4 ms·

I'm sure a century or two the same was said for reading and writing.

oblio 5y ago
Yeah, but: > In the US, 14% of the adult population is at the "below basic" level for prose literacy; 12% are at the "below basic" level for document literacy, and 22% are at that level for quantitative literacy. Only 13% of the population is proficient in each of these three areas—able to compare viewpoints in two editorials; interpret a table about blood pressure, age, and physical activity; or compute and compare the cost per ounce of food items. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_illiteracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_illiteracy Plus stuff like this: https://eufactcheck.eu/factcheck/true-we-have-42-functional-illiterates-a-major-problem-for-romania/ https://eufactcheck.eu/factcheck/true-we-have-42-functional-... And keep in mind Romania is average at a world level, economically, maybe even slightly higher than average. On top of that programming is based on logic (for the layman who doesn't want to think of it as based on math; and let's not go into the layman's clear separation between logic and math), so it for sure has an extra difficulty level compared to reading or writing.
- manjalyc 5y ago
  100% population literacy is neither reasonable nor attainable. Yet, functional literacy has drastically improved throughout the past century. To say programming is never to attain such a characteristic is making a statement against the trends of history in all other academic disciplines. Focusing on the present state is an ignorance of underlying trend. A couple thousand years ago, groundbreaking advances in trigonometry were made by some of the worlds smartest people. Today the average high schooler knows soh cah toa.
  - oblio 5y ago
    Well, I agree with what you're saying. But if these advances take centuries, from a purely personal perspective they don't matter much. By then, I, and everyone I have and will ever know, will be dead. In the long term, we're all dead. Though I obviously appreciate progress :-)

Yeah, but: > In the US, 14% of the adult population is at the "below basic" level for prose literacy; 12% are at the "below basic" level for document literacy, and 22% are at that level for quantitative literacy. Only 13% of the population is proficient in each of these three areas—able to compare viewpoints in two editorials; interpret a table about blood pressure, age, and physical activity; or compute and compare the cost per ounce of food items. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_illiteracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_illiteracy Plus stuff like this: https://eufactcheck.eu/factcheck/true-we-have-42-functional-illiterates-a-major-problem-for-romania/ https://eufactcheck.eu/factcheck/true-we-have-42-functional-... And keep in mind Romania is average at a world level, economically, maybe even slightly higher than average. On top of that programming is based on logic (for the layman who doesn't want to think of it as based on math; and let's not go into the layman's clear separation between logic and math), so it for sure has an extra difficulty level compared to reading or writing.

manjalyc 5y ago
100% population literacy is neither reasonable nor attainable. Yet, functional literacy has drastically improved throughout the past century. To say programming is never to attain such a characteristic is making a statement against the trends of history in all other academic disciplines. Focusing on the present state is an ignorance of underlying trend. A couple thousand years ago, groundbreaking advances in trigonometry were made by some of the worlds smartest people. Today the average high schooler knows soh cah toa.
- oblio 5y ago
  Well, I agree with what you're saying. But if these advances take centuries, from a purely personal perspective they don't matter much. By then, I, and everyone I have and will ever know, will be dead. In the long term, we're all dead. Though I obviously appreciate progress :-)