There's a big difference between learning syntax and learning to code.
Why one company is making all its employees learn how to code
21–30 of 41 posts
Re: Why one company is making all its employees learn how to code
#22That's awesome. Imagine working in an all Spanish workplace and refusing to learn at least some Spanish. I think everyone benefits from learning a bit of the language. You don't have to be fluent but even knowing the slightest bit gets you a lot more respect. You can see this when visiting foreign countries. Understanding and writing code should be the basics.
Re: Why one company is making all its employees learn how to code
#23Maybe next year all the programmers can learn accounting.
Wait until they teach everyone how to sell a product.
Re: Why one company is making all its employees learn how to code
#24I'm having trouble understanding what "learn to code" means for most people. It's almost obnoxious when business types propose "learning to code" in a nonchalant manner as though people don't spend decades developing their programming skills. Yes, you may take codecademy tutorials and have a slight understanding of js syntax...but I wouldn't expect you to build anything of value.
Do you feel the same way about learning to speak foreign languages and play musical instruments? Is it obnoxious for a person to teach introductory French night classes, when fluency will take years and may never be possible for the students given their other commitments? What if it is not even likely that they will ever have French-language conversations "of value"? Does the very act of proposing learning this new s…
Is it obnoxious for a person to teach introductory French night classes, when fluency will take years and may never be possible for the students given their other commitments?
I think the implication is that it's obnoxious when people equate "learning a little French grammar and vocabulary" with "learning to speak French". Similarly, many of these pop-tech articles don't appear able to differentiate between "learning a little JavaScript grammar and vocabulary" and "learning to program". (I'd bet that the principals at the companies mentioned do know the difference, but they have an obvious incentive not to emphasize it to the press or to their potential customers.)
Re: Why one company is making all its employees learn how to code
#25All these comments about "no value" are hilarious. Honestly I dont think "serious programming" even matters. It's people learning, for example, that the 30 min daily process they do in excel can actually be a script that takes one second to run. The company is already seeing benefits to the culture and soon people will be thinking differently. That's a win.
I think that's equivalent to asking everyone to go to chef's school and describing the upside as 'People will realize that peeling potatoes can be done in a quarter the time they're doing it now!'
It's just... why? These people aren't going to be doing any programming daily. Why don't you take all that money, and all that time and let each non-programmer go to a deep dive conference of their choice for whatever their discipline is. Seems like a much better use of resources.
Re: Why one company is making all its employees learn how to code
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been hearing this argument a lot lately. Are you suggesting that if I wanted to learn to code it would take me decades to be able to build anything of value? To me learning to code is just like learning any other skill. Sure you wont be good at it the first few months you start but that is what practice is for. I don't see why in a year or two you wouldn't be able to build something of value. If it really took 1…
Umm... piano? violin? lawyer? doctor? mathematician? I could go on... After a year or two of learning to code, you can build things of minimal value. If they're of any reasonable complexity, though, they'll probably be terribly structured and difficult to maintain. To truly become effective, it really does take many years, with lots of things that can really only be learned by experience.
You can become a medic in a few months which is not a doctor but still able to save peoples lives in a wide range of circumstances. As to musical instruments learning to play the bugle call takes a while but not decades. You can learn some basic piano songs to play at parity's fairly rapidly assuming a reasonable level of dedication.
As for math even something as simple as being able to make change quickly is both useful and in demand.
Re: Why one company is making all its employees learn how to code
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Umm... piano? violin? lawyer? doctor? mathematician? I could go on... After a year or two of learning to code, you can build things of minimal value. If they're of any reasonable complexity, though, they'll probably be terribly structured and difficult to maintain. To truly become effective, it really does take many years, with lots of things that can really only be learned by experience.
You can become a medic in a few months which is not a doctor but still able to save peoples lives in a wide range of circumstances. As to musical instruments learning to play the bugle call takes a while but not decades. You can learn some basic piano songs to play at parity's fairly rapidly assuming a reasonable level of dedication. As for math even something as simple as being able to make change quickly is both us…
I guess it depend on how one sees something to have value.
There are mathematicians only consider research level mathematics have value. There are some subfield of mathematics like algebraic geometry that take years for a math grad student to even understand the language, and takes even longer to produce research paper with value.
Re: Why one company is making all its employees learn how to code
#28I'm having trouble understanding what "learn to code" means for most people. It's almost obnoxious when business types propose "learning to code" in a nonchalant manner as though people don't spend decades developing their programming skills. Yes, you may take codecademy tutorials and have a slight understanding of js syntax...but I wouldn't expect you to build anything of value.
Certainly I wouldn't expect most of them to be writing production code, but there are other benefits.
1) Before I knew how to program computers and programming seemed very mysterious and magical to me. Giving everyone a basic understanding of what your company actually does is a good thing. At the very least it will improve communication. It might help non-developers set more realistic expectations, etc.
2) Even "business types" can benefit from knowing how to program, even if they won't be writing user-facing code. Many business applications have scripting engines built in. Being able to take some data and transform it or calculate some statistics will help them do their jobs better.
3) Designers/UI/UX people who can program are incredibly valuable. They know what the technology is capable of, and will design with that in mind. Often they can produce working prototypes, or even production code.
Some employees will probably just learn the basics and decide they don't really care for programming, but others might embrace it and become much more efficient at what they do.
Re: Why one company is making all its employees learn how to code
#29I'm having trouble understanding what "learn to code" means for most people. It's almost obnoxious when business types propose "learning to code" in a nonchalant manner as though people don't spend decades developing their programming skills. Yes, you may take codecademy tutorials and have a slight understanding of js syntax...but I wouldn't expect you to build anything of value.
Part of the problem is you're trying to understand a classification that's fairly broad (learn to code) in terms of your narrow definition vs. their narrow definition. It's too broad of a term, so it's better to just say "learn to code" means the whole spectrum, then get specific about what they actually can do.
For example, these people are learning to code, but they're beginners so they won't be very capable. They'll struggle with most concepts, have to be reminded about syntax, and kind of think the computer is "magic". If they get through a few basic books then, yes, they "learned to code". If that's all they wanted to do, then they've done it and now they have a better understanding of computation and the things they work with all day.
After that, maybe some of them move on to build things, figure out the computer is not magic, learn a few more languages, pick up techniques, and generally continue the path of "learning to code". At that point you have a wider range of phases they'd go through on the way, but they are still doing what the phrase says. Maybe none of them will ever reach a professional level, some may master it and never do it as a day job.
Re: Why one company is making all its employees learn how to code
#30A lot of people seem to be offended by this, or think it's a waste of time. I think you need to realize there's a difference between learning to code and being a professional programmer.
I see "programming" as a skill like "writing" or "basic math" that everyone should know something about. We all know how to write and do some math but we don't call ourselves "writers" or "mathematicians".
But you'd never claim it's worthless to learn how to write or do arithmetic. Why not programming?