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Tory Boss of Government Coding Education Initiative Can't Code

90 points by choult 13y ago

JazCE 13y ago
This is essentialy the same as: Minister of health is not a surgeon. I do think there is actually a need for a political party whose MP's are actually made up on members of the professions they'll eventually represent (By which I mean they won't represent the actual industry, but the people, but you would have a minister of education who has actual practice of being a teacher or something).
- choult 13y ago
  The Minister of Health doesn't go around stating that every schoolchild should learn how to operate on people...
  - mattmanser 13y ago
    In a day.
  - arethuza 13y ago
    Don't give them any ideas on how to "improve" the NHS!
  - w0utert 13y ago
    >> The Minister of Health doesn't go around stating that every schoolchild should learn how to operate on people... Or how it would 'only take a day' to learn how to operate on people, for that matter. I'm not so much surprised that someone in her position doesn't know how to code (she doesnt't have to, really), but at the very least I expect you to have a basic understanding of the depth and breadth of the topic, and not make sweeping, distracting and confusing statements like this. A little preparation, just a few hours of talking to people who are knowledgeable on the topic, would go a long way not making a fool out of yourself.
    - tragic 13y ago
      >> The Minister of Health doesn't go around stating that every schoolchild should learn how to operate on people... > Or how it would 'only take a day' to learn how to operate on people, for that matter. ...Nor does he lack even a layperson's grasp of what surgery is. I feel rather sorry for her, though - aren't politicians supposed to be briefed for public appearances nowadays so things like this Just Don't Happen?
  - moron4hire 13y ago
    Probably does think that every school child should learn biology, though, with a few labs involving animal specimen dissections. We aren't talking about "teaching kids to develop software". This is "teaching kids to put code in a text editor and run a compiler on it."
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- desas 13y ago
  Lottie Dexter is not a politician, she's a civil servant. She should have been appointed based on her professional neutrality and ability to do the job, a substantial part of which appears to be to lead a team promoting how to learn programming.
  - arethuza 13y ago
    I don't think she is a civil servant - she is described as "Director" of the Million Jobs Campaign - no idea what the legal status of that is (couldn't find it as a charity or a limited company). Also, the idea that civil servants are appointed based on "ability to do the job" is, for lack of a better term, amusing. NB The UK Civil Service is precisely the kind of organization that I suspect Michael Young had in mind when he coined the much-abused term "meritocracy": http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/29/comment http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/29/comment
    - true_religion 13y ago
      Desas is talking about the way the world should be, not the way the world is.
      - arethuza 13y ago
        Ahhh - I have failed to detect sarcasm, I will surrender my nationality.
- WilliamMayor 13y ago
  I've had this conversation with a friend of mine the other day and he raised an interesting point. When the NHS was first being proposed the doctors at the time were strongly against it. The Health Secretary (Bevan I think) just flat refused to listen to what the doctors were telling him. He told them that it didn't matter what their complaints were, he was going to start a national health service. If we had a system where you had to be an expert in a field before you could be in government then we would lose things like this. We would also lose problems with idiots running things (cough Gove cough). Overall though, we would never have change, our elected officials would only ever vote to maintain the status quo. Additionally, we vote for people to represent us in government, I don't know that doctors could ever truly represent my views on health care. I would just like to add a note that none of the things that I've represented as facts above have been checked. I learnt them in the pub, they might be wrong. Let me know (nicely).
  - czr80 13y ago
    Wikipedia agrees with you: On the "appointed day", 5 July 1948, having overcome political opposition from both the Conservative Party and from within his own party, and after a dramatic showdown with the British Medical Association, which had threatened to derail the National Health Service scheme before it had even begun, as medical practitioners continued to withhold their support just months before the launch of the service, Bevan's National Health Service Act of 1946 came into force. After 18 months of ongoing dispute between the Ministry of Health and the BMA, Bevan finally managed to win over the support of the vast majority of the medical profession by offering a couple of minor concessions, but without compromising on the fundamental principles of his NHS proposals. Bevan later gave the famous quote that, in order to broker the deal, he had "stuffed their mouths with gold". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneurin_Bevan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneurin_Bevan
- yen223 13y ago
  That's a fundamental problem with modern democracy - it doesn't optimize for talent, it optimizes for charisma.
  - arethuza 13y ago
    Consider Clement Attlee, possibly the most influential PM of the 20th century (yes, even more so than Churchill or Thatcher) was fabulously uncharismatic being described by Thatcher as "all substance and no show": http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1194059/A-giant-man-Clem-Attlee-stood-decency-duty--stark-contrast-todays-MPs.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1194059/A-giant-ma...
    - yen223 13y ago
      "...when an interviewer asked if he had any thoughts about the coming general election, replied simply: 'No.'" I need to have a beer with this guy.
      - arethuza 13y ago
        I can recommend "Live from Downing Street" by Nick Robinson - it contrasts the media styles of all of the PMs (at least since there has been a "media" reporting on Parliament): http://www.amazon.co.uk/Live-Downing-Street-Nick-Robinson/dp/0857500007 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Live-Downing-Street-Nick-Robinson/dp... Personally, I think this country is long overdue a Attlee, Bevan or even a Thatcher - leaders who actually believed in something.
    - zbyszek 13y ago
      The famous jibe is along the lines of "An empty taxi drew up outside 10 Downing Street and Clement Attlee got out", attributed to Winston Churchill, but I think he denied it.
      - gaius 13y ago
        Churchill described Atlee as a modest man with much to be modest about.
- colin_jack 13y ago
  > This is essentialy the same as: Minister of health is not a surgeon. Its more that she doesn't even know what a surgeon does but thinks you can train a surgeon up in a day.
- TheCoelacanth 13y ago
  I wouldn't expect the minister of health to have a level of knowledge of medicine comparable to that of a practicing medical professional. However, I would expect them to have a level of knowledge that goes significantly beyond what is taught to school-children.
alexbilbie 13y ago
What annoys me the most about all of this is that the media and Government are too focussed on the actual code and not the benefits that come from learning to code. By the time these kids are old enough to gets jobs (so in some cases in 10+ years) technology will be even more prevalent in the work place than it is now and it will penetrate every sector. If kids start learning to code and making things with computers (whether it's apps, websites, programming Lego or robots) then they will become more familiar and comfortable with technology and whilst being able to write a bit of JavaScript may not directly help you get the dream job as a doctor, but being able to sit down in front of a new computer system or patient care device and very quickly learn you way around is a huge benefit to employers - and that will stem because they're going to have 10 years of being exposed to different devices, UI paradigms and OSs. In terms of the code it will hopefully teach the kids some maths skills, language skills (in terms of learning about syntactical structure and expressing your instructions), and also learning to fail (which we still see as a huge negative here in the UK). Of course there are many other benefits and skills they will pick up too. A final thing that pisses me off is this "year of code" aspect, it shouldn't be just one year, it should be tens years of code; the Government should be shouting about how enriched today's 6 years olds will be when they finally leave school to work because of a decade of exposure to technology. </rage>
- vezzy-fnord 13y ago
  and that will stem because they're going to have 10 years of being exposed to different devices, UI paradigms and OSs. I honestly don't expect the compulsory school system to enact anything nearly as elaborate as that. The "learn to code" hysteria is just a desperation move to try and bring back some legitimacy to an already highly ravaged public school system. At best, the course will be something like a JavaSchool. I still find it aggravating that people are for teaching kids to code without learning system administration first. Knows how to write C# scripts, but can't use vi to edit a configuration file.
IE5point5 13y ago
> Expecting anything less from the tories
- awjr 13y ago
  Sorry but no. This isn't a tory only thing. This is down to the political system we have that allows people with little experience in a sector to be put 'in charge'. What I will say is that an expectation to be able to program is not something I would expect from a career politician. I would expect them to listen to advice from those that can. (edit) OK I went and read the article. I take it all back. If you are given a job, you should at least have a basic understanding of what is involved. :(
Fuxy 13y ago
And this is a god example of why government is far removed from its citizens. They all got their gobs through connections not merit. It's like a general who never fraught a war or ever even went through the training.
cmdkeen 13y ago
The article is pretty trolling with it's wider commentary about political placemen. If anything one of the problems the current government has is that it hasn't been placing those sympathetic to their agenda in wider society. Gove is currently in trouble because he isn't renewing the contract of someone he initially appointed. She happens to be a former Labour politician. I'd be far happier if the technically minded politicians were those holding schemes like this to account rather than running them. Running a scheme like this involves lots of skills, none of them technical. She isn't writing the curriculum, she's navigating it through the corridors of power and dealing with all the vested interests for and against it.
- lil_cain 13y ago
  She does have to understand what's involved in the curriculum though. And claiming that teachers can learn to program in a day shows that she doesn't have that.
- lyso 13y ago
  >she's navigating it through the corridors of power and dealing with all the vested interests for and against it. Yes, but she doesn't seem to know what "it" is.
- Tyrannosaurs 13y ago
  Agreed that she doesn't need to be able to code herself (though if you claim that you can learn it in a day then there is a valid question "why didn't you") but one of the things that is part of her job is promoting the programme in a positive way and based on this interview it's hard to say she's doing that. In terms of the government placing people sympathetic to it's agenda in wider society, the role you talk about (the Oftsted role) isn't meant to be a political role. The head of Ofsted is answerable to whatever party is in power but isn't part of the government in a party political way. If you don't do that you end up changing large swathes of the government every five years or more (it's not like governments don't change tack mid parliament) which isn't in anyone's interest. These roles should be on competence rather than political vision.
- fauigerzigerk 13y ago
WilliamMayor 13y ago
I disagree with very little of what she said. OK, so she doesn't know how to code, she admitted that, and she doesn't know a great deal about technology. She confuses graphic design and coding at one point. Here is an MP on Question Time saying all the things I want to say on Question Time. Coding is a vital skill that our education system is ignoring. Children that grow up without any idea of how computers work will be disadvantaged. An economy that has no young work force even introduced to coding will not be digitally productive. When I'm trying to sell the "teach children to code" course that I occasionally run I like to use this metaphor: people that don't know how computers work to even the most basic level aren't people that don't know how an internal combustion engine works. They're people that only know how to get taxis. So don't hate on this woman (even if she is Tory, even if she does know powerful people) because she's standing in our corner fighting our fight.
- pessimizer 13y ago
  I'm pretty sure I was taught to code in a day. 10 PRINT "HELLO" 20 GOTO 10 My first hack was: 10 PRINT "IM A COMPUTER" 20 GOTO 10 Now the system was leaking internal information. The next 30 years have just been variations on a theme. Spawned Erlang processes, in my head, are 20 GOTO 10. edit: The thing that freaks me out about computer illiterate people being in charge of teaching people computing is that they aren't equipped to choose the experts to hire. She can only evaluate them by their connections, their pleasantness, their respect from peers (who also can't be evaluated), and their massive marketing budgets.
  - WilliamMayor 13y ago
    I remember hacking print "Hello world!" into print "Hello World!" and crossing my fingers, pressing the button, and being amazed that it worked! I was convinced that somehow it would be more complicated than that.
    - Beliavsky 13y ago
      I wish Guido van Rossum had left well enough alone, so that the above line was valid code in current Python (it works for Python 2, not Python 3).
danso 13y ago
Steve Jobs: http://www.npr.org/2011/10/06/141115121/steve-jobs-computer-science-is-a-liberal-art http://www.npr.org/2011/10/06/141115121/steve-jobs-computer-... > "In my perspective ... science and computer science is a liberal art, it's something everyone should know how to use, at least, and harness in their life. It's not something that should be relegated to 5 percent of the population over in the corner. It's something that everybody should be exposed to and everyone should have mastery of to some extent, and that's how we viewed computation and these computation devices." Woz: http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-never-wrote-computer-code-for-apple-2013-8 http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-never-wrote-comput... > Steve didn't ever code. He wasn't an engineer and he didn't do any original design, but he was technical enough to alter and change and add to other designs. I did all of the Apple I and Apple ][ myself, including the feature choices. I did all of the BASIC myself (it's in handwriting as I couldn't afford an assembler). The only person who helped write some of the Apple ][ code was Allen Baum, who helped with the 'monitor' program.
gaius 13y ago
You can safely ignore people who call it "coding" not "programming". Similarly ICT vs IT.
- tspiteri 13y ago
  Sure, there is more to "programming" than "coding", but there is also more to racing than driving and we still call F1 drivers "drivers". And there are very valid programmers who call it "coding".
altero 13y ago
But she is a woman! We need more woman who do software development, coding is irrelevant skill.
anaphor 13y ago
Why can't they just appoint SPJ to lead this? He's already part of the Computing At Schools (CAS) organization. See: http://www.computingatschool.org.uk/index.php?id=about-us http://www.computingatschool.org.uk/index.php?id=about-us
- Moru 13y ago
  Sadly todays employer won't hire a coder from UK. He will hire an app-developer from Romania and pay them 20% of your salary per hour.
AdamJBall 13y ago
Needs someone leading who can code, gets the skills issue and also sees the impact of technology. Would be more than happy to put myself forward. (@AdamJBall) - Computer Science grad - Launching a tech startup to help connect businesses and student coders (@CodingCupboard) - Passionate about solving youth unemployment - No political affiliation - All round nice guy
- JetSpiegel 13y ago
  - No political affiliation Disqualified right there. If you don't care about politics, why should you get appointed to a political office?
b43w5 13y ago
"coding" is becoming a marketing buzzword. It's a shame because there are so many facets to programming that children could learn that aren't being emphasised: computer science; web development; UX (I hope this is included somewhere); etc. It's great to include it in the curriculum but I'm sure everyone on here realises that not every child will want to learn it or have the mental aptitude to learn it, but it should lead to more people understanding (it at least on some level).
Xophmeister 13y ago
This may be slightly off-topic (apologies), but what I worry about regarding this scheme are the people/companies who will be brought in to get schools up to speed. Call me cynical if you must, but I think, inevitably, they will be 'IT consultants' that maybe know a bit of SQL, but are otherwise shysters. (That's my impression of the IT consultancy sector in the UK, at least. I'd love to be proven wrong!) Most of the current generation of software engineers taught themselves in the beginning. Or, at least, had enough curiosity and initiative to investigate on their own volition and/or put themselves in knowledge's way (e.g., set themselves up for computer science degrees, etc.) Consultants however are invariably from the world of social engineering, where they get by and succeed through excessive self-confidence and, if you're lucky, they may have picked up a technical anecdote here-or-there. I certainly agree with the sentiment of teaching/introducing proper computer science and/or software engineering to kids, but I can't help but feel that, as a government project, it'll be botched by the lowest bidder or brownest nose.
tomasien 13y ago
That interview is kind of embarrassing, but I think the fact that she can't code and has committed to learning along with others is perfectly fine. The tweets comparing learning to layout an HTML website in an hour to learning complex algorithms in an hour is ridiculous - I learned to make a website in an hour! Crappy, crappy, CRAPPY website but a website nonetheless!
- mistakoala 13y ago
  That's how my first website started. Nothing much more than an <h1> and a few <p>s. I still remember the feeling of almost-elation at seeing it in a browser, too. That might not mean much to you or anybody else, but to someone learning it can be an enormous leap.
  - tomasien 13y ago
    100% agree. I could basically not fucking believe it.
utopkara 13y ago
The problem is, it is very hard to evaluate her success. She needs to know about coding and computer science overall in addition to being good at policy making and running government programs to be able to honestly evaluate her success for herself.
MJR 13y ago
Am I the only one who was confused by the title and thought that the article was about someone named 'Tory Boss'?
Agathos 13y ago
In business, non-programmers love telling coders what to code, how to code, and how long it should take. So this may actually provide students excellent training for the real world.
JanezStupar 13y ago
Am I the only one not seeing anything wrong with what this lady is doing, what her goals are, what her current knowledge is and with what she said in the interview? I must say that I am quite impressed by her and her attitude.
logicallee 13y ago
and Steve Jobs couldn't mill aluminum, even when he championed it for all the macbook bodies. who cares.
BoppreH 13y ago
The article makes it sounds like it's a secret and she's disinterested. The selected quotes make her look like she's underestimating the challenge. But then you listen to the linked excerpt of interview: - "I'm going to put my cards on the table, Jeremy, I can't code. I've committed this year to learning to code, hopefully." - "Take a year?" - "Well, you can do very little in a very short space of time." "Very little" in a "very short space of time" seems sensible. Her explanation of what code is: - "Code is the language you use to instruct computers" I find her position reasonable, and don't see what the fuss is all about. If played well, the "hey, I'm learning to code too!" card could be more valuable than "you should all learn what I already know".
- Tloewald 13y ago
  Good points, although I'm not sure what you meant by "disinterested". "not interested" perhaps?
  - BoppreH 13y ago
    Thanks. English is not my first language, and the dictionary is telling me "disinterested" can mean "having or feeling no interest in something". Am I wrong? And by lack of interest, I mean for example the picture on the header. [ ] Can write code [ ] Can explain what it is [x] Is a Tory [x] Worked for Iain Duncan Smith's think tank I feel that image is trying to convince me she's there for purely political reasons and she's not at all interested in coding.
    - corin_ 13y ago
      Your word choice was fine, and your English sounds great. But I don't think the image was trying to make her seem disinterested, I think it was trying to make her seem unqualified. The person in that job should be interested AND qualified, not interested and politically connected.
      - Tloewald 13y ago
        disinterested means "not having a conflict of interest" not "having no interest", so I was simply trying to clarify the OP.
jerf 13y ago
Scarily, she's probably actually... correct. You can teach a teacher how to teach a student to code in about a day... for the definition of "teach to code" that they are operating with, which often seems to be "here's a book, read out of it, grade student submissions if they look sort of like this and ding them if they don't, now we're going to shove you out the door, good luck!" I mean, yeah, that probably only takes about a day... after all, you're a professional teacher with extension training in teaching, surely it wouldn't take much longer than that or what was all that training for?
- dbond 13y ago
  One of my college teachers actually tried this, it did not end well... A teacher should be a source of qualified help, not just a glorified marking machine. She also wasn't happy that I made space invaders instead of pong...
mistakoala 13y ago
Someone who will have experience of what it's like to learn to code, in charge of some initiative responsible for encouraging people to learn to code(1)? Outrageous! I don't want people at the top to have any understanding of the product they're delivering! (1) Put aside the semantics argument for the moment.
moron4hire 13y ago
I'm really surprised (though maybe I shouldn't be) at the number of people here who are conflating "learning to code in an hour" with "learning how to teach programming in an hour". If your skill as a programmer were dependent on the skill of your teacher as a programmer, then we wouldn't be anywhere. If your skill in anything were dependent on how good your teachers were at the skill itself, rather than at the skill of teaching, then we would really be a lost society. I don't think I had a single teacher in high school or a professor in college that was a better programmer than me, and half of my professors probably couldn't code beyond the old linked list example they were putting up on the projector every semester. They didn't teach me how to program. They taught me how to reason about software. But that isn't the point. As far as I'm concerned, the act of programming is unteachable. The physical act of typing characters in a text editor, running tests on it, and changing some characters with new characters, is all you can teach, but the mental leaps of figuring out which are the right characters and tests and changes for the failing tests takes a lifetime of experience and practice. But that doesn't mean there isn't a role that a teacher can play to instruct students during that personal experience. Otherwise, what is the point of art teachers? It's the same thing, you can't really teach someone to make good art. You can teach them the mechanics of holding a brush and putting paint on a canvas, or taking photos, or writing. I've seen dozens of kids spend small fortunes on art educations at Ivy League schools and they still aren't artists. Because you can't teach them how to make something have meaning. And I knew dozens of kids in my own computer science program who spent the equivalent of a luxury car on a software development education and they still aren't software developers. Few of us stayed in the field, post-graduation, and fewer still are any good at it. The only problem I can foresee with the "Learn To Code" movement is not "not everyone can learn to code." It's that, having the ability to write text in a text editor and run a compiler against it, is going to give everyone opinions on what software development should be, but they will have no experience, no knowledge of what distinguishes software development from programming. I can see it reinforcing the asshole manager view "it's just pushing buttons on a keyboard, what is so hard?" Because "pushing buttons on a keyboard" is all they are going to teach. It would be as if we replaced our art classes with paint-by-number sessions. But, on the other hand, we do force people through art museums and art appreciation classes and they don't seem to try to tell artists what creating art should be. Or, at least, not more often than busy-bodies in general try to tell everyone what to do. If we could only get rid of the busy-bodies.
vinceguidry 13y ago
People don't seem to understand that political actors simply don't have time to acquire domain knowledge. If they took that time, it would inevitably come at the expense of political efficiency.
TullamoreDude 13y ago
During my time studying IT I learned that there is just 1 way to learn how to code(at least for me) and it is "Writing Code". There was no prof who could teach me coding, but they showed me the baselines(how a OS works, what OOP is, what UML is and so on). But coding for real I learned because I was parttime working as a Developer for a company that gave me a chance and time. That's why I think you shouldnt teach coding in schools you should explain them how computers work, which technologies are involved and so on.

90 points by choult 13y ago

JazCE 13y ago

This is essentialy the same as: Minister of health is not a surgeon. I do think there is actually a need for a political party whose MP's are actually made up on members of the professions they'll eventually represent (By which I mean they won't represent the actual industry, but the people, but you would have a minister of education who has actual practice of being a teacher or something).

choult 13y ago
The Minister of Health doesn't go around stating that every schoolchild should learn how to operate on people...
- mattmanser 13y ago
  In a day.
- arethuza 13y ago
  Don't give them any ideas on how to "improve" the NHS!
- w0utert 13y ago
  >> The Minister of Health doesn't go around stating that every schoolchild should learn how to operate on people... Or how it would 'only take a day' to learn how to operate on people, for that matter. I'm not so much surprised that someone in her position doesn't know how to code (she doesnt't have to, really), but at the very least I expect you to have a basic understanding of the depth and breadth of the topic, and not make sweeping, distracting and confusing statements like this. A little preparation, just a few hours of talking to people who are knowledgeable on the topic, would go a long way not making a fool out of yourself.
  - tragic 13y ago
    >> The Minister of Health doesn't go around stating that every schoolchild should learn how to operate on people... > Or how it would 'only take a day' to learn how to operate on people, for that matter. ...Nor does he lack even a layperson's grasp of what surgery is. I feel rather sorry for her, though - aren't politicians supposed to be briefed for public appearances nowadays so things like this Just Don't Happen?
- moron4hire 13y ago
  Probably does think that every school child should learn biology, though, with a few labs involving animal specimen dissections. We aren't talking about "teaching kids to develop software". This is "teaching kids to put code in a text editor and run a compiler on it."
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
desas 13y ago
Lottie Dexter is not a politician, she's a civil servant. She should have been appointed based on her professional neutrality and ability to do the job, a substantial part of which appears to be to lead a team promoting how to learn programming.
- arethuza 13y ago
  I don't think she is a civil servant - she is described as "Director" of the Million Jobs Campaign - no idea what the legal status of that is (couldn't find it as a charity or a limited company). Also, the idea that civil servants are appointed based on "ability to do the job" is, for lack of a better term, amusing. NB The UK Civil Service is precisely the kind of organization that I suspect Michael Young had in mind when he coined the much-abused term "meritocracy": http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/29/comment http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/29/comment
  - true_religion 13y ago
    Desas is talking about the way the world should be, not the way the world is.
    - arethuza 13y ago
      Ahhh - I have failed to detect sarcasm, I will surrender my nationality.
WilliamMayor 13y ago
I've had this conversation with a friend of mine the other day and he raised an interesting point. When the NHS was first being proposed the doctors at the time were strongly against it. The Health Secretary (Bevan I think) just flat refused to listen to what the doctors were telling him. He told them that it didn't matter what their complaints were, he was going to start a national health service. If we had a system where you had to be an expert in a field before you could be in government then we would lose things like this. We would also lose problems with idiots running things (cough Gove cough). Overall though, we would never have change, our elected officials would only ever vote to maintain the status quo. Additionally, we vote for people to represent us in government, I don't know that doctors could ever truly represent my views on health care. I would just like to add a note that none of the things that I've represented as facts above have been checked. I learnt them in the pub, they might be wrong. Let me know (nicely).
- czr80 13y ago
  Wikipedia agrees with you: On the "appointed day", 5 July 1948, having overcome political opposition from both the Conservative Party and from within his own party, and after a dramatic showdown with the British Medical Association, which had threatened to derail the National Health Service scheme before it had even begun, as medical practitioners continued to withhold their support just months before the launch of the service, Bevan's National Health Service Act of 1946 came into force. After 18 months of ongoing dispute between the Ministry of Health and the BMA, Bevan finally managed to win over the support of the vast majority of the medical profession by offering a couple of minor concessions, but without compromising on the fundamental principles of his NHS proposals. Bevan later gave the famous quote that, in order to broker the deal, he had "stuffed their mouths with gold". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneurin_Bevan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneurin_Bevan
yen223 13y ago
That's a fundamental problem with modern democracy - it doesn't optimize for talent, it optimizes for charisma.
- arethuza 13y ago
  Consider Clement Attlee, possibly the most influential PM of the 20th century (yes, even more so than Churchill or Thatcher) was fabulously uncharismatic being described by Thatcher as "all substance and no show": http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1194059/A-giant-man-Clem-Attlee-stood-decency-duty--stark-contrast-todays-MPs.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1194059/A-giant-ma...
  - yen223 13y ago
    "...when an interviewer asked if he had any thoughts about the coming general election, replied simply: 'No.'" I need to have a beer with this guy.
    - arethuza 13y ago
      I can recommend "Live from Downing Street" by Nick Robinson - it contrasts the media styles of all of the PMs (at least since there has been a "media" reporting on Parliament): http://www.amazon.co.uk/Live-Downing-Street-Nick-Robinson/dp/0857500007 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Live-Downing-Street-Nick-Robinson/dp... Personally, I think this country is long overdue a Attlee, Bevan or even a Thatcher - leaders who actually believed in something.
  - zbyszek 13y ago
    The famous jibe is along the lines of "An empty taxi drew up outside 10 Downing Street and Clement Attlee got out", attributed to Winston Churchill, but I think he denied it.
    - gaius 13y ago
      Churchill described Atlee as a modest man with much to be modest about.
colin_jack 13y ago
> This is essentialy the same as: Minister of health is not a surgeon. Its more that she doesn't even know what a surgeon does but thinks you can train a surgeon up in a day.
TheCoelacanth 13y ago
I wouldn't expect the minister of health to have a level of knowledge of medicine comparable to that of a practicing medical professional. However, I would expect them to have a level of knowledge that goes significantly beyond what is taught to school-children.

alexbilbie 13y ago

What annoys me the most about all of this is that the media and Government are too focussed on the actual code and not the benefits that come from learning to code. By the time these kids are old enough to gets jobs (so in some cases in 10+ years) technology will be even more prevalent in the work place than it is now and it will penetrate every sector. If kids start learning to code and making things with computers (whether it's apps, websites, programming Lego or robots) then they will become more familiar and comfortable with technology and whilst being able to write a bit of JavaScript may not directly help you get the dream job as a doctor, but being able to sit down in front of a new computer system or patient care device and very quickly learn you way around is a huge benefit to employers - and that will stem because they're going to have 10 years of being exposed to different devices, UI paradigms and OSs. In terms of the code it will hopefully teach the kids some maths skills, language skills (in terms of learning about syntactical structure and expressing your instructions), and also learning to fail (which we still see as a huge negative here in the UK). Of course there are many other benefits and skills they will pick up too. A final thing that pisses me off is this "year of code" aspect, it shouldn't be just one year, it should be tens years of code; the Government should be shouting about how enriched today's 6 years olds will be when they finally leave school to work because of a decade of exposure to technology. </rage>

vezzy-fnord 13y ago
and that will stem because they're going to have 10 years of being exposed to different devices, UI paradigms and OSs. I honestly don't expect the compulsory school system to enact anything nearly as elaborate as that. The "learn to code" hysteria is just a desperation move to try and bring back some legitimacy to an already highly ravaged public school system. At best, the course will be something like a JavaSchool. I still find it aggravating that people are for teaching kids to code without learning system administration first. Knows how to write C# scripts, but can't use vi to edit a configuration file.

IE5point5 13y ago

> Expecting anything less from the tories

awjr 13y ago
Sorry but no. This isn't a tory only thing. This is down to the political system we have that allows people with little experience in a sector to be put 'in charge'. What I will say is that an expectation to be able to program is not something I would expect from a career politician. I would expect them to listen to advice from those that can. (edit) OK I went and read the article. I take it all back. If you are given a job, you should at least have a basic understanding of what is involved. :(

Fuxy 13y ago

And this is a god example of why government is far removed from its citizens. They all got their gobs through connections not merit. It's like a general who never fraught a war or ever even went through the training.

cmdkeen 13y ago

The article is pretty trolling with it's wider commentary about political placemen. If anything one of the problems the current government has is that it hasn't been placing those sympathetic to their agenda in wider society. Gove is currently in trouble because he isn't renewing the contract of someone he initially appointed. She happens to be a former Labour politician. I'd be far happier if the technically minded politicians were those holding schemes like this to account rather than running them. Running a scheme like this involves lots of skills, none of them technical. She isn't writing the curriculum, she's navigating it through the corridors of power and dealing with all the vested interests for and against it.

lil_cain 13y ago
She does have to understand what's involved in the curriculum though. And claiming that teachers can learn to program in a day shows that she doesn't have that.
lyso 13y ago
>she's navigating it through the corridors of power and dealing with all the vested interests for and against it. Yes, but she doesn't seem to know what "it" is.
Tyrannosaurs 13y ago
Agreed that she doesn't need to be able to code herself (though if you claim that you can learn it in a day then there is a valid question "why didn't you") but one of the things that is part of her job is promoting the programme in a positive way and based on this interview it's hard to say she's doing that. In terms of the government placing people sympathetic to it's agenda in wider society, the role you talk about (the Oftsted role) isn't meant to be a political role. The head of Ofsted is answerable to whatever party is in power but isn't part of the government in a party political way. If you don't do that you end up changing large swathes of the government every five years or more (it's not like governments don't change tack mid parliament) which isn't in anyone's interest. These roles should be on competence rather than political vision.
fauigerzigerk 13y ago

WilliamMayor 13y ago

I disagree with very little of what she said. OK, so she doesn't know how to code, she admitted that, and she doesn't know a great deal about technology. She confuses graphic design and coding at one point. Here is an MP on Question Time saying all the things I want to say on Question Time. Coding is a vital skill that our education system is ignoring. Children that grow up without any idea of how computers work will be disadvantaged. An economy that has no young work force even introduced to coding will not be digitally productive. When I'm trying to sell the "teach children to code" course that I occasionally run I like to use this metaphor: people that don't know how computers work to even the most basic level aren't people that don't know how an internal combustion engine works. They're people that only know how to get taxis. So don't hate on this woman (even if she is Tory, even if she does know powerful people) because she's standing in our corner fighting our fight.

pessimizer 13y ago
I'm pretty sure I was taught to code in a day. 10 PRINT "HELLO" 20 GOTO 10 My first hack was: 10 PRINT "IM A COMPUTER" 20 GOTO 10 Now the system was leaking internal information. The next 30 years have just been variations on a theme. Spawned Erlang processes, in my head, are 20 GOTO 10. edit: The thing that freaks me out about computer illiterate people being in charge of teaching people computing is that they aren't equipped to choose the experts to hire. She can only evaluate them by their connections, their pleasantness, their respect from peers (who also can't be evaluated), and their massive marketing budgets.
- WilliamMayor 13y ago
  I remember hacking print "Hello world!" into print "Hello World!" and crossing my fingers, pressing the button, and being amazed that it worked! I was convinced that somehow it would be more complicated than that.
  - Beliavsky 13y ago
    I wish Guido van Rossum had left well enough alone, so that the above line was valid code in current Python (it works for Python 2, not Python 3).

danso 13y ago

Steve Jobs: http://www.npr.org/2011/10/06/141115121/steve-jobs-computer-science-is-a-liberal-art http://www.npr.org/2011/10/06/141115121/steve-jobs-computer-... > "In my perspective ... science and computer science is a liberal art, it's something everyone should know how to use, at least, and harness in their life. It's not something that should be relegated to 5 percent of the population over in the corner. It's something that everybody should be exposed to and everyone should have mastery of to some extent, and that's how we viewed computation and these computation devices." Woz: http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-never-wrote-computer-code-for-apple-2013-8 http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-never-wrote-comput... > Steve didn't ever code. He wasn't an engineer and he didn't do any original design, but he was technical enough to alter and change and add to other designs. I did all of the Apple I and Apple ][ myself, including the feature choices. I did all of the BASIC myself (it's in handwriting as I couldn't afford an assembler). The only person who helped write some of the Apple ][ code was Allen Baum, who helped with the 'monitor' program.

gaius 13y ago

You can safely ignore people who call it "coding" not "programming". Similarly ICT vs IT.

tspiteri 13y ago
Sure, there is more to "programming" than "coding", but there is also more to racing than driving and we still call F1 drivers "drivers". And there are very valid programmers who call it "coding".

altero 13y ago

But she is a woman! We need more woman who do software development, coding is irrelevant skill.

anaphor 13y ago

Why can't they just appoint SPJ to lead this? He's already part of the Computing At Schools (CAS) organization. See: http://www.computingatschool.org.uk/index.php?id=about-us http://www.computingatschool.org.uk/index.php?id=about-us

Moru 13y ago
Sadly todays employer won't hire a coder from UK. He will hire an app-developer from Romania and pay them 20% of your salary per hour.

AdamJBall 13y ago

Needs someone leading who can code, gets the skills issue and also sees the impact of technology. Would be more than happy to put myself forward. (@AdamJBall) - Computer Science grad - Launching a tech startup to help connect businesses and student coders (@CodingCupboard) - Passionate about solving youth unemployment - No political affiliation - All round nice guy

JetSpiegel 13y ago
- No political affiliation Disqualified right there. If you don't care about politics, why should you get appointed to a political office?

b43w5 13y ago

"coding" is becoming a marketing buzzword. It's a shame because there are so many facets to programming that children could learn that aren't being emphasised: computer science; web development; UX (I hope this is included somewhere); etc. It's great to include it in the curriculum but I'm sure everyone on here realises that not every child will want to learn it or have the mental aptitude to learn it, but it should lead to more people understanding (it at least on some level).

Xophmeister 13y ago

This may be slightly off-topic (apologies), but what I worry about regarding this scheme are the people/companies who will be brought in to get schools up to speed. Call me cynical if you must, but I think, inevitably, they will be 'IT consultants' that maybe know a bit of SQL, but are otherwise shysters. (That's my impression of the IT consultancy sector in the UK, at least. I'd love to be proven wrong!) Most of the current generation of software engineers taught themselves in the beginning. Or, at least, had enough curiosity and initiative to investigate on their own volition and/or put themselves in knowledge's way (e.g., set themselves up for computer science degrees, etc.) Consultants however are invariably from the world of social engineering, where they get by and succeed through excessive self-confidence and, if you're lucky, they may have picked up a technical anecdote here-or-there. I certainly agree with the sentiment of teaching/introducing proper computer science and/or software engineering to kids, but I can't help but feel that, as a government project, it'll be botched by the lowest bidder or brownest nose.

tomasien 13y ago

That interview is kind of embarrassing, but I think the fact that she can't code and has committed to learning along with others is perfectly fine. The tweets comparing learning to layout an HTML website in an hour to learning complex algorithms in an hour is ridiculous - I learned to make a website in an hour! Crappy, crappy, CRAPPY website but a website nonetheless!

mistakoala 13y ago
That's how my first website started. Nothing much more than an <h1> and a few <p>s. I still remember the feeling of almost-elation at seeing it in a browser, too. That might not mean much to you or anybody else, but to someone learning it can be an enormous leap.
- tomasien 13y ago
  100% agree. I could basically not fucking believe it.

utopkara 13y ago

The problem is, it is very hard to evaluate her success. She needs to know about coding and computer science overall in addition to being good at policy making and running government programs to be able to honestly evaluate her success for herself.

MJR 13y ago

Am I the only one who was confused by the title and thought that the article was about someone named 'Tory Boss'?

Agathos 13y ago

In business, non-programmers love telling coders what to code, how to code, and how long it should take. So this may actually provide students excellent training for the real world.

JanezStupar 13y ago

Am I the only one not seeing anything wrong with what this lady is doing, what her goals are, what her current knowledge is and with what she said in the interview? I must say that I am quite impressed by her and her attitude.

logicallee 13y ago

and Steve Jobs couldn't mill aluminum, even when he championed it for all the macbook bodies. who cares.

BoppreH 13y ago

The article makes it sounds like it's a secret and she's disinterested. The selected quotes make her look like she's underestimating the challenge. But then you listen to the linked excerpt of interview: - "I'm going to put my cards on the table, Jeremy, I can't code. I've committed this year to learning to code, hopefully." - "Take a year?" - "Well, you can do very little in a very short space of time." "Very little" in a "very short space of time" seems sensible. Her explanation of what code is: - "Code is the language you use to instruct computers" I find her position reasonable, and don't see what the fuss is all about. If played well, the "hey, I'm learning to code too!" card could be more valuable than "you should all learn what I already know".

Tloewald 13y ago
Good points, although I'm not sure what you meant by "disinterested". "not interested" perhaps?
- BoppreH 13y ago
  Thanks. English is not my first language, and the dictionary is telling me "disinterested" can mean "having or feeling no interest in something". Am I wrong? And by lack of interest, I mean for example the picture on the header. [ ] Can write code [ ] Can explain what it is [x] Is a Tory [x] Worked for Iain Duncan Smith's think tank I feel that image is trying to convince me she's there for purely political reasons and she's not at all interested in coding.
  - corin_ 13y ago
    Your word choice was fine, and your English sounds great. But I don't think the image was trying to make her seem disinterested, I think it was trying to make her seem unqualified. The person in that job should be interested AND qualified, not interested and politically connected.
    - Tloewald 13y ago
      disinterested means "not having a conflict of interest" not "having no interest", so I was simply trying to clarify the OP.

jerf 13y ago

Scarily, she's probably actually... correct. You can teach a teacher how to teach a student to code in about a day... for the definition of "teach to code" that they are operating with, which often seems to be "here's a book, read out of it, grade student submissions if they look sort of like this and ding them if they don't, now we're going to shove you out the door, good luck!" I mean, yeah, that probably only takes about a day... after all, you're a professional teacher with extension training in teaching, surely it wouldn't take much longer than that or what was all that training for?

dbond 13y ago
One of my college teachers actually tried this, it did not end well... A teacher should be a source of qualified help, not just a glorified marking machine. She also wasn't happy that I made space invaders instead of pong...

mistakoala 13y ago

Someone who will have experience of what it's like to learn to code, in charge of some initiative responsible for encouraging people to learn to code(1)? Outrageous! I don't want people at the top to have any understanding of the product they're delivering! (1) Put aside the semantics argument for the moment.

moron4hire 13y ago

I'm really surprised (though maybe I shouldn't be) at the number of people here who are conflating "learning to code in an hour" with "learning how to teach programming in an hour". If your skill as a programmer were dependent on the skill of your teacher as a programmer, then we wouldn't be anywhere. If your skill in anything were dependent on how good your teachers were at the skill itself, rather than at the skill of teaching, then we would really be a lost society. I don't think I had a single teacher in high school or a professor in college that was a better programmer than me, and half of my professors probably couldn't code beyond the old linked list example they were putting up on the projector every semester. They didn't teach me how to program. They taught me how to reason about software. But that isn't the point. As far as I'm concerned, the act of programming is unteachable. The physical act of typing characters in a text editor, running tests on it, and changing some characters with new characters, is all you can teach, but the mental leaps of figuring out which are the right characters and tests and changes for the failing tests takes a lifetime of experience and practice. But that doesn't mean there isn't a role that a teacher can play to instruct students during that personal experience. Otherwise, what is the point of art teachers? It's the same thing, you can't really teach someone to make good art. You can teach them the mechanics of holding a brush and putting paint on a canvas, or taking photos, or writing. I've seen dozens of kids spend small fortunes on art educations at Ivy League schools and they still aren't artists. Because you can't teach them how to make something have meaning. And I knew dozens of kids in my own computer science program who spent the equivalent of a luxury car on a software development education and they still aren't software developers. Few of us stayed in the field, post-graduation, and fewer still are any good at it. The only problem I can foresee with the "Learn To Code" movement is not "not everyone can learn to code." It's that, having the ability to write text in a text editor and run a compiler against it, is going to give everyone opinions on what software development should be, but they will have no experience, no knowledge of what distinguishes software development from programming. I can see it reinforcing the asshole manager view "it's just pushing buttons on a keyboard, what is so hard?" Because "pushing buttons on a keyboard" is all they are going to teach. It would be as if we replaced our art classes with paint-by-number sessions. But, on the other hand, we do force people through art museums and art appreciation classes and they don't seem to try to tell artists what creating art should be. Or, at least, not more often than busy-bodies in general try to tell everyone what to do. If we could only get rid of the busy-bodies.

vinceguidry 13y ago

People don't seem to understand that political actors simply don't have time to acquire domain knowledge. If they took that time, it would inevitably come at the expense of political efficiency.

TullamoreDude 13y ago

During my time studying IT I learned that there is just 1 way to learn how to code(at least for me) and it is "Writing Code". There was no prof who could teach me coding, but they showed me the baselines(how a OS works, what OOP is, what UML is and so on). But coding for real I learned because I was parttime working as a Developer for a company that gave me a chance and time. That's why I think you shouldnt teach coding in schools you should explain them how computers work, which technologies are involved and so on.