4 ms·

Spreading this as far and wide as I can. Coding is as critical as literacy for the next 20 years and there are too many programs and teachers that teach it poor

by dzink 8y ago

Spreading this as far and wide as I can. Coding is as critical as literacy for the next 20 years and there are too many programs and teachers that teach it poorly, alienating large segments of the population. Lambda is among the best. I hope they can scale past 40 students for this in the future.

alexashka 8y ago
What? The average IQ is 100. Computer science is not a 100 IQ field. Science is not a 100 IQ endeavour. Coding at 100 IQ level will be automated away very soon the same way anyone can have a facebook account without knowing HTML.
- dictum 8y ago
  At what IQ does one act upon the opportunities and circumstances available at present time?
- dang 8y ago
  Who (else) said anything about IQ? Could you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html? They include: "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." Also, please stop posting flamebait, especially ideological flamebait, to HN. It fuels flamewars, which destroy what we want to preserve here: thoughtful conversation and intellectual curiosity. Assuming those are things you also want, you're welcome to post here in that spirit.
  - alexashka 8y ago
    Coding was compared to literacy here. Literacy is taught in schools because people of average IQ (100) are capable of literacy and find it helpful in their everyday lives. Literacy is one of the few things taught in schools that actually has any utility in people's everyday lives. Coding is nothing like literacy. It is more like chemistry, physics or Shakespeare - something the vast majority don't care about and will quickly forget. If you have any doubt - poll the population on Newton's three laws of motion and why they matter. Regarding idealogical flamebait - I don't even know what that is - I'm simply expressing my opinion, that the above has hopefully clarified. If you find my stance on the school system offensive, rest assured I'll no longer reply on the matter in this thread, seeing how quick others are to judge others in a negative light.
    - dang 8y ago
      That is a much more substantive comment! there wouldn't have been a moderation issue if you'd posted that to begin with. One way to think of flamebait is low-information comments on provocative topics. Ideological flamebait is the same, on topics where the provocation tends to be ideological.
gridlockd 8y ago
> Coding is as critical as literacy for the next 20 years... I think this is an absurd and tired meme. Most shops who employ coders also employ about 75% non-coders. You need sales, marketing, accounting, management, HR, legal - and even the IT guys often truck along fine with little to no coding skills. If you need code written to perform your task that usually just means the UI of your application isn't powerful enough. So get a coder to add that feature to the UI. You don't need to become a coder yourself. Here's why we really need "more coders" all the time: - the web frontend is getting reinvented every year - the latest trends in infrastructure design ("terascale micro-micro-micro-services as a service") need attention - the latest devices and platform SDKs need to be dealt with - the insane amount of technical debt accumulated through all this churn needs to be paid off Which is all fine only as long as the money keeps rolling in.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > > Coding is as critical as literacy for the next 20 years... > I think this is an absurd and tired meme. Most shops who employ coders also employ about 75% non-coders It would be absurd if coding skill were only useful to people whose job title and central role is “coder” (just as viewing literacy as central would be absurd if measured by the number of people employed as “writers”.)
- jimbokun 8y ago
  Jessica made a really good point, that female founders without any coding knowledge can't even assess whether a coder is any good before hiring him or her. Getting the fundamentals in an intense summer course will not only enable someone to develop a prototype on their own, but also assess who is a good potential hire and who is just good at bullshitting.
  - gridlockd 8y ago
    > Jessica made a really good point, female founders without any coding knowledge can't even assess whether a coder is any good before hiring him or her. If I followed this line of reasoning, then I couldn't hire a lawyer without knowing law, I couldn't hire a marketing person without knowing marketing, I couldn't hire a sales person without knowing sales, and so on and so forth. I would argue that knowledge in law, sales and marketing are far more important to a founder, yet people obsess over coding. > Getting the fundamentals in an intense summer course will not only enable someone to develop a prototype on their own, but also assess who is a good potential hire and who is just good at bullshitting. I don't think that's true. To accurately judge someone else's competence, you have to be at least on their level. Secondly, it's credentials like work experience and education that you go by when hiring. I'm aware that a lot of software developers are often forced to pass lots of silly programming tests, but that's known to not result in better hiring. If you are a founder and non-technical, you shouldn't hire a random developer anyway. You should have a technical co-founder that you can trust and you should focus on literally everything else. You'll need to do a thousand things, but writing code isn't really one of them.

by dzink 8y ago

alexashka 8y ago

What? The average IQ is 100. Computer science is not a 100 IQ field. Science is not a 100 IQ endeavour. Coding at 100 IQ level will be automated away very soon the same way anyone can have a facebook account without knowing HTML.

dictum 8y ago
At what IQ does one act upon the opportunities and circumstances available at present time?
dang 8y ago
Who (else) said anything about IQ? Could you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html? They include: "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." Also, please stop posting flamebait, especially ideological flamebait, to HN. It fuels flamewars, which destroy what we want to preserve here: thoughtful conversation and intellectual curiosity. Assuming those are things you also want, you're welcome to post here in that spirit.
- alexashka 8y ago
  Coding was compared to literacy here. Literacy is taught in schools because people of average IQ (100) are capable of literacy and find it helpful in their everyday lives. Literacy is one of the few things taught in schools that actually has any utility in people's everyday lives. Coding is nothing like literacy. It is more like chemistry, physics or Shakespeare - something the vast majority don't care about and will quickly forget. If you have any doubt - poll the population on Newton's three laws of motion and why they matter. Regarding idealogical flamebait - I don't even know what that is - I'm simply expressing my opinion, that the above has hopefully clarified. If you find my stance on the school system offensive, rest assured I'll no longer reply on the matter in this thread, seeing how quick others are to judge others in a negative light.
  - dang 8y ago
    That is a much more substantive comment! there wouldn't have been a moderation issue if you'd posted that to begin with. One way to think of flamebait is low-information comments on provocative topics. Ideological flamebait is the same, on topics where the provocation tends to be ideological.

gridlockd 8y ago

> Coding is as critical as literacy for the next 20 years... I think this is an absurd and tired meme. Most shops who employ coders also employ about 75% non-coders. You need sales, marketing, accounting, management, HR, legal - and even the IT guys often truck along fine with little to no coding skills. If you need code written to perform your task that usually just means the UI of your application isn't powerful enough. So get a coder to add that feature to the UI. You don't need to become a coder yourself. Here's why we really need "more coders" all the time: - the web frontend is getting reinvented every year - the latest trends in infrastructure design ("terascale micro-micro-micro-services as a service") need attention - the latest devices and platform SDKs need to be dealt with - the insane amount of technical debt accumulated through all this churn needs to be paid off Which is all fine only as long as the money keeps rolling in.

dragonwriter 8y ago
> > Coding is as critical as literacy for the next 20 years... > I think this is an absurd and tired meme. Most shops who employ coders also employ about 75% non-coders It would be absurd if coding skill were only useful to people whose job title and central role is “coder” (just as viewing literacy as central would be absurd if measured by the number of people employed as “writers”.)
jimbokun 8y ago
Jessica made a really good point, that female founders without any coding knowledge can't even assess whether a coder is any good before hiring him or her. Getting the fundamentals in an intense summer course will not only enable someone to develop a prototype on their own, but also assess who is a good potential hire and who is just good at bullshitting.
- gridlockd 8y ago
  > Jessica made a really good point, female founders without any coding knowledge can't even assess whether a coder is any good before hiring him or her. If I followed this line of reasoning, then I couldn't hire a lawyer without knowing law, I couldn't hire a marketing person without knowing marketing, I couldn't hire a sales person without knowing sales, and so on and so forth. I would argue that knowledge in law, sales and marketing are far more important to a founder, yet people obsess over coding. > Getting the fundamentals in an intense summer course will not only enable someone to develop a prototype on their own, but also assess who is a good potential hire and who is just good at bullshitting. I don't think that's true. To accurately judge someone else's competence, you have to be at least on their level. Secondly, it's credentials like work experience and education that you go by when hiring. I'm aware that a lot of software developers are often forced to pass lots of silly programming tests, but that's known to not result in better hiring. If you are a founder and non-technical, you shouldn't hire a random developer anyway. You should have a technical co-founder that you can trust and you should focus on literally everything else. You'll need to do a thousand things, but writing code isn't really one of them.