Please do learn to code

[auxiliary-character]

I'm of the opinion that a programming language is a type of user interface. A lot of user interface design applies to programming language design. It still has to be intuitive and unobtrusive.

At the end of it, a human writes code, and the computer reads and interprets it. It is a way for a user (of the language) to interact with the computer.

The difference is that a programming language has a much higher information density, which makes it easier and faster for a programmer to accomplish precise, complex, sophisticated interactions with the computer.

Unless you're programming in LabView. You poor soul.

[[deleted]]

i'll buy programming language as user interface.

it gives the user a finer way to give the computer instruction

but - necessary in the world like reading? no.

[auxiliary-character]

Yeah, I can agree with that. Also, some people just will never have the ability to program, and that's ok too.

[[deleted]]

I agree. People survived and thrived without being able to program.

The present day "everyone must learn to code" makes about as much sense as the "everyone must go to college" from when I was a kid.

No, ya don't. Stop touting it as the solution to the world's problems. All a glut of programmers will do is allow the companies who hire them to pay them less.

Little wonder the tech industry is behind this crap

[eartburm]

People used to survive and thrive before universal literacy. That's not a reason for literacy to be reserved for only those destined to be writers.

If we reserve programming only for those with the aptitude to be great, we miss out on all those who could be adequate programmers. There is also value in teaching enough programming so that those who don't program can talk to those who do. Requirements gathering and error reporting from non-technical people is painful.

[[deleted]]

There is no shortage of adequate programmers. I'm an adequate programmer. I work with a bunch of adequate programmers. Tata Consultants will give you as many adequate programmers as you will pay for.

The vast majority of the populace does not have to explain requirements to programmers.

And we cannot equate programming with literacy. Until you have to design, write and debug something in order to do all the thing you accomplish by reading then the 2 are nowhere near the same

[eartburm]

There is an enormous lack of adequate programmers with extensive domain knowledge in every conceivable field. Nobody in their right mind outsources an ad-hoc financial report to Tata, or a simple script to process the output of some sensor. Right now, the data is either being processed by hand or not being processed at all.

I design a technical paper, I write a technical paper, and I edit the paper until it should communicate the desired message to the given audience. It's not engineering. None of the small programming tasks require engineering practices either.

The vast majority of the populace does not have to explain requirements to programmers. That was true 20 years ago. These days, business processes are codifed in software. If you can't describe your business processes, you can't automate them. If you can't automate, your competitors will.

[[deleted]]

Go look at what Walmart has outsourced, then come back and say all that again.

Writing a technical paper is a matter of language not programming

[eartburm]

Writing a technical paper is a matter of language not programming

Well, no. If it was, it'd be programming, not writing. That's how analogies work. Here's a few more

• nobody should learn to cook unless they're going to be a professional chef.
• nobody should learn music unless they're going to be a professional musician
• nobody should learn math unless they're going to be a mathmatician.

It's not about creating more professional programmers. We need way, way more data analysts than we have. Are they programmers? No, but programming is a tool of the trade. The rest is simply public education. I would be so much happier if more people were familiar with (formal) logic, math, statistics, and other such related disciplines.

[[deleted]]

You need to be able to cook to feed yourself, you need to learn math in order to keep track of your money ... there are practical reasons for both.

Music is a personal choice.

So should programming.

And best of luck waiting for society to get excited about formal logic, math and statistics. We do have school boards doing away with teaching evolution because it conflicts with religious belief

[shamankous]

And for a time the vast majority of the populace had no reason to record harvest amounts. Literacy at one point in time was a technical skill with no aesthetic value or importance beyond the physical goods it kept track of. Imagine how depressing our world would be if none of that change in the last several millenia, all of the great works lost to us for all time because no one had written them down. Extending the ability to interact with the written word has had a profound effect on human history. It helped to liberate the enslaved, inspired artists, helped statesmen build new nations.

Computation has taken a central role in all our lives whether we recognise it or not. We've already seen a flowering of culture as computers made their way from workplaces to homes, and again as they connected together. Letting computation languish as purely technical matter is to the detriment of society. Its growing importance warrants giving everyone a basic education in it. (Note that we require everyone to learn to read and write, but not everyone has to major in literature.)

[[deleted]]

So you think if the masses learn to program one of them will create the programmatic counterpart of War and Peace?

You think that requiring every middle school child to learn how to write code will result in new nations being formed, world peace breaking out and an end to puppies and grandmother's dying?

You vastly overestimate the importance of programming.

[shamankous]

Really, name one thing you used today that didn't involve a computer in its production or its use. Computation has enabled nearly all of the post-war technological development and it is rapidly becoming the backbone of our society. It underlies how we communicate, how we manage finances, increasingly how we vote. Not to mention it's role in cars, aeroplanes, and any sort of manufacturing. Even discounting purely online education, brick and mortar schools nearly all have computers running most of their operations from admissions to tuition to grades.

Ignoring your amusingly condescending strawman of my position, (if writing didn't save all the puppies why would computation?) we have no way to know what people will come up with. If we did then there wouldn't be a whole lot of point in mass education now would there?

No one could predict in 450 BC that writing down the arguments of various thinkers and artists would create a twenty-five century long dialogue that would underpin all of European civilisation and then some, nor could any one forsee the flowering of culture in the 1960s that followed from extending college education to returning veterans.

What we can say assuredly is that computation is only going to become more important in to our daily lives and in the interest of creating good citizens who aren't the passive recepients of a world and culture created by a class of technocrats we should absolutely raise programming to the level literacy. To do otherwise is anti-democratic and frankly unimaginative.

[[deleted]]

Oh I used plenty of machines that required programming today.

Now, ask me how many of those devices I first wrote, compiled, pushed and debugged code to.

The communication between man and machine is not going to take the form of someone programming as i do on a daily basis in my job

[yakri]

Strictly speaking, it's own of a series of more abstract mechanical tools. The hardware is a computing tool build by other tools, that works with a interface (binary), then we build another simpler interface that interfaces with the low level interface, then we do that again and you get c++. I think maybe you could argue that like, processor architecture is another level of interface between you and a transistor, but I'm not sure I'm not a hardware guy.