5 ms·

>There's a ton of Stupid Computer Shit we all know, mostly from messing around on our own time This, I think, is the core issue. Like most of us here, I start

>There's a ton of Stupid Computer Shit we all know, mostly from messing around on our own time This, I think, is the core issue. Like most of us here, I started playing with computers as a young child, from a Timex Sinclair 1000 as a pre-teen to a Commodore 128 as a young teen, then an Amiga and beyond. It wasn't work, it was fun, a hobby. And more importantly, by the time I hit college, I had literally thousands of hours of practice just being immersed in how computers work. I started tutoring other students in CS for some beer money, and it was a real shock at how awful otherwise very intelligent people were at what I considered utterly trivial questions. But they weren't trivial. They were only simple if you already had a complex, detailed and well-worn model of how computers work running in your head. Without that, even simple computer tasks may as well be written in cuneiform for all the good it does the genuinely new student. I'm not even sure it is possible to take a young adult who is truly computer illiterate and have them succeed in a technical major. At least not in a standard 4 years. There is simply too much foundational knowledge you need to have before you can even begin the real work of learning what to do.

YZF 9y ago
I should have thought about beer money. But I was such an introverted geek. I do remember watching other people trying to figure out how to use a mouse or the most basic stuff. I've already studied algorithms and data structures and had a paying programming job. Most of the CS work seemed trivial but I did learn some math. The math did get hard so the degree was definitely not a breeze. Even with CS there were areas that were less trivial like computational geometry or numerical methods but I had the advantage that coding was a non-issue so I could focus on the essence. Many many many years later, I still often make the mistake of assuming things that look trivial to me are also trivial to others. It's just so hard to tell whether something is universally trivial or just trivial because you've done it so many times. I wonder if the current generation's "playing" with their phone/computer/tablets gives them an advantage over the previous generation. I do work with quite a few sharp young people but I don't know whether they had programmed before going into CS or not, I guess I should ask...
- smeroth 9y ago
  I don't think they have an advantage, as I've noticed that kids knowing their way around their phone are often completely lost when put in front of a computer. They never use the computer, they have everything in their phones. Compared to a computer, a phone is simple, and you aren't actually solving any problems while using it (you're just downloading and running apps). When you have a phone, however, there's no need to learn the computer. This means that they're missing out on the computer learning curve that we experienced.
  - fivestar 9y ago
    Again, Rasp Pi and the whole "maker" movement are mainstream. My daughter is in a STEM Middle School and she has done more things at age 11 than I did when I was 18! They're teaching Android game coding to kids age 10.
    - CydeWeys 9y ago
      I think your daughter is lucky to be going to an exceptional school that teaches programming at age ten. The vast, vast majority of American students do not have these kinds of courses. May I ask what school system your daughter is in?
- tsukikage 9y ago
  If anything, it's a disadvantage IME: the implicit lessons of the iDevice are that the world is made of non-user-serviceable black boxes that cannot be recombined to make anything substantially different than what you started with, and if one does ever manage to peek under the hood (and why would one do that, any more than they do with their fridge or their TV?) one sees only immutable non-deconstructible complexity. Contrast this with the 8-bit era: devices made of multiple clunky components large enough to manipulate and simple enough to fully comprehend, shipping with "user manuals" that look like today's programming textbooks or service/maintenance manuals (where those exist today at all), a readily available developer environment giving full access to the hardware, tinkering with hardware and software as a matter of course to get anything interesting done at all... The experience is very different indeed.
uncletaco 9y ago
So my story is a little different. I didn't write my first program until I was in college and didn't even own a personal computer until I was going into my junior year in 2009. I had the advantage of having a department that assumed we were computer illiterate (I went to an HBCU in the late 00s: lots of low-income kids, very few had PCs of their own growing up, let alone college educated parents) so there were a lot of resources dedicated to tutoring, TA involvement in labs, and building a community around our department. It sort of felt like being in a sports club. Every freshman was assigned am upper-classman mentor and every mentor I had took their role seriously. If I didn't come around for a week I got a phone call. If I struggled I got extra help, and my relationship with my mentor was something that came up if I started slipping in a class. We also had advisors based on our interests who were constantly throwing REUs, internships, and events into our face. When I went to grad school at a majority institution it was like night and day (no pun intended). Lower level students were often left hanging on a vine and were only paid attention to if they were already successful. The TAs weren't actively helping students, only passively so. I left there thinking there were probably a lot of kids who got turned off to the major because they didn't get the help they needed. Poor kids especially had it rough because they often came from a situation like mine, households with one computer that they were only allowed to use if they were using word write a paper or something. I say all that to say I think you can teach a young adult to succeed in a technical major in 4 years, but it takes a village. If you immerse them in a community built around that technical major, it becomes a lot easier to get them up to speed.
- xeromal 9y ago
  Agreed. I think what's more important than tinkering with computers as a child is to just have willpower to stare at something for hours with no end in sight just to have a small breakthrough. Those breakthroughs, for me, almost seemed to reward me with little releases of endorphins like solving a puzzle.
  - uncletaco 9y ago
    I lived for those "a-ha" moments too. I remember when the theory of computation clicked and the rush of understanding that washed over me that put everything I'd done in that class in perspective. It was probably the best feeling I ever had in my academic career.

YZF 9y ago

I should have thought about beer money. But I was such an introverted geek. I do remember watching other people trying to figure out how to use a mouse or the most basic stuff. I've already studied algorithms and data structures and had a paying programming job. Most of the CS work seemed trivial but I did learn some math. The math did get hard so the degree was definitely not a breeze. Even with CS there were areas that were less trivial like computational geometry or numerical methods but I had the advantage that coding was a non-issue so I could focus on the essence. Many many many years later, I still often make the mistake of assuming things that look trivial to me are also trivial to others. It's just so hard to tell whether something is universally trivial or just trivial because you've done it so many times. I wonder if the current generation's "playing" with their phone/computer/tablets gives them an advantage over the previous generation. I do work with quite a few sharp young people but I don't know whether they had programmed before going into CS or not, I guess I should ask...

smeroth 9y ago
I don't think they have an advantage, as I've noticed that kids knowing their way around their phone are often completely lost when put in front of a computer. They never use the computer, they have everything in their phones. Compared to a computer, a phone is simple, and you aren't actually solving any problems while using it (you're just downloading and running apps). When you have a phone, however, there's no need to learn the computer. This means that they're missing out on the computer learning curve that we experienced.
- fivestar 9y ago
  Again, Rasp Pi and the whole "maker" movement are mainstream. My daughter is in a STEM Middle School and she has done more things at age 11 than I did when I was 18! They're teaching Android game coding to kids age 10.
  - CydeWeys 9y ago
    I think your daughter is lucky to be going to an exceptional school that teaches programming at age ten. The vast, vast majority of American students do not have these kinds of courses. May I ask what school system your daughter is in?
tsukikage 9y ago
If anything, it's a disadvantage IME: the implicit lessons of the iDevice are that the world is made of non-user-serviceable black boxes that cannot be recombined to make anything substantially different than what you started with, and if one does ever manage to peek under the hood (and why would one do that, any more than they do with their fridge or their TV?) one sees only immutable non-deconstructible complexity. Contrast this with the 8-bit era: devices made of multiple clunky components large enough to manipulate and simple enough to fully comprehend, shipping with "user manuals" that look like today's programming textbooks or service/maintenance manuals (where those exist today at all), a readily available developer environment giving full access to the hardware, tinkering with hardware and software as a matter of course to get anything interesting done at all... The experience is very different indeed.

uncletaco 9y ago

So my story is a little different. I didn't write my first program until I was in college and didn't even own a personal computer until I was going into my junior year in 2009. I had the advantage of having a department that assumed we were computer illiterate (I went to an HBCU in the late 00s: lots of low-income kids, very few had PCs of their own growing up, let alone college educated parents) so there were a lot of resources dedicated to tutoring, TA involvement in labs, and building a community around our department. It sort of felt like being in a sports club. Every freshman was assigned am upper-classman mentor and every mentor I had took their role seriously. If I didn't come around for a week I got a phone call. If I struggled I got extra help, and my relationship with my mentor was something that came up if I started slipping in a class. We also had advisors based on our interests who were constantly throwing REUs, internships, and events into our face. When I went to grad school at a majority institution it was like night and day (no pun intended). Lower level students were often left hanging on a vine and were only paid attention to if they were already successful. The TAs weren't actively helping students, only passively so. I left there thinking there were probably a lot of kids who got turned off to the major because they didn't get the help they needed. Poor kids especially had it rough because they often came from a situation like mine, households with one computer that they were only allowed to use if they were using word write a paper or something. I say all that to say I think you can teach a young adult to succeed in a technical major in 4 years, but it takes a village. If you immerse them in a community built around that technical major, it becomes a lot easier to get them up to speed.

xeromal 9y ago
Agreed. I think what's more important than tinkering with computers as a child is to just have willpower to stare at something for hours with no end in sight just to have a small breakthrough. Those breakthroughs, for me, almost seemed to reward me with little releases of endorphins like solving a puzzle.
- uncletaco 9y ago
  I lived for those "a-ha" moments too. I remember when the theory of computation clicked and the rush of understanding that washed over me that put everything I'd done in that class in perspective. It was probably the best feeling I ever had in my academic career.