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> "Frederick Douglass taught that literacy is the path from slavery to freedom. There are many kinds of slavery and many kinds of freedom. But reading is still

> "Frederick Douglass taught that literacy is the path from slavery to freedom. There are many kinds of slavery and many kinds of freedom. But reading is still the path." I believe this same thing holds true for coding and the modern day African American ( of which I am one ). I earn 6x more than my father ( Fisk University / TSU - BS/Masters ), 3x more than my sister ( Yale / Columbia Educated Architect - BS/Masters ) and an even greater multiple more than the rest of my family - yet I have no college education. I truly wish more African Americans saw that coding is the new literacy and IMO a real path to freedom.

swoongoonz 8y ago
I talk a lot about this with my wife. She's half mexican-american, I'm a quarter so we compare notes. Not everyone has what it takes to code. I played the hell out of video games for hours and hours on end as a kid. I'm kind of a natural fit for sitting in front of a computer for hours, trouble shooting until I succeed. My parents, my siblings, my friends I grew up with... not so much. Not scientific, but I kind of think we won the lottery for brains and the personality to do the kind of work we do for long stretches of time.
- arionhardison 8y ago
  I 100% agree ... so allow me to reframe my argument around "tech" and not just "coding". No matter if you can sit for hours etc... going into tech is much more likely to allow you the economic freedoms I am speaking of than trying to make it to the NBA or as a rapper etc... Edit: e.g. as a product manager, product manager, graphic designer etc...
  - eropple 8y ago
    It seems that visibility into these tech careers is very low amongst lower-income groups. I don't say that to expand your statement past black communities, but rather as a coincidental point--I am a white man and grew up in a fairly poor, overwhelmingly white area, and it was certainly the case there. What's been related to me (and maybe you can speak to this) is that it's similar in lower-income black communities, yeah? It's ingrained because it's ingrained, and it's what people think about because it's what they're shown. (Perhaps the aspirational targets are different--where I grew up it was not NBA players or rappers. Rather, reality-TV stars and the like. But the idea is similar.) If anything, seeing more and more NBA players (who tend to be extremely savvy businessmen, at the high end) getting into tech as investors--Steph Curry as a founding investor of Slyce, as an example--might bring visibility into that. A few years after the NBA dress code implementation--and there are things to talk about with regards to that, but that's kind of orthogonal--you saw players like Kevin Durant consciously dress "nerdy", with glasses and sweater vests and the like. I thought Wesley Morris wrote a beautiful piece[0] on the topic, and how, reluctantly or not, those NBA players who are themselves aspirational targets are trying to redefine the possibility space for the people watching them. Maybe that'll help. [0] - http://grantland.com/features/the-rise-nba-nerd/ http://grantland.com/features/the-rise-nba-nerd/
    - arionhardison 8y ago
      > "It seems that visibility into these tech careers is very low amongst lower-income groups. I don't say that to expand your statement past black communities, but rather as a coincidental point" You are correct, and you should expand my statement past black communities. I apologize for my bias here as I grew up in an all black poor neighborhood so I often associate this with race but the truth is that its much more socioeconomic than it is racial.
      - eropple 8y ago
        I mean, nothing to apologize for, yeah? Everyone has their take. I grew up in a poor white community, so that's what I see. I do wonder what can be further done; the social consciousness of the NBA is one of the reasons I feel good about watching it, and I have anecdotally heard it's made some inroads, but that seems like it's bailing out the ocean. Structural problems, structural fixes...
peterwwillis 8y ago
I've thought much the same, and I'm really interested in helping out any organization that both increases general literacy and computer literacy for people who have neither. There's so many people in this country who have so little access to basic necessities, but they may have a computer and internet access. Remote work might lift a lot of people out of poverty.
root_axis 8y ago
I totally disagree. Coding is a not at all comparable to literacy, it is simply a lucrative trade that is in demand at this time in history, but it won't always be (in fact, I suspect the career prospects for software engineers will look very similar to the career prospects for lawyers today, within the next 30 years). I say this as a black male software engineer under 35 without a college education who is in the 95th percentile of income earners in the U.S.
- geebee 8y ago
  I would agree that coding is no replacement for literacy. However, I see coding as more than a lucrative trade. I think it is increasingly a way of reasoning about data, not just a set of techniques for manipulating data. I think the ability to code is starting to weave itself deeply into the analytic mindset. If you can't write code, you are limited in your ability to be creative with data. In this sense, it is similar to literacy - you don't just write up your topic after you understand it, you develop understanding through writing. Similarly, you don't do your coding after you understand your data, you understand your data by interacting with it - and these days, that involves increasingly sophisticated coding skill. It is a different kind of coding that software engineering, to be sure, and there will be a grey area between data work and actual coding. But based on what I'm starting to see (I work regularly with academics who struggle with this), it is reasonable to call their analytical work a kind of coding - in fact, I'm not sure there's any other way to describe it. I'm starting to see the amount of R, Python, or other languages analysts need to write to truly dig into complex data, to the point where you can really get insight into it. We can debate where the line between coding and mere analysis starts and ends, but what I'm seeing ventures well into the territory where it is most accurate to call it coding.
  - root_axis 8y ago
    What you're describing here is a specialized skillset that is becoming a necessary tool in order to push forward the frontiers of science and academia, but it isn't a fundamental building block of the mind like literacy or even something like philosophy.

swoongoonz 8y ago

I talk a lot about this with my wife. She's half mexican-american, I'm a quarter so we compare notes. Not everyone has what it takes to code. I played the hell out of video games for hours and hours on end as a kid. I'm kind of a natural fit for sitting in front of a computer for hours, trouble shooting until I succeed. My parents, my siblings, my friends I grew up with... not so much. Not scientific, but I kind of think we won the lottery for brains and the personality to do the kind of work we do for long stretches of time.

arionhardison 8y ago
I 100% agree ... so allow me to reframe my argument around "tech" and not just "coding". No matter if you can sit for hours etc... going into tech is much more likely to allow you the economic freedoms I am speaking of than trying to make it to the NBA or as a rapper etc... Edit: e.g. as a product manager, product manager, graphic designer etc...
- eropple 8y ago
  It seems that visibility into these tech careers is very low amongst lower-income groups. I don't say that to expand your statement past black communities, but rather as a coincidental point--I am a white man and grew up in a fairly poor, overwhelmingly white area, and it was certainly the case there. What's been related to me (and maybe you can speak to this) is that it's similar in lower-income black communities, yeah? It's ingrained because it's ingrained, and it's what people think about because it's what they're shown. (Perhaps the aspirational targets are different--where I grew up it was not NBA players or rappers. Rather, reality-TV stars and the like. But the idea is similar.) If anything, seeing more and more NBA players (who tend to be extremely savvy businessmen, at the high end) getting into tech as investors--Steph Curry as a founding investor of Slyce, as an example--might bring visibility into that. A few years after the NBA dress code implementation--and there are things to talk about with regards to that, but that's kind of orthogonal--you saw players like Kevin Durant consciously dress "nerdy", with glasses and sweater vests and the like. I thought Wesley Morris wrote a beautiful piece[0] on the topic, and how, reluctantly or not, those NBA players who are themselves aspirational targets are trying to redefine the possibility space for the people watching them. Maybe that'll help. [0] - http://grantland.com/features/the-rise-nba-nerd/ http://grantland.com/features/the-rise-nba-nerd/
  - arionhardison 8y ago
    > "It seems that visibility into these tech careers is very low amongst lower-income groups. I don't say that to expand your statement past black communities, but rather as a coincidental point" You are correct, and you should expand my statement past black communities. I apologize for my bias here as I grew up in an all black poor neighborhood so I often associate this with race but the truth is that its much more socioeconomic than it is racial.
    - eropple 8y ago
      I mean, nothing to apologize for, yeah? Everyone has their take. I grew up in a poor white community, so that's what I see. I do wonder what can be further done; the social consciousness of the NBA is one of the reasons I feel good about watching it, and I have anecdotally heard it's made some inroads, but that seems like it's bailing out the ocean. Structural problems, structural fixes...

peterwwillis 8y ago

I've thought much the same, and I'm really interested in helping out any organization that both increases general literacy and computer literacy for people who have neither. There's so many people in this country who have so little access to basic necessities, but they may have a computer and internet access. Remote work might lift a lot of people out of poverty.

root_axis 8y ago

I totally disagree. Coding is a not at all comparable to literacy, it is simply a lucrative trade that is in demand at this time in history, but it won't always be (in fact, I suspect the career prospects for software engineers will look very similar to the career prospects for lawyers today, within the next 30 years). I say this as a black male software engineer under 35 without a college education who is in the 95th percentile of income earners in the U.S.

geebee 8y ago
I would agree that coding is no replacement for literacy. However, I see coding as more than a lucrative trade. I think it is increasingly a way of reasoning about data, not just a set of techniques for manipulating data. I think the ability to code is starting to weave itself deeply into the analytic mindset. If you can't write code, you are limited in your ability to be creative with data. In this sense, it is similar to literacy - you don't just write up your topic after you understand it, you develop understanding through writing. Similarly, you don't do your coding after you understand your data, you understand your data by interacting with it - and these days, that involves increasingly sophisticated coding skill. It is a different kind of coding that software engineering, to be sure, and there will be a grey area between data work and actual coding. But based on what I'm starting to see (I work regularly with academics who struggle with this), it is reasonable to call their analytical work a kind of coding - in fact, I'm not sure there's any other way to describe it. I'm starting to see the amount of R, Python, or other languages analysts need to write to truly dig into complex data, to the point where you can really get insight into it. We can debate where the line between coding and mere analysis starts and ends, but what I'm seeing ventures well into the territory where it is most accurate to call it coding.
- root_axis 8y ago
  What you're describing here is a specialized skillset that is becoming a necessary tool in order to push forward the frontiers of science and academia, but it isn't a fundamental building block of the mind like literacy or even something like philosophy.