sad how little we value education beyond gainful employment.

The fine arts are great, after you've put food on the table and a roof over your head. Most people are much happier to have stable employment than esoteric knowledge. The economy and society are better for it too. School's primary purpose is to prepare people to be functioning members of society.

> School's primary purpose is to prepare people to be functioning members of society.

read: "productive economic units."

Re: Code is not a foreign language, and high schools shouldn't treat it that way

#135

Post by tssva »

Jtsummers wrote: post #102
cfmcdonald wrote: post #79

I can't read the whole article because paywall, but the initial paragraphs seem to miss the point of these laws. The intent is not to indicate that a programming language is an equivalent kind of skill to a foreign language. It's a pragmatic decision about how to fit programming, increasingly an important life skill, into a crowded curriculum. The core requirements (english, math, science, history), aren't going to b…

The author does not. And at least in the Maryland case you're correct (haven't looked up others, but they're probably similar). However, I think the author and others on their side have a point: Why is foreign language being singled out for substitution? I get that there's only so much time in the day, so only a finite number of courses can be meaningfully conducted before a student graduates. This was an issue when…

The author does in fact mention it briefly which is worse than not mentioning it. By mentioning it he acknowledges that he understands the motivation for the law but then proceeds to make an argument against the law which completely ignores the purpose behind it.

It is unfortunate that he sees this as some sort of binary choice. As if the proposed law would eliminate foreign language study rather than offering students a choice of academic paths.

Re: Code is not a foreign language, and high schools shouldn't treat it that way

#136

Post by bane »

It's funny. In one of my first just-out-of-college jobs I worked at a company where "the IT guys" were definitely not at the forefront of the company. However research staff were awarded bonuses or pay differentials if they knew a foreign language even a little bit.

I argued, somewhat successfully, that the time and effort it takes to become "native" at a programming language was comparable to a human language...and even if it was say 30% as hard, everybody in the department knew 4 or 5 different languages pretty well and thus should be payed as if they had put the time into learning Spanish or French or whatnot.

The point that made it really sync in was when we had a series of tasks show up on a contract that required people with programming ability and the research staff wasn't able to "pick it up in a few months" despite huge training efforts and the IT staff was pressed into service to perform on the contract. Some of the research work was in French and most of us knew enough about Romance languages that we could usually produce a reasonable gist of the document before going to the researchers for a proper translation. We also often just used babelfish to try to figure out what was being said.

They ended up creating a technical and nontechnical staff tracks and migrated a number of the IT staff over into "Technical Researcher" roles. The difference was foreign language bonuses applied to the nontechnical staff and programming language proficiency resulted in a salary bump.

Re: Code is not a foreign language, and high schools shouldn't treat it that way

#137

Post by bane »

sorenn111 wrote: post #101

It is clearly not a foreign language, but it might honestly be a better substitute for most students' time. In the US, a foreign language can be a great thing to learn, but with our failing math and science teachings, perhaps shifting towards CS instead might be a good idea for helping many high school kids prepare for a STEM dominated job market. From the article: "It stems from a widely held but mistaken belief tha…

Unlike many other fields, I would wager that the vast bulk of IT staff were mostly self-taught and many have a lifetime of experience in their field. For those people, school in fact got in the way of their education and career track as it was simply less time they could spend self-educating.

Until college, schools generally do a very poor job at teaching STEM.

Re: Code is not a foreign language, and high schools shouldn't treat it that way

#138

Post by AnimalMuppet »

sorenn111 wrote: post #101

It is clearly not a foreign language, but it might honestly be a better substitute for most students' time. In the US, a foreign language can be a great thing to learn, but with our failing math and science teachings, perhaps shifting towards CS instead might be a good idea for helping many high school kids prepare for a STEM dominated job market. From the article: "It stems from a widely held but mistaken belief tha…

But if our schools can't teach math and science, why do you think they're going to be able to teach CS?

Re: Code is not a foreign language, and high schools shouldn't treat it that way

#139

Post by bane »

influxed wrote: post #13

My experience with written/spoken languages vs programming languages has been vastly different. In my early 20s I picked up enough Spanish working in a restaurant to have conversations about simple topics/small talk, including native speakers at family dinners. Not much effort. In my late 20s using Anki (SRS) I learned enough Russian to mostly understand radio broadcasts and television, but I never practiced speaking…

The language syntax is often pretty small for most programming languages, but the vocabulary (libraries) are often enormous.

Most professional programmers program as if they were speaking with a dictionary and thesaurus at hand and stopped in the middle of every sentence to look up a work or usage.

Re: Code is not a foreign language, and high schools shouldn't treat it that way

#140

Post by airstrike »

bane wrote: post #139
influxed wrote: post #13

My experience with written/spoken languages vs programming languages has been vastly different. In my early 20s I picked up enough Spanish working in a restaurant to have conversations about simple topics/small talk, including native speakers at family dinners. Not much effort. In my late 20s using Anki (SRS) I learned enough Russian to mostly understand radio broadcasts and television, but I never practiced speaking…

The language syntax is often pretty small for most programming languages, but the vocabulary (libraries) are often enormous. Most professional programmers program as if they were speaking with a dictionary and thesaurus at hand and stopped in the middle of every sentence to look up a work or usage.

> Most professional programmers program as if they were speaking with a dictionary and thesaurus at hand and stopped in the middle of every sentence to look up a work or usage.

Which is probably why code that feels like you're reading prose is hard to come by

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