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People who will code will code even if you don't push them to.

The booming industry of coding boot camps shows that there are a large number of people who want to code but didn't have the opportunity or knowledge to learn until they were old enough and wealthy enough to pay for private tuition. I would argue that is strong evidence that your assertion is wrong - it's a reasonable assumption there are a number of people who are capable of coding and who want to code but can't afford private lessons and therefore won't ever become a coder.

Lowering the barrier to starting, to the point where it's as simple as running an app without any cost (beyond access to a computer), is a very good thing that greatly benefits a huge number of people.

I suspect the majority of those coding boot camp customers do not want to code, but want money, and see coding as an easy way to get it.

You have no evidence for that, and it's a pretty horrible thing to say about the people who take those courses.

What's horrible about that? People doing things for the money is the driving force behind capitalism, the best economic system yet invented. It improves everybody's quality of life. I have no objection to people going to coding boot camps because they think it will help them make money, and I hope they succeed.

But I don't think coding boot camps are evidence for great love for coding for its own sake. People who really want to code will find some way to do it no matter what. They don't need paid tuition.

People wanting money is fine. It was the assertion that they "see coding as an easy way to get it" that's too harsh. In my experience people who have been through coding bootcamps are very aware that they're learning something hard and that they'll need to put in a lot of effort, and that they're starting a new career where they'll be a junior in their first role unless they're very lucky.

Seriously? Paying to learn a skill is a sign of impure motives? That seems like a very unfair assumption. Not everyone can learn on their own in their spare time.

Why do you suspect that?

Having talked with over 200 of them, I'd suggest that just like people in most career training programs, there's something about the job (as they imagine it) that attracts them relative to other jobs. "Huh, that looks like a good job, and I suspect I can do it, maybe I should invest some time and money into finding out!"

I don't think anyone thinks it's a get-rich-quick plan; no one expects it to be easy. And if they do think that, they revise their estimates on the first day of bootcamp. But many of them DO suspect that as a career, coding pays well relative to the amount of work it is, and has good growth prospects. I too believe that, so I'm sympathetic to their perspective, although I doubt it's the BEST career in those aspects (I hear trades are really quite lucrative). The degree of "passion" for various particular aspects of the career is variable (e.g. desire to do the act of coding, e.g. desire to produce software, e.g. desire to work in startups, e.g. desire to make mad bank, e.g. desire to have flexible working conditions, e.g. desire to get paid to do math). Few of them have had wildly successful careers in other domains (I believe that between 1% and 3% of my sample were already making six figures in another career), so the majority are hoping that this will be their successful career.

In summary, it is true that all of them expect that learning to code might be somewhat economically productive, but your phrasing is condescending and nasty. Don't be nasty.

Disclaimer: I have a vested interest in bootcamps being at least somewhat successful.

Right now it is the same as in the Millennium bubble -- programming is a simple way to get a well paid job.

But sure, some of the people jumping on the train then and now are lifers.

What do you mean by "opportunity"? If they have 3 months to go to a camp, surely they could as well learn at home for those 3 months.

It's the certificate and contacts they're after (and pay dearly for).

> What do you mean by "opportunity"?

The opportunity of access to extensive mentorship and a solid curriculum. Those things make a good boot camp a more efficient way to learn than doing it entirely on your own, not least because you don't have to discover all the blind alleys and mistakes for yourself. (Like I did! But I started at age six. An adult looking to learn a trade skill has not the luxury of a whole lifetime to spend doing so.)

What do you mean by "opportunity"?

If you were unfortunate enough to attend a school that didn't have any sort of computing classes, after school groups, etc, or you lived somewhere rural that didn't have those programmes outside of school then you would have had no access to a mentor who can guide you.

If they have 3 months to go to a camp, surely they could as well learn at home for those 3 months.

In order to learn on your own you need some knowledge to start with. If you sit down in front of a computer with zero knowledge of a subject then you don't even know what to put in to Google, and if you start with a search like "how to code" you have no way to assess whether the websites you find are actually useful or a waste of time.

Languages like Scratch can teach someone to code when they have no external input. They might teach "bad" ideas, but those can be unlearned and replaced with better concepts later. Most of us learned by starting with something like BASIC and have gone on to learn better techniques. There's no reason why someone learning today has to start with a "good" language like Python.

Heck, I started with Visual Basic 6. That's was far worse than Scratch as far as teaching bad practices go.

> If you were unfortunate enough to attend a school that didn't have any sort of computing classes, after school groups, etc, or you lived somewhere rural that didn't have those programmes outside of school then you would have had no access to a mentor who can guide you.

I grew up in a small Greek village at a time when very few people knew what a computer was. My first exposure to programming was finding a CD with all sorts of things in it, including Visual Basic 4. I had no internet, so literally the only thing I had to go on was the VB language reference (the reference, as in, this function does that), and a two-page tutorial on making a temperature converter.

I taught myself programming using just that reference and tutorial, and nothing else. I don't believe courses are necessary if you want to learn programming.

I don't believe courses are necessary if you want to learn programming.

You're wrong. There are lots of developers who are self-taught, and just like you they didn't need a course. That's awesome. Similarly though there are lots of other developers who aren't self-taught, and for whom the process of how to think about code didn't "click" with them until they were taught the basics. Those developers needed a course.

People aren't all the same, so what works for one person won't necessarily work for another, and given the number of developers society will need in the future we will have to afford opportunities to every type of learner.

>> given the number of developers society will need in the future

It really is 1999 all over again. :-( :-)

Be careful when projecting your experiences onto others.

I would be very surprised if you honestly can't conceive of people who would struggle immensely to teach themselves the way you did. Or even if they could succeed in doing so, that it might take too long or be too financially risky.

I personally know plenty of people like that. Some of them are very intelligent as well.

People are reading more into my comment than what I said. The GP said you can't learn to program without a mentor or access to resources, and I suggested that you can, to which he both agreed and disagreed.

My friend created a website which solves most of these issues. Instead of using a "made-up" language like how Scratch does, its building blocks are just proxies for CoffeeScript code. You can also freely move between block mode and editing mode, so students who want to learn "real syntax" can do so without having to move to a new platform. CoffeeScript is also potentially helpful for employment because learning JavaScript is a natural progression. We currently use it for teaching middle schoolers code, and they seem to have fun with it.

You can take a look at http://pencilcode.org.

How is coffeescript not a "made-up" language? Or C, for that matter?

By "made-up" language, what are you suggesting?

I think he means 'made up for the occasion', 'made up just for this project'.

Using a main stream language would make re-use and integration easier as well as making it easier for users to move both from Scratch to more conventional methods and from them to Scratch.

I think the world would be a much better place if we exchanged "everyone learns to code" with "everyone learns safe and secure computer practices". That doesn't have the same ring to it but it's more important. Let's learn now to not open malware attachments before learning an if loop.

Yes, this would be a healthy approach.

Also I'm not a big fan of the just learning to code approach. software development is more than just hammering on the keyboard. It is about thinking about the right data structures, or data generally, it is about architecture.

Finally, if you have internet you have access to so much material to learn coding, why should you start with Scratch if there are thousands of free courses, books, tutorials for every other language. Think about learning Swift on the iPad, C# in the browser, ...

Given that even people that work with _sec 24/7 violate best practices left and right, i fear that it will be a futile effort.

I too don't see Scratch as the future of programming but you have to grant that it gets kids interested in programming.

Honestly I think Scratch has as high learning curve as simple programming languages like python or ruby (maybe even higher learning curve), not to mention all the copy-and-paste-able code available online if you learn languages like python (compared to this format which is obscure and not easily shareable).

That's why I said if I was teaching my kid to code I would teach python. It's easier to learn, copy and paste (for instant gratification), and it is an actual programming language. I really can't see where this Scratch thing has any benefit over these other languages.

I remember teaching a 9 year old how to code. He was pretty comfortable in Scratch and he understood the basics like loops, conditionals, variables. He was able to program simple graphical Scratch games with minimal assistance (e.g. rock paper scissors, space defenders).

When I tried teaching him Python however, his spelling and typing skills held him back significantly. It took him almost a minute to type 5 words.

Unfortunately, this is becoming more common, as more kids are growing up without using a computer much at all, in favor of tablets and smartphones.

"Honestly I think Scratch has as high learning curve as simple programming languages like python or ruby"

No. Simply no.

Source: Taught First/Second/Third graders scratch once a week for 2 full years. The no syntax (no writing) part is extremely important. I've seen first graders completely crate a game from scratch (no pun) that I and other adults actually enjoyed playing as an honest to goodness challenging game. There's absolutely no comparison with "grown up" programming languages... even BASIC (that I myself programmed as a kid but that was only in middle school and later).

No, it has a lower learning curve. I used Scratch about 6 years ago when I was learning programming as a kid.

The blocks are much easier to understand--they constrain what you can create and that avoids syntax errors and many other problems. Also, the visual element is certainly good and makes it fun.

Arguing that people who don't already code shouldn't code assumes people make perfectly informed career choices based on their pre-determined personal traits.

I strongly recommend reading Dweck's work on mindsets to dissuade you of the belief that aptitude for things like Mathematics is a fixed trait rather than something that can be changed.

I think it's also helpful to recognise that the group that are exposed to programming under the right conditions to start of their own accord are a subset (I would posit a small subset) of the people who would be an asset to the industry.

> Arguing that people who don't already code shouldn't code

I'm sorry, I'm having hard time finding where I said that. Please do point me to an excerpt.

> I'm sorry, I'm having hard time finding where I said that. Please do point me to an excerpt.

Cool. This (below) was the bit I must have misunderstood. It read as if you were saying that coders naturally find coding, and that people who don't naturally find coding are better off not coding.

"People who will code will code even if you don't push them to. And most others, well they have other better things to do in their lives like making art, becoming a scientist, or becoming a doctor."

> And most others, well they have other better things to do in their lives like making art, becoming a scientist, or becoming a doctor.

Agree with your general sentiment, but this kind of made me smile. I'm teaching a general programming class next quarter and I plan to say the opposite of this, that the students don't have anything better to do in their lives than to learn programming -- at least for the 10 weeks that they've signed up for.

I actually do believe that, but only in the way that I feel it would be shortsighted to tell an aspiring doctor, "don't mind the literacy thing, just be a good doctor!"

> The "education" purpose is also out of touch too. If I wanted to teach my kid how to program I would teach him python. It's not that hard.

It's not just about learning to program. Building systems with these blocks trains problem solving and abstract thinking skills, which are also helpful in many areas outside of software development or mathematics. That's part of the reason why schools and universities have students lern mathematics even if they're not going to use those exact mechanics later in their profession.

And such a gamification helps catching their interest where raw code might just scare them away.

As best i can tell even if just a few will end up actively code, at least most will have a passing familiarity with software internals and thus make more realistic demands of both the software and the programmers.

yes, but there are different levels of complexity in software. If you write code for e.g. AI, Google's ranking algorithm, ..., of course you need powerful programming languages to do so. But much everyday software comes down to accessing data rom a database, manipulating it and/ or displaying it. I think if there were simple, scratch-like tools powerful enough to do this in a decent (good enough) way, a lot of non-coders could develop tools for such tasks, freeing expert coders' time to do more interesting stuff.