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The author seems to miss the boat super hard on > 6. "Everyone Should Learn to Code" Her argument seems to be that teaching more kids to code, will result in

by axbytg 7y ago

The author seems to miss the boat super hard on > 6. "Everyone Should Learn to Code" Her argument seems to be that teaching more kids to code, will result in more people ending up in a toxic tech industry. This may be true. But the tech industry will never, ever change until we expose more kids to engineering as a choice. If we can cause a greater number and diversity of children and young adults to consider engineering as a career, the industry will be more diverse. this seems like a bit of a no-brainer. Also the reaction to the Hour of Code makes me question whether or not the author has every lead or observed one in a meaningful way. Having led literally hundreds, almost every single one that I was involved with resulted in at least one student saying "I didn't think that this was for me / for people like me, but I really liked it". That makes it worth it. Hearing that one single time, makes every single HoC ever worth it in my opinion. I know a lot of teachers that would agree. Nobody on earth thinks kids are making significant progress towards mastery of programming from an hour of code -- it's about exposing every child and letting them know that they are capable of a career that is often, for a variety of reasons, seen as "not for them".

jkhaui 7y ago
Completely agree. The author glosses over the fact that half of coding is just pattern recognition derived from seeing something written a certain way many, many, many times over. It's not far-fetched to consider that exposing kids to an hour of code daily could make transitioning to a programming career much more feasible in their later life (whereas without this exposure, programming might seem like untouchable black magic). Heck, I think the reason my own transition to being a dev was relatively smooth is because I was obsessed making HTML websites as a kid. Despite not touching it for ~15 years, even that exposure proved invaluable in picking up the skills relatively fast
- geomark 7y ago
  I think it is broader than that. Maybe it is becoming a cliche already, but I think being able to code is a new literacy that everyone should learn even if they are not going to become software engineers or computer scientists. It's just such a useful skill now and more so in the future. I think the author doesn't get that.

by axbytg 7y ago

jkhaui 7y ago

Completely agree. The author glosses over the fact that half of coding is just pattern recognition derived from seeing something written a certain way many, many, many times over. It's not far-fetched to consider that exposing kids to an hour of code daily could make transitioning to a programming career much more feasible in their later life (whereas without this exposure, programming might seem like untouchable black magic). Heck, I think the reason my own transition to being a dev was relatively smooth is because I was obsessed making HTML websites as a kid. Despite not touching it for ~15 years, even that exposure proved invaluable in picking up the skills relatively fast

geomark 7y ago
I think it is broader than that. Maybe it is becoming a cliche already, but I think being able to code is a new literacy that everyone should learn even if they are not going to become software engineers or computer scientists. It's just such a useful skill now and more so in the future. I think the author doesn't get that.