Should everyone learn to code?
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@gąska said in Should everyone learn to code?:
@xaade said in Should everyone learn to code?:
Funny how no one's concerned that not everyone can play football...
Maybe in your country. Over here, playing football is one of the first skills every boy learns, just after they learn to tie shoes. Sometimes earlier. If I had 6 years old son who can't play football, I'd be VERY concerned.
But that's the wrong kind of football. It doesn't take any ability to play that kind, just the ability to fall over in fake pain when someone breathes in your direction. /
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@pie_flavor said in Should everyone learn to code?:
Yes, and the children watch YouTube on their iPads. Teaching everyone to code would be more along the lines of teaching everyone to repair their own car.
Why? Coding is taking someone else's abstractions and building stuff on top of it. If you're going to give a kid a Lego set you're not going on about how you need to know how they're made, standardized and repaired with plastic solvent if you ever manage to break them. You just let them construct either by the set's book or let them create something new out of it.
@pie_flavor said in Should everyone learn to code?:
Your assertion, as usual, is wrong. There are a great many ways of programming that are not complex at all. Not coincidentally, they are also so underpowered it is impossible to do anything with them.
Even an underpowered scripting environment can be useful. Visual Basic for Applications or even plain Excel functions are not useful for doing database operations, but why would an end user care about databases if they just want to automate generating lists or totaling numbers?
@gąska said in Should everyone learn to code?:
Even if the kids learn things by heart, they might realize that a computer can do stuff which they don't need a specialized program for.
If you can make a few understand that they can deviate from the beaten path then even better. At the end it will still required effort and creativity, and it can be hard to make people expend effort.
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@benjamin-hall said in Should everyone learn to code?:
@gąska said in Should everyone learn to code?:
@xaade said in Should everyone learn to code?:
Funny how no one's concerned that not everyone can play football...
Maybe in your country. Over here, playing football is one of the first skills every boy learns, just after they learn to tie shoes. Sometimes earlier. If I had 6 years old son who can't play football, I'd be VERY concerned.
But that's the wrong kind of football. It doesn't take any ability to play that kind, just the ability to fall over in fake pain when someone breathes in your direction. /
At least it's played with feet.
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@gąska Good old hand-egg.
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Fun fact: Polish national team used to be ranked 76th worldwide in 2013. Now it's in top 10. I have very high hopes for World Cup this year - especially considering who else is in our group!
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@gąska said in Should everyone learn to code?:
You're the only one with such a miserable interpretation of kids' abilities. It sounds like you were rather badly taught for part of your childhood.
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@jbert said in Should everyone learn to code?:
Even if the kids learn things by heart, they might realize that a computer can do stuff which they don't need a specialized program for.
Exactly this. It's about demystifying these systems. If they understand that they can be the ones in control, that these systems will do what the user tells them to do, then that empowers them for the future. They might do nothing with that idea, or they might go on to use it a lot; it's fundamentally about getting the children to think of computers as tools for the mind.
That's also why I want things to be very immediate. The default mode of operation should be that whatever the child says to do should be done immediately with no (perceptible) delay and no (perceptible) safety checks; that greatly reinforces the notion of being in control. Only once they've got that idea can they move onto “make a collection of instructions with a name” a.k.a. functions and (a little later) saved programs; those are more sophisticated ideas and while they're vital, until you get the basic concept of “the machine is doing what I told it to do” they're not helpful.
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@gąska said in Should everyone learn to code?:
Fun fact: Polish national team used to be ranked 76th worldwide in 2013. Now it's in top 10. I have very high hopes for World Cup this year - especially considering who else is in our group!
Oh fuck. I'll have to listen about this shit for weeks.
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@dkf said in Should everyone learn to code?:
That's also why I want things to be very immediate. The default mode of operation should be that whatever the child says to do should be done immediately with no (perceptible) delay and no (perceptible) safety checks; that greatly reinforces the notion of being in control. Only once they've got that idea can they move onto “make a collection of instructions with a name” a.k.a. functions and (a little later) saved programs; those are more sophisticated ideas and while they're vital, until you get the basic concept of “the machine is doing what I told it to do” they're not helpful.
Basically, instead of having kids make a game, have kids perform a tool assisted speedrun of the game.
And to be clear, most "games" that teach kids programming are actually teaching them how to record a TAS.
For example: 0 - Prologue.tas
U,D,L,R = up/down/left/right
J = jump
G = grab
X = dashThe numbers are just how long to wait while holding those keys.
There is no fundamental difference between a tool assisted speedrun and a "game" that teaches kids to program.
There's a huge difference between a tool assisted speedrun and a turing-complete programming language. And it's a pretty major thing - they're teaching kids to solve problems for computers, not to solve problems using computers.
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@pie_flavor said in Should everyone learn to code?:
@blakeyrat said in Should everyone learn to code?:
@pie_flavor said in Should everyone learn to code?:
You think that's what was meant? Seriously?
I know what it meant; that someone in this thread was treating programming as an "end" and not as a "means". Which is wrong-think that I'm going to point out whenever it comes up.
Which was irrelevant to what I was saying. Programming professionally is selling your software to other people. Whether or not you use a program you wrote yourself to assist in your work does not factor into the definition of programming professionally. Words have meanings, yes?
Oh fuck, I should hand in my "Professional Developer" badge then? In the 18 years I thought I was coding professionally, I only made one business website that I sold to other people. All the rest are back-office applications, applications included for free with a financial service, integration and computation software and the likes to support a business function...
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@gąska said in Should everyone learn to code?:
If I had 6 years old son who can't play football, I'd be VERY concerned.
Can’t or doesn’t?
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@ben_lubar said in Should everyone learn to code?:
There's a huge difference between a tool assisted speedrun and a turing-complete programming language. And it's a pretty major thing - they're teaching kids to solve problems for computers, not to solve problems using computers.
A very interesting look at the topic. I never thought of that, but now that you said it, it perfectly describes what I think and have always thought on the subject.
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@gurth said in Should everyone learn to code?:
@gąska said in Should everyone learn to code?:
If I had 6 years old son who can't play football, I'd be VERY concerned.
Can’t or doesn’t?
Can't. There's plenty of kids who hate playing football, just like there's plenty of kids who hate scrambled eggs, and both are absolutely fine (though personally I've never anyone who did either).
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@dkf said in Should everyone learn to code?:
@gąska said in Should everyone learn to code?:
You're the only one with such a miserable interpretation of kids' abilities. It sounds like you were rather badly taught for part of your childhood.
Or your social bubble is made up entirely of middle-class people with well raised children realizing their parents' ambitions. It looks like you have no idea what an actual average kid is like.
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@bjolling said in Should everyone learn to code?:
@pie_flavor said in Should everyone learn to code?:
@blakeyrat said in Should everyone learn to code?:
@pie_flavor said in Should everyone learn to code?:
You think that's what was meant? Seriously?
I know what it meant; that someone in this thread was treating programming as an "end" and not as a "means". Which is wrong-think that I'm going to point out whenever it comes up.
Which was irrelevant to what I was saying. Programming professionally is selling your software to other people. Whether or not you use a program you wrote yourself to assist in your work does not factor into the definition of programming professionally. Words have meanings, yes?
Oh fuck, I should hand in my "Professional Developer" badge then? In the 18 years I thought I was coding professionally, I only made one business website that I sold to other people. All the rest are back-office applications, applications included for free with a financial service, integration and computation software and the likes to support a business function...
Still not a problem: you sold your back-office application to your business team. They count as an "internal" customer.
Or are they all @boomzilla alts too? That case might be an exception.
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@gąska said in Should everyone learn to code?:
@benjamin-hall said in Should everyone learn to code?:
These "everybody should code" fads are the same thing as "everyone should own a house". And we saw how well that worked.
It worked for most of human history
In the sense that maybe some people pretended that everyone should own a house but few actually did? Pretending people are something they are not (creditworthy, in the house example) just leads to tears when the shit hits the fan.
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@blakeyrat said in Should everyone learn to code?:
Unfortunately, the software industry is full of people who mistakenly believe coding is an end and not a means, and also think they can become domain experts in no time at all.
Can you explain more about these people who think coding is an end?
Of course posting this here is useless because this forum is full of "high priesthood" types who think only the super smart super smarts can code and they should be revered and worshipped by everybody else etc.
Recognizing that a lot of people are dumb WRT the sort of thinking required to program a computer is not a crime.
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@pie_flavor said in Should everyone learn to code?:
@gąska Good old hand-egg.
Oh, you like Sesame Street, too?
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@boomzilla said in Should everyone learn to code?:
@gąska said in Should everyone learn to code?:
@benjamin-hall said in Should everyone learn to code?:
These "everybody should code" fads are the same thing as "everyone should own a house". And we saw how well that worked.
It worked for most of human history
In the sense that maybe some people pretended that everyone should own a house but few actually did? Pretending people are something they are not (creditworthy, in the house example) just leads to tears when the shit hits the fan.
What historical period are you referring to, and what do you mean by own? Because I'm talking about 1800 AD and earlier, and don't consider living with parents "not owning a house".
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@gąska said in Should everyone learn to code?:
@boomzilla said in Should everyone learn to code?:
@gąska said in Should everyone learn to code?:
@benjamin-hall said in Should everyone learn to code?:
These "everybody should code" fads are the same thing as "everyone should own a house". And we saw how well that worked.
It worked for most of human history
In the sense that maybe some people pretended that everyone should own a house but few actually did? Pretending people are something they are not (creditworthy, in the house example) just leads to tears when the shit hits the fan.
What historical period are you referring to, and what do you mean by own? Because I'm talking about 1800 AD and earlier, and don't consider living with parents "not owning a house".
I was referring at first to "most of human history" and then to what @Benjamin-Hall was actually referring (which lead to the 2007 financial crisis).
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@boomzilla except wanting to own house, or the widespread idea that everyone should own a house, isn't what led to the crisis. It was giving mortgages to people who absolutely cannot afford them, coupled with credit bundles reselling and other financial shenanigans. On its own, feeling an obligation to buy a house, and taking loan to do it, while suboptimal for society as a whole, isn't really that bad. And you absolutely can have everyone having their own house without credits - with the caveat most people will have it by age of 45, not 30.
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@gąska said in Should everyone learn to code?:
except wanting to own house, or the widespread idea that everyone should own a house, isn't what led to the crisis. It was giving mortgages to people who absolutely cannot afford them, coupled with credit bundles reselling and other financial shenanigans
There was a widespread idea among policy makers that more people should own houses. How do you think all sorts of crazy incentives came into being to encourage all that stuff in your second sentence?
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@boomzilla the crisis had more to do with flawed INTERNAL policies of banks rather than government policies. If banks properly vetted their customers before giving them hundreds of thousands of dollars, there wouldn't be nearly as many bad credits on the market, and crisis would never happen.
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@boomzilla said in Should everyone learn to code?:
@gąska said in Should everyone learn to code?:
except wanting to own house, or the widespread idea that everyone should own a house, isn't what led to the crisis. It was giving mortgages to people who absolutely cannot afford them, coupled with credit bundles reselling and other financial shenanigans
There was a widespread idea among policy makers that more people should own houses. How do you think all sorts of crazy incentives came into being to encourage all that stuff in your second sentence?
One reason [potential] PROFIT for the institutions and the people behind them.
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@gąska said in Should everyone learn to code?:
@boomzilla the crisis had more to do with flawed INTERNAL policies of banks rather than government policies. If banks properly vetted their customers before giving them hundreds of thousands of dollars, there wouldn't be nearly as many bad credits on the market, and crisis would never happen.
Hahahahaha! No, but seriously, the government policies laid the foundation and provided multiple incentives for exactly those flawed INTERNAL policies.
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@boomzilla IIRC the government actually told them to provide sub-par loans, thus causing the derivatives market.
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@boomzilla said in Should everyone learn to code?:
Pretending people are something they are not (creditworthy, in the house example) just leads to
tearsdoubling down and making more laws when the shit hits the fan.FTFY
@gąska said in Should everyone learn to code?:
If banks properly vetted their customers before giving them hundreds of thousands of dollars, there wouldn't be nearly as many bad credits on the market, and crisis would never happen.
And the customers the banks vetted out wouldn't have houses, so everyone wouldn't have had one.
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Should everyone learn to code?
No!: The camel has two humps.
Ctrl-Z, Ctrl-Z, Ctrl-Z, Ctrl-Z, .. why won't this work? Ctrl-Z, Ctrl-Z, Ctrl-Z, : Camels and humps: a retraction
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@Gąska @boomzilla @M_Adams I was particularly thinking of the government policies that encouraged banks to make bad decisions. It was a team effort--everybody contributed to screwing up. Yes, including the borrowers who often lied about income and expenses. Remember--blame is not conserved. Every single participant can be 100% to blame, all at the same time.
But the core philosophical problem was the idea that since successful people are generally homeowners (ie income/good social outcomes is correlated with homeownership), we should encourage homeownership to boost those social outcomes. It's the same correlation/causation mess as afflicts lots of things. People chasing metrics (LoC, commits per hour, etc), not chasing fundamentals.
I've taught high-school level coding classes. In fact, I started the first one for the general population of my school (ie not limited to those in the STEM concentration). Results were strongly mixed. It's no panacea. Like everything, some people catch on quick, others don't care, others try and struggle.
I currently teach an HTML/CSS class (aimed at people who know absolutely nothing). I don't expect most of them to become web developers. I do expect them to come away with some appreciation for the issues involved--so that when they're adding stuff to internal websites or commissioning business websites (which lots of people do), they have an idea of what's easy, what's hard, what works well, what doesn't, and a bit more sympathy for the poor fool who has to implement all their outrageous designs.
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@blakeyrat said in Should everyone learn to code?:
Just like cars are inherently complex, and yet we all agree as a society that anybody (barring severe sight or reaction time impairment) can learn to drive.
The equivalent of a programmer for a car is a mechanic, not a driver.
@blakeyrat said in Should everyone learn to code?:
The thing is: you might be right. But we're, as a profession/society, making absolutely zero effort to make it less complex. So again: is this a thing that is? Or is this a thing that is only because nobody's bothering to even attempt to try and fix it? My assertion is that it's the latter.
I see what looks like efforts to make things simpler, but yes, accessibility is a problem and I agree with you there. I just think of it as a different problem.
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@benjamin-hall said in Should everyone learn to code?:
@Gąska @boomzilla @M_Adams I was particularly thinking of the government policies that encouraged banks to make bad decisions. 100% to blame, all at the same time.**
Not exactly, it was the government removing restrictions preventing the banks from making bad decisions [of that type and scale]. Then the banks just were "doin what comes naturally".
I currently teach an HTML/CSS class (aimed at people who know absolutely nothing).
A poor choice if the goal is to understand computers and not just make silly pages.
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@lb_ said in Should everyone learn to code?:
The equivalent of a programmer for a car is a mechanic, not a driver
I think there would also be a benefit to everybody learning basic mechanics. Not to the level of stripping down and rebuilding an engine, but oil changes, changing a flat and some basic diagnostics would be a positive thing
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@thecpuwizard said in Should everyone learn to code?:
@benjamin-hall said in Should everyone learn to code?:
@Gąska @boomzilla @M_Adams I was particularly thinking of the government policies that encouraged banks to make bad decisions. 100% to blame, all at the same time.**
Not exactly, it was the government removing restrictions preventing the banks from making bad decisions [of that type and scale]. Then the banks just were "doin what comes naturally".
I have never heard better than a hand waving argument for this. OTOH, you had things like Fannie Mae actively contributing to the problem.
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@gąska said in Should everyone learn to code?:
At least it's played with feet.
Yeah it's so weird that American Football is called that when all the players hover using their anti-gravity belts.
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@boomzilla said in Should everyone learn to code?:
Can you explain more about these people who think coding is an end?
HackerNews is jam-packed with them.
Then every month or so they have a heartfelt discussion like "hey guyz, maybe we should stop using the JavaScript framework-of-the-minute and focus on boring libraries that are tested and work?" and everybody agrees, then the next article is like "New JS library Floosuty is 40000 times faster than Vue.JS!" and the cycle repeats.
@boomzilla said in Should everyone learn to code?:
Recognizing that a lot of people are dumb WRT the sort of thinking required to program a computer is not a crime.
Everybody can learn music to an acceptable degree. Everybody can learn to paint to an acceptable degree. (And to be clear, I'm not saying you can take any random kid and make them Rembrandt.) We, as a society, all agree on that.
Why have some people decided that the same concept does not apply to instructing a computer to do shit?
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@blakeyrat now I wonder which of these two sports involves more jumping. I've never watched a full game of handegg, but in the few seconds that I've seen during my year long stay in USA, I haven't noticed any.
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@lb_ said in Should everyone learn to code?:
The equivalent of a programmer for a car is a mechanic, not a driver.
No. If you're not a programmer, you're not even a driver. You're on a train, which can't leave the tracks.
Again: some people think "programming" means "WRITE LINUX KERNAL FROM SCRATCH!" No it does not. Back in the 1990s, "programming" could be as simple as telling your VCR to switch to channel 12 at 8:00 PM and start recording even if nobody's there. When did the word change meanings?
@lb_ said in Should everyone learn to code?:
I see what looks like efforts to make things simpler, but yes, accessibility is a problem and I agree with you there.
There's an effort in teaching systems to kids. There's zero effort in making any established "professional" tools better.
And I know I bring up this example all the time, but it's blatant: everybody in development is going to have to use Git sooner or later. Has Git improved even slightly since it was introduced? Has a single thing in it gotten better from a discoverability, accessibility, usability perspective? No. If anything, it's gotten worse. Since features like pre-commit hooks sabotage third-parties trying to provide a decent UI where the Git developers do not.
But it's not just Git. Has TFS improved? No. It's gotten worse since it's moved to the web in VSTS form. Has Visual Studio improved? No. 2016 is notably worse than 2010 in a dozen ways, most obviously its shit stability. Was WPF an improvement over WinForms from a usabillity/accessible/etc perspective? Was HTML5 an improvement over WPF? Was... uh... "nothing" an improvement over XNA?
No. There's no forward motion at all.
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@thecpuwizard said in Should everyone learn to code?:
A poor choice if the goal is to understand computers and not just make silly pages.
Nothing I learned in high school will turn into a job. Aside from English, none of it will help me in my future job. However, if I was going into a field I took a class in, it will at least give me base knowledge for college. The same can go for programming. It's not about learning useful things, it's about using the base level of useful things.
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@gąska said in Should everyone learn to code?:
@blakeyrat now I wonder which of these two sports involves more jumping. I've never watched a full game of handegg, but in the few seconds that I've seen during my year long stay in USA, I haven't noticed any.
This side conversation is fucking stupid, but since your statement was also fucking stupid, let me just say this: we'll stop calling it "football" when it can be played by people in wheelchairs. Baseball can. Basketball(!) can and is frequently. But somehow football? Huh.
Now go talk about that in some other topic.
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@blakeyrat said in Should everyone learn to code?:
@lb_ said in Should everyone learn to code?:
The equivalent of a programmer for a car is a mechanic, not a driver.
No. If you're not a programmer, you're not even a driver. You're on a train, which can't leave the tracks.
Your analogy is completely wrong. I'd say why but NodeBB ate my post.
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@blakeyrat said in Should everyone learn to code?:
@boomzilla said in Should everyone learn to code?:
Can you explain more about these people who think coding is an end?
HackerNews is jam-packed with them.
Then every month or so they have a heartfelt discussion like "hey guyz, maybe we should stop using the JavaScript framework-of-the-minute and focus on boring libraries that are tested and work?" and everybody agrees, then the next article is like "New JS library Floosuty is 40000 times faster than Vue.JS!" and the cycle repeats.
You haven't explained yourself at all with this. You found some people who disagree about they way they go about stuff. I'm also amused that you often rant about people stuck in the past and now you're largely doing the opposite.
@boomzilla said in Should everyone learn to code?:
Recognizing that a lot of people are dumb WRT the sort of thinking required to program a computer is not a crime.
Everybody can learn music to an acceptable degree. Everybody can learn to paint to an acceptable degree. (And to be clear, I'm not saying you can take any random kid and make them Rembrandt.) We, as a society, all agree on that.
Why have some people decided that the same concept does not apply to instructing a computer to do shit?
I haven't decided anything. I've just observed enough.
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@boomzilla said in Should everyone learn to code?:
You haven't explained yourself at all with this.
Ok well I guess you'll just have to call me wrong and stupid and a moron based on that partial explanation instead of being able to call me wrong and stupid and a moron based on a full explanation.
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@blakeyrat said in Should everyone learn to code?:
@gąska said in Should everyone learn to code?:
@blakeyrat now I wonder which of these two sports involves more jumping. I've never watched a full game of handegg, but in the few seconds that I've seen during my year long stay in USA, I haven't noticed any.
This side conversation is fucking stupid, but since your statement was also fucking stupid, let me just say this: we'll stop calling it "football" when it can be played by people in wheelchairs.
Why not call it brainball why we're at it? Surely it can't be played by people who... oh wait.
Still curious how much jumping is in handegg.
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@gąska said in Should everyone learn to code?:
Still curious how much jumping is in handegg.
There is 8 jumping. 8 exactly. That's how much jumping there is. 8.
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@blakeyrat said in Should everyone learn to code?:
@boomzilla said in Should everyone learn to code?:
You haven't explained yourself at all with this.
Ok well I guess you'll just have to call me wrong and stupid and a moron based on that partial explanation instead of being able to call me wrong and stupid and a moron based on a full explanation.
Yes, I think you're an idiot for thinking that it's wrong to be interested in the tools one uses.
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@gąska said in Should everyone learn to code?:
Still curious how much jumping is in handegg.
OK, I have to ask. What the fuck do eggs look like where you live?
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@dcon Anti-grav belts in action!
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@mrl said in Should everyone learn to code?:
@gąska said in Should everyone learn to code?:
Fun fact: Polish national team used to be ranked 76th worldwide in 2013. Now it's in top 10. I have very high hopes for World Cup this year - especially considering who else is in our group!
Oh fuck. I'll have to listen about this shit for weeks.
Just shut down anyone who starts bragging about their injury acting team by saying they colluded with Russia to steal the World Cup.
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@gąska said in Should everyone learn to code?:
@boomzilla the crisis had more to do with flawed INTERNAL policies of banks rather than government policies. If banks properly vetted their customers before giving them hundreds of thousands of dollars, there wouldn't be nearly as many bad credits on the market, and crisis would never happen.
https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/hillary-and-bill-cause-of-housing-financial-crisis/
The evidence is overwhelming that Clinton was the architect of the financial disaster that wiped out trillions of dollars in household wealth. Under his National Homeownership Strategy, Clinton took more than 100 executive actions to pry bank lending windows wide open.
Through executive order, he marshaled 10 federal agencies under a little-known task force to enforce new "flexible" mortgage underwriting guidelines to boost low-income and minority homeownership.
For the first time, banks were ordered to qualify low-income borrowers with spotty credit. The 1994 policy planted the seeds of the mortgage crisis, as lenders eventually abandoned prudent underwriting altogether.
The next year, Clinton set quotas for lending in high-risk neighborhoods under an overhauled Community Reinvestment Act, while adding several hundred bank examiners to enforce the tougher CRA rules. Banks that came up short had expansion plans put on hold — a slow death sentence in an era of bank mergers and acquisitions.
I could block quote the rest of the article too, it's really worth a read.
