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The metaphor of software being like literature is flawed. It is more apt to deem it an edifice. Buildings, much like software, are absolutely ubiquitous. Chance

The metaphor of software being like literature is flawed. It is more apt to deem it an edifice. Buildings, much like software, are absolutely ubiquitous. Chances are on average you don't intimately understand the workings of contemporary civil engineering. And, while you should absolutely be able to modify your house, the reality is a lot of other buildings are off-limits to you or purpose-built for a specific recipient or cause. Indeed, a huge amount of software is designed to be sold to specific contractors and not to the public at large. Nor will the public realistically have the chance to modify most of the software they interact with, either because they're just circuits, dumb terminals or another reason. Thirdly, software is permanent, modulo bit rot. That is to say most people can be satisfied entirely by existing written solutions. Simple task automation, scripts and macros can be self-taught if the person sees an opportunity. Actually creating legitimately new things requires a deep proficiency in a problem domain that a pedestrian knowledge of programming will not satisfy. Also, if you're going to promote ideals for governments, I strongly suggest you promote free software, not open source.

adpirz 11y ago
Couldn't this same rationale be applied to high-school level math? It's one of the biggest excuses made about learning anything beyond arithmetic -- unless I'm pursuing engineering or some computation-heavy career, when will I need to care about calculus? Or for that matter, why ever learn about cell biology in elementary school? Not everyone is going to be a geneticist, and most pharma patents are completely off limits, so why bother? Yet it's important that we learn all these pieces because we expect a fundamental level of understanding about the world we live in, including how that world and what we know about it is changing. Without an informed electorate and a labor force primed with the skillset necessary for the current job market, not one that's passed, we suffer collectively. Thirty years ago, it wouldn't have made sense to make something like computer literacy or computer science a compulsory subject, but considering just how much it touches every aspect of the world and our lives today, it seems remiss to not empower students with the knowledge and skills to interact with and change that world for themselves.
- strayptr 11y ago
  unless I'm pursuing engineering or some computation-heavy career, when will I need to care about calculus? Or for that matter, why ever learn about cell biology in elementary school? Not everyone is going to be a geneticist, and most pharma patents are completely off limits, so why bother? Agreed. Why bother? In fact, forcing children to learn these topics often harms them so irreparably that they not only don't retain the knowledge, but can't bring themselves to be interested later in life. Make it optional. Make the topics available for children who want to know. Make it self-selected, just like every other aspect in life.
  - nitrogen 11y ago
    The point of compulsory education is to provide a common memetic foundation for society's interaction and communication. Without that shared foundation, we see endlessly polarized political talking heads debating nonissues for attention instead of reasoned debate and informed participation in society.
    - strayptr 11y ago
      I'm not sure if the elites of HN have spent much time among today's average youth, but they certainly aren't learning a common memetic foundation. They barely graduate from high school. And in fact, the average youth are what drag down today's achievers. The achievers are made to feel there's something wrong with them, and that it's a sin against the collective to try to be better than average. Yet averages are precisely the problem. You throw your achievers together with the average, giving them nowhere to go and no outlets to explore. Programming is one of the few outlets, as it isn't compulsory, yet here we're talking about ripping that one away too. I figured out what the original comment reminded me of: https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament.... "We are helping our students become more competitive in an increasingly sound-filled world."
      - mindcrime 11y ago

adpirz 11y ago

Couldn't this same rationale be applied to high-school level math? It's one of the biggest excuses made about learning anything beyond arithmetic -- unless I'm pursuing engineering or some computation-heavy career, when will I need to care about calculus? Or for that matter, why ever learn about cell biology in elementary school? Not everyone is going to be a geneticist, and most pharma patents are completely off limits, so why bother? Yet it's important that we learn all these pieces because we expect a fundamental level of understanding about the world we live in, including how that world and what we know about it is changing. Without an informed electorate and a labor force primed with the skillset necessary for the current job market, not one that's passed, we suffer collectively. Thirty years ago, it wouldn't have made sense to make something like computer literacy or computer science a compulsory subject, but considering just how much it touches every aspect of the world and our lives today, it seems remiss to not empower students with the knowledge and skills to interact with and change that world for themselves.

strayptr 11y ago
unless I'm pursuing engineering or some computation-heavy career, when will I need to care about calculus? Or for that matter, why ever learn about cell biology in elementary school? Not everyone is going to be a geneticist, and most pharma patents are completely off limits, so why bother? Agreed. Why bother? In fact, forcing children to learn these topics often harms them so irreparably that they not only don't retain the knowledge, but can't bring themselves to be interested later in life. Make it optional. Make the topics available for children who want to know. Make it self-selected, just like every other aspect in life.
- nitrogen 11y ago
  The point of compulsory education is to provide a common memetic foundation for society's interaction and communication. Without that shared foundation, we see endlessly polarized political talking heads debating nonissues for attention instead of reasoned debate and informed participation in society.
  - strayptr 11y ago
    I'm not sure if the elites of HN have spent much time among today's average youth, but they certainly aren't learning a common memetic foundation. They barely graduate from high school. And in fact, the average youth are what drag down today's achievers. The achievers are made to feel there's something wrong with them, and that it's a sin against the collective to try to be better than average. Yet averages are precisely the problem. You throw your achievers together with the average, giving them nowhere to go and no outlets to explore. Programming is one of the few outlets, as it isn't compulsory, yet here we're talking about ripping that one away too. I figured out what the original comment reminded me of: https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament.... "We are helping our students become more competitive in an increasingly sound-filled world."
    - mindcrime 11y ago