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Comment by Olscore | Hacker News Reader

This may not be a good idea. Code is one of those things that by itself sucks until you have a reason or purpose to use it. I started learning coding around age ~9 in 1996 or so. But what got me hooked was websites, because I could use the code to build fan sites or accomplish real, purposeful tasks. I feel like just shoving code at kids isn't going to do much unless they are also incentivized to use it somehow.

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You can apply this logic to almost all subjects in school aside from the very basic ones (math, reading/writing) and even then you can argue school need not be teaching at a high level.

> I feel like just shoving code at kids isn't going to do much unless they are also incentivized to use it somehow.

We shove kids into biology, chemistry, physics, literature, art, etc. The ones that like it will make it their career or college major. The ones that don't will forget and throw away their notes after the final. The same will happen with programming classes.

nuh, up to a certain point you won't learn much that's not at least interesting, save for french. And even that could help me with latin now, had I learned it better. Sure there's details only needed in a career, but that's late and kept to a minimum for obvious reasons, was for me.

The investment is the pupils choice and the rdturn on investment is debateable. You argue diminishing returns, I say scientific responsibility can be a burdon indeed, so what I really dislike is that it's forced.

Or it could go the way of math, hated but all but the very most talented at it and generally considered boring. This has very real effects on the discipline, including a more exaggerated gender problem that CS has already inherited, and a number of extremely intelligent people are conditioned to never really give it a chance.

> including a more exaggerated gender problem that CS has

I'll need a citation for that, since last I checked, math had more females then CS and Physics.

You make a great point. My experience was the opposite. I desperately wanted to learn more about programming in junior high school, but the math teachers locked all the interesting computers up in their office and really didn't know much about them anyway. This was in the 1980's. Back then, computers were very tightly coupled with math and science, which was incredibly limiting for someone like me who didn't excel in those areas but was totally obsessed with computers. I remember I used to write BASIC programs in a notepad with a pencil! I eventually taught myself Pascal and C at home. I remember showing a math teacher at my high school a program that solved every problem on our homework assignments for the semester. She gave me a C because she couldn't see my work.

> She gave me a C because she couldn't see my work.

Remember when the system is unfair, cheating becomes fair. For example in this case you should have tried to update your program to produce a list of steps showing your work.

I learned my lesson...now all of my code prints writes detailed logs describing how it works. (Kidding.)

You just described Mathematics.

For the longest time, it was just something I did because people told me to. They judged me on how well I could complete a problem so I did the problems...

I hope to god we don't go down the same path for Programming.

He also just described English education in Japan. Students just complete problems, and even those that do well never learn to speak English just through these classes.

Yeah the conversation schools seem that way, I'm seeing more of a trend towards more classes and general communication though. There isn't much of a reason for those conversation schools to do better though, they rarely get called out(from what I've seen anyway).

Was this 'high school' math or math?

Many (all?) subjects that are taught at schools are already like that. People don't see the value until they need the skills.

Give them the tools and kids will often find a use for it on their own. Someone shoved Hypercard in front of me when I was eleven or so and started me on the path (rather, they shoved a Mac in front of me on which Hypercard happened to be installed - I took it from there). Of course not every kid will find it compelling enough to do so, but then not every kid should aspire to be a programmer.

I disagree that it will not be useful. Here's a comment that I wrote:

"Required subjects are required not because they have tangible use but because it's worth to learn them as common knowledge. Literature, history, etc can all be argued as unimportant for sustaining your life. Programming is ubiquitous, and yet there are many people who cannot even imagine what programming is despite having gone through school. To relate to your engine example, ask anyone who has gone through school to try to describe what the insides of a car is like and they can probably explain their own interpretation (whether it is right or wrong). Ask the same people how they think a computer is run and I bet less than 20% can even attempt their own interpretation. That seems like a common knowledge worth learning."

It doesn't matter if they are going to make use of it. What matters is that they now have an idea of what programming is and what is possible with programming and how to communicate with those with programming knowledge.

The first 'code' I wrote was probably logo writer (turtles!) In kindergarten. It was fun. Then we did HyperCard and built all sorts of fun interactive designs.

Tldr: if kids can do art class, they can program and have fun doing it.

This exactly... my first "coding experience" in early-mid elementary school was "programming" magazine games (written in BASIC) into a TRS-80, as well as making cute animations in Logo on a TI 99/4A. Nothing ground-breaking, but there's incentives (fun!) and it introduces you to the principles.

For a modern equivalent, I've seen my sister's kids (also in early-mid elementary school) currently making games and animations in Scratch.

I'm sure it's easy to make coding dry and boring as well, of course.

Not all children will grow up to be programmers, but more and more will be information workers that will need to know what kind of tasks can be solved with programming.

In a previous company the requests from non-developers ranged in complexity from simple string processing to multi-year research projects that still might not bear fruit.

You wouldn't ask a mechanic to build a flying car in an afternoon, but people still ask programmers to perform such tasks.

I think programming coupled with mathematics has nothing but positive results. Code affects most of our environment and it will dominate every aspect of it in the near future. Knowing how things work and how to alter them is incentive enough from my point of view. You can make things fun like creating or changing game mechanics and kids will love it. Coding involves a lot of logic and that brings a positive effect on how they will think and take decisions later in life. Much like playing chess as a kid which shaped my mind to think more thoroughly.

So it math. Most find it boring, but some of them will eventually find their way back to it, and discover that they can be pretty good at it.

It is not going to be work for everyone, but will definitely attract more people to this area.

In the UK it's called 'computational thinking', which much better covers what such a curriculum is about. Parts of it can be done without a computer at all; a 'bubble sort dance' for example (getting students to sort themselves from small to tall with an algorithm).

Honestly that sort of knowledge would only be useful for a computer science college student. I don't see any real point in teaching it to high school students. Most people don't care about maximizing their sorting when Excel does the sorting for you.

It's about critical thinking, it's not a class to teach children how to sort things... I'm really surprised to see a comment like this on this website.

Not sure if trolling or just oblivious...

You say you started learning at 9 -- I started much later and regret it -- why not get others started sooner?

What age much later than nine years old did you begin programming?

Well I tried to teach myself during high school and college but mostly learned after graduating. I always wanted to learn but my HS didn't have the resources and I felt behind by college. So I got a degree in math and have been struggling to play catch up still :) it's going good anyway but I surely would have enjoyed having something deeper than Excel back then. In middle school and high school I did have basic tech stuff like that.

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