8 ms·

Why the “Learn to Code” Meme Is Toxic and Shouldn't Be Used

30 points by majikarp 8y ago

anoncoward111 8y ago
The reason the learn to code meme is popular with 4chan is because some journalists were insinuating that coal miners and truck drivers will have to learn how to code in order to pay their bills. Now that journalists are being told to learn how to code to pay their bills, it is controversial.
smush 8y ago
So this meme didn't come from nowhere. Blue collar professions have been given this 'helpful advice' by journalists quite a bit over the years. It was tone deaf then, and still so now. I admit I don't yet see why it's verboten/'toxic' to parrot this same tone deaf advice to journalists now? I admit I haven't wandered through the more dilapidated internet street corners lately, so perhaps it's become toxic due to the sheer volume of use where its no longer something to be seen in good fun, or perhaps we are running low on goodwill as a society to be able to enjoy a joke? Setting that entire matter aside, the article has (to me) a somewhat tenuous argument that saying the tone deaf joke of 'learn to code' is disrespectful to programmers and the like. I'm not sure about that, but I don't have a coherent reason to articulate that just yet.
- onlydeadheroes 8y ago
  > I admit I don't yet see why it's verboten/'toxic' to parrot this same tone deaf advice to journalists now? Because journalists are better than you. This is the only "reality" the media are interested in pushing forward. It underlies every weird thing coming out of the media in the last few years.
  - kristianc 8y ago
    This was also implicit in the way Twitter dealt with it. Tweeting "Learn to Code" was fine, tweeting it at a journalist would get you banned.
- etg34525 8y ago
  Did all the journalists being targeted by this actually tell blue collar workers to learn coding? I've searched on my own and found articles about "this company in west virginia that's training coal miners to code" or "jobs that will be automated in 10 years - is your's next?", but I don't specifically see or recall journalists telling displaced workers that coding would fix their problems. If anyone here can provide examples of that, I would appreciate it. If this was a widespread thing that many journalists spouted, I understand the outcry. If only a few journalists spouted this nonsense, then I don't think it's fair to punish an entire industry over some bad apples. What I suspect is that the "learn to code" push was more of a society-wide meme trafficked by politicians, economists, and tech CEOs. And I have to imagine that some journalists gave those people a platform. But perhaps I'm looking at the wrong evidence? EDIT: dexen's post found maybe one example: A Buzzfeed quiz that suggests coding could become the next blue collar profession. That kind of fits the "learn to code" meme. The other articles dexen posted were actually counter to that - An article where Michael Bloomberg said learning to code is unrealistic for many displaced workers, and another article about coal miners proving him wrong. Is that it? Or are there more examples?
  - leereeves 8y ago
    Whether it was journalists pushing it, or "politicians, economists, and tech CEOs" pushing it, and journalists merely repeating it, I don't know. But I definitely remember hearing that message in the media for the last 20 years, and I don't recall anyone calling it "trolling" until it was directed at journalists.
    - etg34525 8y ago
      Well it's important to know what was actually said and who said it. If, by and large, journalists did not actually advocate for displaced workers to code their way out of unemployment, then harassing them with #learntocode is unjustified. I've wasted the entire morning looking for sources of this by now. Like you, I sort of remembered hearing that message over the years. But now that I'm looking, I'm not actually finding many examples where news outlets are seriously suggesting this. Have you ever thought you knew something, but end up misremembering it? There are lots of people who swear they remember a movie called Shazzam staring Sinbad as a genie, but there is no such movie. There was a movie called Kazaam staring Shaquille O'Neal, and Sinbad once dressed up in similar garb when hosting a movie showing. But people conflated the two things. I think that's whats going on. And if so, we should not be harassing journalists who had nothing to do with this.
- mc32 8y ago
  I guess the media don't like getting a clap back [since they stated it years ago when "those jobs ain't coming back" and so on]; they like to be the ones dishing it out.
- hashberry 8y ago
  I think sexism is also involved. Media professions attract more women (my journalism and marketing classes were filled with women). And the media loves to cover the gender gap in STEM. So now it's a bunch of guys tweeting to women telling them to "Learn to Code" after said women complain about getting laid off or career difficulties.
  - leereeves 8y ago
    So what? Women journalists comment on male careers all the time, what's wrong with the reverse? Unless you're prepared to apply that "sexism" standard equally, you're being sexist by applying unequal standards.
    - hashberry 8y ago
      Look up James Damore. When men comment on women's career choices, they get fired. And now men are getting banned from Twitter. Probably because "sexism."
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - leereeves 8y ago
        You may be right. It's a a sexist double standard, but in certain circles, it's essentially forbidden for a man to criticize a woman in any way, while it's permissible for a woman to say anything she likes about men, however hateful. And those circles do seem to have a lot of overlap with the circles that consider the "Learn to Code" meme "toxic".
        apacheCamel 8y ago
        I think these certain circles are quite small but the emphasis is put on them and many people, whether they agree or not, are put into the circle for viewing the "Learn to Code" meme as toxic. I agree that telling blue collar workers to learn to code originally was tone deaf and these journalists should be scolded for it but I also assume that not every journalist was on the "holier than thou" train. We should just be better to each other. Don't fight their ignorance with the same ignorance, it is just making the world a meaner place in my opinion.
- 420codebro 8y ago
  Because journalists are pussies.
- SilasX 8y ago
  >So this meme didn't come from nowhere. Blue collar professions have been given this 'helpful advice' by journalists quite a bit over the years. It was tone deaf then, and still so now. I admit I don't yet see why it's verboten/'toxic' to parrot this same tone deaf advice to journalists now? Right. This short, low-effort article doesn't seem to be aware of the context of the meme, and how it's just spitting back the very meme that journalists were promoting. Of course if you're not aware of that context, or didn't take the effort to research it, then the meme will seem more trollish and less poetic than it is.
  - 0-_-0 8y ago
    I agree, the writer of this piece isn't doing a good job as a journalist. Maybe he should learn to code...
- msla 8y ago
  > So this meme didn't come from nowhere. Blue collar professions have been given this 'helpful advice' by journalists quite a bit over the years. It was tone deaf then, and still so now. I admit I don't yet see why it's verboten/'toxic' to parrot this same tone deaf advice to journalists now? Because you're taking a meme meant for low-income low-prestige men and applying it to members of a high-income high-prestige mixed group. You are, in short, reducing the status of the journalists to those of unemployed coal miners. Hell, you might as well slap a paper hat on their heads and tell them to man a fryer. It's "problematic" and "toxic" to be reminded that you can fall in the class structure like that.
  - 0815test 8y ago
    I don't think it has anything to do with income - journalism is not an especially "high income" career path. It's all about culture, cliques and good-old-boy networks - here as perhaps in other cases, journalists are relying on a rather context-specific sort of "prestige" in an effort to escape this sort of attack/criticism.
- forgottenpass 8y ago
  >the article has (to me) a somewhat tenuous argument that saying the tone deaf joke of 'learn to code' is disrespectful to programmers and the like Yeah, seems off to me too. If there's anything about the whole thing that's disrespectful to programmers, it's that journos think programming as a career path is beneath them.
brodouevencode 8y ago
Software engineer for 12 years, in IT for 18. Not in the slightest bit offended by this. No one should be. It's a silly meme.
bibyte 8y ago
Why do people think that software engineering is the ultimate job in the world ? Sure it pays well and is generally a good job but other jobs are important too. Our modern lifestyle isn't solely built by software engineers. The meme is that everyone should learn to code is as silly as saying everyone should be an astronaut.
- nkrisc 8y ago
  My belief is that because people who don't know anything about writing software think it's easy and pays lots of money because you understand this arcane language that seems mystical to them.
- jhbadger 8y ago
  The difference is that writing code is useful to many people who aren't professional programmers. I'm a research scientist, not a programmer, for example. But writing code to analyze my data gives me an advantage over people who just put everything in Excel because they can't code.
- mywittyname 8y ago
  Because on the outside, it does look like the ultimate job. They think it's easy, low-effort, and high-paying. To most people, we sit at desks (or play ping pong) all day, type words on keyboards, then collect a five-figure paycheck at the end of the week.
hanoz 8y ago
The "Learn to Code" meme in its current evolution, i.e. as thrown back in the faces of journalists, is pointedly in defense of the value and difficulty of software development which the article espouses.
ratling 8y ago
The people using this meme are worthless, a bunch of 'has beens' who refuse to innovate or change to improve their situation in any way and actively mock those that do. Pay them no mind.
- EpicEng 8y ago
  I don't think you understand the context behind the meme... at all.
  - ratling 8y ago
    I get it entirely. It’s people from the red flavor of the political spectrum mocking people on the blue end who find themselves in tough times. Here’s the thing. I grew up with the red end. These people just loooooove to bitch about everything. Bitch bitch bitch all day long. Yet when you suggest a solution that isn’t what their daddy did or what their friends are doing they balk. Worse, if you look like you’re trying to rise above your station you’ll be actively mocked if not hindered for funsies. 2019 I don’t give a shit that they think they’re clever by flipping the script on people in blue land. Hilariously some of those journalists will probably land in tech land and do just fine, the skill sets are complimentary. Red land? Fuck em. They made their beds long ago. Let them sleep in them.
    - tomhoward 8y ago
      Plenty of people from all across the political spectrum would sooner complain than take responsibility and initiative, and plenty of others from across the board are otherwise inclined. Maybe tone down the broad-brushed contempt; among the people you're talking about there will inevitably be people who are just dealing with tough luck through little fault of their own, and who are not reacting with cruelty to others.
dexen 8y ago
>Currently (...) Way to start with a false premise. The meme died out by now[1]. > The phrase “Learn to Code” was initially posted on Twitter after the layoffs at BuzzFeed and the Huffington Post. Way to continue with a false premise. The phrase was used literally [2], and the subject was referenced [3] by numerous newspapers and other media outlets back when the economy was tanking, as a helpful suggestion to laid off workers - miners, autoworkers, and so on. "Those jobs aren't coming back" and all that. The only concern back then was of practicality, and nobody in their right mind considered it to be a put down of the workes, or of programmers. Yes, the phrase may seem insensitive from our, programmer's, POV. Nonetheless, there's a historical precedent to it, based off of much wider segment of society than just programmers. I find it shameful that Twitter, in its infinite wisdom, decided to suppress the accompanying hashtag, and later on even went as far started penalizing the posters. It used to be understood as a good idea back then, it's still considered a good idea now-a-day. I think it was shot down only for the expediency of keeping the journalists a-buzz on Twitter. -- [1] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%203-m&q=%22learn%20to%20code%22 https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%203-m&q=... [2] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katienotopoulos/should-you-learn-to-code https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katienotopoulos/should-... [3] https://gigaom.com/2014/04/09/michael-bloomberg-you-cant-teach-a-coal-miner-to-code/ https://gigaom.com/2014/04/09/michael-bloomberg-you-cant-tea... and https://www.wired.com/2015/11/can-you-teach-a-coal-miner-to-code/ https://www.wired.com/2015/11/can-you-teach-a-coal-miner-to-...
- pxc 8y ago
  > the subject was referenced [3] by numerous newspapers and other media outlets back when the economy was tanking, as a helpful suggestion to laid off workers - miners, autoworkers, and so on. lol nope. None of the articles I've seen on the subject were framed as or constituted advice to working class people in any way. In fact, neither do none of the articles you cite. The first article, from Gigaom, is reporting on a statement by former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg— news about statements made by a public figure. This is what started the whole meme of considering learning to code as a way of finding work in the context of the decline of other sectors. The second piece is an article about how _everyone_ should learn to code, a common and totally distinct meme that goes around HN quite often. It refers to teaching a new generation of blue collar workers to code via the public school system for the purpose of creating a new layer of coders-as-tradesmen to fill unmet demand for developers in the job market. Again, not about telling working class people in industries under threat to just ‘learn to code’ to solve their problems. The third piece is reporting on a group of coal miners who literally did teach themselves to code and founded a web development consultancy that seeks to retrain and employ people who were not previously tech workers. It addresses the Michael Bloomberg comments in the headline, and examines whether the existence of such a company proves his condescending statement ‘you can't teach a coal miner to code’ is true (it's not). Like all the other pieces, it does not suggest in the slightest that ‘learn to code’ is a universal solution for workers whose jobs are under threat in a changing economy. In fact, the tone of the article sides _with_ the former coal miners it profiles, against the condescension of Bloomberg: > Rusty Justice thought he might know miners a little better than some fancy tycoon in New York did. [...] It was time to go and prove Bloomberg wrong. and at the same time stresses the precarity of the former coal miners striking out on this path, and the uncertainty they themselves express about the long-term viability of the venture they've only just started, and frames scaling this effort up even to a handful more coders as a significant (if surmountable) challenge: > What they’re building in its place is all so fragile and new. Parrish is worried even about the effect of U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez coming to shake the coders’ hands, or reporters like me coming to do stories. “We just don’t want all the notoriety to give the false illusion that we developed all the skills.” > Rusty is less cautious, and thinks they just need to keep digging, keep plowing, keep seeding. The coders are getting it — they’re building websites, closing contracts. “They believe they can do it. That’s the magic.” > Now the challenge is one that’s very typical to startups: how to scale. The narrative you've just reproduced, as well as the entire ‘#learntocode’ meme, of snooty journalists callously advising distressed workers to casually retrain themselves and change careers, is transparently a false one, sustainable only if you refuse to read the actual content of the articles that are allegedly part of it. The reason it's been propagated so widely despite that fact is the role that it plays in an online culture war between alt-right edgelords (and often, their ‘woke centrist’ apologists, à la Joe Rogan and company), including their soft allies on the ‘intellectual dark web’, and their perceived enemies: ‘SJWs’ and ‘intersectional feminism’, as they understand them. They represent the despicable and hegemonic views of an out-of-control leftwing mainstream in the same way as the ‘progressive NPCs’ do to 4chan's /pol/, Anita Sarkeesian does to gamers for whom the insulation of videogames from serious art criticism has resulted in an allergy to even 101-level feminism, and the ‘liberal mainstream media’ does to Trumpian Fox News acolytes. This is about flogging the political and cultural outgroup by any means available, honest or not, and nothing more.
egberts1 8y ago
Virtue signaling, much?
wtdata 8y ago
We should be aware that the meme has origin on journalists themselves. When blue collar workers faced job shortages due to environmental regulations (I am not arguing those were wrong of course, just putting it into perspective), journalists suggested those workers to "learn to code" in some very insensitive remarks. Now, those words are being thrown back at journalists facing job shortages themselves.
- etg34525 8y ago
  Do you remember which journalists made those remarks? I'm trying to find the source of this.
  - wtdata 8y ago
    The Know Your Meme article about it has quite a lot of info and some sources for the old articles: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/learn-to-code?full=1 https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/learn-to-code?full=1
lenticular 8y ago
I think this author is a bit too easily offended. Software engineering is a good job but we're not better than anyone else.
0815test 8y ago
Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19336925 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19336925 Tim Apple himself is saying that colleges are not doing enough to teach folks to code! Acknowledging this underlying reality, even in a somewhat provocative way, is hardly "toxic".
wdhilliard 8y ago
This author doesnt understand sarcasm - another reason I tend to ignore anyone who uses the word "toxic" outside of health and safety.
everdrive 8y ago
I'm not sure it's toxic. Ideas can't hurt people, not really. That said, I don't think most people can code very effectively. It requires a person to be generally intelligent, and then to specialize in a narrow part of computer science. "Learn to Code" is great advice, but it should probably be understood that everyone who's being displaced won't become effective coders.
- AnimalMuppet 8y ago
  > I'm not sure it's toxic. Ideas can't hurt people, not really. Jesus said "The truth will set you free."[1] The corollary is that lies make you a slave. Ideas can definitely hurt people - especially ideas that are believed. In this context, the idea that I need to learn to code could be very harmful if I believe it, devote time and money into learning how to code, and find out that I can't code well enough to get a job (or that I hate it). Now I'm out a bunch of time and money that I could have spent learning how to do something else that fit me better. Even worse is if I conclude that "coding = success, not being able to code = failure", and therefore that I am currently a failure, and a permanent failure if I fail to learn how to code. That can be massively harmful. The meme itself isn't a big deal. Directing some smack talk at the media is completely fair game. If someone takes the meme seriously, however, it can definitely hurt people. (Don't take career advice from memes. Even more, don't take advice as to your identity or value as a human being from memes.) -- [1] Actually, he said that if you followed his teaching, you would know the truth, and the truth would set you free - it was spiritual truth and spiritual freedom he was talking about. I'm taking his words more broadly than perhaps he meant them.
  - everdrive 8y ago
    This is a great response. I think I probably could have caveated a little better, and said something like: "People are throwing around the word 'toxic' far too freely. I'm worried about over-sensitivity and censorship. Because of these concerns, I'm apt to push back on characterizations that words and ideas are harmful, even if the ideas themselves are flawed and open to criticism. Specifically, flawed ideas that deserve to be criticized can't really hurt you in the way that 'toxic' implies."
hellllllllooo 8y ago
It's supposed to be a jab at fired journalists and not serious career advice which is how the author appears to have taken it. The toxic part is not that learning to code is going to solve all their problems and be all "rainbows and unicorns" but that it is mocking people for being laid off, whoever they are.
adamnemecek 8y ago
Feels like he started with the conclusion and worked in a premise.
Antifragile1 8y ago
Cry harder libtards.
jressey 8y ago
I disagree. Hearing this about a decade ago was the kick in the pants that I needed to get my life in shape. I realize it doesn't work out for everybody, but demystifying software development as something anybody can do is excellent. What hurts our industry is the ninja/hero culture where devs burn the midnight oil for no overtime. If you want to be respected as professionals, behave like a lawyer. What would your lawyer say if you told him he needed to do a Saturday night deployment?

30 points by majikarp 8y ago

The reason the learn to code meme is popular with 4chan is because some journalists were insinuating that coal miners and truck drivers will have to learn how to code in order to pay their bills. Now that journalists are being told to learn how to code to pay their bills, it is controversial.

smush 8y ago

So this meme didn't come from nowhere. Blue collar professions have been given this 'helpful advice' by journalists quite a bit over the years. It was tone deaf then, and still so now. I admit I don't yet see why it's verboten/'toxic' to parrot this same tone deaf advice to journalists now? I admit I haven't wandered through the more dilapidated internet street corners lately, so perhaps it's become toxic due to the sheer volume of use where its no longer something to be seen in good fun, or perhaps we are running low on goodwill as a society to be able to enjoy a joke? Setting that entire matter aside, the article has (to me) a somewhat tenuous argument that saying the tone deaf joke of 'learn to code' is disrespectful to programmers and the like. I'm not sure about that, but I don't have a coherent reason to articulate that just yet.

onlydeadheroes 8y ago
> I admit I don't yet see why it's verboten/'toxic' to parrot this same tone deaf advice to journalists now? Because journalists are better than you. This is the only "reality" the media are interested in pushing forward. It underlies every weird thing coming out of the media in the last few years.
- kristianc 8y ago
  This was also implicit in the way Twitter dealt with it. Tweeting "Learn to Code" was fine, tweeting it at a journalist would get you banned.
etg34525 8y ago
Did all the journalists being targeted by this actually tell blue collar workers to learn coding? I've searched on my own and found articles about "this company in west virginia that's training coal miners to code" or "jobs that will be automated in 10 years - is your's next?", but I don't specifically see or recall journalists telling displaced workers that coding would fix their problems. If anyone here can provide examples of that, I would appreciate it. If this was a widespread thing that many journalists spouted, I understand the outcry. If only a few journalists spouted this nonsense, then I don't think it's fair to punish an entire industry over some bad apples. What I suspect is that the "learn to code" push was more of a society-wide meme trafficked by politicians, economists, and tech CEOs. And I have to imagine that some journalists gave those people a platform. But perhaps I'm looking at the wrong evidence? EDIT: dexen's post found maybe one example: A Buzzfeed quiz that suggests coding could become the next blue collar profession. That kind of fits the "learn to code" meme. The other articles dexen posted were actually counter to that - An article where Michael Bloomberg said learning to code is unrealistic for many displaced workers, and another article about coal miners proving him wrong. Is that it? Or are there more examples?
- leereeves 8y ago
  Whether it was journalists pushing it, or "politicians, economists, and tech CEOs" pushing it, and journalists merely repeating it, I don't know. But I definitely remember hearing that message in the media for the last 20 years, and I don't recall anyone calling it "trolling" until it was directed at journalists.
  - etg34525 8y ago
    Well it's important to know what was actually said and who said it. If, by and large, journalists did not actually advocate for displaced workers to code their way out of unemployment, then harassing them with #learntocode is unjustified. I've wasted the entire morning looking for sources of this by now. Like you, I sort of remembered hearing that message over the years. But now that I'm looking, I'm not actually finding many examples where news outlets are seriously suggesting this. Have you ever thought you knew something, but end up misremembering it? There are lots of people who swear they remember a movie called Shazzam staring Sinbad as a genie, but there is no such movie. There was a movie called Kazaam staring Shaquille O'Neal, and Sinbad once dressed up in similar garb when hosting a movie showing. But people conflated the two things. I think that's whats going on. And if so, we should not be harassing journalists who had nothing to do with this.
mc32 8y ago
I guess the media don't like getting a clap back [since they stated it years ago when "those jobs ain't coming back" and so on]; they like to be the ones dishing it out.
hashberry 8y ago
I think sexism is also involved. Media professions attract more women (my journalism and marketing classes were filled with women). And the media loves to cover the gender gap in STEM. So now it's a bunch of guys tweeting to women telling them to "Learn to Code" after said women complain about getting laid off or career difficulties.
- leereeves 8y ago
  So what? Women journalists comment on male careers all the time, what's wrong with the reverse? Unless you're prepared to apply that "sexism" standard equally, you're being sexist by applying unequal standards.
  - hashberry 8y ago
    Look up James Damore. When men comment on women's career choices, they get fired. And now men are getting banned from Twitter. Probably because "sexism."
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - leereeves 8y ago
      You may be right. It's a a sexist double standard, but in certain circles, it's essentially forbidden for a man to criticize a woman in any way, while it's permissible for a woman to say anything she likes about men, however hateful. And those circles do seem to have a lot of overlap with the circles that consider the "Learn to Code" meme "toxic".
      - apacheCamel 8y ago
        I think these certain circles are quite small but the emphasis is put on them and many people, whether they agree or not, are put into the circle for viewing the "Learn to Code" meme as toxic. I agree that telling blue collar workers to learn to code originally was tone deaf and these journalists should be scolded for it but I also assume that not every journalist was on the "holier than thou" train. We should just be better to each other. Don't fight their ignorance with the same ignorance, it is just making the world a meaner place in my opinion.
420codebro 8y ago
Because journalists are pussies.
SilasX 8y ago
>So this meme didn't come from nowhere. Blue collar professions have been given this 'helpful advice' by journalists quite a bit over the years. It was tone deaf then, and still so now. I admit I don't yet see why it's verboten/'toxic' to parrot this same tone deaf advice to journalists now? Right. This short, low-effort article doesn't seem to be aware of the context of the meme, and how it's just spitting back the very meme that journalists were promoting. Of course if you're not aware of that context, or didn't take the effort to research it, then the meme will seem more trollish and less poetic than it is.
- 0-_-0 8y ago
  I agree, the writer of this piece isn't doing a good job as a journalist. Maybe he should learn to code...
msla 8y ago
> So this meme didn't come from nowhere. Blue collar professions have been given this 'helpful advice' by journalists quite a bit over the years. It was tone deaf then, and still so now. I admit I don't yet see why it's verboten/'toxic' to parrot this same tone deaf advice to journalists now? Because you're taking a meme meant for low-income low-prestige men and applying it to members of a high-income high-prestige mixed group. You are, in short, reducing the status of the journalists to those of unemployed coal miners. Hell, you might as well slap a paper hat on their heads and tell them to man a fryer. It's "problematic" and "toxic" to be reminded that you can fall in the class structure like that.
- 0815test 8y ago
  I don't think it has anything to do with income - journalism is not an especially "high income" career path. It's all about culture, cliques and good-old-boy networks - here as perhaps in other cases, journalists are relying on a rather context-specific sort of "prestige" in an effort to escape this sort of attack/criticism.
forgottenpass 8y ago
>the article has (to me) a somewhat tenuous argument that saying the tone deaf joke of 'learn to code' is disrespectful to programmers and the like Yeah, seems off to me too. If there's anything about the whole thing that's disrespectful to programmers, it's that journos think programming as a career path is beneath them.

brodouevencode 8y ago

Software engineer for 12 years, in IT for 18. Not in the slightest bit offended by this. No one should be. It's a silly meme.

bibyte 8y ago

Why do people think that software engineering is the ultimate job in the world ? Sure it pays well and is generally a good job but other jobs are important too. Our modern lifestyle isn't solely built by software engineers. The meme is that everyone should learn to code is as silly as saying everyone should be an astronaut.

nkrisc 8y ago
My belief is that because people who don't know anything about writing software think it's easy and pays lots of money because you understand this arcane language that seems mystical to them.
jhbadger 8y ago
The difference is that writing code is useful to many people who aren't professional programmers. I'm a research scientist, not a programmer, for example. But writing code to analyze my data gives me an advantage over people who just put everything in Excel because they can't code.
mywittyname 8y ago
Because on the outside, it does look like the ultimate job. They think it's easy, low-effort, and high-paying. To most people, we sit at desks (or play ping pong) all day, type words on keyboards, then collect a five-figure paycheck at the end of the week.

hanoz 8y ago

The "Learn to Code" meme in its current evolution, i.e. as thrown back in the faces of journalists, is pointedly in defense of the value and difficulty of software development which the article espouses.

ratling 8y ago

The people using this meme are worthless, a bunch of 'has beens' who refuse to innovate or change to improve their situation in any way and actively mock those that do. Pay them no mind.

EpicEng 8y ago
I don't think you understand the context behind the meme... at all.
- ratling 8y ago
  I get it entirely. It’s people from the red flavor of the political spectrum mocking people on the blue end who find themselves in tough times. Here’s the thing. I grew up with the red end. These people just loooooove to bitch about everything. Bitch bitch bitch all day long. Yet when you suggest a solution that isn’t what their daddy did or what their friends are doing they balk. Worse, if you look like you’re trying to rise above your station you’ll be actively mocked if not hindered for funsies. 2019 I don’t give a shit that they think they’re clever by flipping the script on people in blue land. Hilariously some of those journalists will probably land in tech land and do just fine, the skill sets are complimentary. Red land? Fuck em. They made their beds long ago. Let them sleep in them.
  - tomhoward 8y ago
    Plenty of people from all across the political spectrum would sooner complain than take responsibility and initiative, and plenty of others from across the board are otherwise inclined. Maybe tone down the broad-brushed contempt; among the people you're talking about there will inevitably be people who are just dealing with tough luck through little fault of their own, and who are not reacting with cruelty to others.

dexen 8y ago

>Currently (...) Way to start with a false premise. The meme died out by now[1]. > The phrase “Learn to Code” was initially posted on Twitter after the layoffs at BuzzFeed and the Huffington Post. Way to continue with a false premise. The phrase was used literally [2], and the subject was referenced [3] by numerous newspapers and other media outlets back when the economy was tanking, as a helpful suggestion to laid off workers - miners, autoworkers, and so on. "Those jobs aren't coming back" and all that. The only concern back then was of practicality, and nobody in their right mind considered it to be a put down of the workes, or of programmers. Yes, the phrase may seem insensitive from our, programmer's, POV. Nonetheless, there's a historical precedent to it, based off of much wider segment of society than just programmers. I find it shameful that Twitter, in its infinite wisdom, decided to suppress the accompanying hashtag, and later on even went as far started penalizing the posters. It used to be understood as a good idea back then, it's still considered a good idea now-a-day. I think it was shot down only for the expediency of keeping the journalists a-buzz on Twitter. -- [1] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%203-m&q=%22learn%20to%20code%22 https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%203-m&q=... [2] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katienotopoulos/should-you-learn-to-code https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katienotopoulos/should-... [3] https://gigaom.com/2014/04/09/michael-bloomberg-you-cant-teach-a-coal-miner-to-code/ https://gigaom.com/2014/04/09/michael-bloomberg-you-cant-tea... and https://www.wired.com/2015/11/can-you-teach-a-coal-miner-to-code/ https://www.wired.com/2015/11/can-you-teach-a-coal-miner-to-...

pxc 8y ago
> the subject was referenced [3] by numerous newspapers and other media outlets back when the economy was tanking, as a helpful suggestion to laid off workers - miners, autoworkers, and so on. lol nope. None of the articles I've seen on the subject were framed as or constituted advice to working class people in any way. In fact, neither do none of the articles you cite. The first article, from Gigaom, is reporting on a statement by former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg— news about statements made by a public figure. This is what started the whole meme of considering learning to code as a way of finding work in the context of the decline of other sectors. The second piece is an article about how _everyone_ should learn to code, a common and totally distinct meme that goes around HN quite often. It refers to teaching a new generation of blue collar workers to code via the public school system for the purpose of creating a new layer of coders-as-tradesmen to fill unmet demand for developers in the job market. Again, not about telling working class people in industries under threat to just ‘learn to code’ to solve their problems. The third piece is reporting on a group of coal miners who literally did teach themselves to code and founded a web development consultancy that seeks to retrain and employ people who were not previously tech workers. It addresses the Michael Bloomberg comments in the headline, and examines whether the existence of such a company proves his condescending statement ‘you can't teach a coal miner to code’ is true (it's not). Like all the other pieces, it does not suggest in the slightest that ‘learn to code’ is a universal solution for workers whose jobs are under threat in a changing economy. In fact, the tone of the article sides _with_ the former coal miners it profiles, against the condescension of Bloomberg: > Rusty Justice thought he might know miners a little better than some fancy tycoon in New York did. [...] It was time to go and prove Bloomberg wrong. and at the same time stresses the precarity of the former coal miners striking out on this path, and the uncertainty they themselves express about the long-term viability of the venture they've only just started, and frames scaling this effort up even to a handful more coders as a significant (if surmountable) challenge: > What they’re building in its place is all so fragile and new. Parrish is worried even about the effect of U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez coming to shake the coders’ hands, or reporters like me coming to do stories. “We just don’t want all the notoriety to give the false illusion that we developed all the skills.” > Rusty is less cautious, and thinks they just need to keep digging, keep plowing, keep seeding. The coders are getting it — they’re building websites, closing contracts. “They believe they can do it. That’s the magic.” > Now the challenge is one that’s very typical to startups: how to scale. The narrative you've just reproduced, as well as the entire ‘#learntocode’ meme, of snooty journalists callously advising distressed workers to casually retrain themselves and change careers, is transparently a false one, sustainable only if you refuse to read the actual content of the articles that are allegedly part of it. The reason it's been propagated so widely despite that fact is the role that it plays in an online culture war between alt-right edgelords (and often, their ‘woke centrist’ apologists, à la Joe Rogan and company), including their soft allies on the ‘intellectual dark web’, and their perceived enemies: ‘SJWs’ and ‘intersectional feminism’, as they understand them. They represent the despicable and hegemonic views of an out-of-control leftwing mainstream in the same way as the ‘progressive NPCs’ do to 4chan's /pol/, Anita Sarkeesian does to gamers for whom the insulation of videogames from serious art criticism has resulted in an allergy to even 101-level feminism, and the ‘liberal mainstream media’ does to Trumpian Fox News acolytes. This is about flogging the political and cultural outgroup by any means available, honest or not, and nothing more.

egberts1 8y ago

Virtue signaling, much?

wtdata 8y ago

We should be aware that the meme has origin on journalists themselves. When blue collar workers faced job shortages due to environmental regulations (I am not arguing those were wrong of course, just putting it into perspective), journalists suggested those workers to "learn to code" in some very insensitive remarks. Now, those words are being thrown back at journalists facing job shortages themselves.

etg34525 8y ago
Do you remember which journalists made those remarks? I'm trying to find the source of this.
- wtdata 8y ago
  The Know Your Meme article about it has quite a lot of info and some sources for the old articles: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/learn-to-code?full=1 https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/learn-to-code?full=1

lenticular 8y ago

I think this author is a bit too easily offended. Software engineering is a good job but we're not better than anyone else.

0815test 8y ago

Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19336925 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19336925 Tim Apple himself is saying that colleges are not doing enough to teach folks to code! Acknowledging this underlying reality, even in a somewhat provocative way, is hardly "toxic".

wdhilliard 8y ago

This author doesnt understand sarcasm - another reason I tend to ignore anyone who uses the word "toxic" outside of health and safety.

everdrive 8y ago

I'm not sure it's toxic. Ideas can't hurt people, not really. That said, I don't think most people can code very effectively. It requires a person to be generally intelligent, and then to specialize in a narrow part of computer science. "Learn to Code" is great advice, but it should probably be understood that everyone who's being displaced won't become effective coders.

AnimalMuppet 8y ago
> I'm not sure it's toxic. Ideas can't hurt people, not really. Jesus said "The truth will set you free."[1] The corollary is that lies make you a slave. Ideas can definitely hurt people - especially ideas that are believed. In this context, the idea that I need to learn to code could be very harmful if I believe it, devote time and money into learning how to code, and find out that I can't code well enough to get a job (or that I hate it). Now I'm out a bunch of time and money that I could have spent learning how to do something else that fit me better. Even worse is if I conclude that "coding = success, not being able to code = failure", and therefore that I am currently a failure, and a permanent failure if I fail to learn how to code. That can be massively harmful. The meme itself isn't a big deal. Directing some smack talk at the media is completely fair game. If someone takes the meme seriously, however, it can definitely hurt people. (Don't take career advice from memes. Even more, don't take advice as to your identity or value as a human being from memes.) -- [1] Actually, he said that if you followed his teaching, you would know the truth, and the truth would set you free - it was spiritual truth and spiritual freedom he was talking about. I'm taking his words more broadly than perhaps he meant them.
- everdrive 8y ago
  This is a great response. I think I probably could have caveated a little better, and said something like: "People are throwing around the word 'toxic' far too freely. I'm worried about over-sensitivity and censorship. Because of these concerns, I'm apt to push back on characterizations that words and ideas are harmful, even if the ideas themselves are flawed and open to criticism. Specifically, flawed ideas that deserve to be criticized can't really hurt you in the way that 'toxic' implies."

hellllllllooo 8y ago

It's supposed to be a jab at fired journalists and not serious career advice which is how the author appears to have taken it. The toxic part is not that learning to code is going to solve all their problems and be all "rainbows and unicorns" but that it is mocking people for being laid off, whoever they are.

adamnemecek 8y ago

Feels like he started with the conclusion and worked in a premise.

Antifragile1 8y ago

Cry harder libtards.

jressey 8y ago

I disagree. Hearing this about a decade ago was the kick in the pants that I needed to get my life in shape. I realize it doesn't work out for everybody, but demystifying software development as something anybody can do is excellent. What hurts our industry is the ninja/hero culture where devs burn the midnight oil for no overtime. If you want to be respected as professionals, behave like a lawyer. What would your lawyer say if you told him he needed to do a Saturday night deployment?