6 ms·

The problem is that we usually discuss things in extremes. We don't need to know how to sew our own clothes, but knowing how to mend them is useful. Do we rea

by II2II 6y ago

The problem is that we usually discuss things in extremes. We don't need to know how to sew our own clothes, but knowing how to mend them is useful. Do we really want to live in a world where we toss out a shirt simply because a button falls off? We don't need to know how to build a home, but knowing how to fix simple problems is useful. Do we really want to live in a world where we have to call in an electrician every time we trigger a circuit breaker? We don't need to know how to churn butter, but knowing how to cook is useful. Do we really want to live in a world where we depend upon someone else decides what goes into every meal we eat? Yes, computers are there to do stuff for us and to save time. We should be exploiting that. On the other hand, we should not be reliant upon it to the point where it interferes with control over our own destinies or the creative process.

raziel2p 6y ago
I don't think your metaphors work. There's a huge difference between knowing how to sew a button or flipping a circuit breaker and being able to code.
- boudin 6y ago
  Though a lot of elementary schools and junior high schools provides basic coding classes, but no sewing ones.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Many schools used to, as well as shop, etc. albeit pretty heavily split by traditional gender roles. Personally, in high school at least, I think a good case could be made for carving out a bit of time for practical life skills (also personal finance, etc.).
- wraptile 6y ago
  I didn't necessarily mean "learn to code" in such explicit manner with my original comment. More like learn technology itself and some strong basics of how everything works so people would be more equipped to grok this new world we're living in. To get a driver's license you need some basic knowledge of car internals. I'd argue that computers are infinitely more important in our society than a car yet majority of people have absolutely no idea how computers work and are expected not only to live in this world but to ace it too.
  - buran77 6y ago
    The problem is that we live in a world and society where you're expected to know a lot about a lot. And we just keep adding to the pile we need to learn. You need to know how to sew or mend your clothes, you need to know how to tinker with your electrical system or plumbing, with your car, with your electronics, know your stuff around a kitchen. And the list can really go on and on. Now you need to know how to code. The computer equivalent of what most people know how to do around the house is clearing the browser cache, restarting a service, running something at startup, and other troubleshooting steps like this. Stuff that you learn in under a day just like you would when learning basic clothes mending, replacing a faucet, changing a tire or your oil, or cooking a meal. Any reasonable definition of "coding" is creating something. Like building your own electronic circuit, mechanical part, simple clothes, etc. This is beyond what a normal person is expected to know about their stuff as general knowledge in life. Everyone should just understand the principles of the tools they're using and basic "under the hood" stuff to assist with basic troubleshooting. In reality in the parts of the world with higher standards of living (can afford stuff) this piling up of expectations just lead people to give up and pay for services rather than learn all that. And for good reason, modern society has this bad habit of taking every shred of free time and complicating your life, with unfortunate consequences.
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      > Any reasonable definition of "coding" is creating something. Not necessarily creating something. The OP really did shoot themself in the foot by using the word "coding", where what they most likely meant was doing simple alterations to computing systems that require understanding some basic control flow structures - conditionals and loops. Things like, "I seem to be doing the same repetitive sequence of steps 100x a day, let me automate this somewhat". Think Tasker and bash, not JavaScript and C++. > this piling up of expectations just lead people to give up and pay for services rather than learn all that A small bit of knowledge can save you a lot of money in services. I can get why wealthy wouldn't care, but most people aren't wealthy. Also, I feel there's more pressure from the sales&marketing departments of services than from modern society's demands on free time.
- II2II 6y ago
  A lot of it comes down to what you mean by coding and what you mean by sewing (as an example). There is much more to sewing clothes than threading a needle and guiding it through a button hole, at least if you want to make something that will fit and will last. The complexity of the product also plays a strong role. Much the same can be said of coding. Being able to issue a command in a shell or compose a function in a spreadsheet is probably the closes analog to sewing on a button, but how many people can even do those things? We live in a world where our phone's calculators are typically as powerful as a four function calculator from decades ago, perhaps with a subset of functions found on a scientific calculator. How do we expand our minds beyond that limited scope if vendors are afraid of creating software that allows us to compose anything more complex? With the status quo, we have to seek out options and those options are mostly targeted at professionals. Similar things can be said for other domains. While writing of coding, I was actually thinking of graphics design and word processing and databases and the many other domains that have been over simplified by modern consumer applications. For the most part, their functionality has been simplified to the point where you can perform a very narrow range of tasks and have very little scope of the imagination. For example: that database that backs your address book cannot be adapted to catalogue your books, or the online word processor that is fine for writing reports is poorly suited for preparing a book for publications. Sure, there are professional alternatives out there. On the other hand, it seems as though people has a lot more flexibility with the software of the 1990's than the 2010's.
- jdmg94 6y ago
  statistically speaking most people today make a living coding in js, if we where going to extremes we would be talking about soldering your own board, assembling your own language, rolling your own OS, the shit Bell labs used to do. Coding is by all means an adequate analog to sewing my dude/dudette
spurgu 6y ago
It's not extremes. Modern society is designed so that we don't have to do any of those things (in extreme or even in between), we just throw money (that we generated doing one specific job) at our problems.
- anonymou2 6y ago
  Then when that job is no longer needed by society you are really, really lost.
  - Spivak 6y ago
    I mean that's already true. The kinds of skills that people talk about in these threads are typically very domestic. Even if you had all of them you still probably have a few skills that can bring in money if you're lucky.
    - spurgu 6y ago
      > I mean that's already true. Exactly. That's why it makes a lot of sense to study/learn things outside your area of expertise, and/or if you want to lean on the more extreme side, study/learn basic survival skills (that everyone used to know before the agricultural revolution).
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  It's a strong point. Personally, I find it both hard to argue against and at the same time extremely dehumanizing. Related to this is the phenomenon of turning everything into service. Why would you own things and accept responsibility for maintaining them, if you could just throw money at the service provider and have the thing be present when it's needed? Of course the thing will be extremely limited in what you can do with it, subject to Terms&Conditions, but why would you want to do anything non-standard with stuff? There's always another service you can throw money at to solve the same problem. What's the end-game here? That we specialize into sub-species of humans, forever stuck in one role, with zero autonomy? No longer building wealth, we'll only be allocating the flow of money - from what Society gives us in reward for our work, straight to Services of said Society? Will we become specialized cells of the meta-multicellular organism Society becomes? I can see how we're on the path towards that reality, and I absolutely hate it.

by II2II 6y ago

raziel2p 6y ago

I don't think your metaphors work. There's a huge difference between knowing how to sew a button or flipping a circuit breaker and being able to code.

boudin 6y ago
Though a lot of elementary schools and junior high schools provides basic coding classes, but no sewing ones.
- ghaff 6y ago
  Many schools used to, as well as shop, etc. albeit pretty heavily split by traditional gender roles. Personally, in high school at least, I think a good case could be made for carving out a bit of time for practical life skills (also personal finance, etc.).
wraptile 6y ago
I didn't necessarily mean "learn to code" in such explicit manner with my original comment. More like learn technology itself and some strong basics of how everything works so people would be more equipped to grok this new world we're living in. To get a driver's license you need some basic knowledge of car internals. I'd argue that computers are infinitely more important in our society than a car yet majority of people have absolutely no idea how computers work and are expected not only to live in this world but to ace it too.
- buran77 6y ago
  The problem is that we live in a world and society where you're expected to know a lot about a lot. And we just keep adding to the pile we need to learn. You need to know how to sew or mend your clothes, you need to know how to tinker with your electrical system or plumbing, with your car, with your electronics, know your stuff around a kitchen. And the list can really go on and on. Now you need to know how to code. The computer equivalent of what most people know how to do around the house is clearing the browser cache, restarting a service, running something at startup, and other troubleshooting steps like this. Stuff that you learn in under a day just like you would when learning basic clothes mending, replacing a faucet, changing a tire or your oil, or cooking a meal. Any reasonable definition of "coding" is creating something. Like building your own electronic circuit, mechanical part, simple clothes, etc. This is beyond what a normal person is expected to know about their stuff as general knowledge in life. Everyone should just understand the principles of the tools they're using and basic "under the hood" stuff to assist with basic troubleshooting. In reality in the parts of the world with higher standards of living (can afford stuff) this piling up of expectations just lead people to give up and pay for services rather than learn all that. And for good reason, modern society has this bad habit of taking every shred of free time and complicating your life, with unfortunate consequences.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    > Any reasonable definition of "coding" is creating something. Not necessarily creating something. The OP really did shoot themself in the foot by using the word "coding", where what they most likely meant was doing simple alterations to computing systems that require understanding some basic control flow structures - conditionals and loops. Things like, "I seem to be doing the same repetitive sequence of steps 100x a day, let me automate this somewhat". Think Tasker and bash, not JavaScript and C++. > this piling up of expectations just lead people to give up and pay for services rather than learn all that A small bit of knowledge can save you a lot of money in services. I can get why wealthy wouldn't care, but most people aren't wealthy. Also, I feel there's more pressure from the sales&marketing departments of services than from modern society's demands on free time.
II2II 6y ago
A lot of it comes down to what you mean by coding and what you mean by sewing (as an example). There is much more to sewing clothes than threading a needle and guiding it through a button hole, at least if you want to make something that will fit and will last. The complexity of the product also plays a strong role. Much the same can be said of coding. Being able to issue a command in a shell or compose a function in a spreadsheet is probably the closes analog to sewing on a button, but how many people can even do those things? We live in a world where our phone's calculators are typically as powerful as a four function calculator from decades ago, perhaps with a subset of functions found on a scientific calculator. How do we expand our minds beyond that limited scope if vendors are afraid of creating software that allows us to compose anything more complex? With the status quo, we have to seek out options and those options are mostly targeted at professionals. Similar things can be said for other domains. While writing of coding, I was actually thinking of graphics design and word processing and databases and the many other domains that have been over simplified by modern consumer applications. For the most part, their functionality has been simplified to the point where you can perform a very narrow range of tasks and have very little scope of the imagination. For example: that database that backs your address book cannot be adapted to catalogue your books, or the online word processor that is fine for writing reports is poorly suited for preparing a book for publications. Sure, there are professional alternatives out there. On the other hand, it seems as though people has a lot more flexibility with the software of the 1990's than the 2010's.
jdmg94 6y ago
statistically speaking most people today make a living coding in js, if we where going to extremes we would be talking about soldering your own board, assembling your own language, rolling your own OS, the shit Bell labs used to do. Coding is by all means an adequate analog to sewing my dude/dudette

spurgu 6y ago

It's not extremes. Modern society is designed so that we don't have to do any of those things (in extreme or even in between), we just throw money (that we generated doing one specific job) at our problems.

anonymou2 6y ago
Then when that job is no longer needed by society you are really, really lost.
- Spivak 6y ago
  I mean that's already true. The kinds of skills that people talk about in these threads are typically very domestic. Even if you had all of them you still probably have a few skills that can bring in money if you're lucky.
  - spurgu 6y ago
    > I mean that's already true. Exactly. That's why it makes a lot of sense to study/learn things outside your area of expertise, and/or if you want to lean on the more extreme side, study/learn basic survival skills (that everyone used to know before the agricultural revolution).
TeMPOraL 6y ago
It's a strong point. Personally, I find it both hard to argue against and at the same time extremely dehumanizing. Related to this is the phenomenon of turning everything into service. Why would you own things and accept responsibility for maintaining them, if you could just throw money at the service provider and have the thing be present when it's needed? Of course the thing will be extremely limited in what you can do with it, subject to Terms&Conditions, but why would you want to do anything non-standard with stuff? There's always another service you can throw money at to solve the same problem. What's the end-game here? That we specialize into sub-species of humans, forever stuck in one role, with zero autonomy? No longer building wealth, we'll only be allocating the flow of money - from what Society gives us in reward for our work, straight to Services of said Society? Will we become specialized cells of the meta-multicellular organism Society becomes? I can see how we're on the path towards that reality, and I absolutely hate it.