41–50 of 76 posts
> Is it the lack of fresh, organic food in inner-cities? Ha ha ha ha you think people are held back because their food isn't organic? Ha ha ha ha ha!
I see being able to code as a thing like literacy, either you have it or you don't, and, if you don't have it, then you are going to be held back and not reach your own potential. In the workplace I see a lot of people using 1990's tools like Excel to create 'reports' of some sort, where the data in them is as good as dead. Meanwhile, those of us that can do a database join or two and get the results in some type of web page (or text file) don't have to keep creating the same 'reports'. The computer just does it thereafter.
Companies that used to have a web page (and not much more) are now using online tools for business, whether that is getting stuff out the door, handling customer service, doing business intelligence things, in fact almost everything gets touched on by this 'web' way of working. Doing things in legacy tools (Excel spreadsheets, Word docs) just does not cut it anymore, things now get done in a web-style way with some backend processes bespoke to the given business smoothing things along. 'Let's go back to doing everything in Excel' is the new 'let's go back to doing everything on paper'.
Even if one is not proficient at coding it is still important to be able to work with those that are, to be able to describe processes in a way that can be 'automated' to some extent, a 'systems approach' rather than hand-me-down ways of working.
This automation does not necessarily put people out of work, it empowers people to be able to do their actual work without the tedium of repetitive tasks. They can be more customer focused, do better 'business intelligence' or keep better tabs on getting stuff out the door.
There was a revolution in the 1990's when Word came along and replaced Wordperfect. Suddenly people could type their own letters and memos, they did not need to dictate to a secretary. Oddly nobody has gone back to the 'Wordperfect' ways of working. Code (particularly on the web, whether front or backend) is like that, a game changer, and I want to see people coding, not necessarily to do some SF next-unicorn thing but just to be able to be participant in regular SME businesses.
I usually try to temper my judgments on these sorts of articles, but this is patently ridiculous. Is it the police and prison systems that are endangering another generation of black and brown youth? Is it the lack of fresh, organic food in inner-cities? Maybe it's the fact that black and brown parents have, at a disgustingly disproportionate rate, been taken away from their families for possession of plants and chem…
Maybe it's the combination of many potential social problems, and the author is writing about one specifically? I don't see anywhere it's stated that this is the biggest issue facing youth of colour.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can try all you want, and in fact I encourage everyone to do so. Let's not have populists plant the seeds that all it takes is government handouts (and also wave the carrot of future career ROI in front of people who don't know better) though. This is at best misdirection and manipulation by corrupt demagogues who know nothing about software or engineering. Unless of course there are others, besides hack job poli…
All this program is doing is attempting to give exposure to programming to young students who may not otherwise have an opportunity to do so. No matter how naturally gifted a student may be, the tools to learn and grow have to be put within their reach in the first place. The criticism this article is levying is how it is threatening to produce code monkeys instead of well-rounded software engineers. But that is beca…
Where you see "attempting to give exposure to programming" I see students being PUSHED by the environment (parents, teachers, peers) into doing something that they may very well not enjoy or be good at, simply because it's been reduced to a good CAREER. Is that something that we need to further encourage?
Moreover, re: exposure to programming, I dare say that we don't need it _at all_ these days since it's everywhere.
Knowing what we know about the American education system (ranked as among one of the worst in the world, every year) I think my interpretation is a lot more realistic than yours.
> Offering a glimpse into the not-too-distant future, [Joseph Sweeney] describes a day when... artificial-intelligence system will build the app... Coding might then be nearly obsolete It's always cute to hear school administrators (or any non-technical policy types) predict the future based upon superficial understanding of the underlying science and technology. Code synthesis for fully specified and very simple pro…
> Is it the lack of fresh, organic food in inner-cities? Ha ha ha ha you think people are held back because their food isn't organic? Ha ha ha ha ha!
> Is it the lack of fresh, organic food in inner-cities? Ha ha ha ha you think people are held back because their food isn't organic? Ha ha ha ha ha!
Obviously it depends on the food. Eating pesticide-filled butter everyday throughout ones youth may well have effects later in life.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Math as taught in US high schools has very little to do with anything of real value. It's basically an SAT prep program, to push people through to calculus. I could very nearly count on a railway brakeman's fingers the number of times that high school math has been an asset in my software career. The three years of computer programming electives I took were wildly more useful - and actually taught me geometry...
I would argue that well-taught geometry and such will make learning programming muuuch easier. Linear algebra has a lot of concepts that translate quite neatly to programming. Set theory, functions, etc. Formal logic is also a great asset for understanding branching logic. Then again, learning how to program probably also makes learning those concepts easier too, as it goes both ways...
Hell, I had to take the AP Calculus AB twice -- not because I did poorly the first time, but because there was no other courses for me to take and I didn't want to go a year without any math before college.