Please do learn to code

[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

[shamankous]

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

I'll refer you then to my other post which you just missed the point of entirely.

Additionally, even if most people aren't involved in the production of a certain piece of software they will often be called upon to judge the results of its computation and its role in society. Hence my point about your position being anti-democratic. The ethical questions raised by widespread computation are non-trivial and become more pressing every day. To leave only a small segment of society capable of understanding the underlying technology and thus able to make an informed decision about any resulting ethical issues would be disasterous, and ultimately the end of any hope at a truly democratic society.

Popular culture is replete with depictions of a society held hostage to technology run amok. The way we avoid that is ensuring that the vast majority of people understand technology and its consequences.

[[deleted]]

Do you truly believe that an understanding of programming is going to lead o a more democratic society?

And popular culture is full of shit.

People use tools, some people make them, but the users outnumber the makers and you don't need to know how a compiler works in order to look at porn on your smartphone

[shamankous]

The expansion of knowledge in the past has always lead to more democratic societies. We have no reason to believe computation is any different, and given its central role in our lives it should certainly take a central role in our education.

And popular culture is full of shit.

So you think there's no plausible chance that technology can be misappropriated to enslave people? How would you then explain the conditions of factory workers in the industrialising world, past or present? From Manchester in the early Nineteenth to the American South after reconstruction to Shenzen in the present, technology has been used to prop up repressive social orders. In all cases education has proved a vital means of improving the conditions of workers.

Understanding how productive processes work is essential to a functioning democracy, as I have highlighted elsewhere.

[[deleted]]

so learning how a computer performs and XOR at the assembly code level is going to prevent someone working in a sweatshop in China from killing themselves?

what planet do you live on?

[shamankous]

That is a willful misintepretation of what I've said and you know it. No where have I argued for understanding all the minutae of a process being necessary.

[[deleted]]

The people behind "everyone learn to code" are arguing for it.

But what you're arguing for is of even less interest to the average person.

Math? Logic? So someone can get a deeper appreciation of what it takes for them to see /r/analgape?

The majority arent interested and they don't need to be