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A) What Jeff thinks we're saying: "Everyone should be programmers so the world would be a better place" B) What Jeff thinks is the right: "Everyone should be t

A) What Jeff thinks we're saying: "Everyone should be programmers so the world would be a better place" B) What Jeff thinks is the right: "Everyone should be technically literate for their own good" C) What we're actually saying: "Everyone should be technically literate for their own good" You can observe that B and C are the same. So we actually agree, but some haven't noticed it yet. Only because the sentence "learn to code" can be very ambiguous. After having studied natural language programming, I've come to realize that 90% of disagreements between human beings derive from semantic misunderstanding of ambiguities. This is just yet another example. Kinda funny to be honest. Watching the blogs argue with each other is similar to watching Abbot and Costello arguing who is on first [1]. [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sShMA85pv8M http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sShMA85pv8M

jwingy 14y ago
Kinda ironic too when people are arguing about the importance of learning programming because it teaches logic...
adeelk 14y ago
I don’t think so. When does “programming” ever mean technical literacy? What Atwood is arguing against is the idea that “everyone needs to learn programming”. Because of the title he chose for his first post (which didn’t actually represent his point correctly), now many other groups of people, with a lot of varying views, are arguing with him on points he wasn’t even making. You individually are arguing that everyone should be technically literate, but that’s not what he was arguing against anyway.
benatkin 14y ago
No, Jeff is actually wrong here. He's had two articles and numerous comments to point out what he really meant by the statement "Please Don't Learn to Code", and he still maintains that programming is only for programmers. We have a major non-programmer programming community with R now. There are, and have been, many others.

jwingy 14y ago

Kinda ironic too when people are arguing about the importance of learning programming because it teaches logic...

adeelk 14y ago

I don’t think so. When does “programming” ever mean technical literacy? What Atwood is arguing against is the idea that “everyone needs to learn programming”. Because of the title he chose for his first post (which didn’t actually represent his point correctly), now many other groups of people, with a lot of varying views, are arguing with him on points he wasn’t even making. You individually are arguing that everyone should be technically literate, but that’s not what he was arguing against anyway.

benatkin 14y ago

No, Jeff is actually wrong here. He's had two articles and numerous comments to point out what he really meant by the statement "Please Don't Learn to Code", and he still maintains that programming is only for programmers. We have a major non-programmer programming community with R now. There are, and have been, many others.