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Wow, in 20 years Japan will be producing some amazing technology. I think people underestimate how transformative an understanding of programmatic problem solvi

by quxbar 10y ago

Wow, in 20 years Japan will be producing some amazing technology. I think people underestimate how transformative an understanding of programmatic problem solving can be. I'd put it only slightly under literacy.

gjolund 10y ago
I would put it on the same level as literacy and basic arithmetic. It exposes you to entirely know ways to solve problems, a basic understanding of computer science on a societal level would be amazing.
- elliotec 10y ago
  There's no way it is on the same level as literacy and basic arithmetic, at least not for decades if not longer. Literacy rates in the modern world are close to 100%, near the same can add and subtract. Programmatic thinking requires much more effort and skill, at least right now, and that's why we are getting hella paid. It's almost like saying accounting or medicine is the same level as literacy. Or on the low end of education and vocational skills, carpentry or plumbing. Not everyone will know how to be a plumber, a doctor, an accountant, or a software developer, and that's just fine. Most people should know how to read and count and that is also fine.
  - tedks 10y ago
    Good software engineering is ridiculously difficult to the extent that nobody gets it right, everything sucks everywhere, and there's no way to win. It requires a lot of domain expertise and background knowledge that goes far beyond just programming. That's why developers are, as you put it, hella paid. That said, programmatic thinking itself is much simpler. Learning how to think algorithmically and think about things like recursion, iteration, functional abstraction, etc., are definitely things everyone can learn to do. And this sort of thinking is valuable in areas other than software engineering. The weakest thing you can claim is that knowing programming lets people write programs, which is somewhat popular hobby activity among people can do it regardless of their profession, and something that there's some value in given the success of IFTT, Tasker, and similar systems that either approach or are actually programming.
    - elliotec 10y ago
      Ok, I don't disagree with that. So if they teach programmatic thinking in the ways you describe from a very young age, and they can apply it to realms outside software engineering, then it makes perfect sense to teach.
    - damptowel 10y ago
      My course started with learning structured programming logic by drawing structograms. From 'what is a variable?' to several sorting algorithms and their time complexity. No keyboard was touched, everything was computed by hand to tables. I found it hugely satisfying and think just doing the thinking-like-a-machine bit is a great addition to any curriculum. It doesn't need to make programmers out of every one, it just needs to show young students that programming isn't this black art only math geniuses can aspire to, because it's too often portrayed that way.
  - imtringued 10y ago
    >that's why we are getting hella paid This has nothing to do with skill. As long as demand is higher than supply for your job you will be well paid. Median wages for lawyers are lower because there is an oversupply of workers on the job market.
    - elliotec 10y ago
      True, but I think a good chunk of the reason it is in such demand still is because it requires a high level of skill to be able to fill that demand. And I'm not sure that would change with exposure in schooling.
modanq 10y ago
Countries like Israel and Estonia are doing something similar. Meanwhile in the US we are teaching only 10% of our schoolchildren how to code. It will be interesting to see what these countries will be producing in 20 years; but, what I am more worried about if the US will still have its technological prowess.
eru 10y ago
Alas, that doesn't mean that mandatory teaching will make people competent at it. (We have pretty widespread teaching of programming in high schools in Germany. Doesn't help too much.)
- kleer001 10y ago
  Does it seem to help much at all with the political sphere? In US politicos seem to me to be pretty ignorant of some of the finer points, but that may be an age thing too.
  - LionessLover 10y ago
    Politicians will start being competent as soon as the populace giving them jobs values that trait enough. That also includes keeping the loudly howling minorities for any given topic in check that raises hell whenever a person in public view seems to disagree with them, thereby teaching such people that lying and pretending is the best option.
    - eru 10y ago
      And the population will reward more reasonable people, when that becomes a useful tactic in voting. First-past-the-post basically forces you to vote for the idiot, or risk throwing away your vote.
  - eru 10y ago
    Don't think it has any effect. Why would it? Any effects of education are swamped by the differences in voting systems. Germany has Mixed-member proportional representation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-member_proportional_representation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-member_proportional_repr...), which leads to a multi-party system. The US has some variation of first-past-the-post. Especially together with the primary system, this rewards people for pandering to the base.
Zakiazigazi 10y ago
Considering how long English has been mandatory and what the average level of English proficiency actually is, it might be a little too early to be overly optimistic. The potential is there, but it will depend mostly on the execution and based on current experience I wouldn't expect too much.
- simunaga 10y ago
  Why be optimistic at all? The more people are able to code, the less demand for it, the less salaries of the programmers.
  - sbuttgereit 10y ago
    Gotta be pedantic on this one... Demand wouldn't decrease because of more developers being on the market. Supply would increase. Just because any one developer might be individually in less demand doesn't mean that demand for developers has decreased. Yes, this would still depress salaries for developers. Having said that, there is no fixed amount demand for developers. If development resources are a bottleneck for development projects moving forward, there being more developers may actually increase demand. This comes about as projects that otherwise wouldn't be started do get started and may, themselves, not be able to be fully staffed even with the new blood. I don't know that this would actually happen... but then again I suspect the Japanese don't really know what will happen either. You can't just look at the two values of current demand and current supply and extrapolate that into a vision of the future... there are many, many more variables than that.
    - simunaga 10y ago
      Interesting. The situation when robots not only take the people jobs but because of the robots new jobs get created, comes to mind. Isn't it similar to that? Yet, I think that robots don't create as many jobs as they take.
      - imtringued 10y ago
ekianjo 10y ago
We had mandatory programming in france 30 years ago it did not create a generation of little geniuses.
- venomsnake 10y ago
  And in Eastern Europe we had a system of dedicated STEM schools that took kids with aptitude to extend their abilities and now the region is an IT powerhouse. YMMV.
  - imtringued 10y ago
    There is a difference between increasing school capacity for specific areas of education than forcing insufficient education on everyone.
  - LionessLover 10y ago
    That has nothing to do with you guys being very cheap, right? No argument that STEM education was good in the East - I even have proof. Immediately after reunification German magazine "Wirtschaftswoche" (Businessweek equivalent) sponsored a very big test of students who had just finished high school "Abitur" in Germany) in East and in West Germany. It was tens of thousands of students. The result was that East German students wre significantly better in everything STEM, and worse in "language" (not just English, also in the use of their own language - so they were good engineers and bad at marketing and PR, to translate it to job profiles). However, that is not nearly enough for success, the main reason Western firms outsource to the East is price. Competence is necessary but not sufficient. Most of the software boom in the East is fueled by demand from the West.
tdfx 10y ago
I think it greatly depends on the comprehension level of the teachers. I can't imagine they're going to turn every teacher into a competent programmer overnight, nor will they lure an infinite number of competent programmers into the teaching profession.
chdhxhhd 10y ago
>Wow, in 20 years Japan will be producing some amazing technology Like more javascript frameworks?
_yosefk 10y ago
I think programmers overestimate the value of programmatic problem solving. IMO it's slightly under understanding how cars work (something I have no idea about and as a result, I waste money on new leased cars so as to avoid maintaining older ones), nowhere near as useful as literacy or basic arithmetic. The reason is that contrary to Alan Kay's opinion, computers not just aren't, but can't be usefully applied by most people without a lot of professional programmers providing them with software for the task at hand.
Zklsalue8 10y ago
I disagree. Making people learn to code is the same as making people learn math. It turns people off it. Most people are not interested in it. We often see the world through our own lens. I know many people in my past programming class who simply did not want anything to do with it ever again, and they selected themselves to do it. In fact, that seems to be more common than the people who loved it.

by quxbar 10y ago

gjolund 10y ago

I would put it on the same level as literacy and basic arithmetic. It exposes you to entirely know ways to solve problems, a basic understanding of computer science on a societal level would be amazing.

elliotec 10y ago
There's no way it is on the same level as literacy and basic arithmetic, at least not for decades if not longer. Literacy rates in the modern world are close to 100%, near the same can add and subtract. Programmatic thinking requires much more effort and skill, at least right now, and that's why we are getting hella paid. It's almost like saying accounting or medicine is the same level as literacy. Or on the low end of education and vocational skills, carpentry or plumbing. Not everyone will know how to be a plumber, a doctor, an accountant, or a software developer, and that's just fine. Most people should know how to read and count and that is also fine.
- tedks 10y ago
  Good software engineering is ridiculously difficult to the extent that nobody gets it right, everything sucks everywhere, and there's no way to win. It requires a lot of domain expertise and background knowledge that goes far beyond just programming. That's why developers are, as you put it, hella paid. That said, programmatic thinking itself is much simpler. Learning how to think algorithmically and think about things like recursion, iteration, functional abstraction, etc., are definitely things everyone can learn to do. And this sort of thinking is valuable in areas other than software engineering. The weakest thing you can claim is that knowing programming lets people write programs, which is somewhat popular hobby activity among people can do it regardless of their profession, and something that there's some value in given the success of IFTT, Tasker, and similar systems that either approach or are actually programming.
  - elliotec 10y ago
    Ok, I don't disagree with that. So if they teach programmatic thinking in the ways you describe from a very young age, and they can apply it to realms outside software engineering, then it makes perfect sense to teach.
  - damptowel 10y ago
    My course started with learning structured programming logic by drawing structograms. From 'what is a variable?' to several sorting algorithms and their time complexity. No keyboard was touched, everything was computed by hand to tables. I found it hugely satisfying and think just doing the thinking-like-a-machine bit is a great addition to any curriculum. It doesn't need to make programmers out of every one, it just needs to show young students that programming isn't this black art only math geniuses can aspire to, because it's too often portrayed that way.
- imtringued 10y ago
  >that's why we are getting hella paid This has nothing to do with skill. As long as demand is higher than supply for your job you will be well paid. Median wages for lawyers are lower because there is an oversupply of workers on the job market.
  - elliotec 10y ago
    True, but I think a good chunk of the reason it is in such demand still is because it requires a high level of skill to be able to fill that demand. And I'm not sure that would change with exposure in schooling.

modanq 10y ago

Countries like Israel and Estonia are doing something similar. Meanwhile in the US we are teaching only 10% of our schoolchildren how to code. It will be interesting to see what these countries will be producing in 20 years; but, what I am more worried about if the US will still have its technological prowess.

eru 10y ago

Alas, that doesn't mean that mandatory teaching will make people competent at it. (We have pretty widespread teaching of programming in high schools in Germany. Doesn't help too much.)

kleer001 10y ago
Does it seem to help much at all with the political sphere? In US politicos seem to me to be pretty ignorant of some of the finer points, but that may be an age thing too.
- LionessLover 10y ago
  Politicians will start being competent as soon as the populace giving them jobs values that trait enough. That also includes keeping the loudly howling minorities for any given topic in check that raises hell whenever a person in public view seems to disagree with them, thereby teaching such people that lying and pretending is the best option.
  - eru 10y ago
    And the population will reward more reasonable people, when that becomes a useful tactic in voting. First-past-the-post basically forces you to vote for the idiot, or risk throwing away your vote.
- eru 10y ago
  Don't think it has any effect. Why would it? Any effects of education are swamped by the differences in voting systems. Germany has Mixed-member proportional representation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-member_proportional_representation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-member_proportional_repr...), which leads to a multi-party system. The US has some variation of first-past-the-post. Especially together with the primary system, this rewards people for pandering to the base.

Zakiazigazi 10y ago

Considering how long English has been mandatory and what the average level of English proficiency actually is, it might be a little too early to be overly optimistic. The potential is there, but it will depend mostly on the execution and based on current experience I wouldn't expect too much.

simunaga 10y ago
Why be optimistic at all? The more people are able to code, the less demand for it, the less salaries of the programmers.
- sbuttgereit 10y ago
  Gotta be pedantic on this one... Demand wouldn't decrease because of more developers being on the market. Supply would increase. Just because any one developer might be individually in less demand doesn't mean that demand for developers has decreased. Yes, this would still depress salaries for developers. Having said that, there is no fixed amount demand for developers. If development resources are a bottleneck for development projects moving forward, there being more developers may actually increase demand. This comes about as projects that otherwise wouldn't be started do get started and may, themselves, not be able to be fully staffed even with the new blood. I don't know that this would actually happen... but then again I suspect the Japanese don't really know what will happen either. You can't just look at the two values of current demand and current supply and extrapolate that into a vision of the future... there are many, many more variables than that.
  - simunaga 10y ago
    Interesting. The situation when robots not only take the people jobs but because of the robots new jobs get created, comes to mind. Isn't it similar to that? Yet, I think that robots don't create as many jobs as they take.
    - imtringued 10y ago

ekianjo 10y ago

We had mandatory programming in france 30 years ago it did not create a generation of little geniuses.

venomsnake 10y ago
And in Eastern Europe we had a system of dedicated STEM schools that took kids with aptitude to extend their abilities and now the region is an IT powerhouse. YMMV.
- imtringued 10y ago
  There is a difference between increasing school capacity for specific areas of education than forcing insufficient education on everyone.
- LionessLover 10y ago
  That has nothing to do with you guys being very cheap, right? No argument that STEM education was good in the East - I even have proof. Immediately after reunification German magazine "Wirtschaftswoche" (Businessweek equivalent) sponsored a very big test of students who had just finished high school "Abitur" in Germany) in East and in West Germany. It was tens of thousands of students. The result was that East German students wre significantly better in everything STEM, and worse in "language" (not just English, also in the use of their own language - so they were good engineers and bad at marketing and PR, to translate it to job profiles). However, that is not nearly enough for success, the main reason Western firms outsource to the East is price. Competence is necessary but not sufficient. Most of the software boom in the East is fueled by demand from the West.

tdfx 10y ago

I think it greatly depends on the comprehension level of the teachers. I can't imagine they're going to turn every teacher into a competent programmer overnight, nor will they lure an infinite number of competent programmers into the teaching profession.

chdhxhhd 10y ago

>Wow, in 20 years Japan will be producing some amazing technology Like more javascript frameworks?

_yosefk 10y ago

I think programmers overestimate the value of programmatic problem solving. IMO it's slightly under understanding how cars work (something I have no idea about and as a result, I waste money on new leased cars so as to avoid maintaining older ones), nowhere near as useful as literacy or basic arithmetic. The reason is that contrary to Alan Kay's opinion, computers not just aren't, but can't be usefully applied by most people without a lot of professional programmers providing them with software for the task at hand.

Zklsalue8 10y ago

I disagree. Making people learn to code is the same as making people learn math. It turns people off it. Most people are not interested in it. We often see the world through our own lens. I know many people in my past programming class who simply did not want anything to do with it ever again, and they selected themselves to do it. In fact, that seems to be more common than the people who loved it.