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Unpopular opinion: Why does everyone need to learn to code?

ponker 6y ago
Code is everywhere in our world. It governs our behaviors, our desires, our politics. Everyone needs to learn to code for the same reason that everyone needs to learn to cook — code is such a major component of your life that you’d be well served to understand it as well as you can. Just like cooking can help you build good health patterns, coding can help you build good digital lifestyle patterns.
psychomugs 6y ago
It'll eventually be tantamount to asking why people should learn how to read.
- dgellow 6y ago
  I think that’s a flawed analogy. Reading and writing are necessary to participate in society (such as read and sign contracts), that’s not the case for writing software.
askvictor 6y ago
I teach coding to high schoolers, and often wonder the same thing. One reason is it helps with problem solving skills - to code, you need to first be able to decompose problems, and structure your thinking. So in that sense, it's a proxy rather than a necessary outcome in itself; kind of like maths (very few people need the level of maths taught in schools), but more modern and sexier. What I've been wondering is, with the likes of Siri and Google Now being able to be 'programmed' with natural language, how much longer we will need to code, compared to talking to a computer/AI to achieve the required outcome.
- kiba 6y ago
  I think the most important skills/attitude an educator can impart is 'fearlessness', an essential trait when it comes to dealing with the many errors posed by computers and the complexity of the modern world.
dgellow 6y ago
Spoiler: they don’t. But as far as I can see the reasoning is the following: Because of competition in the global economy. There is a huge demand for skilled software engineers in the world, and that’s expected to continue to grow in the future. If you want to be able to compete with other countries then you want to have trained workers. Here the bet is that having an increase in software engineers would result in higher productivity, and generate value over time. It’s also an easy sell to parents and people in general given that you can make really good money by writing software without killing yourself to the job.
WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
Because having workers able to achieve a better than middle class outcome is a threat to the ruling class therefore we must teach a new generation so they can fight over the scraps as we import H1B slaves.
mac01021 6y ago
Do I have to think everyone needs to learn to code in order to want to teach _more_ people to code or to want to advance the state of the art in coding pedagogy? I don't think EVERYONE needs these skills. Most people will never need them. But: - I think getting underprivileged kids excited about coding/making games/robots/etc may be an excellent way to provide more kids with a good future. - I _really_ wish more legislators had backgrounds in software. I think concepts like technical debt, KISS, code reuse, etc as well as the general method of translating business requirements to code are more applicable to that domain than generally appreciated.

Code is everywhere in our world. It governs our behaviors, our desires, our politics. Everyone needs to learn to code for the same reason that everyone needs to learn to cook — code is such a major component of your life that you’d be well served to understand it as well as you can. Just like cooking can help you build good health patterns, coding can help you build good digital lifestyle patterns.

psychomugs 6y ago

It'll eventually be tantamount to asking why people should learn how to read.

dgellow 6y ago
I think that’s a flawed analogy. Reading and writing are necessary to participate in society (such as read and sign contracts), that’s not the case for writing software.

askvictor 6y ago

I teach coding to high schoolers, and often wonder the same thing. One reason is it helps with problem solving skills - to code, you need to first be able to decompose problems, and structure your thinking. So in that sense, it's a proxy rather than a necessary outcome in itself; kind of like maths (very few people need the level of maths taught in schools), but more modern and sexier. What I've been wondering is, with the likes of Siri and Google Now being able to be 'programmed' with natural language, how much longer we will need to code, compared to talking to a computer/AI to achieve the required outcome.

kiba 6y ago
I think the most important skills/attitude an educator can impart is 'fearlessness', an essential trait when it comes to dealing with the many errors posed by computers and the complexity of the modern world.

dgellow 6y ago

Spoiler: they don’t. But as far as I can see the reasoning is the following: Because of competition in the global economy. There is a huge demand for skilled software engineers in the world, and that’s expected to continue to grow in the future. If you want to be able to compete with other countries then you want to have trained workers. Here the bet is that having an increase in software engineers would result in higher productivity, and generate value over time. It’s also an easy sell to parents and people in general given that you can make really good money by writing software without killing yourself to the job.

WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago

Because having workers able to achieve a better than middle class outcome is a threat to the ruling class therefore we must teach a new generation so they can fight over the scraps as we import H1B slaves.

mac01021 6y ago

Do I have to think everyone needs to learn to code in order to want to teach _more_ people to code or to want to advance the state of the art in coding pedagogy? I don't think EVERYONE needs these skills. Most people will never need them. But: - I think getting underprivileged kids excited about coding/making games/robots/etc may be an excellent way to provide more kids with a good future. - I _really_ wish more legislators had backgrounds in software. I think concepts like technical debt, KISS, code reuse, etc as well as the general method of translating business requirements to code are more applicable to that domain than generally appreciated.