8 ms·

Biden announces, “Anyone that can throw coal in a furnace can program ”

20 points by gleepglop 7y ago

technologyvault 7y ago
Not sure what throwing coal in a furnace has to do with the mental exertion required to be a programmer, but maybe the point of being persistent makes sense.
- ftvy 7y ago
  It is very insulting to expect that the experience of working in a factory or mining environment will translate at all as skills necessary for programming.
  - kbos87 7y ago
    It’s also very insulting to imply that all some group of people is likely doing all day is throwing heaps of coal into a furnace. Even most seemingly simple blue collar jobs are usually pretty detailed and complex in their own way.
    - Turing_Machine 7y ago
      > It’s also very insulting to imply that all some group of people is likely doing all day is throwing heaps of coal into a furnace. Indeed. Not to mention that no one has been doing that for a very long time. That's not what coal miners, nor has it ever been what coal miners do. A guy who shovels coal into a furnace was called a "stoker", and that unskilled labor job was automated out of existence about a hundred years ago. A coal miner is a skilled laborer who (nowadays) uses advanced machinery and technology. Look into how "longwall mining" works. It's pretty cool.
  - asveikau 7y ago
    It's very insulting to factory workers or miners to assume off the bat that they can't learn or acquire new skills.
- haecceity 7y ago
  Labor is interchangeable
  - salawat 7y ago
    Keep telling yourself that, and hire a mason to do some machining, or the machinist to do your hair, or the hair stylist to do your doctoring, or your doctor to do your roofing, or the roofer to do your stocking, or the stocker to do your books, or the bookkeeper to do your cooking, or the cook to do work on your car. I assure you, human beings are not mere cogs. The sooner you divorce yourself from the notion, the better off you and any employees will be.
    - sigmaprimus 7y ago
      Thats the problem with todays workforce, everyone is a specialist now. Heck even Subway has "Sandwich Artists" now! IMHO programming is even more specialized than most jobs, it requires constant learning to maintain a productive ability. Eg. Before 2013 how many people were doing react native programming? How many people are writing Pascal code today? BTW does anyone really believe Joe Biden is an athority on coding? He probably thinks a coder is a guy sending messages by tapping a CW Keyer!
aiscapehumanity 7y ago
The very fact he used a bogus comparison should be self-disqualifying, like, what?!
dane-pgp 7y ago
The relevant question for a politician shouldn't be "Can they program?" but rather "Can they program in a way that produces enough value to a company per day to justify a wage that the person can live off?". One limiting factor in that calculation might be not just the speed/skill of the programmer, but the number of companies with such positions available.
- anonu 7y ago
  I'm waiting until someone creates Alexa for programs skill. You have no clue how many times I've wanted to program through voice commands. I think one day we'll get there.
  - sebazzz 7y ago
    You think programming is only about learning syntax?
hourislate 7y ago
It's election time and things are getting crazier every day. The whole thing is a shit show and I am trying to ignore it.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Turing_Machine 7y ago
"Throwing coal into a furnace" hasn't been a job for about a hundred years now. On other than the smallest scale (say, a home coal furnace) that's been done with machinery for longer than Biden has been alive. Does he really not know the difference between being a coal miner (which is a skilled trade, if dirty, strenuous, and dangerous) and being a furnace stoker (which historically required nothing but a strong back)?
hootbootscoot 7y ago
I rather agree. Call them a front-end engineer and let's get back to simplifying what is supposed to be an indexed document delivery platform. The dewey decimal system is more complicated that the request/response cycle should be. We invent busywork and it will take coal miners to break this farce, so bring on the coal miners! Hindsight 2020 (just kidding, Sanders 2020)
- hootbootscoot 7y ago
  btw, the "washington examiner" exists solely to challenge rational thought and decency. the thing is, if you always the devils advocate, you have to accept that your client is, in fact, the devil. but in other news, it's a fake news rag of ill-repute that can't be counted upon for anything other than trying to stir the pot in a rather tilted "rupert murdoch" like manner. It's a tabloid. A cheap exercise in yellow journalism. The National Enquirer trying to pretend it's the WaPo circa the 2016 campaign, they just forgot to turn the trumpet off. per the wikipedia entry etc... "The Washington Examiner is an American conservative news website and weekly magazine based in Washington, D.C. It is owned by MediaDC, a subsidiary of Clarity Media Group, which is owned by Philip Anschutz. From 2005 to mid-2013, the Examiner published a daily tabloid-sized newspaper, distributed throughout the Washington, D.C. metro area. The newspaper focused on local news and political commentary.[2] The local newspaper ceased publication on June 14, 2013, and its content began to focus exclusively on national politics, switching its print edition from a daily newspaper to a weekly magazine format.[3] The Examiner is known for its conservative political stance and features many known conservative writers.[4]" To which I reply "Conservative? conservative of what, precisely? conserving what in which manner?" It's a Trump trumpet. Blatant. next.
hirundo 7y ago
This seems like the Dunning-Kruger Effect or maybe Pointy-Haired Boss Syndrome. Having never coded Biden miscalibrates the skill and effort required for competence. His words would have more weight if he took the time to learn to write FizzBuzz. After that he might want to qualify "Anyone".
- Turing_Machine 7y ago
  He doesn't know anything about coal mining, either.
  - hirundo 7y ago
    He said "throw coal in a furnace", not mine coal. When I was a teenager I had a summer job keeping a coal furnace burning overnight. It's hard to underestimate the skill required for that. They probably could have trained pigeons to drop in coal chunks in return for bird seed. The best part of the job was the time it gave me to read programming books.
    - Turing_Machine 7y ago
      But he was talking to/about coal miners, not furnace stokers. "They probably could have trained pigeons to drop in coal chunks in return for bird seed." Yeah. Other than on very small scales, that job was automated out of existence a hundred years ago. I'm surprised to hear that anyone is still employed doing that, frankly.
dazilcher 7y ago
Sure they can, but why bother? Perfecting snark take a lot of work... The real question is can they learn to be a politician, or say a Burisma board member?
gigatexal 7y ago
There’s more to a healthy economy than everyone being a programmer.
hokey_smokey 7y ago
You can find similarly silly statements about other skilled work. The bottom line is that humans can learn something; valuable experts are the priduct of an extensive training process. I would argue for the benefits of retraining people of dying industries for work in growing industries.
moneytide1 7y ago
He assumes "Anybody who can go down 300 to 3,000 feet in a mine can sure as hell learn to program as well" couldn't just do the opposite and go up 3'-30' for the massive amounts of residential solar roof mounting jobs required to quickly ween Residential Zoned surface area off of being fueled from things "thrown" in a furnace. Class C truck pallet delivery, crane, climb, connect, organize individual or aggregated items weighing 5-30lbs. None of these is sit, type, wait, compile, ponder and I know many of them would not want that life. However, without violating NDA I can tell you there are furnaces and "throwing" involved in making components for the Tesla Model 3.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
johnwallz 7y ago
It's not surprising that a career politician doesn't know anything about programming or coal mining.

20 points by gleepglop 7y ago

Not sure what throwing coal in a furnace has to do with the mental exertion required to be a programmer, but maybe the point of being persistent makes sense.

ftvy 7y ago
It is very insulting to expect that the experience of working in a factory or mining environment will translate at all as skills necessary for programming.
- kbos87 7y ago
  It’s also very insulting to imply that all some group of people is likely doing all day is throwing heaps of coal into a furnace. Even most seemingly simple blue collar jobs are usually pretty detailed and complex in their own way.
  - Turing_Machine 7y ago
    > It’s also very insulting to imply that all some group of people is likely doing all day is throwing heaps of coal into a furnace. Indeed. Not to mention that no one has been doing that for a very long time. That's not what coal miners, nor has it ever been what coal miners do. A guy who shovels coal into a furnace was called a "stoker", and that unskilled labor job was automated out of existence about a hundred years ago. A coal miner is a skilled laborer who (nowadays) uses advanced machinery and technology. Look into how "longwall mining" works. It's pretty cool.
- asveikau 7y ago
  It's very insulting to factory workers or miners to assume off the bat that they can't learn or acquire new skills.
haecceity 7y ago
Labor is interchangeable
- salawat 7y ago
  Keep telling yourself that, and hire a mason to do some machining, or the machinist to do your hair, or the hair stylist to do your doctoring, or your doctor to do your roofing, or the roofer to do your stocking, or the stocker to do your books, or the bookkeeper to do your cooking, or the cook to do work on your car. I assure you, human beings are not mere cogs. The sooner you divorce yourself from the notion, the better off you and any employees will be.
  - sigmaprimus 7y ago
    Thats the problem with todays workforce, everyone is a specialist now. Heck even Subway has "Sandwich Artists" now! IMHO programming is even more specialized than most jobs, it requires constant learning to maintain a productive ability. Eg. Before 2013 how many people were doing react native programming? How many people are writing Pascal code today? BTW does anyone really believe Joe Biden is an athority on coding? He probably thinks a coder is a guy sending messages by tapping a CW Keyer!

aiscapehumanity 7y ago

The very fact he used a bogus comparison should be self-disqualifying, like, what?!

dane-pgp 7y ago

The relevant question for a politician shouldn't be "Can they program?" but rather "Can they program in a way that produces enough value to a company per day to justify a wage that the person can live off?". One limiting factor in that calculation might be not just the speed/skill of the programmer, but the number of companies with such positions available.

anonu 7y ago
I'm waiting until someone creates Alexa for programs skill. You have no clue how many times I've wanted to program through voice commands. I think one day we'll get there.
- sebazzz 7y ago
  You think programming is only about learning syntax?

hourislate 7y ago

It's election time and things are getting crazier every day. The whole thing is a shit show and I am trying to ignore it.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Turing_Machine 7y ago

"Throwing coal into a furnace" hasn't been a job for about a hundred years now. On other than the smallest scale (say, a home coal furnace) that's been done with machinery for longer than Biden has been alive. Does he really not know the difference between being a coal miner (which is a skilled trade, if dirty, strenuous, and dangerous) and being a furnace stoker (which historically required nothing but a strong back)?

hootbootscoot 7y ago

I rather agree. Call them a front-end engineer and let's get back to simplifying what is supposed to be an indexed document delivery platform. The dewey decimal system is more complicated that the request/response cycle should be. We invent busywork and it will take coal miners to break this farce, so bring on the coal miners! Hindsight 2020 (just kidding, Sanders 2020)

hootbootscoot 7y ago
btw, the "washington examiner" exists solely to challenge rational thought and decency. the thing is, if you always the devils advocate, you have to accept that your client is, in fact, the devil. but in other news, it's a fake news rag of ill-repute that can't be counted upon for anything other than trying to stir the pot in a rather tilted "rupert murdoch" like manner. It's a tabloid. A cheap exercise in yellow journalism. The National Enquirer trying to pretend it's the WaPo circa the 2016 campaign, they just forgot to turn the trumpet off. per the wikipedia entry etc... "The Washington Examiner is an American conservative news website and weekly magazine based in Washington, D.C. It is owned by MediaDC, a subsidiary of Clarity Media Group, which is owned by Philip Anschutz. From 2005 to mid-2013, the Examiner published a daily tabloid-sized newspaper, distributed throughout the Washington, D.C. metro area. The newspaper focused on local news and political commentary.[2] The local newspaper ceased publication on June 14, 2013, and its content began to focus exclusively on national politics, switching its print edition from a daily newspaper to a weekly magazine format.[3] The Examiner is known for its conservative political stance and features many known conservative writers.[4]" To which I reply "Conservative? conservative of what, precisely? conserving what in which manner?" It's a Trump trumpet. Blatant. next.

hirundo 7y ago

This seems like the Dunning-Kruger Effect or maybe Pointy-Haired Boss Syndrome. Having never coded Biden miscalibrates the skill and effort required for competence. His words would have more weight if he took the time to learn to write FizzBuzz. After that he might want to qualify "Anyone".

Turing_Machine 7y ago
He doesn't know anything about coal mining, either.
- hirundo 7y ago
  He said "throw coal in a furnace", not mine coal. When I was a teenager I had a summer job keeping a coal furnace burning overnight. It's hard to underestimate the skill required for that. They probably could have trained pigeons to drop in coal chunks in return for bird seed. The best part of the job was the time it gave me to read programming books.
  - Turing_Machine 7y ago
    But he was talking to/about coal miners, not furnace stokers. "They probably could have trained pigeons to drop in coal chunks in return for bird seed." Yeah. Other than on very small scales, that job was automated out of existence a hundred years ago. I'm surprised to hear that anyone is still employed doing that, frankly.

dazilcher 7y ago

Sure they can, but why bother? Perfecting snark take a lot of work... The real question is can they learn to be a politician, or say a Burisma board member?

gigatexal 7y ago

There’s more to a healthy economy than everyone being a programmer.

hokey_smokey 7y ago

You can find similarly silly statements about other skilled work. The bottom line is that humans can learn something; valuable experts are the priduct of an extensive training process. I would argue for the benefits of retraining people of dying industries for work in growing industries.

moneytide1 7y ago

He assumes "Anybody who can go down 300 to 3,000 feet in a mine can sure as hell learn to program as well" couldn't just do the opposite and go up 3'-30' for the massive amounts of residential solar roof mounting jobs required to quickly ween Residential Zoned surface area off of being fueled from things "thrown" in a furnace. Class C truck pallet delivery, crane, climb, connect, organize individual or aggregated items weighing 5-30lbs. None of these is sit, type, wait, compile, ponder and I know many of them would not want that life. However, without violating NDA I can tell you there are furnaces and "throwing" involved in making components for the Tesla Model 3.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

johnwallz 7y ago

It's not surprising that a career politician doesn't know anything about programming or coal mining.