271–280 of 441 posts
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Do you think, as a lawyer, it would be helpful for everyone to know a little bit of law? To be able to more effectively navigate day to day things like contracts, leases, understanding of rights etc.?
A more proper analogy is: do you think it would be helpful to everyone to know the process for making laws?
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…
I am guessing it's going to get substantially easier to program going forward. Look at amount of tools and technologies we have access to. Communities, Github, Refactoring, Intellisense. So many things just out of the box. Many ready made, battle tested libraries and frameworks. It's going to get a lot easier for a non computer science person to do some end level programming. Like dragging some blocks (just thinking…
When I was growing up, in the 1980s, I saw 10-years-olds around me code in assembler. They were not geniuses, they just wanted to draw sprites on a screen. I don't think that, say, learning CSS would have been equally attractive.
I'm keen to see details of how the US government expects the programme to work. Given their track-record, particularly with the Obamacare site debacle, my hopes are not high.
Throwing in a compulsory coding course to the curriculum isn't the answer. Until a decent plan emerges, it's just phony rhetoric.
Nice. But I would prefer if he first stopped torturing people and putting his own citizens on kill lists.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am guessing it's going to get substantially easier to program going forward. Look at amount of tools and technologies we have access to. Communities, Github, Refactoring, Intellisense. So many things just out of the box. Many ready made, battle tested libraries and frameworks. It's going to get a lot easier for a non computer science person to do some end level programming. Like dragging some blocks (just thinking…
The main thing holding back software development is source code. And the reason for that is culture rather than technology. Because you aren't a 'real' programmer unless you are typing colorful complex text. That's just what the definition of a programmer is. However, in most domains, interactive graphical tools have been invented and reinvented numerous times that are more efficient than text-only programming. Those…
Speaking as a non-coder, but as one who did minimal things with programming-like higher-level stuff ranging from the old DOS batch files to VBA and some dabbling with SQL, I am curious whether real engineers believe the idea of broad literacy in coding truly would be valuable and, if so, how exactly. I am not speaking as a skeptic, just as one who does not readily see the point and wants to know. Of course, we are in…
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If this were true then we'd be hearing less and less about coding education, not more. There would be less "I have an idea and need a programmer" people, and not more. More people want to learn how to code now because they realize they are at a fundamental disadvantage in manipulating these things that are entering every facet of our lives. This is the dominant force, not the slow marginalization of the utility of wr…
> "If this were true then we'd be hearing less and less about coding education, not more." I don't think that follows. My hypothesis is that lots of programmers think that programming is more important than it really is, and politicians wanting to get tech on their side, humor them. You know how rural farming towns often have strong 4H clubs? I think this "teach kids to code" stuff is the tech equivalent of that. Eve…
Society is on a trajectory. Automation, information processing, software. It is well on its way to permeate literally every facet of life. If there is a more direct way to position people to not be left behind in this shift than ensuring they have a basic grasp of computer science and understand they can make computers do what they want via code, I'd be hard pressed to come up with it.
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Why'd you leave IBD/VC?
Before, I built pitch books and excel models and funneled money from one place to another, taking a cut. Today, I build websites that democratize content (okay that's a bit hyperbole). I just feel better about my life choices now that I'm building something substantive. Being an entrepreneur is a great experience for anyone who can cut it. I also think it should be a necessary pre-req for investors to be a founder at…
Speaking as a non-coder, but as one who did minimal things with programming-like higher-level stuff ranging from the old DOS batch files to VBA and some dabbling with SQL, I am curious whether real engineers believe the idea of broad literacy in coding truly would be valuable and, if so, how exactly. I am not speaking as a skeptic, just as one who does not readily see the point and wants to know. Of course, we are in…
I hated all of the effort wasted in the modern educational system. But when you see a kid's eyes light up when they blow into a recorder for the first time, or see how they respond to praise of their art class drawing, or see their face when they score the winning touchdown, you can see the value and importance. We can't take that away from people. So we study things that might not matter. I don't see any reason why computer programming shouldn't be that list of experiences. There are people in the world who would be rock star hackers if only they'd been given an early opportunity. Even a modest increase in the number of technically literate people can have great benefits to society.
There is a clear trend toward automation. We all know people who wouldn't benefit at all from computer programming experience. But that might not be true in twenty or thirty years. Even lawyers might need to learn more about data structures and server management in the coming decades. The ideal case is that we end up in an automated world in which everyone can pitch in a little programming to make things better. Making some technical knowledge universal might be the first step.