8 ms·

> software is a new form of literacy Do you mean basic skills in using a desktop computer, or do you mean software engineering skills? > we don't talk about t

> software is a new form of literacy Do you mean basic skills in using a desktop computer, or do you mean software engineering skills? > we don't talk about the literacy department Software development is a skilled craft, and will remain so.

nickthemagicman 6y ago
Reading itself used to be considered a skilled craft. Only 4% of people knew how to read during the middle ages. Mostly clergy and civil servants. The grandparent poster is right imo. If programming becomes just another thing everyone knows, and takes a software class every year like they take an English class, the world will be way better off.
- colinb 6y ago
  Interesting idea. Will everyone spend the next twenty years complaining about how much they hated Mrs Jones the programming teacher and how Stroustrup ruined programming for them? Put it another way. The reason we interview people the way that we do, is because it isn't realistic (unfortunately) to expect that a CS grad can fizz-buzz, or delete from a linked list, or whatever. Anyone who has spent a little time interviewing can confirm this. Why should we expect that secondary education would do a better job?
  - nickthemagicman 6y ago
    If they were taught this kind of thing from an extremely young age in school every year these interviews would be trivial, Just like speaking your native language is trivial.
    - dasudasu 6y ago
      We don't quite reach a very high degree of practical math literacy even though everyone is taught from a young age. Calculus considered as "incredibly difficult" being an example.
      - fakedang 6y ago
        I know a lot of students who would not understand the idea behind calculus concepts, even though they knew the formulae. They simply could not grasp a very simple thing like "area under the curve" or "Slope of a curve". This was at a large private school with a selective admissions process. I know for a fact that my college educated parents (50+) would not know how to solve a calculus problem. So yeah, Calculus is a pretty bad example because it IS incredibly difficult for the general population.
        nickthemagicman 6y ago
        I don't know if this is like a smarts thing or just a poor math education thing.
        6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
        As someone who does math for a living, I’m always frustrated because I truly believe it’s a poor math education thing. But then people just respond, “oh MYNAME, you just think that because you’re good at it/you’re a math person.” As if that made the point less valid rather than more valid.
      - nickthemagicman 6y ago
        I completely agree with you. I think it's a failure of the school system from a very early age because math is heavily dependent on foundations of previous classes. And I think it's more than just sharing the information we have to also make rational thinking fields as fun and cool as the emotional expression fields of study like English or Music and not the domain of 'nerds'. I think our whole culture would be way better off if people had better critical thinking logic and math skills.
        6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
        > because math is heavily dependent on foundations of previous classes. This is a point I hadn't thought enough about before. Great insight. It makes me think that maybe we just suck at education in general, and it only shows up in the subjects where continuation is dependent on previous courses. If you completely fail to understand american history, you can lie to yourself about being good at it, and continue to believe that when you get to european history. If you completely fail to understand the lessons from Fahrenheit 451, you can believe you're good at English (the subject, not the language) while you move on to Shakespeare. The only (pre-college) subjects I can think of that really require you to actually understand the prereq's material are math and language. And they share that people say "I'm just not a math person" or "I'm just no good at languages." I'd never thought about it with that lens before, but now I'm feeling kinda pessimistic. Like, if this hypothesis is true, it's not about bringing math education up to the bar of other subjects, it's about overhauling the entire system.
    - isbvhodnvemrwvn 6y ago
      You use your native language all the day, all the time. It's nowhere near the same.
- fauigerzigerk 6y ago
  The important difference between programming and reading/writing is that written language is just another representation of natural language. All the complexity is in understanding and using natural language. Reading itself is trivial once you have some practice. Programming on the other hand is creating new abstractions (i.e modelling). It never becomes trivial, because it's not just a new encoding of existing abstractions. I think programming is no different than maths. Yes, everyone will have to know a little bit of it, but very few will be capable of modelling complex problems or implementing large software systems.
  - nickthemagicman 6y ago
    Language is just a tool to express a collection of ideas. The reason programming is not an extension of our natural language is because we haven't included those concepts in our natural language yet. The world would be way better off if everyone had better logic and analytical thinking ability
  - lifeisstillgood 6y ago
    By saying " ed few can do the hard stuff", is that not redefining use of maths to an arbitrary cutoff line. Think of all the instances of maths used globally. Do the millions of people who more or less get the idea of an average - this is used across politics, and common discourse. Does that count as maths? I would say yes, just as a for loop is programming. No we are not expecting a compiler but just "arranging the world so it can be easily iterated over" is a fine common objective.
    - fauigerzigerk 6y ago
      >Does that count as maths? Yes, that's exactly what I meant when I said "a little bit of it".
  - jart 6y ago
    Well lots of people can read and write, but few people are able to write a good novel. Everyone I know who isn't necessarily a software engineer but has basic programming skills has benefited from that knowledge. For example with everyday office work there's a big difference between someone who's able to use Word and someone who's able to use Access. The latter requires programming know-how. Also shell scripts and automation. It has a huge productivity amplifying impact.
- maxwell 6y ago
  Agreed. Widespread ability to read and write natural language seems to've, eventually, made written constitutions not so-much "viable" but "necessary". It's easy to forget how innovative the U.S. Constitution was for being written, content aside. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_constitutions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_constitutions Definitely excited about the social implications of widespread ability to read and write executable language in the long run, note when France crossed 50% literacy though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy#/media/File:Illiteracy_france.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy#/media/File:Illiterac...
- lifeisstillgood 6y ago
  I think I am the grandparent - and yes I agree, software is going to be table stakes for the next generation of corporate players (and by implication, those corporates who cannot will mean a huge gap opening up). It's not just "can my employees write a for loop" but it's "do we store data sensibly, when upper management wants a report is there a data history stretching back to the raw (ie no manual involvement). Do we all publish APIs and work through those defined interfaces - and many more.
gonzo41 6y ago
Software development is a skilled craft, and will remain so. Yes, you're right, but i would take the meaning that understanding Software development and deployment and how that can be leveraged is a literacy. There's tons of IT transformation disasters because the companies upping their literacy get stuck with knowing the words (SOA and Agile) but don't know how to make coherent use of them. Most projects these days are IT projects. Think about it like a dev, Software on a computer is useful. Networked software is more useful. Cloud and IaaS is really useful, SaaS is a really really useful and knowing when to use each to actually get stuff done is the most useful of all.
- FpUser 6y ago
  >"Software on a computer is useful. Networked software is more useful. Cloud and IaaS is really useful, SaaS is a really really useful" I actually prefer the reverse progression as the closer it is to my computer / my server the less I spend on feeding somebody else's insatiable appetites. Being connected is one thing. Giving somebody else more and more control over your business is totally different.
junon 6y ago
Man it really sucks this is being down voted. Software engineering is not like reading. Reading conveys information about reality. Software code conveys solutions to problems. The latter requires understanding of computers, problem solving, domains, etc. Just like I can't pick up a book about organic chemistry and understand it, people are not going to some day care to know about how distributed systems algorithms work. It is indeed a skilled craft and this weird, cyberpunk-ian idea that everyone will just converge on technical literacy is very hand wavey and ignores simple facts like some people just not having ANY interest in computers or tech.
- jfim 6y ago
  Literacy is actually a good analogy. People have different reading abilities, but they're all under the umbrella of literacy. Some people are illiterate, some people can read simple documents but struggle with higher complexity texts and contracts, and some people can breeze through high complexity texts. In the same way, some people struggle with computers, some are able to understand Excel spreadsheets, some are able to understand business logic expressed in a domain specific language, and some are able to read complex programs.
SideburnsOfDoom 6y ago
I use the motor vehicle metaphor: Software literacy is equivalent to: being able to drive a car, fuel it, decode the various dashboard lights when they blink, maybe change a tire and check the oil. Software engineering is: Being a car mechanic. So is it very useful to society if the vast majority of adults are able to drive. It is not important or worth the effort to have a majority of adults as fully trained car mechanics. Although it is good to have "on ramps" for those with the aptitude and inclination to pick it up, as a useful and paying job. It is _now_ useful to society if the vast majority of adults are able to use a maps app, a messaging app, a word processor, maybe a formula in spreadsheet, calendar a zoom call and unmute themselves, have email and can distinguish a phishing email from real bank communications, ignore fake news on social media, etc. The difference between a formula in a spreadsheet and full-time coding is one of degree, not kind; but you could say the same about changing a tire vs. a full vehicle overhaul.
- datavirtue 6y ago
  I used to be a mechanic and the analogy fits. Rich people drive into the shop and bark at you to "just fix it." They don't care about any of the minutia but it had better work they way they envision it working. Then they throw you a few pennies and drive off.
  - gpanders 6y ago
    Where were you a mechanic that it only cost “a few pennies”? I feel like I get bled dry every time I take my car in...
    - SideburnsOfDoom 6y ago
      I don't know myself, but if the big expense is parts not salary, both can be true. The vehicle manufacturer would be the one capturing the profits of the overpriced band-name parts.
    - datavirtue 6y ago
      Mechanics work ungodly hours and deal with very painful situations and barely make a living wage that can support a family. You feel like you are getting bled dry because the service does not scale. A highly trained professional has to focus on your problem until it is fixed and the solution is often very time consuming. Insurance costs are high and so are labor and material costs. It doesn't mean the mechanics are making a killing. The owners are often well off though. Hiring more mechanics scales for them.
moonbug 6y ago
your periodic reminder that Excel is programming.
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  Respectfully, I don't think it's insightful to point out that Excel is Turing complete. That's a technical curiosity, it doesn't inform our discussion here. The boundaries of what we call 'software development' are fuzzy, but that's true for all sorts of things. Assembling a computer doesn't make you an electronic engineer, despite that you're building a complex electronic system. If a high school teacher comes up with a basic arithmetic question that, by coincidence, has never been asked before, the teacher still doesn't count as a research mathematician for solving it.
  - 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
    I think you misunderstood the point (or they edited the comment). Excel is user programmed automation, and it’s incredibly wide spread.
  - moonbug 6y ago
    "Excel as technical curiosity". Peak SV.
- nullserver 6y ago
  It’s also extremely productive. Management always thinks a new web report / dashboard will solve all the problems. Team then spends a week or month building said report into system. Only to find that it doesn’t help anything. Six months of iterations later it’s correct and useful. Or have someone build a one off report in excel. Iterate a few times that afternoon until it’s correct. Then it’s handed off to developers. Avoiding months of rework.
andrewflnr 6y ago
Writing is a skilled craft, and will remain so, especially at professional levels. But we still teach everyone the basics.

nickthemagicman 6y ago

Reading itself used to be considered a skilled craft. Only 4% of people knew how to read during the middle ages. Mostly clergy and civil servants. The grandparent poster is right imo. If programming becomes just another thing everyone knows, and takes a software class every year like they take an English class, the world will be way better off.

colinb 6y ago
Interesting idea. Will everyone spend the next twenty years complaining about how much they hated Mrs Jones the programming teacher and how Stroustrup ruined programming for them? Put it another way. The reason we interview people the way that we do, is because it isn't realistic (unfortunately) to expect that a CS grad can fizz-buzz, or delete from a linked list, or whatever. Anyone who has spent a little time interviewing can confirm this. Why should we expect that secondary education would do a better job?
- nickthemagicman 6y ago
  If they were taught this kind of thing from an extremely young age in school every year these interviews would be trivial, Just like speaking your native language is trivial.
  - dasudasu 6y ago
    We don't quite reach a very high degree of practical math literacy even though everyone is taught from a young age. Calculus considered as "incredibly difficult" being an example.
    - fakedang 6y ago
      I know a lot of students who would not understand the idea behind calculus concepts, even though they knew the formulae. They simply could not grasp a very simple thing like "area under the curve" or "Slope of a curve". This was at a large private school with a selective admissions process. I know for a fact that my college educated parents (50+) would not know how to solve a calculus problem. So yeah, Calculus is a pretty bad example because it IS incredibly difficult for the general population.
      - nickthemagicman 6y ago
        I don't know if this is like a smarts thing or just a poor math education thing.
        6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
        As someone who does math for a living, I’m always frustrated because I truly believe it’s a poor math education thing. But then people just respond, “oh MYNAME, you just think that because you’re good at it/you’re a math person.” As if that made the point less valid rather than more valid.
    - nickthemagicman 6y ago
      I completely agree with you. I think it's a failure of the school system from a very early age because math is heavily dependent on foundations of previous classes. And I think it's more than just sharing the information we have to also make rational thinking fields as fun and cool as the emotional expression fields of study like English or Music and not the domain of 'nerds'. I think our whole culture would be way better off if people had better critical thinking logic and math skills.
      - 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
        > because math is heavily dependent on foundations of previous classes. This is a point I hadn't thought enough about before. Great insight. It makes me think that maybe we just suck at education in general, and it only shows up in the subjects where continuation is dependent on previous courses. If you completely fail to understand american history, you can lie to yourself about being good at it, and continue to believe that when you get to european history. If you completely fail to understand the lessons from Fahrenheit 451, you can believe you're good at English (the subject, not the language) while you move on to Shakespeare. The only (pre-college) subjects I can think of that really require you to actually understand the prereq's material are math and language. And they share that people say "I'm just not a math person" or "I'm just no good at languages." I'd never thought about it with that lens before, but now I'm feeling kinda pessimistic. Like, if this hypothesis is true, it's not about bringing math education up to the bar of other subjects, it's about overhauling the entire system.
  - isbvhodnvemrwvn 6y ago
    You use your native language all the day, all the time. It's nowhere near the same.
fauigerzigerk 6y ago
The important difference between programming and reading/writing is that written language is just another representation of natural language. All the complexity is in understanding and using natural language. Reading itself is trivial once you have some practice. Programming on the other hand is creating new abstractions (i.e modelling). It never becomes trivial, because it's not just a new encoding of existing abstractions. I think programming is no different than maths. Yes, everyone will have to know a little bit of it, but very few will be capable of modelling complex problems or implementing large software systems.
- nickthemagicman 6y ago
  Language is just a tool to express a collection of ideas. The reason programming is not an extension of our natural language is because we haven't included those concepts in our natural language yet. The world would be way better off if everyone had better logic and analytical thinking ability
- lifeisstillgood 6y ago
  By saying " ed few can do the hard stuff", is that not redefining use of maths to an arbitrary cutoff line. Think of all the instances of maths used globally. Do the millions of people who more or less get the idea of an average - this is used across politics, and common discourse. Does that count as maths? I would say yes, just as a for loop is programming. No we are not expecting a compiler but just "arranging the world so it can be easily iterated over" is a fine common objective.
  - fauigerzigerk 6y ago
    >Does that count as maths? Yes, that's exactly what I meant when I said "a little bit of it".
- jart 6y ago
  Well lots of people can read and write, but few people are able to write a good novel. Everyone I know who isn't necessarily a software engineer but has basic programming skills has benefited from that knowledge. For example with everyday office work there's a big difference between someone who's able to use Word and someone who's able to use Access. The latter requires programming know-how. Also shell scripts and automation. It has a huge productivity amplifying impact.
maxwell 6y ago
Agreed. Widespread ability to read and write natural language seems to've, eventually, made written constitutions not so-much "viable" but "necessary". It's easy to forget how innovative the U.S. Constitution was for being written, content aside. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_constitutions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_constitutions Definitely excited about the social implications of widespread ability to read and write executable language in the long run, note when France crossed 50% literacy though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy#/media/File:Illiteracy_france.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy#/media/File:Illiterac...
lifeisstillgood 6y ago
I think I am the grandparent - and yes I agree, software is going to be table stakes for the next generation of corporate players (and by implication, those corporates who cannot will mean a huge gap opening up). It's not just "can my employees write a for loop" but it's "do we store data sensibly, when upper management wants a report is there a data history stretching back to the raw (ie no manual involvement). Do we all publish APIs and work through those defined interfaces - and many more.

gonzo41 6y ago

Software development is a skilled craft, and will remain so. Yes, you're right, but i would take the meaning that understanding Software development and deployment and how that can be leveraged is a literacy. There's tons of IT transformation disasters because the companies upping their literacy get stuck with knowing the words (SOA and Agile) but don't know how to make coherent use of them. Most projects these days are IT projects. Think about it like a dev, Software on a computer is useful. Networked software is more useful. Cloud and IaaS is really useful, SaaS is a really really useful and knowing when to use each to actually get stuff done is the most useful of all.

FpUser 6y ago
>"Software on a computer is useful. Networked software is more useful. Cloud and IaaS is really useful, SaaS is a really really useful" I actually prefer the reverse progression as the closer it is to my computer / my server the less I spend on feeding somebody else's insatiable appetites. Being connected is one thing. Giving somebody else more and more control over your business is totally different.

junon 6y ago

Man it really sucks this is being down voted. Software engineering is not like reading. Reading conveys information about reality. Software code conveys solutions to problems. The latter requires understanding of computers, problem solving, domains, etc. Just like I can't pick up a book about organic chemistry and understand it, people are not going to some day care to know about how distributed systems algorithms work. It is indeed a skilled craft and this weird, cyberpunk-ian idea that everyone will just converge on technical literacy is very hand wavey and ignores simple facts like some people just not having ANY interest in computers or tech.

jfim 6y ago
Literacy is actually a good analogy. People have different reading abilities, but they're all under the umbrella of literacy. Some people are illiterate, some people can read simple documents but struggle with higher complexity texts and contracts, and some people can breeze through high complexity texts. In the same way, some people struggle with computers, some are able to understand Excel spreadsheets, some are able to understand business logic expressed in a domain specific language, and some are able to read complex programs.

SideburnsOfDoom 6y ago

I use the motor vehicle metaphor: Software literacy is equivalent to: being able to drive a car, fuel it, decode the various dashboard lights when they blink, maybe change a tire and check the oil. Software engineering is: Being a car mechanic. So is it very useful to society if the vast majority of adults are able to drive. It is not important or worth the effort to have a majority of adults as fully trained car mechanics. Although it is good to have "on ramps" for those with the aptitude and inclination to pick it up, as a useful and paying job. It is _now_ useful to society if the vast majority of adults are able to use a maps app, a messaging app, a word processor, maybe a formula in spreadsheet, calendar a zoom call and unmute themselves, have email and can distinguish a phishing email from real bank communications, ignore fake news on social media, etc. The difference between a formula in a spreadsheet and full-time coding is one of degree, not kind; but you could say the same about changing a tire vs. a full vehicle overhaul.

datavirtue 6y ago
I used to be a mechanic and the analogy fits. Rich people drive into the shop and bark at you to "just fix it." They don't care about any of the minutia but it had better work they way they envision it working. Then they throw you a few pennies and drive off.
- gpanders 6y ago
  Where were you a mechanic that it only cost “a few pennies”? I feel like I get bled dry every time I take my car in...
  - SideburnsOfDoom 6y ago
    I don't know myself, but if the big expense is parts not salary, both can be true. The vehicle manufacturer would be the one capturing the profits of the overpriced band-name parts.
  - datavirtue 6y ago
    Mechanics work ungodly hours and deal with very painful situations and barely make a living wage that can support a family. You feel like you are getting bled dry because the service does not scale. A highly trained professional has to focus on your problem until it is fixed and the solution is often very time consuming. Insurance costs are high and so are labor and material costs. It doesn't mean the mechanics are making a killing. The owners are often well off though. Hiring more mechanics scales for them.

moonbug 6y ago

your periodic reminder that Excel is programming.

MaxBarraclough 6y ago
Respectfully, I don't think it's insightful to point out that Excel is Turing complete. That's a technical curiosity, it doesn't inform our discussion here. The boundaries of what we call 'software development' are fuzzy, but that's true for all sorts of things. Assembling a computer doesn't make you an electronic engineer, despite that you're building a complex electronic system. If a high school teacher comes up with a basic arithmetic question that, by coincidence, has never been asked before, the teacher still doesn't count as a research mathematician for solving it.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
  I think you misunderstood the point (or they edited the comment). Excel is user programmed automation, and it’s incredibly wide spread.
- moonbug 6y ago
  "Excel as technical curiosity". Peak SV.
nullserver 6y ago
It’s also extremely productive. Management always thinks a new web report / dashboard will solve all the problems. Team then spends a week or month building said report into system. Only to find that it doesn’t help anything. Six months of iterations later it’s correct and useful. Or have someone build a one off report in excel. Iterate a few times that afternoon until it’s correct. Then it’s handed off to developers. Avoiding months of rework.

andrewflnr 6y ago

Writing is a skilled craft, and will remain so, especially at professional levels. But we still teach everyone the basics.