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The underlying principle behind teaching (except for higher eduction) is not to make productive workers but knowledgeable and discerning citizens. The number o
by yoha 12y ago
The underlying principle behind teaching (except for higher eduction) is not to make productive workers but knowledgeable and discerning citizens.
The number of programmers we need is not relevant here: they may not need to know how to write complex programs, but knowing the basic principles of programming will make them more able in a worlds relying heavily on computers. This is already the reason why we teach basic math, physics, biology, history, geography, English, etc. to kids.
- vezzy-fnord 12y agoThe "basic principles" of programming are meaningless unless you define concrete paradigms - concatenative, array, functional, object-oriented and so on. I suppose you could talk about data types, data structures, operators, variables and so on, but I do not see how this knowledge will make one "more able" in a digital world. It can certainly impart a false feeling of knowing, however. Actually, writing some ALGOL (or even languages detached from the von Neumann and imperative spheres) to see what it's like will ultimately teach you almost nothing, due to real world computation and software development being remarkably complex and multifaceted, involving tons of abstractions that require plenty of study to grasp. I'd wager teaching people to use a free Unix-like would be much more useful than simply "coding" - which is too broad to have a strict methodology that can be used to teach it. And then expecting the public education system to do it properly is laughable.