8 ms·

A rising tide of literacy lifts all boats, that's why I care. I still don't get why Atwood does, though.

by pohl 14y ago

overgard 14y ago
There's a big difference between literacy and knowing how to code. Literacy means access to the sum total of the world's knowledge. That's huge. That gives you access to everything if you're willing to put in the effort. That's freedom. "Code literacy" means knowing how to tell a computer to do something reliably and the associated lessons that come with that. That's good, but it's not the same. One is the ability to gain new skills at will, the other is just another skill to master. I say all this as a coder who thinks its important, I just think the hyperbole around "programming being the new literacy" to be overblown
- pohl 14y ago
  Literacy means access to the sum total of the world's knowledge. Funny you should use the word 'overblown' after saying something like this. Literacy, at best, gives access to the world's words, not the world's knowledge, and actually only the fraction of the words that are in the language in which one is literate. I'm not just speaking of natural languages, either. A considerable amount of the world's knowledge is expressed in the languages of mathematics and music, for which literacy in English is weak preparation. Another enormous chunk of the world's knowledge is experiential, for which any language is a weak substitute for apprenticeship (at best) or mere doing (at least). The world's knowledge lies behind and endless chain of conceptual hurdles, and the ease with which one can jump over these hurdles while running on the legs of literacy is determined by everything else that one studies.
randomdata 14y ago
Why programming? The study of mechanics seems like it would have a much more profound impact on average people's lives. Often, it seems, I find myself hitting walls in the physical realm where someone with the right background would just build a simple machine to overcome the problem. I would never discourage the pursuit of knowledge, I'm just not seeing why programming gets its very own pedestal. It seems no more important than many other subjects that are not commonly learned by people.
- pohl 14y ago
  Where I'm from, most schools already have shop classes where practical arts like mechanics are taught. So the status quo here is that mechanics is on a pedestal relative to programming.
  - randomdata 14y ago
    That's interesting. The closest thing we had was auto shop, but that's like the learning MS Word equivalent of a programming class. What we did have, interestingly, was some programming lessons, though probably lighter than it should have been.

A rising tide of literacy lifts all boats, that's why I care. I still don't get why Atwood does, though.

by pohl 14y ago

A rising tide of literacy lifts all boats, that's why I care. I still don't get why Atwood does, though.

There's a big difference between literacy and knowing how to code. Literacy means access to the sum total of the world's knowledge. That's huge. That gives you access to everything if you're willing to put in the effort. That's freedom. "Code literacy" means knowing how to tell a computer to do something reliably and the associated lessons that come with that. That's good, but it's not the same. One is the ability to gain new skills at will, the other is just another skill to master. I say all this as a coder who thinks its important, I just think the hyperbole around "programming being the new literacy" to be overblown

pohl 14y ago
Literacy means access to the sum total of the world's knowledge. Funny you should use the word 'overblown' after saying something like this. Literacy, at best, gives access to the world's words, not the world's knowledge, and actually only the fraction of the words that are in the language in which one is literate. I'm not just speaking of natural languages, either. A considerable amount of the world's knowledge is expressed in the languages of mathematics and music, for which literacy in English is weak preparation. Another enormous chunk of the world's knowledge is experiential, for which any language is a weak substitute for apprenticeship (at best) or mere doing (at least). The world's knowledge lies behind and endless chain of conceptual hurdles, and the ease with which one can jump over these hurdles while running on the legs of literacy is determined by everything else that one studies.

randomdata 14y ago

Why programming? The study of mechanics seems like it would have a much more profound impact on average people's lives. Often, it seems, I find myself hitting walls in the physical realm where someone with the right background would just build a simple machine to overcome the problem. I would never discourage the pursuit of knowledge, I'm just not seeing why programming gets its very own pedestal. It seems no more important than many other subjects that are not commonly learned by people.

pohl 14y ago
Where I'm from, most schools already have shop classes where practical arts like mechanics are taught. So the status quo here is that mechanics is on a pedestal relative to programming.
- randomdata 14y ago
  That's interesting. The closest thing we had was auto shop, but that's like the learning MS Word equivalent of a programming class. What we did have, interestingly, was some programming lessons, though probably lighter than it should have been.