An unapology

39 41 11 years ago

vezzy-fnord3• 11 years ago

The metaphor of software being like literature is flawed. It is more apt to deem it an edifice. Buildings, much like software, are absolutely ubiquitous. Chances are on average you don't intimately understand the workings of contemporary civil engineering.

And, while you should absolutely be able to modify your house, the reality is a lot of other buildings are off-limits to you or purpose-built for a specific recipient or cause. Indeed, a huge amount of software is designed to be sold to specific contractors and not to the public at large. Nor will the public realistically have the chance to modify most of the software they interact with, either because they're just circuits, dumb terminals or another reason.

Thirdly, software is permanent, modulo bit rot. That is to say most people can be satisfied entirely by existing written solutions. Simple task automation, scripts and macros can be self-taught if the person sees an opportunity. Actually creating legitimately new things requires a deep proficiency in a problem domain that a pedestrian knowledge of programming will not satisfy.

Also, if you're going to promote ideals for governments, I strongly suggest you promote free software, not open source.

adpirz• 11 years ago

Couldn't this same rationale be applied to high-school level math? It's one of the biggest excuses made about learning anything beyond arithmetic -- unless I'm pursuing engineering or some computation-heavy career, when will I need to care about calculus? Or for that matter, why ever learn about cell biology in elementary school? Not everyone is going to be a geneticist, and most pharma patents are completely off limits, so why bother?

Yet it's important that we learn all these pieces because we expect a fundamental level of understanding about the world we live in, including how that world and what we know about it is changing. Without an informed electorate and a labor force primed with the skillset necessary for the current job market, not one that's passed, we suffer collectively. Thirty years ago, it wouldn't have made sense to make something like computer literacy or computer science a compulsory subject, but considering just how much it touches every aspect of the world and our lives today, it seems remiss to not empower students with the knowledge and skills to interact with and change that world for themselves.

strayptr2• 11 years ago

unless I'm pursuing engineering or some computation-heavy career, when will I need to care about calculus? Or for that matter, why ever learn about cell biology in elementary school? Not everyone is going to be a geneticist, and most pharma patents are completely off limits, so why bother?

Agreed. Why bother? In fact, forcing children to learn these topics often harms them so irreparably that they not only don't retain the knowledge, but can't bring themselves to be interested later in life.

Make it optional. Make the topics available for children who want to know. Make it self-selected, just like every other aspect in life.

mikeash• 11 years ago

A lot of high school math is pretty pointless for most people, though. It doesn't even help people understand the world, because they don't understand the math, they just do it by rote. I think we'd be a lot better off if we taught high schoolers some basic statistics and finance rather than fourteen different ways to solve a quadratic equation.

stvswn4• 11 years ago

Because people should be exposed to a variety of disciplines, and they should be given the chance to demonstrate a talent for whichever they find suits them. In that sense, we should absolutely expose kids to programming.

But it isn't the same as reading. Reading is a primary form of communication and it's fundamentally critical to joining society.

vezzy-fnord3• 11 years ago

You're naive if you believe that the same public schools which barely get Algebra I right will turn around to start properly teaching discrete mathematics.

Except they won't even do that, because the proposed "computer science" courses will be little more than rote exercises in learning an ALGOL-like notation. It most certainly will not impart any fundamental level of understanding, but quite to the contrary a very specific and wrong one. Learning a notation without knowing what problems to solve is useless, and will not leave anyone informed.

We're already struggling with the fact that even a lot of professional programmers don't really have the fundamentals down, but are stuck accepting various abstractions as absolutes. Making "computer science" (code monkeying) a compulsory school subject will worsen this.

fnordprefect• 11 years ago

It's rather ironic that the article misspells 'privileged'

harigov• 11 years ago

If being able to interact with computer is modern age definition of literacy similar to how it was with reading a book, why is it a bad thing to be able to use someones apps? Isn't it same as reading books written by others? I do agree that being able to program a computer is an important knowledge to have, just like it is important to be able to write, but that doesn't imply that using others software/apps is any inferior. Also, how we program computers might be drastically different 10 years down the line, with ML getting into the mix. Learners are to compilers what compilers were to assemblers.

dragonwriter• 11 years ago

I do agree that being able to program a computer is an important knowledge to have, just like it is important to be able to write, but that doesn't imply that using others software/apps is any inferior.

In fact, to program a modern computer, using software/apps by others is a practical necessity; basic computer literacy is a prerequisite to programming, not an opposed alternative to it.

kazinator6• 11 years ago

Not only that, but it's a false premise that if you dabble in programming, you will be an expert in security and privacy issues, and be immune to problems like phishing, malware and so on.

But that's the primary rationale behind this "everyone must program": that those who don't know code will be at the mercy of some bogey man bad guys who do know how to code, from the perspective of security and privacy.

hyperion20102• 11 years ago

Programmers are the 21st century's clergy. Only we can read and speak to the great digital gods in the clouds and our institutions (though rarely we ourselves) derive great power from their position between the layman and the benevolent providers of addictive flash games and digital watches. Hopefully it won't take ten centuries this time.

edit: please bring on the downvotes without replies, or did being compared to celibate white males hit too close to home?

stvswn4• 11 years ago

People aren't taking offense to the comparison to clergy, they're amazed at the hubris.

vezzy-fnord3• 11 years ago

I interpreted the statement, with "addictive flash games and digital watches", as actually being opposed to the aforementioned programming clergy.

Perhaps they're serious.

biot• 11 years ago

Everyone should be a surgeon and be able to perform surgical operations on their family and friends.

Everyone should be an auto mechanic and be able to assemble new vehicles out of an engine and other parts.

Everyone should be an electronics engineer and be able to construct their own novel devices out of raw circuits.

Everyone should be a chemical engineer and be able to formulate their own novel chemicals.

Everyone should be a biologist and be able to construct their own novel DNA and RNA sequences, splice multiple organisms together to create new life.

Everyone should be a physicist and be able to explain the practical and theoretical principles underlying all the above principles.

Everyone should be an advanced mathematician and be able to derive from first principles the laws governing everything in the universe.

... or you can just do your own thing, grok how to use the things other people have dedicated their lives to understanding and building, and focus on mastering your own profession.

pault• 11 years ago

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

-Robert A. Heinlein

;)

Edit: I sort of meant this tongue in cheek, but I do look forward to the day when cheap energy and life extension give bright people the opportunity to do all of the things in the parent post. Until then, yes, it's probably better to do one thing masterfully than many things poorly. I wish I had more time for learning for learning's sake, but I've only been playing this game for a few decades and I don't want to nerf my character.

kazinator6• 11 years ago

Specialization is for insects.

As in, spending years to learn how to code instead of moving on to butchering that sonnet and comforting that hog.

GFK_of_xmaspast• 11 years ago

Specialization is for insects.

The single most successful clade in the history of this earth.

protomyth• 11 years ago

Specialization allows doctors to save more patients. Specialization means I don't have to do a bunch of stuff just to survive when I could be doing something I love. We can expand the frontiers of humanity when all of us wander in new directions as opposed to having to learn to do everything.

TheGRS3• 11 years ago

I am pretty sure I have heard each of these phrases verbatim from whichever specialist would have said them at one point or another, especially the auto mechanic one, I've heard that one many times.

stvswn4• 11 years ago

A command line used to be the primary UI, and thank God we don't have to do that anymore. The iOS UI makes computing way more accessible to everyone.

Programming is certainly going to be an increasingly valuable skill. But it is not the same as reading and writing -- those skills are about communicating with other humans. Programming is about giving instructions with machines. Only one is critical in order to contribute to society.

Programming is a valuable skill, but it does not make one an ubermensch, and many people will continue to live their lives without being one of the few who can design software. They will definitely operate software, and it's the job of the engineer to let them do that without any special skills.

We always talk about more programming education -- which is fantastic, because more kids need an opportunity to get started in a valuable skill with which they can do great things for society. But it isn't reading. Not everyone wants to do it, and it's not as if 25 years from now a law degree is going to require coding. It isn't. Maybe, just maybe, it will require operating a new intelligent software system that can do legal analysis. But if operating that software requires programming, we've screwed up.

kazinator6• 11 years ago

What the iOS GUI makes accessible to everyone is something other than computing.

stvswn4• 11 years ago

OK, then, what is instant access to all of wikipedia, and to Google's entire search index, inside your pocket at all times? It is what computers have wrought. If you don't think "computing" means "using a computer," then fine. But at a higher level, my point is this: if I were master of the universe, I'd pick millions of people with iPhones over millions of people writing their own programs. For those who love programming, coding is an ends to itself. But in the real world it's not -- people don't care about the code, they just want to see pictures of their grandkids. The pictures of their grandkids are really making their life better in a way that shouldn't be dismissed as frivolous and "not real computing." If we don't make software for people to use in the real world, why do it at all?

draw_down2• 11 years ago

Oh? Do tell.

kazinator6• 11 years ago

Before computers and software, we had technology already. People used tube radios without being able to read schematics. They watched TV without understanding how the YUV signal got hacked in as a sub-carrier of the black and white signal, and drove cars without being able to tune a carburetor. Being able to grok engineering specifications or blueprints, let alone produce them (software or otherwise), isn't really analogous to basic literacy.

TheGRS3• 11 years ago

I'm reminded of a TED talk I went to that proclaimed all code is art and everyone should code. I'm just not convinced. When you are coding I get it, coding is awesome and it can be an art, but I don't always see coding to be an integral part of every day life for most people in the same way that reading and writing is.

Most people do use a computer every day however, so there is an argument to be made that people should learn it at some point to unlock the potential of their machines. But the problem you run into here is that coding is not the same today as it was 10 years ago, and much different than it was 20 years ago. I'm still reading and writing and typing pretty much the same way that I was after learning it for the first time (with minor improvements in speed and legibility). In 10 years though, I'm pretty sure I'll be coding in something else entirely different and in a totally different style. And I also have many devices that I don't bother to code on or interact with in an advanced way, such as my smartphone.

We should teach kids code at an early age, agreed, but we also shouldn't expect them to stick with it for the rest of their lives like they would reading and writing.

0xdeadbeefbabe• 11 years ago

with it for the rest of their lives like they would reading and writing.

I'd say most do not stick with writing.

I'm reminded of a TED talk I went to that proclaimed all code is art and everyone should code.

I'd agree the side effects are art, but the code? Maybe in that loose artsy sense of the word art. Is every email also literature because it is writing?

TheGRS3• 11 years ago

That was my impression coming away from that talk, I don't agree all code is art in the same way that I don't think all forms of expression are art. They can be art, but they certainly are not always art. I also thought it was just another hackneyed way of labeling whatever profession someone is doing as artistic.

jordanpg• 11 years ago

How bold.

Maybe the author could provide some use cases describing how the digital literati of the future will be reading and writing software for themselves, in analogy to the written word?

I'd love to hear about how those with basic "literacy" will be reading/writing anything more complicated than FizzBuzz, much less reading/improving/writing high-quality software in the public domain.

draw_down2• 11 years ago

I worked at a place that outsourced writing, in part. It's a financial news site and some portion of the articles are written by a computer. So, outsourcing those things is less outrageous than it may first seem.

Camillo• 11 years ago

First off, the title is horribly clickbaity.

Second, we've been getting a lot of links on HN lately where someone blurts out some thoughts on a complex subject and is done in less than a page, with no depth at all. I really don't care for them. They may be short, but the insight density is far lower than that of a real article, so they end up being a worse way to spend my time.

Third, I disagree that programming literacy needs to be taught to everyone. The OP does not bother to provide any specific reason, but let's consider two.

One reason may be for the sake of future employment opportunities. The argument is ridiculous on the face of it, but it's one you see politicians make. It should be obvious that we are not going to need everyone to be a professional programmer. It should also be obvious that the trend is of programming skills becoming _less_ necessary for jobs involving computers, and not more. This trend has been largely driven by UI improvements in the past, but AI is poised to give it a second boost.

Another reason could be for the sake of developing a more rational mindset, or some other skills or attitudes that are beneficial for citizens in general. This is an argument I would take more seriously, but I still have to counter that there are more urgently and universally needed things. Basic numeracy is the obvious one, and in particular statistics. Logic is another.

Programming may be a way to exercise these skills, but it is not necessarily the best way to acquire them. I would argue that people find success in programming because of their existing knack for logical reasoning, rather than gaining it because they decided to go into programming. And if you've ever tried to interview professional programmers for a job, you'd know how many of them can make a living in this field without having developed the problem solving skills you'd like to see.

In fact, focusing on programming per se as a skill to acquire may well (read: would definitely, in the American school system) lead to reducing focus on the basic reasoning skills that are more universally useful, in favor of learning how to cobble an app or a website together.

Finally, it is very dubious that the population at large would be able to learn how to program at a reasonable level. You may say that people used to say the same about literacy, which is now universal; but if you look at it more carefully, you'll notice that a non-negligible amount of people never reaches the level of reading and writing skills you would expect from an adult, and even more people see those skills decay once they leave school.

An unapology

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