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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

#171

Post by shard »

ken wrote: post #27
semitext wrote: post #11

My understanding is that the younger you are the easier it is to pick up a foreign language. Whereas that doesn't appear to be the case for computer languages. Learning either creates opportunities for life changing opportunities for the better, but I think it would be a mistake for people to forego learning a foreign language at that age. If they want to learn programming languages as well they will, but I know lots…

> My understanding is that the younger you are the easier it is to pick up a foreign language. The latest research I've seen indicates that this is false. When you look at vocabulary in "words learned per hour of study", adults actually do much better than children. (I'm sure I've seen a study of this involving the U.S. State Department or some such, but I can't find it right now.) This isn't surprising to me: adults…

Learning a foreign language is more than just learning grammar and vocabulary. It is also learning to distinguish the different sounds of that language and the ways to make those sounds. I can't do the searches for it right now, but from what I recall, people lose the ability to distinguish sounds that they don't hear often by a very young age, since their brain figures it's not important to distinguish those, so that it becomes increasingly harder to pronounce and understand those languages which use different sounds. This is why L and R differentiation is very hard for Asian speakers, and tonal languages like Chinese and Vietnamese are very hard for English speakers.

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

#172

Post by jesssse »

holy_city wrote: post #120
B-Con wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's sad that people equate employment to being "functioning members of society." Your job is just one thing you do in society. Education is about teaching children how to think, communicate, and act as much as giving them specific tools for future careers. Never mind the plethora of studies that have found links between arts education and performance in other educational/vocational areas. It's hardly esoteric.

I agree, never mind those studies. Art is masturbatory. Learn a trade.

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

#173

Post by kwhitefoot »

lordnacho wrote: post #119
jandrese wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It shouldn't be a surprise why programming languages are easier to learn. The grammer is highly regular and the vocabulary is absolutely tiny. Even complex computer languages are toys compared to any spoken language. Plus with computer languages you have a machine that can tell you if you're doing it right at your beck and call all day long. No need to bother a real life person to practice.

Plus computer code is always in Latin/English script. Even if you just study a Western European language you'll end up with extra characters. A bit further afield and you end up with alternative alphabets or for example Chinese characters.

> computer code is always in Latin/English script

No it isn't.

I'm working on an application now where many of the variable names use Norwegian specific characters and the bulk of the comments that I write are in Norwegian. Now that we have Unicode there is no reason why non-keyword text should be in English or in a Latin or Latin derived alphabet unless you expect people who can't read that language to maintain the code.

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

#174

Post by lordnacho »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #173
lordnacho wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus computer code is always in Latin/English script. Even if you just study a Western European language you'll end up with extra characters. A bit further afield and you end up with alternative alphabets or for example Chinese characters.

> computer code is always in Latin/English script No it isn't. I'm working on an application now where many of the variable names use Norwegian specific characters and the bulk of the comments that I write are in Norwegian. Now that we have Unicode there is no reason why non-keyword text should be in English or in a Latin or Latin derived alphabet unless you expect people who can't read that language to maintain the…

You can always count on HN to find the exceptions.

Do you have Norwegian standard libs for your application? Or is it just your business logic that's in Norwegian?

Fact is most of the code you find anywhere uses English keywords like "while" or "except", and the standard libs will use English names like "socket". The occasional non English code language is an oddity.

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

#175

Post by chilukrn »

mywittyname wrote: post #88
ghaff wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno. It's hard for me to see a year (say) of a foreign language that's never used outside of that class as having a lot of value. As I dimly remember my high school language classes, you didn't even really get into literature and culture associated with the language until later on. On the other hand, a year of a language like Python probably has some value in teaching logic and problem-solving even if the student…

I feel like teaching coding is a waste of resources, for several reasons: there's a glut of material readily available for individual study; what's taught will be largely irrelevant when the student graduates; and importantly, it will likely be poorly taught. Good CS teachers can probably get jobs paying 3x as much, so only the most dedicated will stick with teaching. My opinions are probably biased because I had an…

I think that's because it is taught by people who are not well trained in CS themselves for the most part, and a not so well defined curriculum. "You can build a cool website/mobile app" can help only so much in inculcating an interest in computing.

I wish there's something more like this book (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure_and_Interpretation_o...) for schools which show that computation is a good extension of mathematical thinking (when used in the sciences), and beyond that, it can used to build "cool stuff" like mobile apps or software to control robotic arms.

In case my last sentence was not clear, I'm trying to allude to different roles of software. One can use it as a useful, very fast but dumb calculator doing computations to predict a molecular structure or a spreadsheet doing a bunch of stuff for an accountant/finance guy. Many times, we tend to think of it as useful to build cool tech apps/websites and force feed them Java/C++ or some such things which they're not ready for yet[1]. We should inculcate "computational thinking" before we teach them Javascript websites/java apps.

[1]As per my experience with some fancy schools teaching 5th/6th grade kids how to build their first apps

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

#176

Post by collyw »

> It stems from a widely held but mistaken belief that science and technology education should take precedence over subjects like English, history and foreign languages.

As someone who lives in a foreign country, computer skills have been a lot more valuable to me than language skills. Some hotel staff here will speak multiple languages while I have managed to get employment in English fairly easily and I earn a fair bit more than what the multilingual hotel staff will earn.

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

#177

Post by namibj »

chilukrn wrote: post #175
mywittyname wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like teaching coding is a waste of resources, for several reasons: there's a glut of material readily available for individual study; what's taught will be largely irrelevant when the student graduates; and importantly, it will likely be poorly taught. Good CS teachers can probably get jobs paying 3x as much, so only the most dedicated will stick with teaching. My opinions are probably biased because I had an…

I think that's because it is taught by people who are not well trained in CS themselves for the most part, and a not so well defined curriculum. "You can build a cool website/mobile app" can help only so much in inculcating an interest in computing. I wish there's something more like this book ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure_and_Interpretation_o... ) for schools which show that computation is a good extensi…

I'm currently trying to teach a friend structured software design via the https://deinprogramm.de [0] approach based on Racket/Scheme, resisting a friends opinion on it being not useful enough in industry and all that. The thing is, that while I'll have an easy time finding her a job with no real experience if she can demonstrate a structured approach I can vouch for, the opposite is far harder. If she can write python, fine. But no one will pay her/teach her without a long trade school contract if she can't demonstrate that she can be left alone with a task that takes 50~150 hours. Or at least that she only lacks a bit experience and needs some guidance to end up with a concise overall design.

Considering that the most senior engineers spend far more time on high-level design than on coding, it seems the better carreer path.

The book you search might be the one linked below, btw.

[0] German brother of https://programbydesign.org/

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

#178

Post by dwild »

holy_city wrote: post #120
B-Con wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's sad that people equate employment to being "functioning members of society." Your job is just one thing you do in society. Education is about teaching children how to think, communicate, and act as much as giving them specific tools for future careers. Never mind the plethora of studies that have found links between arts education and performance in other educational/vocational areas. It's hardly esoteric.

> Education is about teaching children how to think, communicate, and act

CS is incredible to teach how to think. Algorithms, using logic to solve problems, decomposing a problem, etc... Theses are all skills that make you think, that push you to UNDERSTANDS better. Personally I never seen my college classes as nothing else than learning to learn, because that's computer science. More often than not, the lack of information given by the teacher wasn't a proof of incompetence but a way to test our capacity to search and discover by our self.

Sure I learned a bit in my french classes, sure I learned a bit in my history classes, but I never ever learned to think in any of theses classes except CS. I only learned to apply theses skills.

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

#179

Post by grandridge »

citizenkeen wrote: post #112
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…

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

art is a hobby

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

#180

Post by PebblesRox »

entee wrote: post #71
ozzyman700 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you provide examples on how being bilingual has been invaluable to you? I am only fluent in english, I live in a neighborhood where all restaurants answer the phone in spanish but there is usually a worker who speaks english to cover for me. How do you feel being multilingual effects the way you think?

Practically speaking: French is similar enough to latin that most SAT vocab prep was far easier. It also helped when I learned spanish, because again the two are quite similar. Spanish has been useful at several points when I spent some time building things in Latin America, I actually wouldn't have had that opportunity if I didn't speak the language. Fluffier: Watching french language movies and listening to French…

Your comment reminded me of the concept of being a “Third Culture Kid” and makes me realize how much I just I take for granted about my experience growing up in just one culture.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_culture_kid

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