Discussion for article #236392
It’s easier to teach a programmer how to have ideas than it is to teach an “idea man” how to code.
Far, far easier.
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Why is it far far easier? Everyone should know how to code; it is very much like a 2nd or 3rd language requirement. Ideas grow out of the mix of input into the mind; the idea that idea grows ex nihilo ia a nonsense. Load me up, Scotty.
¨ Yale, for instance, defines its curriculum as one that lets students “think and learn across disciplines, literally liberating the mind.” ¨
¨When you know how VCs invest in products, you are liberated to think.¨
Ms. Rhee, if I may be so bold, your might pay more attention to the ¨across disciplines¨ part. It seems to me that VCs are just the latest incarnations of ¨Magical Capitalists¨ that Americans love to hold up. Somehow, their investment’s gonna make a better world, and we can ignore the nasty bits about off-shoring to find the cheapest labor and the least stringent environmental laws, and the millions of ¨surplus¨ people we have in this country. By all means, as a tech entrepreneur you will be a more rounded individual by learning some nuts and bolts of coding, but everybody learning to code, as is the latest rage in schools here in the US, will just lead to more unemployed coders.
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Yeah, I think the second language analogy is a good one. But just as we’d be unwise as a country to teach only Spanish, or Chinese, not everybody needs to learn coding.
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You can only learn how a business really works by starting from the bottom and going up, not from the top down.
Example: Ed Whitacre, who was Chairman and CEO of AT&T, after he put AT&T back together (mostly) by combining SBC, PacTel, SNET, Ameritech, BellSouth, and the last version of AT&T. Did he have an MBA? No, he had a B.S. in Industrial Engineering. Ivy League? No, Texas Tech. Started in “Corporate”? No, and this is the important part: He started literally at the bottom, climbing telephone poles in Oklahoma in Outside Plant work, the dirtiest and most grueling job. In lush greenery? No, in Oklahoma, this used to be the Dust Bowl.
What about the world of IT? Steve Wozniak designed the hardware, circuit board, and operating system for the Apple I, and assembled the first boards along with Steve Jobs. Outsourced? No. Done in Jobs’ garage.
How about the Linux OS? Designed by Linus Torvalds. His first IT work? Programming in Assembly Language on a Commodore VIC-20.
To be able to tell other people what to do, first you have to do it yourself.
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Duh. that’s how elite types feel about any practical skill. I haven’t directly used a lot of my graduate (and under grad) skills in years, but they enable me to know bullshit when I see it. this guy may have a lot of money, but I have to tell you that “people at the top” also tend to be the easiest marks for really dumb ideas. That’s why rags to riches stories oftene d with rags or at least greatly diminished riches.
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Especially when you over a certain age.
When you know how VCs invest in products, you are liberated to think.
Socrates weeps.
PS: no one is making money from the app store but Apple.
This is just the whippersnapper version of “get off my lawn”.
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I don’t know…learning some basics of coding is probably a good idea for most people. The language itself is pretty much irrelevant, but learning to think in terms of programming “logic” is applicable beyond just interfacing with computers.
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Programming is just logic and memory/repetition applied to computer code. In a dozen years, very few people will actually need to know how to code because natural language programming will advance enough that basic instructions will be available to most everyone. Someone with even the most basic grasp of a simple language can pull off something fairly complex using existing libraries without ever needing to know, let alone understand, the underlying code.
I’d rather that idea person be taught in logic and philosphy, civics and history so they can make smart long term decisions than teaching them something that will largely be automated within a generation.
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People have been saying that for a long long time, and it has yet to come anywhere close to being true. Programming today is still a very very complex endeavor, if you are building anything real.
The idea that in a decade we will no longer need computer programmers because “everyone will be able to do it” is pretty laughable. I’ll believe it when I see it.
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This article is a mess. “These courses are the fundamental building blocks of computer science, but on their own, they only teach her how to reinvent the wheel.” is an incredibly myopic view of the importance of the fundamentals of computer science to pushing that discipline forward, and how new ideas actually get implemented. Unicorns need to learn to function as horses or that horn on their head doesn’t do much good.
“She can master the art of persuasion and learn how to borrow from history to study the present.” And unless she’s going to a vocational school, she can do that same thing and end up with a degree in computer science. It sounds like the Yale CS undergraduate program offers that opportunity:
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Hey, for most people, I agree. I myself learned a little code and found it interesting. But so’s picking up another language, or learning to throw pots, it seems to me.
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Yes, I agree…though I am not sure what throwing pots develops in most people, except really bad vases. But my point is that learning programming teaches your mind to think in new ways. Its a discipline and an art form, and there aren’t many things out there that engage both sides of the brain that way.
Most people aren’t going to become code monkeys, for lots of reasons. Just like most people are not going to become mathematicians, either. But learning calculus is still useful in developing your mental acumen.
Hmmm. "it is very much like a 2nd or 3rd language requirement. "
Do you know any programming languages? I’ve learned seven different programming languages since 1982 and I don’t think it’s like learning a foreign language at all. Foreign languages all have one thing in common, you’re communicating with a person. The purpose of a programming language is to communicate with the machine.
Most people aren’t suited to it… especially people who think it’s so easy a chimp could do it.
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I didn’t say we would no longer need computer programmers, but that basic instructions in natural language programming would be available to most everyone. There are plenty of examples (the most basic and most public being Wolfram alpha “search engine”). Considering the vast majority of internet-based programming is very basic and supplemented by libraries that already do the heavy lifting 10 years is, in my view, very likely. The internet itself is only 25 years old, changes in this area happen quickly.
To learn a language well makes you think in a different way. To learn German, say, makes you look at the world in a different way than if you learn Chinese. It’s not just a matter of plugging in the different word for the same thing and changing to the appropriate syntax. In French they say “I have 14 years,” in English we say of course “I am 14 years old,” in Spanish “I have 14 years of age.” Small sample, but if you include all the differences in an entire language, it adds up.
And it is true that to get started you don’t have to be quite as precise in a human language as you do in code to achieve satisfying results. But that’s only 'cos the recipients of one’s human language usually have some pretty exquisite embedded software to interpret what is said.
The programing I’ve done is rudimentary, so I ain’t no expert. But it seems to me that there’s a reason that they’re called programing languages, and the fact that machines are recipients is one instance vs. humans talking to each other is a minor point. A second language, whether it’s Haskell or Swahili, forces you into a new way of thinking.
And throwing pots develops spatial reasoning in a way that you can’t do tapping on a keyboard 
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LOL! I’ve known a few 3D graphic animators that might disagree with you on that.
Learning a foreign language does help you to see the world in different ways. I’ve never said anything to the contrary. My point is that programming teaches you logical flow, understanding how objects have traits and how those traits are passed down, and how the can be put together to optimize whatever you are doing. How changing one little thing can cascade throughout a huge program, and understanding the good and the bad of that happening (usually bad). It teaches you to design first, similar to carpentry to some degree…measure twice, cut once.
All of these things, while they do present you with a different perspective with which to view the world, are more about learning a discipline way of thinking. Its not a mutually exclusive pairing of skills either…you can learn langues and learn programming.
But the two skills don’t necessarily build off of each other. That is where calling programming languages, languages, does a big disservice. Just because a person is adept at learning new languages (which is much easier for young children to do, when they are still mostly thinking in concepts and not actual words), doesn’t mean they are going to be great programmers. There is probably very little correlation there.
So in summary, if you really want to improve your mind, learn to program Java in Chinese!
That’s the sort of age-ism that has forced some very talented people out of the workplace just because they’re “over a certain age.”
I once met a television scriptwriter who had won Emmys for the work he did on the seventies TV show MASH. He said he realized at some point that he had to take his Emmys off of his resume because it instantly let young television executives know how old he was.
It makes no sense --oh, and it’s illegal-- that experienced people are marginalized and made unemployable by such attitudes as yours.
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