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Software development is a lifestyle choice like literacy is a lifestyle choice. If you don't know how to read, you're still totally fine. You just can't: - C

Software development is a lifestyle choice like literacy is a lifestyle choice. If you don't know how to read, you're still totally fine. You just can't: - Communicate your thoughts - Learn new things - Understand warnings about dangerous conditions - Make more than a certain amount of money per year - Participate meaningfully in your government etc. As computers further saturate our existence, the divide between those who truly understand their operation, maintenance and programming will produce scary inequalities. Software solves a lot of problems. If you know how to write it, you can solve problems faster and more efficiently than a person who does not. Debugging is a problem solving framework with tremendous application to all realms, not just tech. Those able to debug their technological lives will find life a lot cheaper than those who must pay others for the same. Not everyone needs to be a professional software developer. But I posit that everyone can benefit from knowing how to write software to direct the actions of their computing device. And regardless of our handwringing in one direction or another, it's going that way anyway. Lots of people are pretty decent functional programmers in their Excel spreadsheets. It'll grow organically from these sorts of tools and frameworks. But seeing the inevitable, I'd sure love to see more people taught computer literacy – programming/scripting included – with the same mandatory nature as language or math.

dinkumthinkum 14y ago
I could say the same thing about electrical engineering but I don't think you would find that as interesting in argument; no one has ever really seriously suggested, that has gotten as much press as "code fever" as regarding everyone needing to learn about energy and electricity. I submit those technologies pervade our culture much more than programming, as well programming real computers that poeple use is only possible because of the former. Why's programming so special in this sense? Because people can whip together "yet another blog in RoR" YouTube videos but maybe electromagnetism not so easy? I dunno. In a funny way, it's like software "engineers" are putting their hands up and saying "I give up. We don't know how to make software or user interfaces for users to use in sensible way so we give up, now we think all our users need to learn to program for us." It's kind of cute. :) If you think a lot of people are pretty decent functional programmers in Excel spreadsheets ... I wonder what you're definition of "a lot" is, I don't think that's really true. Given the state of pre-college education, I sort of feel like we're just saying "math is hard, let's see if we can at least teach these kids dynamic programming languages so they can at least make a simple blog engine instead." It's like we're going to throw more stuff into a system that needs to be reworked, anyway. The other side of it is like ... it's not as if kids are not learning to program as it is. That's what is strange to me; most good/great programmers I know started as kids with various socio-economic backgrounds.

dinkumthinkum 14y ago

I could say the same thing about electrical engineering but I don't think you would find that as interesting in argument; no one has ever really seriously suggested, that has gotten as much press as "code fever" as regarding everyone needing to learn about energy and electricity. I submit those technologies pervade our culture much more than programming, as well programming real computers that poeple use is only possible because of the former. Why's programming so special in this sense? Because people can whip together "yet another blog in RoR" YouTube videos but maybe electromagnetism not so easy? I dunno. In a funny way, it's like software "engineers" are putting their hands up and saying "I give up. We don't know how to make software or user interfaces for users to use in sensible way so we give up, now we think all our users need to learn to program for us." It's kind of cute. :) If you think a lot of people are pretty decent functional programmers in Excel spreadsheets ... I wonder what you're definition of "a lot" is, I don't think that's really true. Given the state of pre-college education, I sort of feel like we're just saying "math is hard, let's see if we can at least teach these kids dynamic programming languages so they can at least make a simple blog engine instead." It's like we're going to throw more stuff into a system that needs to be reworked, anyway. The other side of it is like ... it's not as if kids are not learning to program as it is. That's what is strange to me; most good/great programmers I know started as kids with various socio-economic backgrounds.