Pope Francis Encourages More Children To Code 45
theodp writes: The BBC reports that Pope Francis has endorsed a global project aimed at getting more children into computer programming. The Code with Pope initiative, championed by Cosmose AI founder Miron Mironiuk, aims to bridge "the glaring disparities in education" across the globe by providing access to Python coding education through the free online learning platform Codeforia for students aged 11-15 across Europe, Africa and Latin America. Mironiuk will meet the Pope at the Vatican, but he admits he's not anticipating the pontiff to emulate his students in acquiring new skills. "I don't expect him to know Python very well," he said.
This is not the first time the Pope has encouraged young people to get into coding, having helped write a line of code together with tech-backed nonprofit Code.org in 2019. Pope Francis has also blessed AI's potential for good, meeting with Microsoft President Brad Smith (a Code.org Board member) to sign the Rome Call for AI Ethics early this year just ahead of Microsoft's $10B OpenAI investment and announcing "Artificial Intelligence and Peace" as the theme for World Day of Peace 2024 in August.
This is not the first time the Pope has encouraged young people to get into coding, having helped write a line of code together with tech-backed nonprofit Code.org in 2019. Pope Francis has also blessed AI's potential for good, meeting with Microsoft President Brad Smith (a Code.org Board member) to sign the Rome Call for AI Ethics early this year just ahead of Microsoft's $10B OpenAI investment and announcing "Artificial Intelligence and Peace" as the theme for World Day of Peace 2024 in August.
Maybe the Catholics (Score:5, Funny)
Should just leave all children alone entirely for a few more years
Re: (Score:2)
Nah, let the kids die together with the elderly.
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Maybe the Catholics (Score:5, Interesting)
Should just leave all children alone entirely for a few more years
Haha and all, but I read an interesting thing about humans and statistics and understanding of risk.
It specifically involved the whole catholic priest + child trope. Turns out the statistics don't support it. The book dove deeper into why these "truths" perpetuate and it's complicated.
Part of it is that when a news outlet is picking what stories to air (a.k.a. make more widely known), if they're faced with two equal choices between "catholic priest molests child" and "jewish rabi molests child", they will probably go with the first one because they think "wow, another one of these stories... we should underline the story behind the story, that there's so much of this going on." Because the news-picker has heard more stories about catholic priests, that story is inherently more interesting than the other one, because it supports their statistical bias.
Statistically, Uncle Ned is - by a massive margin - who you should worry about with your child. Family members are massively more likely to do something inappropriate than any other category. But... it's harder to figure out exactly who to vilify with that truth. It's easy to say "keep your kids away from priests" because it's easy to categorize all priests as pedophiles. But it's harder to say "keep your kids away from grandpa" because you can't tell a good grandpa from a bad grandpa.
As it happens, churches in general aren't risky, if you've got a kid. I mean... aside from that they'll get taught religion there, which is a completely different risk.
Re: Maybe the Catholics (Score:5, Informative)
Churches aren't riskier than other establishments with too much access to children, but they are more hypocritical.
More importantly, the whole Catholic Church is complicit in protecting molesters, including relocating them to some other place where they will molest more kids.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe Dan Brown's next book could have this as its theme?
Re: (Score:2)
Churches aren't riskier than other establishments with too much access to children, but they are more hypocritical.
More importantly, the whole Catholic Church is complicit in protecting molesters, including relocating them to some other place where they will molest more kids.
This.
It's less the total number but the way they close ranks and don't allow the authorities to investigate or arrest perpetrators. Hence the Christian Brothers orphanage abused boys for 30 years.
Priests "confess" their sin to each other, then all is forgiven... and must be dropped by the authorities as no-one is willing to say anything as the perp has been "absolved", even going so far as to fly them to Vatican city to avoid prosecution or punishment.
Re: (Score:2)
This is both true and misses the point entirely.
Churches are places of trust, priests are given positions of authority both in the religious sense as well as in the community.
It's very much like if there's a cold-blood murder by a family member versus a cop. They are both bad but the cop doing it is considered more egregious because they are given a higher responsibly to the community and certain special privilege's. For a priest to abuse the trust they are inherently given by the their parish is especial
Why does the pope care about programming? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not Catholic, but this doesn't really seem to be in his wheelhouse.
It's probably some tech CEO (Score:2)
Re:Why does the pope care about programming? (Score:4, Insightful)
The catholic church is the world's largest non-governmental charitable organization. In this case they are donating to a cause which they likely believe will improve people's wellbeing by providing them with better job skills. I'm not sure what's not "up his wheelhouse" about this.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, when the Catholic Church as a world-wide institution settles the complete set of sexual abuse lawsuits worldwide (without having subordinate organizations declare bankruptcy), if they have any money left over, they can send it to "learn to code" programs.
And they can teach the recipients of such programs to learn how to pray that their code actually works....
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
More to the point: why does the pope care about children?
Couldn't the Catholics, perhaps... I don't know... lay low with anything concerning children?
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Right, that makes sense. If only 100% of people were computer programmers we would have no poverty and everyone would have high paying jobs.
Re: (Score:2)
Catholic church has been programming children for centuries.
I think that's great. (Score:5, Funny)
Hopefully they'll teach them to be ashamed of themselves while doing it.
Re: (Score:1)
> Hopefully they'll teach them to be ashamed of themselves while doing it.
How many years of purgatory is a GOTO worth?
HolyC (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed, or See++
Or write in Perl, using bless
Re: (Score:1)
But only in the programming language of god: HolyC.
You died: play Pascal's wager again (Y/N)?
Re: (Score:2)
HolyC will support Rapid Application Publishing, naturally.
Re: (Score:2)
Great, more bullshit (Score:2)
This time from a habitual repeat offender: religion.
Programming is playing God (Score:1)
Not just AI. I mean AI too, but any sort of programming is basically like telling God his creations suck and you need to create your own machine to do stuff. Not only that but you are creating an automaton. Automatons are kind of Satanic if you think about it. You are trying to do what God did, only without a sufferable sentience. My advice to people is don’t use machines, and especially not computers or “smart”phones. And, what’s the deal with people who take medication? Why take
Re: (Score:2)
Not just AI. I mean AI too, but any sort of programming is basically like telling God his creations suck and you need to create your own machine to do stuff. Not only that but you are creating an automaton. Automatons are kind of Satanic if you think about it. You are trying to do what God did, only without a sufferable sentience. My advice to people is don’t use machines, and especially not computers or “smart”phones. And, what’s the deal with people who take medication? Why take ‘em and not just be the way God compels you to be.
You almost got it. Throw in a bit more guilt and something about the fires of hell and you could be a preacher!
Tree of Knowledge (Score:5, Funny)
I don't expect him to know Python very well,
I expect he's quite familiar with the serpent. And promoting Apples as well.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
But Father Ted Crilly told me that the Pope doesn't always say what he thinks....
Re: (Score:2)
Could have gone further (Score:1)
Sure it's great the Pope is encouraging others to code, but he should also have warned of the dangers of releasing the holy smoke if you mess around with the hardware too much.
Logic (Score:5, Insightful)
Amen (Score:2)
Upside down world (Score:2)
Progamming versus systems management (Score:2)
There is no point trying to teach much of the school age population to code in Python. Or anything else. They won't learn it, they would have no use for it if they could learn it.
It is like teaching children how to design an internal combustion engine. They need to know both how to drive, and also to understand the basics of how cars function, so they can make intelligent decisions about maintenance and possible malfunctions. Design is not what they need to know. Or its like insisting on teaching them h
Re: (Score:2)
There is no point trying to teach much of the school age population to code in Python. Or anything else. They won't learn it, they would have no use for it if they could learn it.
I'm not sure that's true. I pretty much hate it on every level but you have to admit it has become pretty useful because so many people are using it, if not on technical merit or any other merit really. One of the coolest things you can do with a computer is write a small amount of code to tie together a bunch of other programs to make them do more complex things.
Coding is like religion ... (Score:1)