Can A New TED-Ed Video Series Teach Students To 'Think Like A Coder'? (ted.com) 94
An anonymous reader writes:
TED Conferences has its own educational YouTube channel (now with 10 million subscribers and over 1.5 billion views). Two weeks ago it launched a 10-episode animated series about computer programming, and its first episode -- The Prison Break -- has already been viewed nearly a quarter of a milllion times.
In the 7-minute video, a programmer wakes up in a prison cell -- with total amnesia -- and discovers a "mysterious stranger" squeezing through the jail cell's bars. It's a floating anthropomorphic drone, saying it needs the programmer's help to rescue a dystopian future world "in turmoil. Robots have taken over." The video introduces the computer programming concept of a loop -- since escaping the jail cell involves testing a key in every possible position. And the video's page on the TED-Ed web site offers links to related resources from Code.org and Free Code Camp, as well as from Advent of Code, "which is run by Eric Wastl, who consulted extensively on Think Like a Coder and inspired quite a few of the puzzles."
The episode ends with the programmer dangling from the flying drone, off on an attempt to recover three artifacts -- nodes of memory, power, and creation -- that are currently being used for "nefarious purposes."
In the 7-minute video, a programmer wakes up in a prison cell -- with total amnesia -- and discovers a "mysterious stranger" squeezing through the jail cell's bars. It's a floating anthropomorphic drone, saying it needs the programmer's help to rescue a dystopian future world "in turmoil. Robots have taken over." The video introduces the computer programming concept of a loop -- since escaping the jail cell involves testing a key in every possible position. And the video's page on the TED-Ed web site offers links to related resources from Code.org and Free Code Camp, as well as from Advent of Code, "which is run by Eric Wastl, who consulted extensively on Think Like a Coder and inspired quite a few of the puzzles."
The episode ends with the programmer dangling from the flying drone, off on an attempt to recover three artifacts -- nodes of memory, power, and creation -- that are currently being used for "nefarious purposes."
No (Score:5, Insightful)
Or at least not thinking like a good coder. This is something you can only teach yourself.
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Or at least not thinking like a good coder. This is something you can only teach yourself.
If they want to learn basic computer programming hand these students a copy of a BASIC manual from the early 1980s. I taught myself BASIC and 6502 assembly language.
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Re: No (Score:1)
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Yes and no. I did proctor in an introduction to programming at the university, which was in Pascal. For sure those freshmen who already knew BASIC and who claimed they already knew how to program and the class was a waste of time were the same ones who struggled the most in the class. However, I'm not entirely sure this was due to already knowing BASIC, or instead because they were so confident in their own abilities that they weren't actually trying to learn.
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Does not match my personal experience, but not everything Djikstra said was actually close to reality.
Re: No (Score:1)
coder vs programmer (Score:2)
To learn to think like a coder, by all means watch silly edutainment videos and study pointless Fibonacci generator puzzles.
To learn to think like a programmer, may I suggest studying Kung-sun Lung-tzu's _Discourse on Names and Their Actual Significance_. Written around 2300 years ago, it's not exactly the new hotness. But a person who can understand that treatise can surely be a fine programmer.
If you choose to study the work I recommend, use the book linked below. It contains parallel fluent translation
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On what basis do you make this claim? I've been able to teach people to think like a good coder. I learned the foundations of it from other people too, often from books.
Maybe you can give us an example of something that is unteachable.
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Maybe you can give us an example of something that is unteachable.
The patience and persistence needed to find that bug, the OCD , the not being able to sleep when you have the answer in your head but you haven't coded it up yet.
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Lack of sleep does not make good coders, it makes sleep deprived error-prone ones with a poor work/life balance.
You absolutely can teach methodically working through bugs.
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Lack of sleep does not make good coders
I never said it did.
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You absolutely can teach methodically working through bugs.
Maybe, but you can't teach the imagination/creativity required to find the really difficult ones.
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The point of working through them methodically is that you don't need imagination/creativity to find them.
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The point of working through them methodically is that you don't need imagination/creativity to find them.
Oh, to be young and confident...
I've debugged systems by making them raise the barrier in the car park so I could see when the bug had occurred by looking out of the window. It was literally the only way I could think of to get a single piece of information out of the system. There was no visual debugger, no printf(), nothing.
But assuming you're right? Would you agree that some people learn programming faster than others? If so, do you still think anybody can be a programmer?
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Yeah yeah, I've done that too. Well, not a car park barrier, but I did it with a switch mode PSU circuit that buzzed when enabled once. Of course when it's my hardware I make sure there is a UART or something available just for debugging, because I'm methodical like that.
Still, when it comes to actually using those primitive debugging facilities I'm methodical about it.
And anyway most people are writing desktop code. Embedded is pretty niche and I've met lots of great desktop developers who can't do it.
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Even on the desktop there's still "Heisenbugs" - bugs that disappear when you add a printf() or try to run it in a debugger.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I've had quite a few of those over the years.
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That's when I pull out Valgrind. Computationally super-expensive to run, but I've found more than a couple nasty memory bugs that way which led to unpredictable behavior.
Coincidentally enough, the other windows on this virtual desktop are trying to do that as I type this. Because it's so expensive, I have a few minutes to check /..
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Experience teaching coding. All you can do is help people that could have taught themselves to learn a little faster. But those that cannot learn this by themselves will never make it.
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So many "coders" these days just don't think well. Extremely high level languages that divorce the programmer from the actual operations that are happening, instead they're gluing bits of libraries and frameworks together. Add to that a dogma that no new code should ever be written if there's already library somewhere in the world that does the same thing, so the first step of any code change involves using a search engine.
I remember in the past when a major application failed when it received some data i
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Add to that a dogma that no new code should ever be written if there's already library somewhere in the world that does the same thing, so the first step of any code change involves using a search engine.
That dogma is fundamentally wrong. Well, like most dogma actually. This approach is basically only ok if you could write that library competently yourself. Also, if you use that library, you need ti make sure it is maintained competently and long-term.
Let's not be too hasty here (Score:2)
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This is still better than the present day where we assume everyone needs to think like a CEO.
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Thinking like a farmer would be great. No more assuming that you can just throw more engineers at the product so that the crops can be harvested the day after they're planted.
TED-ED sounds about right (Score:2)
That summary gave me ED just reading it
I don't think it is that easy... (Score:3)
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I'm pretty sure these videos aren't intended to make viewers l33t c0drs. More like just teaching basic programming concepts, in a package that is hopefully more digestible to young viewers. It's a worthy goal. Being aware of programming concepts is very useful for just about anyone and everyone.
Unfortunately, I just saw the video. The narrator is quite dry, which sort of defeats the purpose of having a dramatic script. Would be better to have given the characters voices. The animation is pretty decent
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You can't make abstract thinking non-dry. You can't make it accessible. Saying "digestible" instead doesn't help, because in the end their code is still shit.
There are fun books like Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby [poignant.guide] but the reality is still that the same people that find the dry material engaging are the ones that find the abstractions in the fun book interesting, and actually gain programming insight from reading it. You can't make it accessible other than by giving more kids access to free time on computers
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That sounds a bit self-defeatist. I don't think that abstract thinking necessarily needs to be dry. It's just that abstract thinkers tend to be dry. Though you are right in a way. As you drill down into any programming language, details will definitely get tedious. Though this video series does not seem to be about programming details.
I think the
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That sounds a bit self-defeatist.
It could equally be self-success-ist, because it isn't defeatist at all, it is merely the belief that the aptitude requires interest in the subject.
I can't imagine the sort of world you live in where having to be interested in something to be good at it is a defeat. If you're not actually interested, not being good at it should be neutral, or positive.
That's true for everything except actuarial accounting, which some people are in fact good at, but nobody is actually interested in it.
Jobs you can do without
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I'm not sure if the goal is necessary though. We managed to invent computers, miniaturize them, program them, invent programming languages and operating systems, create advanced AI, create the world wide web, all with people who were not taught how to code at a young age. Sure, spend a week on this in school, have an elective in high school, but it seems like there's almost a sense of panic about how to get more faux computer science into the schools.
Some rationales I see for this:
- panicked parents, who
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There must be folks who believe that significantly increasing the number of people who "can code" is important/necessary, or else all of the efforts to expose kids to coding wouldn't be pursued. You identify three possible categories: panicked parents, people who think people need to be introduced to computers in kindergarten or they will never understand them, and corporations hoping to get a shovel-ready labor force. Combinations of these three may be even more likely. If the corporations that need to
Its not like the early 80s any more (Score:2)
By the time I received my degree, the crowd had thinned considerably.
Yes but back then professors were allowed to flunk the incompetent. There were gateway classes that were supposed to weed out the unprepared or those unable to meet the standard. Today, not so much.
I've seen professors who in those day would assign negative credit for really bad exam answers go on to become deans who tear a young professor a new one for flunking a kid who did not turn in most of the assignments and couldn't write a working 25 line program to save their life. It didn't matter that the kid
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I had many peers who were trying to grab the brass ring to wealth and fortune that a "Computer Science" degree was perceived to bring. By the time I received my degree, the crowd had thinned considerably.
I used to wish that programmers didn't make so much money, so the gold-diggers wouldn't enter the field and my work day would be a lot more competent, surrounded by people who also enjoy programming.
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Most of the software development jobs out there don't need l33t c0ders, they just need competent ones. Reaching the level of competency required to build useful web apps for business isn't rocket science.
Nope (Score:2)
In the 7-minute video, a programmer wakes up in a prison cell -- with total amnesia -- and discovers a "mysterious stranger" squeezing through the jail cell's bars. It's a floating anthropomorphic drone, saying it needs the programmer's help to rescue a dystopian future world "in turmoil. Robots have taken over." The video introduces the computer programming concept of a loop -- since escaping the jail cell involves testing a key in every possible position. And the video's page on the TED-Ed web site offers links to related resources from Code.org and Free Code Camp, as well as from Advent of Code, "which is run by Eric Wastl, who consulted extensively on Think Like a Coder and inspired quite a few of the puzzles." The episode ends with the programmer dangling from the flying drone, off on an attempt to recover three artifacts -- nodes of memory, power, and creation -- that are currently being used for "nefarious purposes."
[face-palm]
This is so wrong I don't even know where to start.
Clearly, the intention here is to entertain more than to teach. Consequently, students won't learn much coding from this. They'll probably remember the stuff about jail cells & keys, & end-of-the-world, but not much about coding even if they do successfully complete the task.
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Yep. Teaching them to code would have needed a scenario with a binary search (or something).
The intention is to collect funding ... (Score:2)
Clearly, the intention here is to entertain more than to teach
The intention is to collect funding, to get "your piece" of the "learn to code" craziness.
Don't get me wrong. Exposing kids to traditional programming is good. The simple programming languages that were designed to teach beginners are more than capable of the job (improve on these, sure, but this sort of gamification is not an improvement). Let them figure out as early as possible if they have any interest or curiosity about programming. If they do great, so begins their lifelong self study. If not, that
No (Score:5, Interesting)
Math, study, more math, computers, skill, ability, books, an interest in the topic.
The ability to study, the ability to learn.
IQ and ability to pass exams and tests.
Work ethic and conscientiousness.
Time management skills to start a project, get the work done on time.
Few skilled people have that every generation.
The idea of billable hours and working hard.
A "video" cant make a below average person "learn".
Test for the smart people and allow them to advance into the best education a nation has to offer.
Support the people who cant and wont study in other ways.
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Testing children to decide their future is a flawed method that often writes off the best and brightest simply because at a young age they have not developed the skills needed to pass arbitrary exams yet.
We tried that for decades, it didn't work.
It's also ridiculous to say that only a few gifted people in every generation can master basic skills like time management or develop a work ethic.
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Why?
The students who took the time to to their homework and do some study should on average be able to recall some to that word next day, next week for a quiz, test? Months later for an exam?
If that can recall work over days, weeks and months how will going to "university" suddenly improve their academic ability?
They showed no academic ability for many years before university...
Re ' it didn't work."
Testing found and promoted the very best people all over t
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Children develop at different speeds. The earlier you test the more flawed it is.
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So people who failed at math for all the years of education before college will suddenly get video "math" ability in a month before college, ready for the first weeks of college?
Re 'The earlier you test" the better students get found and can get support to get ready for college.
That testing sorts the very best students into more support to learn math. Not video clips to try and get more average people "interested" in math.
Like music, sport, art, languages. Pe
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So people who failed at math for all the years of education before college will suddenly get video "math" ability in a month before college, ready for the first weeks of college?
Maybe not a month before but yes, they may fail for years and then master it. Bad teachers, stuff going on at home, there are all kinds of reasons why.
I studied electronics at college and really struggled with it, but I had a lot going on in my life at the time. Later I tried again at university and found it quite easy, and now I do electronic engineering for a living and like to think I'm pretty good at it.
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So a random person who never got a decade of needed education? A few video clips will make up for a decade of education normal students got?
Thats why testing and exams sort out people who cant and wont learn well before the loan, scholarship, gov spending, spending, full costs of college.
The scholarship can go to a person who showed they could and would study.
The loan should go to a person who can be expected to pay the loa
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So a random person who never got a decade of needed education?
Why do you do this? Why take it to such an obviously ridiculous extreme in a disingenuous way. I'm not going to add a long list of caveats to every post just to satisfy you, I'm going to ignore your disingenuous responses.
Just teach critical thinking (Score:5, Insightful)
and logic. Coding will fall into place.
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And a good way to teach this is to play games. Abusing RPG rules was my first really giant foray into critical thinking within the bounds of a rule system. Obsessively playing video games lead to making my own levels which lead to diving into the code to modify them. One of my first real coding projects was making a 3D tic-tac-toe game on one of the earliest TI calculators.
Nope (Score:2)
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Yep. Programming is easy. The difficult part is finding/understanding the bugs.
Can it? Of course! (Score:3)
Can A New TED-ED Video Series Teach Students To 'Think Like A Coder'
Yes, that's EASY.
99.9% of non-coders are idiots. That last 0.1% just hasn't opened their mouth yet.
95% of other CODERS are also idiots. That last 5% includes my friends and I do like SOMEONE to go to lunch with.
Why does the DWIW instruction never work correctly? Only the "Come From" statement works worse. Well, I'll just crib code from StackOverflow until it works.
Understand they why? [slashdot.org] Why?? You copy and past until it works, then go your merry way. They don't pay me enough to understand, that's what S.O. is for.
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I can haz pointer arithmetic?
I can haz buffer?
I can haz easier input parser?
Certified 80/20 Security 89 hours per week!
As always (Score:3)
Although we live in an age where young people are told point blank " You can be anything you want to be if you only try hard enough, whic is some sort of messed up statement that all humans are exactly identical - no, just no.
People have different abilities and temperaments and talents. A coder mentality is a very small subset of human thought processes, and can no more be taught than any other mentality.
This. A great auto mechanic thinks like a good (Score:2)
Exactly this. Different people have different talents and says of thinking. I can't clap on beat when other people are singing; I'll never be a good musician.
I can be taught to read music and in fact have learned that. You can teach someone the vocabulary of programming, the language, just like you can teach someone the language of music, the symbols and such. That doesn't make them a good musician.
Thinking things through in the way that a good programmer does (as opposed the way a good philosopher does
Re the title (Score:3)
I forgot to pull in the title of my previous post. :)
Some auto mechanics figure out what's wrong by checking the things that commonly break.
Some swap parts out until it seems to work. Swap battery - not fixed. Swap cables - didn't work. Swap alternator - that fixed it.
Others methodically diagnose exactly what the problem is. They'll (eventually) determine that the problem is a blown diode in the voltage regulator inside the alternator.
That last group of mechanics are people I want to hire as programmers
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I'd rather hire the ones who check the common issues and then try swapping parts. That's much faster than methodically working out exactly which diode had failed, and much cheaper for me.
Besides, if the diode failed it was probably because the power supply in that module is buggered so the whole thing needs replacing anyway.
There's a reason why massive Javascript frameworks are popular. You could waste time writing all that yourself from scratch, to make sure it's done right and because you are a super smar
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> I'd rather hire the ones who check the common issues and then try swapping parts. That's much faster than methodically working out exactly which diode had failed, and much cheaper for me.
I understand your point, *sometimes* swapping parts can be faster - if you get lucky.
Point of fact - it's actually a lot FASTER to notice the multimeter bugging out than it is to replace even a battery. When the multimeter is going completely wonkie, you click the dial over AC mode and if it shows 4V, you've got a bad
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The parts-swapping person didn't bother to spend 60 second to actually check with a multimeter, they just started swapping expensive parts - and charging you for them.
My son had about a 3 thousand dollar bill on his BMW before they found the real problem. Which was going to cost more than the car was worth to repair. Had to explain the "sunk cost" theorem. 3 Grand lost, and no car.
Of course the only way to know that stuff precisely is to know something about auto mechanics, so I wouldn't expect everyone to know that.
In general, based on my experience, finding the problem by testing will take less total time and money than swapping parts until it seems to work.
I'm not e
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People who don't figure out the root
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I feel like this car analogy has been stretched a bit too far.
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I feel like this car analogy has been stretched a bit too far.
To make a car anaolgy of car analogies going too far, there was this one time.........
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Paradoxically, what makes me a bad programmer, makes me a good senior programmer. My managers always told me I took too long, but they also always praised me on doing a great job beyond what others did.
Don't sell yourself short. You are doing what you do because of your thought process and abilities.
Ideally, a programmer can recognize the difference between a root cause and a symptom, but in order to do that, they need practice doing root cause analysis.
It's been my experience that a lot of people can barely do analysis. Most just want to get the job finished and have no patience. I like to do Post mortems on projects. Seems no one else does. That's a great way to make the same mistakes over and over again. And they do.
You do you - it is what you do best.
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You do you - it is what you do best.
As I got older, I started to appreciate this more and more, not just for me, but for other programmers who don't have the same skills as me. I've learned to appreciate that people have unique strengths and weaknesses. My personal opinion is that a well rounded person is a unicorn. Skill is important, but a mature trustworthy adult with a decent work ethic is probably more important. Nearly any moderately above average intelligent person will have some useful skill that will overlap with technology in some w
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I'd rather hire the ones who check the common issues and then try swapping parts. That's much faster than methodically working out exactly which diode had failed, and much cheaper for me.
Besides, if the diode failed it was probably because the power supply in that module is buggered so the whole thing needs replacing anyway.
There's a reason why massive Javascript frameworks are popular. You could waste time writing all that yourself from scratch, to make sure it's done right and because you are a super smart guy who can do that kind of thing, but it doesn't make business sense.
However, hearkening back to the concept of temperament and skillset, I am really good at what I do well, as in having been chased back to work because I have a rapid troubleshooting talent plus an ability to interface with and listen to people from the Janitors to the top shakers and movers. That plus what my wife calls being "too stupid to stress out."
That being said, I'm an complete idiot at some things. But what I'm good at cannot be taught, ya gotta have a certain approach and thought process, and
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You can be anything you want to be if you only try hard enough
Seems that children have a better understanding of English than you do. I think most of them understand that the adult doesn't mean they can literally be anything at all simply by working hard.
Anyway, the reason children are encouraged is twofold. It helps them overcome setbacks and build up the will and determination they need, and because there is also a lot of bullshit telling them that they can't do stuff because they are poor or black or a girl or dyslexic or whatever.
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Instead, you misunderstood them and thought that they meant with hard work anyone can be, say, a llama, or a toaster, or a sedimentary rock.
I would really love to be an alpaca....Why can't I be an alpaca? ;^)
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You can be anything you want to be if you only try hard enough
Seems that children have a better understanding of English than you do. I think most of them understand that the adult doesn't mean they can literally be anything at all simply by working hard.
Anyway, the reason children are encouraged is twofold. It helps them overcome setbacks and build up the will and determination they need, and because there is also a lot of bullshit telling them that they can't do stuff because they are poor or black or a girl or dyslexic or whatever.
Perhaps it is different in GB, but when my son was in school, he was submitted to stuff like this: https://www.awakenthegreatness... [awakentheg...within.com] https://www.healthylifestylesl... [healthylif...living.com] And it does not appear to have gone away. I'd post more, but I find such a mindset annoying.
No - I will never be a nurse. I don't have the basic mentality. Thank heavens we have people who can be nurses. Same with a lot of professions. Likewise, everyone cannot be what I am, no matter how much they put their mind to it.
I know a lot ab
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Timely story on the BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/educa... [bbc.com]
The gist of it is that by age 7 children are already seeing their career options limited. That's why efforts to encourage them are made.
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we live in an age where young people are told point blank " You can be anything you want to be if you only watch enough videos
FTFY.
Coders (Score:2)
Write lots of graded code (Score:2)
After I'd studied programming for a little while, I tried to read K&R's book "The C Programming Language". I understood the first few pages, but after that, I didn't get it. I had too many "huh?" moments.
Then I got my CS degree, which involved a lot of programming in several programming languages. I didn't study C when I was working for my degree. C had just come out, and my college didn't have classes it it yet.
After I got my degree, I tried again to read "The C Programming Language". To my surprise, I
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A second way is to just be in one job for a long time and routinely have maintain code you wrote months and years ago. After so many "What dumb fuck......oh, right, that was me." moments, you either decide to code better, or you decide you're a masochist filled with self-hate, and keep on keeping on.
What does that even mean? (Score:2)
What does, "Think like a coder" even mean these days?
In the 70s and 80s it means something different from modern day. Early coders were all about efficiency and exploration. Modern coders seem to be self-righteous pricks who think there's only one way to do something and if you deviate, you're an idiot.
Stack Exchanger (Score:2)
In the 70s and 80s coding involved actually writing code.
Today it involves kludging huge and over-engineered systems systems together.
It used to require quick fingers to type out large amounts of dubious code. Today it requires a good knowledge of Stack Exchange.
TED? (Score:4, Insightful)
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I saw one that was really really good, so I clicked a few more and most of them were pretty bad.
They made a choice between quality and quantity, but for the most part I can get better content watching classroom lectures posted on youtube.
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I gave up TED five years ago, I like to be entertained but I expect to learn things without an overwhelmingly irritating wrapping of it. As you point out there are tons of longer but more helpful videos on YouTube for grown ups. Just type in the names of all the Universities you know to look for content and then follow suggestions for others to find more channels in the YouTube suggested videos for ones you watch. There are plenty of other resources available to go on from there using a search engine on the
TED is low grade entertainment, period. (Score:2)
Entertainment is not a serious way to "learn", especially the kind that is trying to be a replacement of the Sunday evangelist church, giving you feel-good "answers" that most of the time don't even get to be tested.
People go there not to do hard work, but to see some "wokes" and feel "woke" and smug - all while being entertained.
Learning is a very frustrating experience most of the time, so it has no place there. That's the "conference", which is the "best" TED can offer; as for the derivatives, they are m
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Yo, Boner Hitler, good you leave no room for doubt about what gets you off.
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Re: I watched some of the video (Score:1)
Way too confusing (Score:2)
I watched most of the video but I thought it was really not good at teaching concepts in a way people would remember them, it ave you questions to try answering where you had no context of commands available to even try to answer - and a mixture of code/non code, like where it described how to solve the problem with a for loop but then also mentioned you'd remember the color of the lock without having any code that did that remembering.
Maybe if this were a more interactive thing it would work better? Or ma
No... (Score:2)
Please don't think like a coder! (Score:2)
You'll never get anything done.
Define 'coder' (Score:1)
A bigger question, perhaps, is what exactly defines the 'way' a coder thinks. People that grew up on C and assembly may still think about the impact on registers, cachelines, and pipeline stages, even though the evolution of both the compiler and processor architecture makes this way of thinking largely superfluous (and to a large extent, entirely counter-productive). People that grew up on VHDL and Verilog perhaps have a better time at dealing with asynchronous programming than those coming from higher-lev
Really? (Score:2)
...saying it needs the programmer's help to rescue a dystopian future world "in turmoil. Robots have taken over."
So the best thing they could think of to inspire children to learn to code was.... fucking Terminator 2? "Good robot helps plucky youngster save the world from bad robots." Fuck. OFF.
First, Terminator 2 did it better, because Linda Hamilton.
Second, what the hell is wrong with the modern zeitgeist? There's more apocalyptic thinking today than there was 20 years ago, and 20 years ago was freaking October of freaking 1999. That was supposed to be the peak, folks. It passed. How about we have less crazy
Of course it will (Score:1)