NYC Mayor Bloomberg Vows To Learn To Code In 2012 120
Posted
by
timothy
from the give-himself-a-fighting-chance dept.
from the give-himself-a-fighting-chance dept.
theodp writes "New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has announced his intention to take a coding class in 2012 via Twitter ('My New Year's resolution is to learn to code with Codecademy in 2012! Join me.'). So, is this just a PR coup for Codeacademy, or could EE grad (Johns Hopkins, '64) Bloomberg — who parlayed the $10 million severance he received after being fired as head of systems development at Solomon Brothers into his $19.5 billion Bloomberg L.P. fortune — actually not know how to program? Seems unlikely, but if so, perhaps Bloomberg should just apply to be a Bloomberg Summer 2012 Software Development intern — smart money says he'd get the gig!"
Re:Cobol (Score:5, Interesting)
Fortran isn't that bad, considering it's from 1957. Anyone who can do Fortran, could learn C++ very quickly, [begin rant] Cobol on the other hand was a step backwards the day it appeared in 1959, and it's creators should be bludgeoned with a frozen fish for even writing the design document. And yes - I've written tons of Cobol - it doesn't grow on you. It's probably the first example of the fundamental misconception, that it's desirable (if even possible) to make formal descriptions using informal language. The MBA's still think you can describe a piece of software in Word, and then it's a trivial process to make the software that customers want. Informal language is desirable to humans because it supports leaving out details - which is exactly what makes it useless for programming a computer. Using the word "plus" in stead of the symbol "+" is completely missing that fundamental point.[end rant]
Re:Head of systems development? (Score:2, Interesting)
Sure, its nice if you can do the job of your people, so you can have a deeper understanding of what is going on, ..
That's why I in principle like the announcement. Even if it turns out just to be a publicity stunt, it at least shows that Bloomberg thinks that learning something different would be good - or at least thinks, that his voters think that..
According to BBC, the reaction of the London mayor was that he's too busy for things like that. - Now, that shows a politican that needs to get rebooted. If politicians would do a couple things below their pay scale or volunteer for longer than a photo opportunity they might actually get a clue. I'd rather have a mayor "wasting" a few hours a week on his/her education (in a broader sense) and pay for another aide than being stuck with a clueless person who wastes millions.