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Everybody does not need to learn to code.

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Re: Everybody does not need to learn to code.

#41

Post by samatman »

jusben1369 wrote: post #34

Let me ask, earnestly, why is learning to code better or more important than: - Studying medicine at school so you can avoid engaging with the expensive medical system for all but the most critical issues? - Studying law so that you understand how to read contracts and understand legislation? Mathematics and language are the building blocks of programming. We study those. Going further upstream into the outputs of th…

You know how Physics is sometimes viewed as a kind of ad-hoc applied Mathematics? For that reason, we often/usually consider maths the more fundamental discipline.

Mathematicians are generally doing ad-hoc applied computer programming in order to carry on mathematics at this point. Give the academy another 50-100 years to figure out what this means, if anything, about the fundamentals of each discipline.

I think we'll conclude that advances in the rest of mathematics are all built on computable mathematics now, including proof, making computation foundational until/unless someone finds a more powerful approach.

PS: There are no doubt mathematicians reading this, and the ad-hoc part may make you bristle. If you can point me to a paper that begins with a proof of correctness, of both the hardware and operating system which ran whatever code was involved, I'll take it back.

Re: Everybody does not need to learn to code.

#42

Post by mathattack »

bobbbinsIII wrote: post #31
whathre9 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only a small number of people might be coding competently currently, but that doesn't mean only a small number CAN. There is nothing special about programming; like learning a language, it is very possible to become competent, and anybody who is not mentally delayed can do so - it just takes effort. If you can code competently well done, but don't think yourself special.

coding competently requires intelligence and attention to detail. you need to be smart not just "not mentally delayed".

Not everyone needs to code competently. Just like not everyone needs to speak Spanish competently. (Or can learn other languages competently)

But... Learning a little Spanish can increase one's appreciation for Spanish culture. Even attempting to learn some programming can make one much more effective when they hire or direct a programmer, or engage in discussions about online privacy, or ask someone to help analyze a problem.

Re: Everybody does not need to learn to code.

#43

Post by aim-120 »

bobbbinsIII wrote: post #31
whathre9 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only a small number of people might be coding competently currently, but that doesn't mean only a small number CAN. There is nothing special about programming; like learning a language, it is very possible to become competent, and anybody who is not mentally delayed can do so - it just takes effort. If you can code competently well done, but don't think yourself special.

coding competently requires intelligence and attention to detail. you need to be smart not just "not mentally delayed".

Exactly.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2004/09/skill-disparities-i...

Re: Everybody does not need to learn to code.

#44

Post by wry »

jliechti1 wrote: post #29

From a practical standpoint, I really wish everyone was taught enough programming to know how to automate basic manipulation of text data. I see way too many people editing long lists of data by hand, when there are much better ways to go about it (even Excel works great for this kind of stuff). Just knowing this setup below can let you do some really power automation of manual tasks and can save you a lot of time. E…

I agree, basic scripting and automation would be more useful to the general population. Rather than just learning to code, I think that many people people could benefit from learning how to use technology first, include some theory and logic courses that lead into CS.

Re: Everybody does not need to learn to code.

#45

Post by michaelwww »

kailuowang wrote: post #7

IMO, one of the main benefits of everybody learning a bit computer language is so that they can understand better how computers think, which is quite different from people. In an age when people are starting to interact with computer more than with other people, it's certainly valuable. I don't worry too much about novices building shitty things, because debugging crappy code takes way too much energy then learning t…

I think you make an important point here. People should understand basic math and basic programming, if only to protect themselves from charlatans. If more people understood basic financial math we wouldn't have as severe a credit crisis as we had recently. People would have understood the risk in all those crazy loan offers (no income - no money down - no problem!) Congruently, when companies of the future say "trust our computers, they're artificially intelligent" people are going to have a little knowledge to base that trust on.

Re: Everybody does not need to learn to code.

#46

Post by mistercow »

freyr wrote: post #10

Every student should have, at least, exposure to coding and the opportunity to learn it. This has not been the case in my lifetime. In middle school, a special instructor was brought in to teach programming to the GATE kids. She decided she could only handle one student. So out of the entire class, only one kid was exposed to programming in school When it was time to enter high school, there were two public schools i…

Most programming classes that do exist also aren't available until high school. This is a mistake. Elementary school kids are totally capable of learning the basics (I was using HyperCard when I was 6), and they have a key advantage: they don't feel much shame from making mistakes. Kids get frustrated and distracted, but not embarrassed.

This is a major problem for adults learning to use computers in general, and for programming in particular. If you're afraid of poking at a system and possibly breaking it, it's very difficult to learn how it works.

Re: Everybody does not need to learn to code.

#47

Post by kd0amg »

throwit1979 wrote: post #26
freyr wrote: post #10

Every student should have, at least, exposure to coding and the opportunity to learn it. This has not been the case in my lifetime. In middle school, a special instructor was brought in to teach programming to the GATE kids. She decided she could only handle one student. So out of the entire class, only one kid was exposed to programming in school When it was time to enter high school, there were two public schools i…

Sorry, I don't intend to cast aspersions on your upbringing, but why does class availability matter at all to this discussion? Myself, and everyone in the small group of middle school kids at my school who were interested, learned programming from books. Our school was extraordinarily poor, so the whole notion of CS classes was laughable.

I remember trying that when I was in middle school and discovering that the local library did not exactly have a great selection, and I didn't know anyone who could recommend good resources. Searching the web kept bringing up the same few overly shallow tutorials which didn't even explain how to actually run a program. It's less of an issue today, but finding good resources to learn from matters.

Re: Everybody does not need to learn to code.

#48

Post by jusben1369 »

Volscio wrote: post #38
jusben1369 wrote: post #34

Let me ask, earnestly, why is learning to code better or more important than: - Studying medicine at school so you can avoid engaging with the expensive medical system for all but the most critical issues? - Studying law so that you understand how to read contracts and understand legislation? Mathematics and language are the building blocks of programming. We study those. Going further upstream into the outputs of th…

I would figure a lot of what you pay a lawyer for is not making sure you understand the contract but a) to save time and b) to have someone who's in the profession and knows the legal quirks, loopholes, and procedures. I would figure a lot of what you pay a doctor for is not to mend every problem you have with your body to but to ensure that it's done timely, safely, and with the least amount of risk/damage/scarring/…

Hey Volscio thanks for that. I agree that problem solving is great skill to have. Philosophy long filled that role but has fallen a little out of favor. I studied it (minor) at University and many of the lecturers pointed out (mostly in a hope to keep us engaged and motivated) that some of the world's best philosophers make a small fortune on the side with paid engagements for large corporations. Corporations literally give them problems that they cannot solve in terms of the market and philosophers solve them. While somewhat skeptical at first I was ultimately very impressed with how philosophy taught a disciplined approach to problem solving

Re: Everybody does not need to learn to code.

#49

Post by Jach »

jliechti1 wrote: post #29

From a practical standpoint, I really wish everyone was taught enough programming to know how to automate basic manipulation of text data. I see way too many people editing long lists of data by hand, when there are much better ways to go about it (even Excel works great for this kind of stuff). Just knowing this setup below can let you do some really power automation of manual tasks and can save you a lot of time. E…

I have more or less the same viewpoint. There are big gains if everyone understood how much time code loops can save, and if they started to see the areas of their lives where a manual task could be cast into an automatic task without much work.

But this suggests a different way of teaching intro programming, one that is more tool-based than concept-based, a way that's about searching for the existence of a tool and then finding and reading its documentation or examples so that one can use it in a simple, encapsulating control program. If you don't know about the existence of imagemagick, are you going to think you can loop through all the images in a folder and resize them, or extract a subimage from them, or something else, without having to write a ton of code? Maybe not, but you might search for a command line program to do the hard part and discover the tool, or it might have been part of an intro programming course focused on "look at all the neat things general computers can do to save you time if you have this problem". Same thing with Python's csv module, which someone who has used Python for over a year in a CS class may not have even known was there all along. There are lots of powerful one-liners and small code chunks that deserve a lot of respect since they can save so much time.

Re: Everybody does not need to learn to code.

#50

Post by mistercow »

samatman wrote: post #13

Disagree. Everyone needs to learn to code. I was taught long division as a child. Didn't like it; who does? Nor do I use it. But... When I was 15, I finally got a chance to study programming. One of the first things our professor showed us, was how to do string-based long division, with a computer. The enlightenment was profound. Why was I doing this, when everyone else was learning to symbolically find quadratic roo…

>I was taught long division as a child. Didn't like it; who does? Nor do I use it.

Really? I mean, I guess I don't like long division; nor do I dislike it. But I like being able to get its results, and I do it all the time in my head. What do you use instead?

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