3 ms·

> 4) As relevant to HN, K-12 schools are making coding increasingly mandatory, so that skillset is less and less exclusive I'm not buying this. Literacy is dec

> 4) As relevant to HN, K-12 schools are making coding increasingly mandatory, so that skillset is less and less exclusive I'm not buying this. Literacy is declining in the US - and it's not like the older people have forgotten how to read, so we can safely conclude that fewer and fewer of the younger people can read and you think somehow these illiterate people are learning to code? One could argue, and many have, that a bachelor's degree in computer science doesn't prepare one for being a professional developer. A secondary education level developer? On average (discarding the very few exceptional students)? Nope. They're not in your competition pool.

nasmorn 3y ago
Most people cannot even describe their projects in enough detail that an exceptional developer could build it. Now they are supposed to just do it all themselves because they wrote fizzbuzz in high school once? That seems very optimistic
delfinom 3y ago
Literacy's decline can be partially blamed on literally liberal elitists sitting in an ivory tower pushing an absolutely scientifically unproven and bullshit method of teaching kids to read and the dividends are paying real hard now. https://apnews.com/article/phonics-science-reading-c715dea43f338f163715b01b83bb1066 https://apnews.com/article/phonics-science-reading-c715dea43... https://slate.com/human-interest/2023/10/reading-phonics-literacy-calkins-curriculum-public-school.html https://slate.com/human-interest/2023/10/reading-phonics-lit... https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-how-schools-teach-reading https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-ho...
- taylodl 3y ago
  You know schools are locally run and controlled, right? Those so-called "liberal elitists" can only do what a locale allows them to do, meaning, those "liberal elitists" aren't the problem.
  - blagie 3y ago
    OP's political undertones aside, schools like Stanford and MIT fake a lot of data. I have zero ability to tell a school that some study they're relying on is faked if the author is at an elite school. This specific rot is in universities and not local to school districts. The most common scientific method used for most high-impact education research: 1. Pick a story people (teachers, parents, journalists, fellow academics) want to hear. 2. Bake data to support it. 3. Publish it. 4. See people pick up on it. 5. Tenure. Other domains of research have related, but different, scientific methods. There is rot local to school districts, but it's not the same rot. This stuff hurts kids. I'm increasingly moving towards the strict liability side of the debate. If a university publishes results like this, and my district wastes a million dollars on pseudoscience in reliance on that research, that ought to come back as damages. Ditto for people harmed by bad medical research and other domains. All of this would happen just as surely if the universities were staffed by conservatives as by liberals. It's how we've set up incentives.
HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
Not buying what? That the coding instruction is happening, or that the skillset is less exclusive? My 14 year-old came to me to help him debug a Python script that he had to write for his Technology class. I didn't even know that they were teaching programming until then. And this is for a rural school district in farming country. So yeah, it's happening. As far as whether or not the skillset is less exclusive, I don't think that we have much to worry about. It doesn't seem that people are having less trouble learning to program today than they did 30 years ago when I was tutoring in CS. And this is with far more resources available now.
blagie 3y ago
It's not just the US anymore. A child in rural Jamaica can learn to program, if sufficiently motivated and ambitious. Arguendo, if the US has a gap there, that would only strengthen the macroeconomic trend I described. Why should I pay an illiterate American 150k, when a Jamaican student can do the same better for a fraction of the cost? And yes, many of the Caribbean education systems are increasingly impressive.

nasmorn 3y ago

Most people cannot even describe their projects in enough detail that an exceptional developer could build it. Now they are supposed to just do it all themselves because they wrote fizzbuzz in high school once? That seems very optimistic

delfinom 3y ago

Literacy's decline can be partially blamed on literally liberal elitists sitting in an ivory tower pushing an absolutely scientifically unproven and bullshit method of teaching kids to read and the dividends are paying real hard now. https://apnews.com/article/phonics-science-reading-c715dea43f338f163715b01b83bb1066 https://apnews.com/article/phonics-science-reading-c715dea43... https://slate.com/human-interest/2023/10/reading-phonics-literacy-calkins-curriculum-public-school.html https://slate.com/human-interest/2023/10/reading-phonics-lit... https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-how-schools-teach-reading https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-ho...

taylodl 3y ago
You know schools are locally run and controlled, right? Those so-called "liberal elitists" can only do what a locale allows them to do, meaning, those "liberal elitists" aren't the problem.
- blagie 3y ago
  OP's political undertones aside, schools like Stanford and MIT fake a lot of data. I have zero ability to tell a school that some study they're relying on is faked if the author is at an elite school. This specific rot is in universities and not local to school districts. The most common scientific method used for most high-impact education research: 1. Pick a story people (teachers, parents, journalists, fellow academics) want to hear. 2. Bake data to support it. 3. Publish it. 4. See people pick up on it. 5. Tenure. Other domains of research have related, but different, scientific methods. There is rot local to school districts, but it's not the same rot. This stuff hurts kids. I'm increasingly moving towards the strict liability side of the debate. If a university publishes results like this, and my district wastes a million dollars on pseudoscience in reliance on that research, that ought to come back as damages. Ditto for people harmed by bad medical research and other domains. All of this would happen just as surely if the universities were staffed by conservatives as by liberals. It's how we've set up incentives.

HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago

Not buying what? That the coding instruction is happening, or that the skillset is less exclusive? My 14 year-old came to me to help him debug a Python script that he had to write for his Technology class. I didn't even know that they were teaching programming until then. And this is for a rural school district in farming country. So yeah, it's happening. As far as whether or not the skillset is less exclusive, I don't think that we have much to worry about. It doesn't seem that people are having less trouble learning to program today than they did 30 years ago when I was tutoring in CS. And this is with far more resources available now.

blagie 3y ago

It's not just the US anymore. A child in rural Jamaica can learn to program, if sufficiently motivated and ambitious. Arguendo, if the US has a gap there, that would only strengthen the macroeconomic trend I described. Why should I pay an illiterate American 150k, when a Jamaican student can do the same better for a fraction of the cost? And yes, many of the Caribbean education systems are increasingly impressive.