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Ask HN: To encourage new coders should we adopt a new approach?
I think more people would consider learning programming if they understood it as a skill to add to the pursuit of their main interest. Young people see many careers as more prestigious, glamorous, or more exciting. For example, I think they could be encouraged by seeing that a research scientist who can program as having a skill that could make them more productive. They could for example automate the aspects of their job that are mundane and stretch their grant money further.
I also see many entrepreneurs come up with companies that combine programming with their primary area of expertise. I even see doctors who write programs to help do their job.
I just don't think its an angle that initiatives examine.
A dual interest person can fall back onto their comp-sci skills they have if they cannot find work in their primary interest as well.
- chiefalchemist 4y agoContrarian thought: Is this what we want to do? With things like GitHub CoPilot, numerous no-code solutions, coding being codified, etc. how much skill and demand is there looking ahead? I wonder if the future is as bright as the pass. Perhaps it's just me.
- satyrnein 4y agoI wonder if the future is as bright as the pass. Depends on whether you mean for dev salaries or for humanity as a whole.
- tjpnz 4y agoI don't think CoPilot belongs in the same category as no-code. If you don't have any coding experience you'll struggle to express what you want it to write into words, much less be able to integrate it into a larger system.
- chiefalchemist 4y agoMy lens is CoPilot makes those already writing code more effective (i.e., there's less need for more who can write code). That said, and to your point, with CoPilot - which is still early days - we don't need to teach people to write code, we need them to express ideas in a way that CoPilot (or similar) can understand and convert into code. Which might be something that that original question answers.
- codingdave 4y agoMore and more school districts are teaching coding as kids grow up, so they already know it is a skill they can use for work. Just like everything else they learned in school. And those who love it are pursuing for work, while those who do not are going other directions. All of that seems fine to me - it may be worth considering that when coding is integrated into your worldview as just one tool among many, not everyone will pick it out as the tool they want to dedicate their life to. And based on how many angry, cynical, burnt-out coders exist in our industry... the fact that some young people are not pursuing it may be a healthy choice.
- schnebbau 4y agoNo because more new coders would drive salaries down. As a developer who enjoys being paid a butt-load, I propose we raise the bar even higher.
- gyulai 4y agoSounds great! I'll set up a professional body for CBPs (certified brainfuck practitioners) and will get my cronies in government to pass a law against code being written in any language other than brainfuck or by any person who isn't a CBP. You can become a CBP by apprenticing with me for 3 years, during which time you'll do software projects for my clients. Obviously the clients will pay me, not you, and I'll pocket the difference between what they pay me and the minimum wage I'll be paying you. In return, I'll teach you nothing, and I'll reserve the right to kick you out on the street before your 3 years are over. This model works great for other professions. And I'm getting too old anyway to be making my living in any way other than by rent-seeking -- which seems to be what everybody else is doing.
- lakomen 4y agoAre there enough coders already? For me coding is not a love story. It can be fun bit mostly it takes absurd amounts of time, time I would rather spend doing something fun and exciting. No, living in your head creating imaginary worlds isn't what I consider being fun. Music creation, DJing, dancing, hanging out with people, traveling is more fun. Coding is a means to an end, something to get me closer to the goal of not having to work because my income comes passively. It's not a good life. Staring at the screen for hours days weeks years. It's imitation of life in every sense. Slavery even. Also why do you care if people decide to be coders? Let them do what makes them happy
- MisterSandman 4y agoThis comment is unironically based LOL. It's a very cynical take, but I do agree that coding and programming doesn't need to be universal, and any attempt to do so has failed. There is/was this strange wave of every educator demanding programming be taught to middle schoolers and high schoolers. It never turned out great - at best, they were taught very basic Scratch that helped them develop their problem solving skills vs. their programming skills. Computer literacy is far more important, and is completely decoupled from coding. Instead of coding, every student should be taught how the internet genuinely functions, how digital privacy works and more. Knowing how a for loop works doesn't help with any of that.
- fdewrewrewf 4y ago>Also why do you care if people decide to be coders? Probably due the narrative that privileged, young white men control the world with their computer programming. The reality is, ironically, that programming is how well-meaning people with a certain type of smarts find themselves grinding away to perform other people's wishes.
- leidenfrost 4y agoProgramming is fun, but learning to program from zero is boring. And that's partly because the way it's being lectured. Learning to program it's like learning to speak a new language. And learning a new language is boring when all you can do is completing some monotonous exercises with no evident real life use. It's 2022, computers have become way bigger and complex since 1980, and "look this device can prompt for a number in the terminal and multiply it!" Does not excite everyone anymore. Also, the distance from "hello world" to "use your coding skills creatively" is really high, and a lot of people just bail before they get to that goal. We should play more with integrated circuits, where a few lines in C, Go or Rust can generate something tangible, ann slowly raise the level to effective modern code. Humans learn through experience, with actions and with the expectation of some feedback with results. Solving a buttloads of mindless exercises that have no distinctive purpose is not a good way of learning
- hellisothers 4y agoI can’t relate to this experience, is this referring to university CS programs? Any online lesson or coding camp will have you doing something constructive on day one.
- satyrnein 4y agoSolving a buttloads of mindless exercises that have no distinctive purpose is not a good way of learning I agree but I think for non-engineers, starting from circuits is not the best approach. Just the same way everyone uses Excel, I think no-code tools may evolve into something that everyone uses.
- gyulai 4y ago> Also, the distance from "hello world" to "use your coding skills creatively" is really high, and a lot of people just bail before they get to that goal. I agree. When I got into programming as a teenager in the 90s, you could pretty quickly go from having fun with IBM Logo, to learning Turbo Pascal, to writing an application in Delphi that, e.g. your uncle running a small business can get actual use out of. It's probably not like that any more. What you get out of your effort is probably a narrower specialization now than you would have gotten back then, or, conversely, you'd have to put in a lot more effort to become similarly versatile as you would have been back then.
- jstx1 4y agoDoes anyone need to be encouranged to do anything? Expose kids to programming when they're young, give them resources and opportunities to learn and the ones that are interested will get deeper into it; and some of the people who don't pick it up when they're young will come back to it later in life. Everyone else can go about their life and pursue the things that they like instead of being encouraged to do whatever.
- danjoredd 4y agoI like this answer. Not everyone is a programmer, and not everyone needs to be a programmer. Introducing coding as kids will give that spark to a few people who are interested in it to pursue it
- Kim_Bruning 4y agoNot everyone is Shakespeare or JK Rowling either, but we still teach people to read and write in primary school. Because the world around you has a lot of words in it, and it's a useful skill to have. And as has been proven by history, a citizenry with a grasp of writing and rhetoric has a much better chance of standing up for themselves! Nor is everyone Pythagoras or Euclid, but we still teach people counting and adding and geometry in primary school. We do so because the world around you is full of numbers, so it's a useful skill to have. And a citizenry with a basic grasp of numbers and logic is harder to mislead. In the 21st century, the world around you is now full of programs too. * The clothes you wear (looms were programmed with punch cards before computers even existed) * The telephone in your pocket * Your credit/debit/loyalty/etc cards in your wallet for interfacing with diverse services * Your key-fob which interacts with your car in magical ways. * Computers on every desk, in every car, in every tractor, controlling factories, administering stores... etc And not just that, remember that your body itself has kinds of programs at two different levels at least. * DNA transcription is very reminiscent of Turing machine. * Neural Networks are all the rage in ML and AI these days. Humans have these built in too. Albeit a very advanced, powerful, and efficient variant. So why shouldn't we teach everyone the basics of programming, even if just a little? We needn't expect them to become Linus Torvalds or John Carmack or anything. Just enough so they're a little familiar with the magic behind the curtain. Maybe that's just enough intuition to still be able to eg. fix a modern tractor or a car?
- danjoredd 4y agoThat may help. In college I knew a math major who used python to simulate physics for his presentations, so that kind of marketing may help. The problem is it needs to be taught in a way that makes sense for different people's use-case. A person using it for math will not be using it in the same way a biologist would, and so on.
- kradeelav 4y agoThe legion of folks who learned to code via geocities/neocities websites/tumblr themes are a fantastic example of this. :)
- NoZZz 4y agoI think we need less programming languages, and less evolution in their development. So that actually doing something with said languages becomes interesting again ;)
- nonasktell 4y agoWhy do you want new coders? We want more money
- an_aparallel 4y agoThanks for starting this topic. I'll chime in - not as someone who codes - but as someone who has tried, on many ocasions. As some comments mention - one of the biggest AHA moments to have is - learning programming must occur in parallel with a goal. Anecdote time - i'm an obsessive music collector, and not long ago discovered mp3tag's regex functions. Mind...blown - i read the tables describing the regex actions many times - it all felt like gibberish - kept trying....and BAM! it clicked. I can almost guarantee learning anything like this without the strong motivation to avoid manual retagging - would not nearly work as well. Contrast the above - with my current position - working my way - incredibly slowly through Harvard's CS50 - nested for loops make my brain spin out. But just recently - i kept looking for intro explanations...and found a flow chart. With a flow chart in hand, looking at the sample code in one of the code examples made so much more sense. There is such a plethora of learning materials out there in regards to code - i feel that there is gradually more improvement in clarity of explanation for people like myself (who dont "just pick it up"). The area I feel needs the most work is small exercises which build on the exercise before it. Please no more cryptic puzzles (python challenge was actually super fun - but the concept behind just randomly googling - VS - applying something i've learnt...seems off?) I would love something like "maths exercises" but for code. perhaps i've not looked hard enough?