51–60 of 187 posts
IMO make learning programing (fun) a path to learning math (not fun). Once you understand mathematic fundamentals, understanding finance - and other such disciplines - comes naturally. You soon realize that most of (consumer) finance out there are marketing flush revolving around a few formulas.
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Yeah, we're still working on exactly how tutors get paid. For now, it's still in beta, so we're just asking for volunteers and getting feedback and figuring out a fair way to pay people. One thing we are planning to do (in addition to just paying cash) is to give students credits to continue learning and getting help from tutors when they help students who are further behind than they are. That way, students can help…
That's a neat idea. Just please be aware of the danger of extrinsic motivation crowding out intrinsic motivation. People help each other on the internet all the time without any reward apart from doing The Right Thing. Giving credits for getting more advanced help sounds like a good idea, though.
Every single person on their advisory board (http://www.code.org/about) has a vested interest in there being more programmers competing for jobs.
I feel like they are misrepresenting the nature of most programming jobs to the general public.
They prey upon people's fear of unemployment and cite numbers about there being fewer programmers than jobs. Nearly every single person in that video has explicitly said they only hire the very best. My guess is that we'd still end up with legions of unemployed people that happen to be mediocre-to-awful at programming.
Most challenges faced across the global are cultural and linguistic in nature. The heavy dependence on English is a huge barrier to most children and young adults out there. All my attempts to introduce young cousins and nephews to coding failed because they are at the stage where anything not in their own tongue is unfathomable. I looked into making a small ny-own-dialect-based mini language but it seemed that a bet…
Most challenges faced across the global are cultural and linguistic in nature. The heavy dependence on English is a huge barrier to most children and young adults out there. All my attempts to introduce young cousins and nephews to coding failed because they are at the stage where anything not in their own tongue is unfathomable. I looked into making a small ny-own-dialect-based mini language but it seemed that a bet…
I am generally enthusiastic about teaching people to code. That said, I am ambivalent about the backing organization, "Code.org": Every single person on their advisory board ( http://www.code.org/about ) has a vested interest in there being more programmers competing for jobs. I feel like they are misrepresenting the nature of most programming jobs to the general public. They prey upon people's fear of unemployment a…
I think it's much more likely exactly what you see - they want more people to code because they believe everyone should code, and many people will like it once exposed to it.
Where's the group pushing "everyone should learn to": be an accountant, doctor, engineer, electrician or a plumber. And on and on and on. Not everyone needs to learn to code. I agree that exposure to it and a basic understanding of it is good, just like other disciplines. But this is already happening! I learnt LOGO in primary school and then mindstorms, VB and HTML in high school. And so did everyone else, they were…
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First, that's not nationwide in the US. I'm not aware of it being nationwide anywhere. In my school, there was a computer programming course on the list of choices. It disappeared when the time to actually register arrived. There was a web design course. We used dreamweaver. No one knew HTML. I spent the majority of my time in the class helping the other students do things they couldn't do in dreamweaver. The situati…
Here in NSW Australia there is a Year 11/12 subject "Software Design and Development". This has been there for at least a decade if not longer. It's offered at a majority of high schools. http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/syllabus_hsc/pdf_doc/so... Also in the 7-10 high school syllabus there are options for projects that include: AI simulation and modelling, multimedia authoring, database design, website developme…
I think teaching students to program is a wonderful idea. Most people use computers every day-- be it work or leisure. Knowing how to automate your workflow in whatever career you choose would be a wonderful asset. However, I'm concerned that this isn't the goal. Lots of the video refers to a great need for programmers. It sounds like lots of the interested people are more interested in preparing students for a caree…
That could be the case. Programmers are expensive because there isn't enough to meet demand. If you can get a lot more people interested and entering into the market, the cost will go down. I would imagine an employer would prefer programmer's salary to be more in line with what a typical employee's salary is. If there is an end goal, it would probably be to make programming an expected skill set in addition to a specialty, rather than a specialty in of its own.