Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 191 posts

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

#51

Post by kylec »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #50
kylec wrote: post #29

I don't think anyone seriously thinks that learning a computer language is in any way equivalent to learning a foreign language. But it is useful to pretend that it does, so that we don't have to ask the real question: Should everyone be required to study a foreign language in school? My answer is no. I took a year of Latin in high school and hated it, and have never thought about it since. It was a huge waste of tim…

took 4 years of Latin in high school, and it was very useful: I guess its value varies depending on what else you do later, and if it's therefore helpful there?

What sort of uses have you had for it?

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

#52

Post by wallflower »

philipov wrote: post #42
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…

I learned my first programming language, Basic, when I was 8 years old, and reading code feels like a natural language to me. I think the complication is that programming involves both a language and a logic system. While language may be created naturally before puberty, having the requisite logical reasoning requires something extra. I had very early access to formal logic training, and this combined with self-motiv…

> I had very early access to formal logic training

Can you please expand on this? Montessori School?

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

#53

Post by ascar »

kylec wrote: post #29

I don't think anyone seriously thinks that learning a computer language is in any way equivalent to learning a foreign language. But it is useful to pretend that it does, so that we don't have to ask the real question: Should everyone be required to study a foreign language in school? My answer is no. I took a year of Latin in high school and hated it, and have never thought about it since. It was a huge waste of tim…

Most children in non-english countries, especially in US influenced countries, have to learn English for up to 12 years in school.

I'm not sure, if there are any other benefits than being able to communicate in English. But in Germany we even force a 3rd language for at least 4 years to all students in the higher education school path. So there might be evidence for educational benefits?

The US might benefit from adding mandatory Spanish from a very young age with so many native speakers in the country and on the continent.

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

#54

Post by da_chicken »

kylec wrote: post #38
fao_ wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Latin isn't a living language, though.

It satisfied the foreign language requirement

And Brainfuck and Whitespace are technically programming languages. That doesn't mean it's useful to learn them.

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

#55

Post by subway »

This takes me back to High School. My senior year (2002), the school decided to add a "computer programming" course (c++). Despite having a "computer science" department (a lab that taught pc repair skills), the course ended up under the Languages department, taught by the Latin teacher.

To be fair, the reasoning for this was that the Latin teacher was the only faculty member to hold a computer science degree (he also held number of other seemingly unrelated degrees, iirc).

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

#56

Post by amaccuish »

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…

I see it more as several stages of life, some easier than others:

baby/toddler growing up in a multilingual environment = fairly easy

baby/toddler growing up in a monolingual environment = difficult

Young child -> teenager (e.g. I actually began learning french in primary school) = slow and difficult

Late teens -> young adult = the best time after baby/toddler

+40 = more difficult but not impossible

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

#57

Post by SilasX »

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…

>The reason children seem to learn quicker is because they're exposed to the language every hour of the day. They have no choice.

They also have an environment of understanding adults willing to explain their mistakes and teach how to say what they want.

If you’re already an adult, this is hard to find. People will either switch to your language, ignore you, or find some common language (even ad hoc hand signs) to communicate.

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

#59

Post by WhompingWindows »

entee wrote: post #40
kylec wrote: post #29

I don't think anyone seriously thinks that learning a computer language is in any way equivalent to learning a foreign language. But it is useful to pretend that it does, so that we don't have to ask the real question: Should everyone be required to study a foreign language in school? My answer is no. I took a year of Latin in high school and hated it, and have never thought about it since. It was a huge waste of tim…

As someone who grew up bilingual, I think knowing another language has been invaluable to how I approach and understand the world. I disagree (fully acknowledging my bias) that learning another language is a waste of time. However, I think high school is too late. Most people I knew in HS that started learning another language weren't super invested and didn't learn it. Not to mention that it's really hard to do at 1…

You grew up bilingual, though. For those of us speaking the same languages as our parents/community, we're not going to come even remotely close to fluency with a couple of low-level school courses.

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

#60

Post by da_chicken »

influxed wrote: post #13

My experience with written/spoken languages vs programming languages has been vastly different. In my early 20s I picked up enough Spanish working in a restaurant to have conversations about simple topics/small talk, including native speakers at family dinners. Not much effort. In my late 20s using Anki (SRS) I learned enough Russian to mostly understand radio broadcasts and television, but I never practiced speaking…

> Programming languages on the other hand have been a much different experience, not nearly as difficult to pick up. I haven't considered exactly why it's so different until now.

Well, general purpose, procedural, imperative languages -- the first programming languages we typically learn -- are all essentially the same. In many ways, they're all re-imaginings of Fortran, COBOL, Pascal, ALGOL, BASIC and C. They're really different dialects that express ideas in basically the same ways. All languages that derive from this family work in essentially the same ways. Sure, they have different features, syntax, abstractions, paradigms, etc., but Python, Go, Rust, C#, Java and JavaScript are all essentially the same way of thinking and express things in nearly the same ways.

When you start to work with languages that increasingly deviate from that common general purpose, procedural, imperative paradigm, you start to see people struggle. That's when you're actually learning a different language. Established programmers have a notoriously difficult time picking up declared languages like SQL and XSLT, for example, and domain-specific languages like LaTeX can give others difficulty, while functional languages like Lisp seem to be either something you love or hate.

Post reply on HN