Tech Leaders Encourage Teaching Schoolkids How To Code 265
rtoz writes "Code.org has released infographics and a video to explain why students should be taught to code in school. They've gathered support from leaders in politics and the tech industry. Mark Zuckerberg says, 'Our policy at Facebook is literally to hire as many talented engineers as we can find. There just aren't enough people who are trained and have these skills today.' Former U.S. President Bill Clinton adds, 'At a time when people are saying, "I want a good job – I got out of college and I couldn't find one," every single year in America, there is a standing demand for 120,000 people who are training in computer science.' Bill Gates said, 'Learning to write programs stretches your mind, and helps you think better, creates a way of thinking about things that I think is helpful in all domains.' Google's Eric Schmidt is looking beyond first-world countries: 'For most people on Earth, the digital revolution hasn't even started yet. Within the next 10 years, all that will change. Let's get the whole world coding!'"
Part of the standing demand for computer science jobs may be influenced by bad policies from tech companies, like Yahoo's ban on working from home.
Cheap labor trained with tax dollars (Score:5, Insightful)
More "we want cheap labor trained with tax dollars" whining from industry. If there were a shortage of programmers, salaries would be going up. They're not.
Re:Cheap labor trained with tax dollars (Score:5, Insightful)
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Exactly what I was thinking. /discussion
Re:Cheap labor trained with tax dollars (Score:5, Interesting)
People don't refuse programming jobs because they didn't learn how to do it in grade school.
People refuse programming jobs because they hate programming, and don't want to deal with the regular long hours, stress, and complete lack of job security that programming comes with.
Teaching more kids to program won't produce more people who want to do it for a living, but feel free to try.
Making the job worth learning the skill for, on the other hand, will motivate people (old and young) to self-educate. Of course...that might cost something....
Re:Cheap labor trained with tax dollars (Score:5, Interesting)
Most people are capable of being programmers, but they aren't capable of being good programmers. Most people just weren't born with the level of intelligence necessary to be such a thing, and evidence of this is everywhere.
Re:Cheap labor trained with tax dollars (Score:4, Funny)
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Some ability is learned, but some ability is innate. Programming is a skill with a rather unique requirement: the ability to quickly learn and retain lots of information. Where the average person can easily memorize a seven-digit phone number, most good programmers have memorized pi out to at least 15+ decimal places.
The reason this is important should be obvious to anyone who has ever sat down to debug a problem with an 80,000 line piece of software. To do it right, need to be able to instantly recall h
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Some ability is learned, some is innate, but the key thing to remember here is that the difference is not known without enough education to explore unrecognized potential.
Personally, I think programming should indeed be a part of school curriculum, even if only to a lowly introductory level. Because as the world grows increasingly complex and reliant upon the "magic" of software solutions. It becomes more and more important to have a working knowledge of how these solutions are developed, key inputs, constr
That's nothing! (Score:5, Insightful)
Pfft. Never mind 15 decimal places, I have memorized the entire 26 letter alphabet!
Re:Cheap labor trained with tax dollars (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not a question of whether they do this. It's a question of whether then can do this quickly and easily. People who can are much more likely to be good programmers. People who succeed in music above a very basic level are also likely to be good programmers because of the need for memorization (and because they use both the analytical and creative parts of their brain heavily, much like programmers do).
What an amazing coincidence. Engineering and pre-med programs also have high dropout rates, in part because not everyone has those innate abilities.
Unless, of course, you mean building skyscrapers, giving people their medicine, or driving/repairing automobiles, in which case, those are all examples of remarkably simple tasks that just happen to tangentially involve complex interrelated systems. You don't have to master the complexity of an automobile to use it any more than you have to master the complexity of writing software to use an iPhone. Other people design the systems to hide the complexity so that you don't have to understand it. And that's a big part of what makes good programming hard.
More to the point, those tasks are easily compartmentalized. You have to be able to understand a small part of how something works, but you do not have to have a big-picture view at the same time. When you build a bridge or a building, you have parts that are numbered, that were cut and measured, that you put into place. You need to know where they go. You need to know how to fasten them in place. You do not need to understand that the beam is arched slightly so that it will end up being flat after the concrete weighs it down. (You do, however, need to know which side goes up.) You do not need to have a complete understanding of why particular beams are thicker than others. You certainly do not need to understand precisely how the length of the beams and other elements were tweaked to avoid resonance problems (Tacoma Narrows, anyone?) because someone already figured out those details and provided someone else with the manufacturing specs to produce the beam that you're hanging.
Programming, by contrast, cannot easily be compartmentalized. You can't write a function in isolation and hope it fits in with the rest of the code, because there's nobody handing you a detailed specification for exactly how that code should be written (usually). You have to figure it out for yourself. You have to be simultaneously creative and logical. You have to simultaneously understand something very large while understanding how something very small fits in with it. And when you get people who do not have that ability writing code, you get colossal train wrecks. :-)
Yes, in a few organizations, you do have division of labor sufficient to turn programming into code monkey work, but that isn't all that common, and tends to be indicative of a bloated bureaucracy, usually involving government contracts. For everyone else, programming is like designing the skyscraper while you're building it, and living on the ground floor wh
Re:Cheap labor trained with tax dollars (Score:5, Insightful)
There's PLENTY of job security in programming (and all tech jobs) and salaries HAVE been going up.
You're just living in the wrong place.
America is not a country that has job security. Go to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, anywhere in Europe, and enjoy plenty of holidays, great pay and great job security.
Re:Cheap labor trained with tax dollars (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Cheap labor trained with tax dollars (Score:4, Interesting)
I have been in the programming job market for more than 10 years and I am convinced that many big businesses artificially manufacture "shortages" just so that they can get H-1B Visas to hire foreign programmers for much cheaper. A local big business had 20-30 programming jobs on their website. I applied to many of them. Some of those jobs matched up word-for-word with my resume, yet I didn't get a single call back. Instead, we hear of a ton of new hires coming from India. Most of them moved into a new apartment complex right across from the big business. So many, in fact, that the apartment complex became known as "Little India". You can still see them walking across the street early in the morning and then back again very late at night. They work very long hours, are not able to simply change companies at will, and work for a lower salary. And all the big company had to do was claim that they couldn't find any US citizens to meet the job requirements.
Re:Cheap labor trained with tax dollars (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the biggest change is that people in many fields will be using programming as a tool in their non-programming job. This is already the case, but it is largely informal. Computers as a job tool for everyone are going to move far beyond the office suite, and kids who don't know how to program are going to be less able to compete and contribute in general.
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I think the biggest change is that people in many fields will be using programming as a tool in their non-programming job. This is already the case, but it is largely informal. Computers as a job tool for everyone are going to move far beyond the office suite [...]
I certainly hope so, because people are in many ways treating computers as typewriters (and TVs). Lots of boring stuff is done manually or (worse) not done at all, because noone bothered to write a commercial utility to automate it. Or because it's a one-off thing.
This is where the traditional Unix approach shines. The everyday interactive interface is also the programming interface. There's no false dichotomy between programmers and users.
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I don't know why all of the top comments on this article are from people whining about the job market and complaining that employers just want free training (lets be honest, all schooling is just free training for employers, its not like calls for better math or science education aren't a result of the fact that those are the key jobs that need to be filled).
If people are going to be using computers to do 95% of their job, they are bound to run across situations where a littl
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Based on your logic, I can't wait for sales to get access to the prod databases. Update without a where anyone? But no, I'd never let a non-programmer program on any of my systems, end of story, nor will that ever change, nor am i exceptional in that view, sorry bye.
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I can't tell if you're trolling or not. I have never held a job where I wasn't doing some kind of programming, and I only was a programmer by job title for about a year and a half. Most of the time I was writing code in C, fortran, and scripting languages to help me with the automatable or problem solving parts of various jobs.
The fact that I grew up peeking and poking the hell out of my early commodore and apple computers certainly helped. I think the paradigm of desktop computer went away from that bec
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Salaries have been going up steadily in this arena for the past two years. Software Engineering is just about the only industry that has.
Having said that, if they really wanted to solve the problem, they'd try to educate Human Resources better, and encourage more on the job training instead of refusing to hire anybody without 6 years of experience in a technology that only emerged last year.
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,,,, they'd try to educate Human Resources better ...
You first. Talk about an impossible engineering project.
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Re:Cheap labor trained with tax dollars (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's a video [youtube.com] to show you how tech companies in the U.S. today "recruit" American programmers.
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I am still trying to understand why this video still hasn't stirred up a national controversy.
Of course the corporate media have reasons to ignore it. CNN, for instance, has admitted to hiring *journalists* on H1-B visas. There is no reason to do that except as a cheep labor ploy.
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More "we want cheap labor trained with tax dollars" whining from industry.
By extending your logic, we shouldn't have public schools at all.
If there were a shortage of programmers, salaries would be going up.
No, they would only be going up if the shortage was getting worse.
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The 10% vs the 90%? :)
And yes, I have yet to see a competent line of code come out of that country, and I'm probably approaching a million. Not sure what the problem is, but even if the 1% of projects out of india that do succeed make it to production, there's the maintenance costs.
Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Zuckerberg says, 'Our policy at Facebook is literally to hire as many talented engineers as we can find. There just aren't enough people who are trained and have these skills today.' Former U.S. President Bill Clinton adds, 'At a time when people are saying, "I want a good job – I got out of college and I couldn't find one," every single year in America, there is a standing demand for 120,000 people who are training in computer science.'
Yeah, and those "jobs" wouldn't just be a fiction to get more H-1B Visas, now would they? Of course not, they're all legit, of course.
Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm calling bullshit. I work with plenty of very good developers, and none of them has been contacted by Facebook. If he really wanted to meet them, all he'd need to do is offer a yearly salary of $200k. He's apparently unwilling to do that.
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Nice try, Ballmer.
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They've hired quite a few big shots (just like Apple or Google).
It's just that they're only willing to give a lot of money for the very best.
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I agree. But Zuckerberg was saying that those programmers simply don't exist. There's good evidence that in reality, they only don't exist at the price range he has in mind.
To make my point with a more extreme example: Suppose he offered $10 million/year to any highly skilled programmer. How many would suddenly "pop into existence" from his perspective?
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Good point, but that is a bit skewed by the fact that the cost of living is so high there. Salaries in most industries are higher than average in that region.
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Perhaps they can contact facebook, or make themselves visible (linkedin, etc)? I consider myself an above average developer (started playing with BASIC at 10 and now I am 30, with a phd degree), but not the very hardcore ones. I got contacted by facebook and they did offer me a package to the tune of $200k.
How's that replying to unsolicited commercial emails going for you?
my whole class was taught to program in high schoo (Score:5, Insightful)
My whole class in high school was taught how to program. The dirty little secret though is genetics play a key role and only a couple of us had any aptitude for it. Most people can be taught to program in some fashion only a few however will every be any good at it.
Re:my whole class was taught to program in high sc (Score:4, Insightful)
And... there you have it. Every kindergarden class has toy xylophones and drums. Most of them don't have a Mozart. A few of them have future part-time musicians. The rest just make noise.
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And... there you have it. Every kindergarden class has toy xylophones and drums. Most of them don't have a Mozart. A few of them have future part-time musicians. The rest just make noise.
You know, that's why punk was invented. Making your own music is more meaningful than listening to a recording of Brian May stroking his guitar (or whatever the options were in 1977).
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The same is true for every subject already taught at school: math, physics, chemistry, biology, history, and whatever other subjects they teach there.
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First, it taught me how to make something work. So many times in school there is inauthentic assessment. The results of your work does not actually result in anything, so it really does not matter if it is right or wrong. In middle school this means kids will just fill in blanks or bubble things in to get finished. Because I was doing something that wo
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Ask me about something real!
That would, by the way, look really good on a t-shirt.
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That's fine. The purpose of programs at that level shouldn't be to produce a class full of programmers, but instead to help point students with the aptitude to program towards it as a possible career path.
I'm in the IT field because of a 3 hour computer repair class I took as a kid. I never expected to enjoy it or be good at it - it's just something I did. Turned out to be the right decision for me.
Re:my whole class was taught to program in high sc (Score:5, Insightful)
Most people can be taught to program in some fashion only a few however will every be any good at it.
What's your point? If you aren't good enough to be a professional at something, you should never try it or even be exposed to it? Let's shut down all the Little League games -- "the dirty little secret though is genetics play a key role and only a couple of kids on any team (at most) have any aptitude for it. Most people can be taught to hit a ball in some fashion only a few however will ever be any good at it."
If kids are never encouraged to try something out, they'll never figure out what they might actually be good at. And many activities teach useful skills regardless of whether the participants are "any good at it" -- baseball might teach coordination, teamwork, whatever, programming might teach critical thinking about problems, etc.
I fail to see what deserves "+5 insightful" for noting that some people are better at a particular skill than others, or might have a particular aptitude for it... or -- heavens! -- might actually just work hard at it because they're interested rather than being genetically predisposed to be a good programmer.
(Whatever the hell that means -- I don't think computers have been around long enough to put evolutionary pressure on humans to develop a gene for "good coding." And if you're making a claim about how you're required to have a particular IQ or other intelligence marker we claim a genetic basis for, well, I know a lot of people who are incredibly intelligent but terrible at programming, which is a particular skill that seems to require all sorts of personality and intelligence traits to do well... if you've found a genetic marker for "good coding skills," please let us know!)
Anyhow, as the Gates quote in the summary says, good programming does require critical thinking skills and logical thinking. We used to do things like this in schools when we required kids to do proofs in geometry classes, for example. How many kids did we ever expect to become theoretical mathematicians?? A much smaller number than we think might end up doing some coding some day.
Good thinking skills can be transferable. And "genetics" doesn't determine everything about your life.
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My point is just like NFL players you are not necessarily going to turn out more programmers. You are right genetics do not determine everything but they have a very, very large influence. Certainly everyone should be exposed to it just as I had that opportunity.
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The word genetics != race, get it?
Actually one was black so what is your point?
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No, he's talking about IQ which is at least partly based on genetics.
Absolute minimum IQ to be a computer programmer is around 110. To be a GOOD programmer you're gonna need 120+. Out of a class of thirty kids, you're only gonna see 3 or 4 who qualify... the smart kids. And if they're really smart, they go on to be doctors or lawyers or wall street somethings and make more money rather than put up with the long hours, deadline pressures and the job insecurity that goes with being a programmer.
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Absolute minimum IQ to be a computer programmer is around 110. [snip] And if they're really smart, they go on to be doctors or lawyers or wall street somethings and make more money rather than put up with the long hours, deadline pressures and the job insecurity that goes with being a programmer.
Actually, if we go with your implicit definition of "smart" based on IQ scores, your claim about salary isn't actually true. There are a lot of mixed data about very high IQs and whether they actually benefit salary. Sure, people with a 110 or 120 IQ do tend to make more money than people with 100, and that's pretty well established. (That said, where you were born, your education, your parents' wealth, your race, your gender, etc. have been shown to contribute as much or greater impact compared to raw I
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Yes, and even those few people who become great programmers may struggle to find paying work doing it, and end up doing something else.
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That's pretty much true of any skill -- or, for that matter, any school subject. Some people will be better than others. Some won't get it at all. And some will truly excel.
But a worthwhile question is, *why* do some excel at one skill, some at another? To what extent is it nature vs. nurture? Lots of slashdotians are willing to come down on one side or the other, but, far as I know, we don't really understand everything about how people develop skills and interests.
Perhaps a reasonable hypothesis is that nature and nurture both play a role, with the assumption that at this point, we don't really understand the interrelationship between the two. Isn't it therefore worthwh
copyrights, IP, DCMA, whatever (Score:2)
Critical thinking before coding (Score:5, Insightful)
Critical thinking seems to me to be the missing education; teach people to think and when they get to coding it will be easy.
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Along the same lines, teach kids some formal logic so they have the proper tools to think critically.
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No, don't teach people to think! Thinking people are much much harder to control, and we need to control them to ensure they'll take lousy jobs, take on lots of debt, vote for politicians that won't change anything, and blame themselves for not getting anywhere in life. Why, this "thinking" would even convince some people that the corporate leadership isn't really all that smart, and that idea is downright dangerous.
- This message brought to you by the US Chamber of Commerce
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Cute, but most people are probably incapable of critical thinking anyway. That's never going to change.
What we can do is better develop those with some natural aptitude for it.
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Critical thinking seems to me to be the missing education; teach people to think and when they get to coding it will be easy.
Teaching coding is the best way to teach people to think. Most people think they smarter than they really are, [wikipedia.org] but when you have to express your logic in code, it either works or it doesn't.
As an example of dumb people thinking they are smart, I have found that most people that use the phrase "critical thinking", have no idea what they actually mean. Some mean "formal logic", others mean understanding probability, recognizing logical fallacies, or making sure kids are politically indoctrinated. But in ph
Sure! (Score:2)
Because the shortage of skilled coders the corporations whine about will certainly be ended if we train even more! It's not like there is anyone out there that knows how to write software that's unemployed, is it?
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But you don't understand. If every high school graduate can code, suddenly coding is comparable to flipping burgers and stocking shelves, so they can fill those "programing jobs" for $8 an hour.
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If every high school graduate can code, suddenly coding is comparable to flipping burgers and stocking shelves, so they can fill those "programming jobs" for $8 an hour.
Nail, head.
Direct hit.
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At first, I wanted to agree with you and Nadaka, but really that's not quite true. That would be the same as having every high school graduate who managed to dissect a frog without passing out sign up for medical school.
Sure, some people in HS will actually have the intellect and math background to go on and be successful programmers but most folks aren't going to get past moving a form field around in Visual Basic (or whatever serves for the latest GUI approach to programming these days). High School any
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That would be the same as having every high school graduate who managed to dissect a frog without passing out sign up for medical school.
No it wouldn't. Obvious false equivalence here, unless you're trying to imply that coding Javascript requires the same level of intellectual dedication as passing med school and the MCATs?
Lord, I hope not.
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You'd have to either suck or be unwilling to relocate to be unemployed.
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Many Recent College Graduates are the former, and many people who actually have a family and/or invested in real estate are the later. Someday, maybe, HR departments will recognize this fact, and put the extra money they save by hiring an RCG into free training classes, and offer telecomuting options for the more senior positions.
I can dream, can't I?
Except it isn't such a dream. I was contacted in my recent 2 month job search by a company 3000 miles from my home who had identified me as a potential recru
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A decent company will pay your plane ticket for the interview even if no telecommuting is involved.
Teaching kids... (Score:2)
Watching a friend teach kids Java in high school is just painful. They spend way too much time debugging quirks in the languange than debugging their logic. Teaching kids to program in high school/elementry school should be taught differently than teaching kids to program in a particular language. The demographics I've read is that we are having problems getting kids into STEM let alone Computer Science. Teaching kids to program at a younger age should be a good thing, we just aren't doing it right. Di
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The problem was Java. He should have started with this:
http://raptor.martincarlisle.com/ [martincarlisle.com]
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I just bought my kids a Scratch programming book (Super Programming Adventure or something). Hope it's good!
Scratch [mit.edu] is a great language, and a far better choice for beginners than Java. Your kids will have fun, and be able to see real results the first day. I started my kids with Logo, [wikipedia.org] which is great for a start, but they soon got bored, so I showed them how to use Scratch.
Teaching Java to high-schoolers as a first language is inappropriate. The learning curve is way too steep.
Wut (Score:2)
There just aren't enough people who are trained and have these skills today.
Would that have something to do with the way YOU DONT ACTUALLY HIRE ANYONE WHO ISNT A CERTIFIED PROFESSIONAL RIGHT OFF THE BAT?
Seriously, I'm working on my college degree and I cant even get an UNPAID internship without previous PAID WORK EXPERIENCE
Last time I was in a work interview it went fine up untill the point they asked about my previous job which I hadnt included in my CV because I dont have one (because I cant get hired). After they find out I haven't had an actual job in the business the int
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There just aren't enough people who are trained and have these skills today.
Would that have something to do with the way YOU DONT ACTUALLY HIRE ANYONE WHO ISNT A CERTIFIED PROFESSIONAL RIGHT OFF THE BAT?
Seriously, I'm working on my college degree and I cant even get an UNPAID internship without previous PAID WORK EXPERIENCE
That's one major reason why I'm seriously considering bailing on IT. Another is that I can make a shit-ton more money in the family gun shop (especially with all the politicians bloviating on the topic, makes for good business), and not have to worry about whether or not my skills and achievements mesh with what some fucking marketing drone or HR algorithm thinks they should be.
Everybody Thinks They're an Expert (Score:3)
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This just in... (Score:2)
The dirty little secret (Score:2)
They claim that there is a huge demand for coders, but the dirty little secret is that the industry is rife with ageism. If you're over 35 these people don't want to hire you.
Programming, not coding (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't teach the kids how to code. Teach them how to program. That means teaching them to think about the problem, determine requirements, clarify requirements (I'm working on one now where it's taking literally days to tease out of the person exactly what they actually want, it's repetitions of my restating what he said and him going "That sounds right, except for..." and then outlining a new thing the software has to do that he hadn't mentioned before), evaluate approaches and settle on a basic design and outline for the software, and finally document the requirements and design. And then once the code's written it has to be tested and debugged, which is another skill set entirely. Plus, while coding you have to think about what tools are available in the language, what libraries are out there, and how they integrate with your code. Often that affects the design of the software, and you need to understand that and learn how to think ahead during the design stage so your design works with the tools you'll need to use while coding.
Actual coding is the smallest part of the job. Critical thinking, analytical skills, general problem-solving, research, all that is far more important to the job than merely knowing how to crank out code.
Ask any writer. They'll tell you that the actual physical act of typing out a book is the easy part, it's just time-consuming. The hard parts are all the research and working out the actual story before you sit down to start typing.
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No thanks. As a software developer who has to deal with coders, they're literally more trouble than they're worth. To get good code out of them I have to nail things down so explicitly and in such detail that I could've written the code myself in the time it took to write the instructions for them. I nearly have to write the code anyway just to figure out all the stuff I need to give them instructions on. And if I don't give them instructions in that much detail, their lack of analytical ability means they
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No thanks. As a software developer who has to deal with coders, they're literally more trouble than they're worth.
I didn't know there was such a distinction, and I'm horrified by the GP's idea that people cranking out code to specification without understanding *why* could produce anything useful. However ...
To get good code out of them I have to nail things down so explicitly and in such detail that I could've written the code myself in the time it took to write the instructions for them. I nearly have to write the code anyway just to figure out all the stuff I need to give them instructions on. And if I don't give them instructions in that much detail, their lack of analytical ability means they churn out code that doesn't quite do what it's supposed to or does things in ways that conflict with what the rest of the system needs.
To be fair, it can start at the other end, too. You can have a setup with Architects kidnapping the big picture, and treating the programmers as ... well, "coders".
Like Stroustrup wrote, "An organisation that treats its programmers as morons will soon have
programmers that are willing and able to act like morons o
The 80's called - they want their BASIC story back (Score:2)
>> Tech Leaders Encourage Teaching Schoolkids How To Code
The 80's called - they want their BASIC story back.
Not every round peg goes in a square hole. (Score:2)
As many others have pointed out, if there were such a high demand for skilled programmers the base salary/wage would go up. Too often I have seen crazy-stupid job requirements and they are only willing to pay $1 more per hour then MINIMUM WAGE ffs!!!
But I digress, what schools need to teach is critical thinking, and basic logic-reasoning. (aka trouble-shooting)
I don't want to program, I don't like it. I enjoy scripting repetitive tasks. The peak of my programming abilities was realized when I developed c
Nursing Glut (Score:2)
Teach schoolkids how to riot. (Score:2)
Being self-taught in programming, and benefitting from those skills for professional and personal use, I certainly think that's a useful thing for kids to learn.
But, "strangely," industry leaders who claim concern about kids learning skills for getting good jobs in the future, never seem to call for education in those skills that have historically had the greatest impact on boosting job prospects for the next generation. Learning from the past, what is it that assures better jobs for the next generation? Pe
college trun out people with skills gaps and tech (Score:2)
college trun out people with skills gaps and tech / trades based learning get's over looked
The apprenticeship model is needed in tech / IT (Score:2)
The apprenticeship model is needed in tech / IT.
As there is a lot to learn that can't really be done in a pure classes and top level theroy based classed to not help as much as more hands on classes.
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They don't pretend it's cool.
Cool is implied, not forced (Score:2)
They don't pretend it's cool.
They don't hit you over the head with it.
But any video that has popular figures like WillIAm in it saying how they learned to code - well obviously part of the message is "even popular people love to code".
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The message is that coding is empowering, not that it is cool.
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"Like learning to play an instrument or a sport..."
(except that instruments/sports are things you can mention at parties...)
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I don't think playing a sport is cool.
I haven't, however, been exposed to the crazy usian high school system where, if TV series are to be believed, sport players seem to hold some kind of important social status.
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I don't think playing a sport is cool.
I haven't, however, been exposed to the crazy usian high school system where, if TV series are to be believed, sport players seem to hold some kind of important social status.
I don't know what kind of crazy word usian is supposed to be. We're Americans and for the most part don't mind being called such.
I went to high school in the "Commodore 64 / Apple II" era. I played three sports in high school, played an instrument and I also wrote code. Turns out I didn't click with the Jock/Cheerleader clique, the band clique or the computer nerd clique. In fact, my school was small enough that I basically was the computer nerd clique.
There's nothing inherently cool about playing a spo
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It's a way to refer to citizens of the USA without stigmatizing citizens of other American countries.
Of course, it's mostly used by Europeans and a few communities from South America which use English on a regular basis.
Usians themselves are too self-centric to refer to themselves by another word than American.
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OK, I'll play along. What other non-made-up word would you have us call ourselves? Statesmen? That has a nice ring to it, but frankly there are far too few statesmen in the world these days. Plus, I'm guessing you would no doubt find this offensive to women and children.
How about Uniters? Sadly, this one is an inaccurate description of our nation these days, plus it just sounds funny. Also, we wouldn't want to "stigmatize" our neighbors from the United Mexican States.
Maybe we could go with someth
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Bravo SolitaryMan - I love the subtle humor.
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But, I wonder how much it will actually increase the number of people that code. I think that inherently there are a small number of people that really have in inclination to enjoy coding.
I don't think that's true. People surprise you. Many seem to enjoy games, puzzles, systems with strange and detailed rules, creating things ... I don't see why they wouldn't be interested in programming, if they were given the chance.
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It's not legal. The requirement is to advertise for a local potential for a certain amount of time before they proceed into H1-B territory.
There is no mystery as to what they are trying to pull.
There should be no H1-B program. We are a "supply and demand" idealism nation. If a company needs something, they should depend on the market's invisible hand instead of relying on the government to interfere with their business.
We all know the truth though. They all want government to give them things and to mak
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There should be no H1-B program. We are a "supply and demand" idealism nation. If a company needs something, they should depend on the market's invisible hand instead of relying on the government to interfere with their business.
The free market "supply and demand" solution is to have no restrictions at all on immigrants ability to work here. By lobbying for higher H1-B quotas, the companies are asking for less government interference with how they run their businesses. If you want the government to restrict the ability of brown people to compete with you, you have the right to say so. But don't claim to be a champion of free market idealism while doing so.
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http://raptor.martincarlisle.com/ [martincarlisle.com]
I recently had a career fair to do at my kid's school. I looked up "freeware flowcharting", and found this. Took me all of a half hour to program in the Friendship Algorithm from Big Bang Theory as a demo.
Looks like a great first language to me, and while it is an interpreter, it contains a translator to several other high level languages as a starting point.
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I would LOVE for you to find some way to introduce your students to it also. It is because of a math teacher that exposed me to it that I have my career.
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i wish they had a +1 Evil mod..
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The vast majority of those jobs are in Corporate IT. From my experience most corporate IT jobs suck.
From my experience, knowing how to code is the best way to escape from the corporate world. Every successful entrepreneur that I know is a techie.
Why would we expect kids to to find this an attractive career choice?
Because job satisfaction surveys consistently show that STEM professionals are mostly happy with their careers.
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the majority of the jobs that they speak of are in corporate IT.
But once the skills are learned, they can be used anywhere.
I would say most STEM professionals are not working in IT.
I would say that most STEM professionals need to be able to code. I work with EEs that spend 90% of their time coding in Verilog, or writing testing code in Python. I have a cousin who works as a Chem Engr in the plastics industry. He spends most of his time writing cracking tower and reactor simulation software in Fortran.
Coding is important in even non-techie professions. My sister is an accountant. I taught her how to write plug-ins and exte