8 ms·

Coding - the new Latin

138 points by soitgoes 15y ago

Jach 15y ago
I think that's a horrible phrase. The first thing that comes to mind is: "Coding isn't dead!", then: "But coding has direct benefits, not hand-waving indirect benefits like 'you will get better at English!'" I get that it's meant to convey that if you can't code even a little, you're an uneducated person, much like in older times people who didn't know Latin (and Greek) were uneducated. That's a fine sentiment to have, I agree coding is more or less a fundamental skill these days that many are ignoring, but using Latin as the metaphor isn't the way to go. It needs to be as important as learning to write.
- OstiaAntica 15y ago
  I think the metaphor goes deeper. Knowing Latin (and Greek) opened doors to greater learning, providing access to classical writing and history. Indeed, the Renaissance was built on Latin and Greek study. It also was a common language that united the educated elite across Europe.
  - Jach 15y ago
    That's true. Yet my issue remains: how many people know how important Latin really was for its lifetime? A good metaphor that you want to resound with the broad populace should resound with the broad populace. I don't think I'm alone in thinking "What's a dead language got to do with coding?" as a first thought, and I studied Latin for 3 years. As an example of something I think is easier (nearer) for people to grasp, let's add a new R! Reading, 'Riting, 'Rithmetic, and 'Rogramming.
- m0nty 15y ago
  Apparently Latin is a very popular subject in schools. IF that popularity is genuine, it refutes the idea that children are always looking out for the easiest option, which bodes well for CS in schools because (if it's done correctly) it will be challenging. Personally I have my misgivings about the phrase "The New Latin" but I have strong objections to the "Hey kids! Everything is fun, fun, fun!" approach which is so often the alternative.
  - Jach 15y ago
    I actually think Latin's popularity is, at least in part, due to its easiness, and at least in my former high school. I'm inferring to other schools since the AP test doesn't require speaking it. I mentioned in a cousin-comment that I took Latin for three years, I also took French for five. French was a lot harder. Merely speaking it and understanding when it's spoken back with different accents and different speeds is a lot harder than just reading or writing it, which is all I had to do for Latin. (We learned the simple pronunciation rules and read some things aloud but that's it.) Yet for the universities around the area requiring two foreign language credits from high school, Latin was good enough. Latin was funner for me in some ways though since it has a pattern-matching or puzzle-solving feel to it at times with all the word endings and no reliance on word order. I don't think it's as neat as Arabic but it's a somewhat similar feeling. I agree that overselling things as fun is a great way to kill any fun that might have existed.
  - derleth 15y ago
    > Hey kids! Everything is fun, fun, fun! Programming is fun if it's taught well, which is why it must always be taught poorly, if at all. After all, education and play are two mutually-exclusive concepts for humans, like they are for all somewhat-intelligent mammals.
- Fargren 15y ago
  I don't think the slogan is talking about the value of knowing latin today(or a few years ago), it's about the value knowing latin in the middle ages. In the middle ages(in Europe), knowing latin meant you had access to most of the culture that existed. Not knowing latin meant you didn't. In that sense, it would be awesome for coders if coding were the new latin. Alas, it's not. You don't need to know how to code in order to access culture nowadays. You maybe need to know how to sue a computer, but there's a long distance from that to knowing how to code.
tikhonj 15y ago
I think it's a great analogy--there is little like programming for opening your mind up in certain ways. Big ideas from computer science--more than those from any other single subject--have changed they way I see the world. Of course, I am highly involved in computer science, so its effect on me is disproportionate. However, I think that everyone would benefit from at least a cursory understanding of the big ideas behind CS, particularly abstraction. If I had to choose one, single concept that has affected me more than any other it would be abstraction. Apart from this, the highly logical programming mindset is also healthy. Some of the discipline that comes from writing your ideas in a form even a computer can understand is invaluable. Additionally, programming is a creative endeavor with a very low barrier to entry: this is imperative for certain types of people. In my arrogance, I view myself as a relatively creative individual; however, I am also fairly lazy. I do not think I would have pursued engineering or art nearly to the extent I did programming (I was exposed to all three at relatively early ages) simply because they required so much more. To build something, I would need materials, tools and space; the same is naturally true of drawing a picture. To program all I needed was a computer, and since they were common by the time I was in elementary school, this was not an issue. This allowed me to make cool stuff without going out of my way. Computer science really is something that opens the mind. I fervently believe it should stand with subjects like math and literature, not just for practical reasons but because it is immensely valuable for personal development.
- itmag 15y ago
  This. I often get stuck in communication with people because I tend toward abstraction and they toward being more concrete-bound. I often get annoyed with people when they get hung up on stuff which is just irrelevant detail to me. "No, disregard that, it's not important to the general principle here, you see..." But lately, I am gaining some appreciation for the detail-focused mindset. It's just two ways to look at things.
pseudonimble 15y ago
My experience with IT education in the UK is genuinely atrocious. During secondary school we made a spreadsheet in Excel and a couple of Word documents. The closest thing to programming was a picture of traffic lights we had to "programmatically" operate. For a single hour lesson. And that is it. We were lucky if our computers even turned on.
- estel 15y ago
  I remember going a step further than using VBA macros in Access at least once... Using LOGO in Primary School was far better.
- wazoox 15y ago
  The problem is that teachers are often completely computer-illiterate. This is a chicken-and-egg problem; you won't teach proper, interesting computing activities without competent teachers.
  - _delirium 15y ago
    Although true in general, some subset of students will figure out interesting things, and then show them to others, if you at least put them in an environment where that's possible. My middle-school computing class was not particularly well taught, but the curriculum included a few simple things in Hypercard, and Hypercard was the kind of environment where students who finished the official assignments early could find all sorts of other cool things to do in it. That does also require having free time. There's a trend lately towards assuming that any free time students have is wasted time in which they could be learning instead of goofing off, which I'm not sure is the right way to look at it.
- morsch 15y ago
  We programmed abstract data structures in Pascal. I think we implemented quicksort. I guess I was lucky? Fun story: The first time I was truly speechless in CS in high school was when my teacher, looking at my code, told me that, for a boolean variable foo, it's not necessary or reasonable to write IF foo = TRUE THEN // whatever; "=" is comparison in Pascal BTW but rather you can just write IF foo THEN // whatever It seems trivial, even stupid now, but at the time it was an eye-opener.
itmag 15y ago
Why is it that coding is such a rare (relatively speaking) skill? Sure, there are some hard concepts in coding, but for loops and conditional statements are hardly more difficult to understand than a lot of the math which gets taught in junior high. Speaking of that, why is it essential for young people to learn algebra but not to learn for and if?
- lclarkmichalek 15y ago
  The simplest way would be to shove computing under the maths curriculum. Teach if with guard statements, and skip for, teach recursion. by the time the kids get to sixth form, have a mathmatical computation course where you teach them to apply their knowledge to a language like haskell that mirrors mathmatical notation quite well.
  - itmag 15y ago
    I would probably just go with Python or something. Teach them variables, for loops, if statements, printing stuff to the screen, stuff like that. That way they get a good notion of what programming actually is. I'm only now getting into functional programming. I would not have grokked it very well when I was like 12 years old.
    - philwelch 15y ago
      Maybe functional programming would be easier to grasp had you not learned imperative programming first.
      - kabdib 15y ago
        I never had a problem with this, and my first few languages were BASIC, assembly and C. LISP came naturally to me a few years later. I think the problem is that people are /used/ to imperative programs, and aren't given real practice in functional programming. There are also FP zealots, some of whom maintain that learning IP first causes damage. I think this attitude is toxic and doesn't actually help their "cause" (as if good tools needed a "cause" -- good tools should just be good tools).
siddMahen 15y ago
I've spoken to both of my principals and my ICT teacher about introducing a solid computer science course and scraping "ICT". As a student and a avid programmer, I find it horrible that we don't get a chance to truly leverage the power of computers. The reason I don't think CS is being widely adopted is because many students have been conditioned to accept ICT as a good computer course and have no clue as to what you can achieve with proper training and a computer. My classmates aren't interested in CS because they think it's way to difficult and has no tangible effect on society. On top of that, both of my previous ICT teachers had no clue how to program: those days were spent editing movies and making animations in Flash. Glad to see the powers that be finally take some initiative to solve this problem...
wingo 15y ago
It is important, but I prefer Eben Moglen's analogy: "Software is what the 21st century is made of. What steel was to the economy of the 20th century, what steel was to the power of the 20th century, what steel was to the politics of the 20th century, software is now. It is the crucial building block, the component out of which everything else is made, and, when I speak of everything else, I mean of course freedom, as well as tyranny, as well as business as usual, as well as spying on everybody for free all the time." http://www.softwarefreedom.org/events/2011/fosdem/moglen-fosdem-keynote.html http://www.softwarefreedom.org/events/2011/fosdem/moglen-fos...
- berntb 15y ago
  Check the total number of steel workers as percentage of the work force in the year 1900 to a hundred years later. Very much less. My personal lesson from this, is that computer software jobs in general might soon have the hourly pay of PHP coders on elance. (Then the cycle of few people studying computer science will repeat... like ten years ago.)
  - guard-of-terra 15y ago
    What makes you think "soon"? It's obvious that in some distant point of future programming will cease to be The hot thing to do, but what makes you think it might be soon enough for us to see it?
    - adestefan 15y ago
      I'm not sure that steelworkers were ever "the hot thing to do." The downfall of the steel industry in the US is multifaceted, but mainly boils down to the fact that importing steel from outside US is cheaper than producing it in the US and technological improvements in building with steel has greatly reduced the number of people needed to construct things with steel. Take from that what you will about the software industry, but just remember that everyone either gets replaced by someone cheaper or technology takes their job away.
  - sedachv 15y ago
tpatke 15y ago
When I think about all of the problems with the education system I am not sure that "teaching coding" would top that list. The bottom line is that coding is a profession which is not suited to everyone. I remember being a TA at university in the late 90s when IT was booming. Everyone wanted to learn to program. Once they learned enough to realize it meant sitting in front of a computer alone all day - most moved on to something else. Few people have the concentration / (lack of :-) social aptitude. I believe most people have the intelligence. Basic computer skills need to be taught. Coding? It should possibly be a required semester in university for all majors. ...beyond that? Does everyone really need to know about recursion?
- Jach 15y ago
  > Does everyone really need to know about recursion? Yes, and I'd argue indirection as well. If you teach coding without recursion, you're just teaching basic logic coupled with arithmetic, we have classes for that already. (As an aside, I think iteration should be introduced as a special case to recursion.)
- _delirium 15y ago
  One proposal, which I'm somewhat sympathetic to, that a general cognitive skill of being able to think procedurally or computationally is important in the 21st century, even if the craft of being able to program is more specialized. Some papers on that: http://www.bogost.com/writing/procedural_literacy.shtml http://www.bogost.com/writing/procedural_literacy.shtml http://dm.lcc.gatech.edu/~mateas/publications/MateasOTH2005.pdf http://dm.lcc.gatech.edu/~mateas/publications/MateasOTH2005.... http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/usr/wing/www/publications/Wing06.pdf http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/usr/wing/www/publications/Wing0...
- bad_user 15y ago
  Does everyone really need to know about recursion? Does everyone really need to know the basics of calculus? Or how about genetics? Does everyone really need to know French? I had classes for the above in my high-school. In fact I can't think of any class I took in high-school that isn't useless to a large portion of high-school graduates. And I can't think of many examples that are more useful than grasping the concept of recursion.
cafard 15y ago
Ewnay atinlay? ixnay!
tezza 15y ago
Who here studied Latin? Well I did Latin for 6 years in High School (Sydney Boys fyi). I find this title "Coding - the new Latin" as a bizarre way of inducing people to learn to code. Latin is dead. Very dead. Back in my day Latin was billed as "The Fastest Growing Language", but that never transpired. Now if you want to read Caesar, Virgil, Catulus et al, then fine learn Latin. But Latin is no longer the ticket to an elite private members club that it once was. Latin - is also a language that you exclusively read. There is so little creative element to it. One furthers oneself in Latin by re/interpreting existing works. Coding - is a creative craft where you take instructions and make something that never existed before. It would be better to strap coding onto something intensely creative: Technical Drawing Metal Work Fine Art, Sculpture
- derleth 15y ago
  > Coding - is a creative craft where you take instructions and make something that never existed before. Mathematics - is a creative craft where you take a formal system (a structure purely of the mind) and create something (a new theorem, an addition to the structure) that never existed before. That is what mathematics is. That is why there are math majors. If it were all rote nonsense, computers would be doing all of it by now; computers are cheaper than people for rote nonsense, after all. So, to tie this back to the topic, teaching programming correctly would be much easier if we taught mathematics correctly.
  - delinka 15y ago
    Making advances in math indeed requires creativity. But actually creating something new and expanding mathematics is a Very Hard Problem. It doesn't lend itself to "instant creation" like programming does. Sure, you can apply formulas in many areas of business and life, and you can create simple formulas for these things-- doesn't take a math major. As to your last sentence, I completely agree.
- cletus 15y ago
  I believe you're missing the point. Here are some historical uses of Latin: - Obviously it was the language of the Roman Empire; - It is the basis for many European languages; - It was the language of Christianity, the Papacy for thousands of years (tying in somewhat historically with the conversion of Constantine). This went so far as Roman Catholic services being held in Latin until IIRC the 1960s; - Prior to the printing press, books were the province of monks and the like so being educated (in Western Europe) involved speaking Latin; - In England, Latin was the language of court and the law for centuries. There are many Latin terms--even in American law--for a reason; - Latin was the language of science. Element names in chemistry, species names in biology and so on have Latin roots; - For centuries, Latin was the lingua franca of the ruling class of Europe. The short of it is that being able to speak, read and write Latin in medieval and Renaissance Europe was power. More to the point, if you didn't know Latin, you were essentially excluded from many things (as many people were). Knowing Latin had as much power and influence as literacy in general. So what the author is saying is the ability "speak" the language of computers, the ability to communicate with them and make them do things, is the 21st century version of the thrall once held by Latin. Many have spoken about how expensive it was to launch a dot-com company in the 90s and how that cost has essentially decreased by two orders of magnitude in a decade. One might have thought this would make engineers less valuable as our skills would've been commoditized to some degree. The converse has happened. While other costs have largely vanished, more businesses became possible that never were before. There seems to be an insatiable demand for engineering talent, at least for the short to medium term. Last century the dream was the 21st century would be about space exploration and an otherwise "Star Trek" like future. Instead I believe the story about the 21st century will be what incredible things we do with computers. Genetic engineering, curing diseases, artificial intelligence, you name it. This may go so far as to essentially stratify society. It's hard to overstate just how importance computers will be in the next century (IMHO).
nobody314159265 15y ago
Coding - the new maths! Students are dropping IT in schools - good. Not taking IT at college probably also good. IT in schools has (and always will be) crap. The problem is that nobody has any idea what to teach. When it started in the early 80s we drew flowcharts and wrote programs in Basic then did exams on the definitions of a mainframe, mini and microcomputer. Then it gradually evolved to 'useful' skills - so IT today is how to format word documents and create powerpoint slides. If the brightest students are dropping this - then there is some hope for the future. Similarly most CS course (except of course your favourite Uni) have become "teach Java in 21weeks" - repeat for 3years.
jamesrcole 15y ago
And it looks like they've found what could be a great slogan for their campaign. "Coding is the new Latin," says Alex Hope... To echo number of the other comments here (and try and respond to some of the criticisms of those comments): I think that's a terrible slogan. The point of a slogan is to be immediate - something appealing that gets the point across in a catchy and unambiguous fashion. I think that the associations (and slogans are about associations) Latin has for most people is a language that is presently irrelevant and of no practical purpose. It may have once been really significant, and it may have played an important role in the world becoming what it is today, but such details are not the things that the term "Latin" immediately invokes for most people, and what it immediately invokes is what matters for a slogan. Being a great analogy does not make it a great slogan.

138 points by soitgoes 15y ago

Jach 15y ago

I think that's a horrible phrase. The first thing that comes to mind is: "Coding isn't dead!", then: "But coding has direct benefits, not hand-waving indirect benefits like 'you will get better at English!'" I get that it's meant to convey that if you can't code even a little, you're an uneducated person, much like in older times people who didn't know Latin (and Greek) were uneducated. That's a fine sentiment to have, I agree coding is more or less a fundamental skill these days that many are ignoring, but using Latin as the metaphor isn't the way to go. It needs to be as important as learning to write.

OstiaAntica 15y ago
I think the metaphor goes deeper. Knowing Latin (and Greek) opened doors to greater learning, providing access to classical writing and history. Indeed, the Renaissance was built on Latin and Greek study. It also was a common language that united the educated elite across Europe.
- Jach 15y ago
  That's true. Yet my issue remains: how many people know how important Latin really was for its lifetime? A good metaphor that you want to resound with the broad populace should resound with the broad populace. I don't think I'm alone in thinking "What's a dead language got to do with coding?" as a first thought, and I studied Latin for 3 years. As an example of something I think is easier (nearer) for people to grasp, let's add a new R! Reading, 'Riting, 'Rithmetic, and 'Rogramming.
m0nty 15y ago
Apparently Latin is a very popular subject in schools. IF that popularity is genuine, it refutes the idea that children are always looking out for the easiest option, which bodes well for CS in schools because (if it's done correctly) it will be challenging. Personally I have my misgivings about the phrase "The New Latin" but I have strong objections to the "Hey kids! Everything is fun, fun, fun!" approach which is so often the alternative.
- Jach 15y ago
  I actually think Latin's popularity is, at least in part, due to its easiness, and at least in my former high school. I'm inferring to other schools since the AP test doesn't require speaking it. I mentioned in a cousin-comment that I took Latin for three years, I also took French for five. French was a lot harder. Merely speaking it and understanding when it's spoken back with different accents and different speeds is a lot harder than just reading or writing it, which is all I had to do for Latin. (We learned the simple pronunciation rules and read some things aloud but that's it.) Yet for the universities around the area requiring two foreign language credits from high school, Latin was good enough. Latin was funner for me in some ways though since it has a pattern-matching or puzzle-solving feel to it at times with all the word endings and no reliance on word order. I don't think it's as neat as Arabic but it's a somewhat similar feeling. I agree that overselling things as fun is a great way to kill any fun that might have existed.
- derleth 15y ago
  > Hey kids! Everything is fun, fun, fun! Programming is fun if it's taught well, which is why it must always be taught poorly, if at all. After all, education and play are two mutually-exclusive concepts for humans, like they are for all somewhat-intelligent mammals.
Fargren 15y ago
I don't think the slogan is talking about the value of knowing latin today(or a few years ago), it's about the value knowing latin in the middle ages. In the middle ages(in Europe), knowing latin meant you had access to most of the culture that existed. Not knowing latin meant you didn't. In that sense, it would be awesome for coders if coding were the new latin. Alas, it's not. You don't need to know how to code in order to access culture nowadays. You maybe need to know how to sue a computer, but there's a long distance from that to knowing how to code.

tikhonj 15y ago

I think it's a great analogy--there is little like programming for opening your mind up in certain ways. Big ideas from computer science--more than those from any other single subject--have changed they way I see the world. Of course, I am highly involved in computer science, so its effect on me is disproportionate. However, I think that everyone would benefit from at least a cursory understanding of the big ideas behind CS, particularly abstraction. If I had to choose one, single concept that has affected me more than any other it would be abstraction. Apart from this, the highly logical programming mindset is also healthy. Some of the discipline that comes from writing your ideas in a form even a computer can understand is invaluable. Additionally, programming is a creative endeavor with a very low barrier to entry: this is imperative for certain types of people. In my arrogance, I view myself as a relatively creative individual; however, I am also fairly lazy. I do not think I would have pursued engineering or art nearly to the extent I did programming (I was exposed to all three at relatively early ages) simply because they required so much more. To build something, I would need materials, tools and space; the same is naturally true of drawing a picture. To program all I needed was a computer, and since they were common by the time I was in elementary school, this was not an issue. This allowed me to make cool stuff without going out of my way. Computer science really is something that opens the mind. I fervently believe it should stand with subjects like math and literature, not just for practical reasons but because it is immensely valuable for personal development.

itmag 15y ago
This. I often get stuck in communication with people because I tend toward abstraction and they toward being more concrete-bound. I often get annoyed with people when they get hung up on stuff which is just irrelevant detail to me. "No, disregard that, it's not important to the general principle here, you see..." But lately, I am gaining some appreciation for the detail-focused mindset. It's just two ways to look at things.

pseudonimble 15y ago

My experience with IT education in the UK is genuinely atrocious. During secondary school we made a spreadsheet in Excel and a couple of Word documents. The closest thing to programming was a picture of traffic lights we had to "programmatically" operate. For a single hour lesson. And that is it. We were lucky if our computers even turned on.

estel 15y ago
I remember going a step further than using VBA macros in Access at least once... Using LOGO in Primary School was far better.
wazoox 15y ago
The problem is that teachers are often completely computer-illiterate. This is a chicken-and-egg problem; you won't teach proper, interesting computing activities without competent teachers.
- _delirium 15y ago
  Although true in general, some subset of students will figure out interesting things, and then show them to others, if you at least put them in an environment where that's possible. My middle-school computing class was not particularly well taught, but the curriculum included a few simple things in Hypercard, and Hypercard was the kind of environment where students who finished the official assignments early could find all sorts of other cool things to do in it. That does also require having free time. There's a trend lately towards assuming that any free time students have is wasted time in which they could be learning instead of goofing off, which I'm not sure is the right way to look at it.
morsch 15y ago
We programmed abstract data structures in Pascal. I think we implemented quicksort. I guess I was lucky? Fun story: The first time I was truly speechless in CS in high school was when my teacher, looking at my code, told me that, for a boolean variable foo, it's not necessary or reasonable to write IF foo = TRUE THEN // whatever; "=" is comparison in Pascal BTW but rather you can just write IF foo THEN // whatever It seems trivial, even stupid now, but at the time it was an eye-opener.

itmag 15y ago

Why is it that coding is such a rare (relatively speaking) skill? Sure, there are some hard concepts in coding, but for loops and conditional statements are hardly more difficult to understand than a lot of the math which gets taught in junior high. Speaking of that, why is it essential for young people to learn algebra but not to learn for and if?

lclarkmichalek 15y ago
The simplest way would be to shove computing under the maths curriculum. Teach if with guard statements, and skip for, teach recursion. by the time the kids get to sixth form, have a mathmatical computation course where you teach them to apply their knowledge to a language like haskell that mirrors mathmatical notation quite well.
- itmag 15y ago
  I would probably just go with Python or something. Teach them variables, for loops, if statements, printing stuff to the screen, stuff like that. That way they get a good notion of what programming actually is. I'm only now getting into functional programming. I would not have grokked it very well when I was like 12 years old.
  - philwelch 15y ago
    Maybe functional programming would be easier to grasp had you not learned imperative programming first.
    - kabdib 15y ago
      I never had a problem with this, and my first few languages were BASIC, assembly and C. LISP came naturally to me a few years later. I think the problem is that people are /used/ to imperative programs, and aren't given real practice in functional programming. There are also FP zealots, some of whom maintain that learning IP first causes damage. I think this attitude is toxic and doesn't actually help their "cause" (as if good tools needed a "cause" -- good tools should just be good tools).

siddMahen 15y ago

I've spoken to both of my principals and my ICT teacher about introducing a solid computer science course and scraping "ICT". As a student and a avid programmer, I find it horrible that we don't get a chance to truly leverage the power of computers. The reason I don't think CS is being widely adopted is because many students have been conditioned to accept ICT as a good computer course and have no clue as to what you can achieve with proper training and a computer. My classmates aren't interested in CS because they think it's way to difficult and has no tangible effect on society. On top of that, both of my previous ICT teachers had no clue how to program: those days were spent editing movies and making animations in Flash. Glad to see the powers that be finally take some initiative to solve this problem...

wingo 15y ago

It is important, but I prefer Eben Moglen's analogy: "Software is what the 21st century is made of. What steel was to the economy of the 20th century, what steel was to the power of the 20th century, what steel was to the politics of the 20th century, software is now. It is the crucial building block, the component out of which everything else is made, and, when I speak of everything else, I mean of course freedom, as well as tyranny, as well as business as usual, as well as spying on everybody for free all the time." http://www.softwarefreedom.org/events/2011/fosdem/moglen-fosdem-keynote.html http://www.softwarefreedom.org/events/2011/fosdem/moglen-fos...

berntb 15y ago
Check the total number of steel workers as percentage of the work force in the year 1900 to a hundred years later. Very much less. My personal lesson from this, is that computer software jobs in general might soon have the hourly pay of PHP coders on elance. (Then the cycle of few people studying computer science will repeat... like ten years ago.)
- guard-of-terra 15y ago
  What makes you think "soon"? It's obvious that in some distant point of future programming will cease to be The hot thing to do, but what makes you think it might be soon enough for us to see it?
  - adestefan 15y ago
    I'm not sure that steelworkers were ever "the hot thing to do." The downfall of the steel industry in the US is multifaceted, but mainly boils down to the fact that importing steel from outside US is cheaper than producing it in the US and technological improvements in building with steel has greatly reduced the number of people needed to construct things with steel. Take from that what you will about the software industry, but just remember that everyone either gets replaced by someone cheaper or technology takes their job away.
- sedachv 15y ago

tpatke 15y ago

When I think about all of the problems with the education system I am not sure that "teaching coding" would top that list. The bottom line is that coding is a profession which is not suited to everyone. I remember being a TA at university in the late 90s when IT was booming. Everyone wanted to learn to program. Once they learned enough to realize it meant sitting in front of a computer alone all day - most moved on to something else. Few people have the concentration / (lack of :-) social aptitude. I believe most people have the intelligence. Basic computer skills need to be taught. Coding? It should possibly be a required semester in university for all majors. ...beyond that? Does everyone really need to know about recursion?

Jach 15y ago
> Does everyone really need to know about recursion? Yes, and I'd argue indirection as well. If you teach coding without recursion, you're just teaching basic logic coupled with arithmetic, we have classes for that already. (As an aside, I think iteration should be introduced as a special case to recursion.)
_delirium 15y ago
One proposal, which I'm somewhat sympathetic to, that a general cognitive skill of being able to think procedurally or computationally is important in the 21st century, even if the craft of being able to program is more specialized. Some papers on that: http://www.bogost.com/writing/procedural_literacy.shtml http://www.bogost.com/writing/procedural_literacy.shtml http://dm.lcc.gatech.edu/~mateas/publications/MateasOTH2005.pdf http://dm.lcc.gatech.edu/~mateas/publications/MateasOTH2005.... http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/usr/wing/www/publications/Wing06.pdf http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/usr/wing/www/publications/Wing0...
bad_user 15y ago
Does everyone really need to know about recursion? Does everyone really need to know the basics of calculus? Or how about genetics? Does everyone really need to know French? I had classes for the above in my high-school. In fact I can't think of any class I took in high-school that isn't useless to a large portion of high-school graduates. And I can't think of many examples that are more useful than grasping the concept of recursion.

cafard 15y ago

Ewnay atinlay? ixnay!

tezza 15y ago

Who here studied Latin? Well I did Latin for 6 years in High School (Sydney Boys fyi). I find this title "Coding - the new Latin" as a bizarre way of inducing people to learn to code. Latin is dead. Very dead. Back in my day Latin was billed as "The Fastest Growing Language", but that never transpired. Now if you want to read Caesar, Virgil, Catulus et al, then fine learn Latin. But Latin is no longer the ticket to an elite private members club that it once was. Latin - is also a language that you exclusively read. There is so little creative element to it. One furthers oneself in Latin by re/interpreting existing works. Coding - is a creative craft where you take instructions and make something that never existed before. It would be better to strap coding onto something intensely creative: Technical Drawing Metal Work Fine Art, Sculpture

derleth 15y ago
> Coding - is a creative craft where you take instructions and make something that never existed before. Mathematics - is a creative craft where you take a formal system (a structure purely of the mind) and create something (a new theorem, an addition to the structure) that never existed before. That is what mathematics is. That is why there are math majors. If it were all rote nonsense, computers would be doing all of it by now; computers are cheaper than people for rote nonsense, after all. So, to tie this back to the topic, teaching programming correctly would be much easier if we taught mathematics correctly.
- delinka 15y ago
  Making advances in math indeed requires creativity. But actually creating something new and expanding mathematics is a Very Hard Problem. It doesn't lend itself to "instant creation" like programming does. Sure, you can apply formulas in many areas of business and life, and you can create simple formulas for these things-- doesn't take a math major. As to your last sentence, I completely agree.
cletus 15y ago
I believe you're missing the point. Here are some historical uses of Latin: - Obviously it was the language of the Roman Empire; - It is the basis for many European languages; - It was the language of Christianity, the Papacy for thousands of years (tying in somewhat historically with the conversion of Constantine). This went so far as Roman Catholic services being held in Latin until IIRC the 1960s; - Prior to the printing press, books were the province of monks and the like so being educated (in Western Europe) involved speaking Latin; - In England, Latin was the language of court and the law for centuries. There are many Latin terms--even in American law--for a reason; - Latin was the language of science. Element names in chemistry, species names in biology and so on have Latin roots; - For centuries, Latin was the lingua franca of the ruling class of Europe. The short of it is that being able to speak, read and write Latin in medieval and Renaissance Europe was power. More to the point, if you didn't know Latin, you were essentially excluded from many things (as many people were). Knowing Latin had as much power and influence as literacy in general. So what the author is saying is the ability "speak" the language of computers, the ability to communicate with them and make them do things, is the 21st century version of the thrall once held by Latin. Many have spoken about how expensive it was to launch a dot-com company in the 90s and how that cost has essentially decreased by two orders of magnitude in a decade. One might have thought this would make engineers less valuable as our skills would've been commoditized to some degree. The converse has happened. While other costs have largely vanished, more businesses became possible that never were before. There seems to be an insatiable demand for engineering talent, at least for the short to medium term. Last century the dream was the 21st century would be about space exploration and an otherwise "Star Trek" like future. Instead I believe the story about the 21st century will be what incredible things we do with computers. Genetic engineering, curing diseases, artificial intelligence, you name it. This may go so far as to essentially stratify society. It's hard to overstate just how importance computers will be in the next century (IMHO).

nobody314159265 15y ago

Coding - the new maths! Students are dropping IT in schools - good. Not taking IT at college probably also good. IT in schools has (and always will be) crap. The problem is that nobody has any idea what to teach. When it started in the early 80s we drew flowcharts and wrote programs in Basic then did exams on the definitions of a mainframe, mini and microcomputer. Then it gradually evolved to 'useful' skills - so IT today is how to format word documents and create powerpoint slides. If the brightest students are dropping this - then there is some hope for the future. Similarly most CS course (except of course your favourite Uni) have become "teach Java in 21weeks" - repeat for 3years.

jamesrcole 15y ago

And it looks like they've found what could be a great slogan for their campaign. "Coding is the new Latin," says Alex Hope... To echo number of the other comments here (and try and respond to some of the criticisms of those comments): I think that's a terrible slogan. The point of a slogan is to be immediate - something appealing that gets the point across in a catchy and unambiguous fashion. I think that the associations (and slogans are about associations) Latin has for most people is a language that is presently irrelevant and of no practical purpose. It may have once been really significant, and it may have played an important role in the world becoming what it is today, but such details are not the things that the term "Latin" immediately invokes for most people, and what it immediately invokes is what matters for a slogan. Being a great analogy does not make it a great slogan.