Please Don't Become Anything, Especially Not A Programmer

On Hacker News.

I mean, Mark Zuckerberg's only ever had one job, which he gave to himself. So we can pretty much ignore anything he has to say, too. How many jobs has Paul Graham had? Two, maybe? How many of them were "given to him by himself"? I think... two?

I didn't see anywhere in Jeff's post where he was saying he wanted to make beginners look like losers. What he is saying is that it isn't necessary for everyone to learn how to code, that a lot of people seem to have a passing interest in it but aren't really serious about it. His example is the fact that Mike Bloomberg is using it as a cheap political stunt, that his time as Mayor would be better spent accomplishing other things. Now, that's somewhat a matter of opinion, maybe Mike Bloomberg really is serious about wanting to learn how to code, but somehow I doubt it. This is a far cry from Jeff wanting to make people feel like losers.

"He's telling other people's kids to not learn to code. He's telling adults who want to improve their lives, or just learn something new. He's telling people from other professions that no, programming won't help them. Why? Why would Jeff tell people to quit and just let the professionals do this? Because of resentment."

That's a complete assumption, in no way backed by anything Jeff said. I didn't see any "resentment" in that post, but you can read into anything you want and make any wild assumptions you want, as long as it makes your post more sensational.

He's not saying that your's or anyone's kids shouldn't learn how to code, he's saying that he doesn't see it as a basic skill we should be teaching children, along with reading, writing, and math. I don't necessarily agree with this, but I get where he is coming from and I'm not going to grossly exaggerated Jeff's position just to make my point.

So, yah, maybe Jeff is wrong, but you're post certainly didn't address what he was actually saying.

In the lower division (first two years), there is often a separation of core classes between math majors and non-math majors. Calculus, for example, and linear algebra. They served as weeder courses for the math majors so that those who couldn't do good math wouldn't advance onto the upper division courses were they would continue to not do well. In addition, there was a somewhat misc. logic class for math majors that was very strict and served as a choke-point weeder class taken just before you would go onto upper division work.

For non-math majors, the Calculus classes were kind of weeder classes, but that wasn't their purpose. If you were an engineering, the engineers had their own real classes that were their own weeder classes. Etc.

But the two tracks disappeared after lower division. Once you were in 3rd year, there was largely only one set of classes. A couple of them had less rigorous counterparts for those only pursuing a teaching certification, but that was about it.

You are right that CS stands out. It's an unorganized field that is still trying to define itself. (Consider how young it is, relatively speaking.) Some schools want it to be mostly theory, others mostly software engineering, most are somewhere in between. There's disagreement over which languages to teach, how to teach them, etc. It's all somewhat awkward, and it needs to be reformed. I'm hoping that eventually we can split it into two separate fields, like CS theory and software engineering, and do a better job teaching both. (FWIW, I also majored in CS, so I saw both sides of the coin.)