Will the Push for Coding Lead to ‘Technical Ghettos’?
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Will the Push for Coding Lead to ‘Technical Ghettos’?
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Re: Will the Push for Coding Lead to ‘Technical Ghettos’?
#2I don't get the complaint that teaching Java and JavaScript puts them on the bottom rung. You have to learn on some programming language and those are as good as any, though starting on Java sounds painful.
Re: Will the Push for Coding Lead to ‘Technical Ghettos’?
#3I don't get the complaint that teaching Java and JavaScript puts them on the bottom rung. You have to learn on some programming language and those are as good as any, though starting on Java sounds painful.
I think he's implying that teaching them how to code and not how to design programs will be the new "vocational" equivalent. Although this issue seems like it just generally applies to the education system as a whole, not specific at all to coding... unless I'm missing some key point.
Also, I think perhaps the issue is with allowing "coding" classes to qualify as math/science credits may encourage some students to essentially come out of highschool with a working knowledge of how to write java / javascript to accomplish certain tasks but have little analytical training (ie the scientific method, math beyond the basics, etc)
Re: Will the Push for Coding Lead to ‘Technical Ghettos’?
#4I don't get the complaint that teaching Java and JavaScript puts them on the bottom rung. You have to learn on some programming language and those are as good as any, though starting on Java sounds painful.
Java jobs are well paid and Javascript is the new BASIC. It's not a bad choice.
Re: Will the Push for Coding Lead to ‘Technical Ghettos’?
#5You dont need phd in mathematics to be a good software developer.
Re: Will the Push for Coding Lead to ‘Technical Ghettos’?
#6I don't get the complaint that teaching Java and JavaScript puts them on the bottom rung. You have to learn on some programming language and those are as good as any, though starting on Java sounds painful.
I think he's implying that teaching them how to code and not how to design programs will be the new "vocational" equivalent. Although this issue seems like it just generally applies to the education system as a whole, not specific at all to coding... unless I'm missing some key point. Also, I think perhaps the issue is with allowing "coding" classes to qualify as math/science credits may encourage some students to es…
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...
Re: Will the Push for Coding Lead to ‘Technical Ghettos’?
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think he's implying that teaching them how to code and not how to design programs will be the new "vocational" equivalent. Although this issue seems like it just generally applies to the education system as a whole, not specific at all to coding... unless I'm missing some key point. Also, I think perhaps the issue is with allowing "coding" classes to qualify as math/science credits may encourage some students to es…
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...
Re: Will the Push for Coding Lead to ‘Technical Ghettos’?
#8I know the reasons for teaching Java...but I really wish that when a coding curriculum is decided upon, we go to something as close to the *nix-like shell as possible. I'm teaching Python to non-CS college students right now, and it never fails to amaze me how many times I have to remind them that we're dealing with text and textfiles, whether it's web scraping or counting words in Shakespeare or accessing an API. If they have any doubt what they just opened and read into memory, or wrote to disk, just switch over to the GUI (i.e. Finder on OS X) and inspect the file the "old fashioned way". The students that get it are the ones who can use programming on a casual basis...I don't attempt to teach the basics of comsci theory, but if someone can see that a task is repeatable and abstractable into a for-loop, and then apply that to something "real-world", even if it's just something like sending or collecting tweets, or managing photos...that to me is what students in a general curriculum should be learning: that the power of programming is the ability to control a computer at the granular level that you need to do exactly what you plan for. Not just learning how to push buttons on an interface designed for general consumption.
The other stuff...algorithmic efficiency, recursion, design...can come later, and are much easier to teach after you've appreciated the potential of computing and computational thinking.
Re: Will the Push for Coding Lead to ‘Technical Ghettos’?
#9Is it just me, or was the entire "question" in the article irrelevant? Like, yes just "learning to code" doesn't make you a good programmer. But just "learning to write" doesn't make you a good author either. You have to get an introduction and basic skills somewhere, even if most people will never go on to develop or profit from those skills.
Re: Will the Push for Coding Lead to ‘Technical Ghettos’?
#10I don't get the complaint that teaching Java and JavaScript puts them on the bottom rung. You have to learn on some programming language and those are as good as any, though starting on Java sounds painful.
Java jobs are well paid and Javascript is the new BASIC. It's not a bad choice.
And C and Haskell teach you how to pick up those two in less than a week when you have mastered them.
If your goal is not to have codemonkeys - you need to give the people skills to develop themselves further - which means knowing how computers work.