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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

#151

Post by pmichaud »

Steko wrote: post #132

Kevin Drum (spoilers: knows how to code) had the best take on this: http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/12/no-everyone-do... But wait. The link leads me to a fairly routine presidential video in honor of Computer Science Education Week, in which President Obama encourages kids to take computer science classes. "It's important for our country's future," he says. But I imagine he's cut dozen of videos for every…

I don't agree with Kevin. It's true that you can function without programming, but it's also true that being able to program could improve pretty much any job. Even a janitor could develop, say, a logistics application to optimize his path through the building he cleans, or build a roomba to vacuum for him.

And more broadly, I really do think programming improves the quality of my thoughts. I remember when I was 10 or 11 consciously experiencing the sensation of getting smarter as it dawned on me at deeper and deeper levels how to think precisely about problems. And that skill set invades every aspect of my thought process now. I find it to be a remarkable improvement.

On a practical level, programming is probably the best employment fall-back ever. I don't know many fields that you can enter without any credentials and make $100k+ within a couple years. That may change, but I expect it'll stay the same or improve for at least a few decades. So just for that reason, it may be wise for anyone who is capable to learn it.

Re: President Obama calls on every American to learn code

#152

Post by nickff »

0xdeadbeefbabe wrote: post #101
nickff wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, stuxnet proved that some government agencies could create code to break things; healthcare.gov is already broken, so they don't need help from the stuxnet team.

Well, stuxnet breaks things in one or two specific known ways on purpose and the healthcare site is broken in lots of unknown ways by accident. You think that is fair?

I was trying to be fair to the healthcare.gov administrators, but I agree with you.

Re: President Obama calls on every American to learn code

#153

Post by was_hellbanned »

pvnick wrote: post #73

I frequently disagree with the president, but he really hit the nail on the head with this one. I've been saying for a while now, if we were to replace high school and college foreign language requirements with a computer programming language class, you would propel America way ahead of everyone else (more-so than now) in terms of industry and innovation, and do wonders for the economy, all within a decade. Think abo…

> I've been saying for a while now, if we were to replace high school and college foreign language requirements with a computer programming language class

Computer programming has absolutely nothing to do with learning a foreign language. Learning a foreign language provides excellent perspective on your own, leading to a much greater understanding of grammar.

I took four years of Spanish and it's the only thing that made the endless, repetitive English lessons finally 'click'. For the record, I also took four years of programming and passed both CS AP exams (not that it mattered, since at the time colleges wouldn't acknowledge it b/c it was taught in Pascal and everyone wanted C -- yes, they were really that dumb).

Learning a foreign language provides critical insight into language. Learning to program provides critical insight into how to break problems down and how to structure a solution. Both are valuable and dissimilar.

Re: President Obama calls on every American to learn code

#154

Post by rhizome »

api wrote: post #80
briandear wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens when everyone has a high paying job?

I know where you're going with this. It's possible to ask the converse question: what happens when everyone has a low-paying job? The answer is that deflation must occur. Home prices must fall, etc. The problem is that deflation is incredibly painful, more painful than inflation. Activist labor is highly inflationary, which in today's debt-overburdened environment is exactly what we (meaning about 99.5% of the popula…

You might be interested in this bit from The Wire's David Simon that appeared yesterday:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/08/david-simon-cap...

Re: President Obama calls on every American to learn code

#155

Post by drzaiusapelord »

Steko wrote: post #132

Kevin Drum (spoilers: knows how to code) had the best take on this: http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/12/no-everyone-do... But wait. The link leads me to a fairly routine presidential video in honor of Computer Science Education Week, in which President Obama encourages kids to take computer science classes. "It's important for our country's future," he says. But I imagine he's cut dozen of videos for every…

>There's no need to put it on a higher pedestal.

Agreed, but when there's an important skill that's being developed overseas and neglected domestically, well, its worth beating that drum. Agriculture doesn't have that problem.

The world is becoming more and more digital. Encouraging domestic success in technology should be a national goal and, no, "I have an MBA and an idea for an iphone app" isn't enough. Software is still eating the world. The Chinese, Russians, and Indians certainly understand that. Do we?

Re: President Obama calls on every American to learn code

#156

Post by Crito »

gfodor wrote: post #125
Crito wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wr…

The extent that programming has been required to make effective use of computers has been in freefall since computers were first constructed. I see no reason to think that this trend will not continue.

Making sure that people can effectively use computers is different from having people learn to code. I really think that anyone who insists that the later is necessary has some serious tunnel-vision.

Re: President Obama calls on every American to learn code

#157

Post by api »

rhizome wrote: post #154
api wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know where you're going with this. It's possible to ask the converse question: what happens when everyone has a low-paying job? The answer is that deflation must occur. Home prices must fall, etc. The problem is that deflation is incredibly painful, more painful than inflation. Activist labor is highly inflationary, which in today's debt-overburdened environment is exactly what we (meaning about 99.5% of the popula…

You might be interested in this bit from The Wire's David Simon that appeared yesterday: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/08/david-simon-cap...

"I think Marx was a much better diagnostician than he was a clinician."

That is exactly my view as well. Great article.

Re: President Obama calls on every American to learn code

#159

Post by United857 »

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…

We teach writing as a required subject in schools, without the expectation that everyone is going to be a professional writer.

We teach science without the expectation that everyone is going to be a scientist.

We teach physical education without the expectation that everyone is going to be a professional athlete.

These are all good life skills to have even if you don't learn enough to make it your career. So it should be the same with programming.

Re: President Obama calls on every American to learn code

#160

Post by JonFish85 »

hga wrote: post #93
JonFish85 wrote: post #59

While I agree that it's a great mental exercise to learn how to code (and to learn the mindset that goes along with it), isn't it much more important for every American to learn how to budget? To learn how to save money? To me, those are things that are far more important to the country as a whole than understanding even basic scripting. As a quick example, the meaning of "afford" has changed in the last 2 generation…

Isn't that a rather ... subversive concept when a good fraction of those learning it will then apply it to the Federal budget, their state's budget and on down?

How is that subversive? It's basic personal finance. It's no more subversive than teaching kids to share toys encourages communism, in my mind.

In general, people shouldn't spend more than they make. If they spend more than they make one month a year, but save enough the other months to cover it, no big deal. I don't see how that's any different at a macro level, but I'm also not an economist.

To me it's far worse to avoid having people learn basic personal finance things than it is to avoid it, in case some people apply it to bigger things.

We have major debt problems in the population, in my opinion. The housing bubble was a part of it: buying things that one can't afford, with the assumption that prices always go up. Credit card debt being near $1 trillion (I think it's around $800b), college loans being over $1 trillion.... Borrowing has been made very easy for quite some time, but just because money is easy to get doesn't mean that the average person should borrow as much as they can (which is what I meant above when I said that affording minimum payments != affording something).

Put those numbers up against the median retirement savings, which are ~$150k for households with head-of-household aged 65+[1, Table 7]. It seems pretty obvious that we as a nation should be educating people to save for their future. I guess another solution, which would be to assume that people can't/won't save no matter what, and use the government to facilitate that "savings" (i.e. increase Social Security's role to the primary source of funds for retirement). That way we wouldn't have to worry about people subverting the system and can just trust the government to do all of the hard work for them. That may match up better with your view, if you find personal finance potentially subversive...

[1] https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43057.pdf

(Edited to fix typo: $8b -> $800b)

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