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To be honest, these types of posts come off with a level of smugness that I don't have words for. It's this holier-than-thou attitude that prevents us from gett
by zer8k 3y ago
To be honest, these types of posts come off with a level of smugness that I don't have words for. It's this holier-than-thou attitude that prevents us from getting people to use their computers better. Yes, there are 1,000 better options than a visual programming language. But to your point about "using boring technology" the professor chose the most boring technology available that will convey the message effectively. When considering an audience of Non-CS, possibly non-technical, people you will look like a jackass trying to tell them life will be better learning something more complicated. Not everyone wants to spend 6-12 months learning something just to start what they want.
It may humble you to go volunteer to teach adults how to program. Once you're outside the bubble of technically minded people it becomes very obvious how intractable the problem can become. If you're smart, you will arrive at the same conclusion the professor did. In some cases it's often better to start people off with PlaySkool My First Language than immediately plunging them into the depths of language hell. Especially if the goal is simply to improve their productivity.
An example from my personal life. I have taught business people how to think about programming. I generally will sit them down and teach them about Excel, Excel macros, etc. I don't use these in my daily life. I might prefer R, Pandas, or something else. If I recommended those to a non-technical person they would learn nothing. But if I teach them something they can click, play with, etc they will not only be more effective but perhaps eventually be inspired to spread their wings a little. It's not a hit to my ego and I don't look down on them.
- amadeuspagel 3y ago> It may humble you to go volunteer to teach adults how to program. Indeed I've never done that. I would have thought that college students are young and intellegent enough to learn to code, but if that's not the case, and they're supposed to learn how to make websites, then they should learn wordpress, or some other CMS that's actually used. > An example from my personal life. I have taught business people how to think about programming. I generally will sit them down and teach them about Excel, Excel macros, etc. Yes, Excel is a tool that's used in the real world, and that's the kind of tool people should learn.
- Dalewyn 3y agoWe can reasonably presume these students are young and intelligent, but whether they have any interest in becoming computer programmers is a different matter entirely. Remember, these are liberal arts students; their focus of learning is going down a completely different path from computer science or anything to do with engineering. As the history professor wants to show her students, a computer can be used to construct a database of information and a website can be used to present that information for subsequent use. This is for furthering their subject of liberal arts, none of them care exactly how computers or websites work because it doesn't matter to them. So long as they have a rudimentary understanding of what a database is, what a website is, and how they can be used for their goals of studying liberal arts, that's all that matters. They will likely just hire someone with the professional expertise to actually handle the database and website itself later in their careers, because their job is bigger than being a webmaster or a programmer. It's like how the CEO of a company will want to know how a website could further his business endeavours, but wouldn't necessarily be interested in knowing what a website is because his job is running a company and not a web server.