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Computer science is just an elective at my school. Students can also take a cooking class as an elective even though they don't plan to be chefs.

Students have room in their schedules for several electives and mine has a reputation as a tough but rewarding course. The majority of my students just take a single class and go on to college to major in something else.

Kids have different hobbies. I have students who've been playing soccer since they were 5 years old who don't play around with a computer for fun. Or they don't have access to a computer. (Many of my students are on free or reduced price lunch.)

Limiting the profession to those who started naturally at a young age is a good way to keep out everyone but rich mostly-white kids with college-educated parents.

> Limiting the profession to those who started naturally at a young age is a good way to keep out everyone but rich mostly-white kids with college-educated parents.

Counter-example: I started coding at 9, got my first at-home family computer 3 years later, and my parents graduated college when I was already in college. This was back when a PC cost more than my parents made in 2 months. Now laptops can be got for $300.

It's not about rich, it's about having coding after-school classes as available as soccer (or whatever) practice.

Or rather, it's either about rich or about having a adequately funded and provisioned school system for people who are not.

I went through my first year at community college without even having a desktop computer. All of my home programming was with pencil and paper, and I used the lab. I can imagine that if you're 9, you may not have parents that can carve out an extra $300 so you can see if you like computers, or a lab at your school that has free computers that you have a sufficient level of access to in order to run or install the software you would need. I was in my 20s, and still limited.

> It's not about rich, it's about having coding after-school classes as available as soccer (or whatever) practice.

Ok... so what about the kids who want to play soccer instead of being cooped up inside?

The idea that you might have to choose between playing a sport and getting enough experience to consider going into CS/SE in college is ridiculous.

> Ok... so what about the kids who want to play soccer instead of being cooped up inside?

I don't see what your point is. The OP suggests that coding after school classes should be as available as soccer practices. Do you think that if coding classes after school are made available then somehow it is harmful?

OK ... so what about the kids who want to be cooped up inside instead of playing soccer?

The idea that you might have to choose between coding and getting enough experience to consider being a professional soccer player is ridiculous.

;)

But my point was about having the choice and opportunity.

> Limiting the profession to those who started naturally at a young age is a good way to keep out everyone but rich mostly-white kids with college-educated parents.

~$100 (or less for an old second hand laptop plus a basic internet connection (or the public libraries one) is all that's needed to start programming.

$100 equals 40 hours of work in a blue-collar job down here in Argentina. It's probably even worse elsewhere.

Maybe there should be a laptop charity page which connects the ones needing old laptops with people having them rotting away in a drawer. Shipping can't be that expensive.

The question is, is there need for something like this?

And if you're coding, you're not training or doing another job. So it is actually much more.

To have been coding for 5-15 years when entering college now... you have to think about the prices and availability of internet/computers 5-15 years ago ;)

15 years ago I was involved with a charity refurbishing 486s (or better) and we were giving them away.

Okay, so you could potentially get a computer.

Now, think about accessing the resources to learn programming: Books, Documentation, Compilers, IDE...

I recall being on 56k internet in 2001, paying by the hour. Couldn't have learn programming, except going around and buying books and tools on CD and offline documentation.

That was the hell of a barrier to entry compared to today.

"is all that's needed to start programming"

No it's not. You first have to know that it's a thing that you might be able to do. Who knows what other barriers are there unless they live it?

Hardware is relatively cheap, time is not.

$100 is a lot of money for a lot of people.

A lot of poor people do not have free time to earn it-- they're going to school and using their minimum wage money to eat. I slept on the floor and worked 16 hour days to be able to get my education.

"Limiting the profession to those who started naturally at a young age is a good way to keep out everyone but rich mostly-white kids with college-educated parents."

I would say it weeds out everyone who was not inclined to study programming or was not in a situation that prompted them to start programming.

Frankly, this is a childish presupposition. Let's imagine if surgeons where expected to have begun surgery for fun at the age of seven.

It's a cop-out excuse from teaching establishments (if used) and it's a harsh and exclusive requirement from colleagues, more fitting of a puerile fraternity than that a professional cohort.

What one does need, is a certain fluidity in language skills, logic, and most of all, most importantly, a will to learn.

Yes, it needs a lot of work, and it's not easy, but let's not invent imaginary boundaries for peoples careers and lives.

I think the OP meant those doing a CS degree with no prior coding experience why would you do a degree in something if you had not done it at some level at high school?

> I do work with older students (aged 14-18)

These are high school students.

I didn't major in CS and I started programming only when I was 20 on my first year at the university, yet I quickly became enthralled with the subject and am now a pretty good well rounded software engineer (got my MSc in physics).

1. It's quite ok to start programming after ones teens and still make a career of it. The basics of programming aren't that hard. It's the systems design aspect which takes a lifetime.

2. Internal motivation for the subject is the key. People are pretty good learners for most of their life.

"Money grab"... Most professional careers demand quite many hours put into it. Some programmers treat their career as a profession, others as just a job. Since there are no authorative qualification bodies on the matter (like for doctors) that's just how the dynamics of personal lives and human nature run.

That said, I don't really see the point in chasing after new technolgies - I have quite a large enough learning load in trying to gain deep understanding of my domain (graphics/computational geometry).

Totally hit the nail on the head. I started programming when I was about 15 or so, but I left it for a few years. Im pretty much at the spot you're in right now and I'm just more fascinated with the subject than ever before even though I've been into computers since I was a little kid. Also again totally agree with you about the "money grab", even a friend of mine who does this for a living and is quite ab it older than me says he doesn't care about work off time because when he's out of the office for the day, he's done.

I've taught individuals that have driven forklifts for decades that converted to computers because of "the money". Regardless of anyone's reason for coming into CS, assuming only does one thing. That same individual is now a fledgling web developer because he found a love for programming amongst the certifications at my community college (the Software and Web Developer courses did not offer any form of certification with its degree, while tracks like Networking did).

Everyone starts with a simple "interest". Computers were the "interest" for me as a teenager that grew in CS. Others can be interested in "computers" but not know where to begin. Only after looking around did some find CS to be that "it" they were looking for.

1. These are high school students.

2. My mother, with an English degree, went into programming in her early 20s through a training program at her job. That was nearly 40 years ago, and she's still going.

Programming is largely a monoculture that looks down on people who are dissimilar (for example: who didn't program as a child, or decided to enter the field in college), and actively discourages them from continuing by assuming the worst about their capabilities.

Cool story about your mother. I'm interested to hear more about the kind of company that supported that transition, how long it took, and what it was like for her.

People take intro courses into subjects in the first year of university all the time when they're undecided. If something sparks an interest, some follow it all the way through. It doesn't necessarily produce 9-5ers -- it just means some people discover what their passion later in life in a different manner.

In college (back in the late 80s/early 90s) I had a few professors (in Comp Sci) that hated computers. My roommate disdained computers as well (he had a more theoretical/mathematical bent). There was also the Comp-Sci major I met that wanted to get out of programming and into management as quickly as possible.

There are all kinds.

From what I've experienced, most people don't have a "passion" coming out of high school. They figure they're pretty good at math, enjoy computers, and CS pays well, so they might as well major in that. So, it's not quite a money grab, but it's not based on a passion/hobby either.

More than 70% of the students who take Harvard's introductory CS class have never programmed before.

Introductory courses often serve the purpose of introducing students to a topic they've only heard of, if that.

I had very limited exposure to programming growing up. Freshman and sophomore year in college were what hooked me. I turned out all right, I think.

While I was interested in computers since I was young (at about 3) - my interests started with gaming and "hacking". Over time, I wanted to be a "hacker" and I started to look into actual software development. But till about Grade 8 - computers for me were a form of entertainment. I took CS classes but in all honesty, most teachers treated it as an extra-curricular activity (we were told to use MS paint, or play around in MS office etc.)

Over time, my interests grew and I wanted to make websites so I started off with some HTML. I got a basic hang of it and I wanted everything to be pretty - so I did some basic CSS and then I got in JS. (All of this was done in Notepad - I was not even aware about auto-complete and tab indentation till I got to university and started using Visual Studio and Eclipse)

I got into Software Engineering in university because I was passionate about computers - not "programming" in general. But the course of my education, I got into everything from web and mobile dev, to creating file systems (it was extremely basic) - and now, I'm extremely passionate about programming. All that said...from personal experience, I would say that if you combine game dev, CS and SE - more than 80% of the incoming class came in with no prior experience in programming.

In my specific class, out of the graduating students (in Software Engineering)- at max 2 of the 15 are what I would consider "good/skilled" programmers. The rest got in because of various reasons (thought it was easy, thought they'd get a huge salary after leaving etc.) and don't really give a damn about programming/tech and their code/skills display that - but in the end, it does not even matter because companies like TCS/FDM hire such students, have a "intense" training program (read: basic Java/C# skills) and then pass on these "trained" students to enterprise (banks, hospitals etc.) and pay them extremely low (min. wage during training period, 30 - 40k CAD for the next 2 years - which these students will accept because they are aware of their deficiencies and this sets a bad precedence for even skilled workers)

It's not TCS/FDM's problem, managers/enterprises don't care either as long as you have that many hours/day and work gets done (quality and ownership does not really matter) and your co-workers generally have a similar skillset and play hot potato when it comes to getting actual work done. All the workload finally falls on that one skilled guy / team who basically does everything (who'll keep getting more and more frustrated and finally quit)- rinse & repeat. And worst of all - co-workers will have the audacity to make fun of the skilled worker for having an interest in programming/work (because having a passion for what you do is somehow a bad thing /s) all while offloading as much work as possible.

I have seen quite a lot of friends (skilled and mediocre) basically fall into the above cycle and in the end - the skilled are the ones who finally give up and stop giving a damn about their work/skills (which then sets a bad example - I have heard this as an example in uni - "why bother studying this framework/tech?, just find the guy who knows it and offload it to em") while mediocre workers basically get skilled at just that - not getting work done while not getting fired - which is considered a perfect 9 - 5 life.

BTW the above are my experiences and incidents I heard from friends/co-workers etc.