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Comment by nukeop | Hacker News Reader

It's sad that these "get everyone and their dog into 'coding'" initiatives by large companies are just attempts to provide cheap workers for themselves in the future. There's so many of them, and yet there's no evidence that they help anyone other than the company's PR team in generating exposure and promoting their products.

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This isn't the only reason.

It's obvious that coding is becoming a skill on par with math for its utility in the modern world.

If more people understand the fundamentals of coding, it will completely change the user interfaces and sophistication of applications in the future. People will be able to code up simple features and behaviours they need, for example.

Most people don't have the analytical approach engineering-minded people have. They understand most of their surrounding reality in terms of blackboxes. Pull a trigger and a bullet comes out. Press a button and receive a parking card. Touch the screen and the facebook app launches. They're not interested in the internal mechanisms. And if you're not already interested in that, then no amount of coding bootcamps are going to spark that interest.

Sure, but a lot of people don't have the mindset required for cooking or construction or sports, yet these are still things we teach in school and try to make accessible for more people.

Or any of the liberal arts.

The "well rounded" argument works both ways!

Sure, most people don't, but an increasing number of people do.

Most people a few centuries ago used to think about the world without any scientific awareness.

There are still people like that, and there always will be, but people in developed nations with an education are far more scientific in their thinking as an average trend.

The same will be true of the analytical mindset for coding

To an extent though, is that something that you're born with, or something you can be taught? I think a lot of people attribute something to 'genetics' just because their parents have a particular trait. Parents are also the people raising you, so they have the highest impact regardless of genetics

I somewhat agree both with you and PP. But

> It's obvious that coding is becoming a skill on par with math for its utility in the modern world.

I am not sure it's obvious, sadly. I feel like having a programming environment on your computer is similar to having a workshop at home. So you could repair and build many physical things yourself.

I can imagine an alternate reality where most people have workshops in their homes, and they repair most (and build some) of the stuff they bought themselves. But it's not the highly-specialized, consumer-oriented society we live in (actually, I think this was more true in the past).

In a similar way, I could envision a world where everybody routinely scripts their applications to automate and customize them. But the trend seems to go the opposite way, away from scriptability, to specialized, task-oriented applications. So I am skeptical this world will happen.

I would love coding to become a new form of literacy, and I am certainly going to treat it like that with my kids. But I currently don't believe many people will use these skills on regular basis.

Addendum: It's interesting that the very same companies that want everybody to code are the ones that don't want the software buyers to have to customize the applications themselves, so they could sell them the customization.

I work in civil engineering and literally every application used here comes with a very powerful scripting environment that could make just about everybody's jobs a lot easier if only they felt comfortable using them. Programming isn't just for programmers, but useful for everybody who has to use a computer as any a part of their job (which is verging on everybody).

"Programming isn't just for programmers, but useful for everybody who has to use a computer as any a part of their job (which is verging on everybody)."

VBA does not get much respect, but there are probably a vast number of accountants, managers etc. today that write code in Office applications.

VBA does not get much respect, but there are probably a vast number of accountants, managers etc. today that write code in Office applications.

In my experience the number is far from 'vast'. But whatever the actual number might be, it is definitely much too small.

> I would love coding to become a new form of literacy, and I am certainly going to treat it like that with my kids. But I currently don't believe many people will use these skills on regular basis

It's been added to the primary school curriculum in the UK. And annecdotally, a good number of my (20-something, recent univeristy grad) friends are finding that a little coding is neccesary for their jobs, even if it's not the main focus.

That's nothing new, really. I was taught programming (but not much, just a little BASIC, and I already knew it by the time) in a public elementary school in Czechoslovakia in late 1980s, during the communist regime period.

But it should be pointed out that the real socialist society was much more do-it-yourself than western capitalist societies are. Mostly out of necessity, but partly because people had quite a bit of free time and couldn't freely associate (and argue about politics on social networks). So hypothetically, if the communist regime continued to this day, programming skills would probably become much more useful to an ordinary person.

I don't think so. Coding bootcamps might motivate and help those already fascinated with computers to some degree, but a vast majority of computer users just use it as a device, much like using a toaster or oven.

It's not even that their minds are different from technically inclined people or that they're just dumb. It's just that they have OTHER occupations in life, and using a computer may be just a means to look up info, entertainment, communication or as a digital assistant.

Computers are deep, involved and time-consuming, once you scratch below the surface. And you generally don't have the time in modern life to be holding a full-time career AND to investigate the innards of computing systems, even just the software.

If that was the goal, wouldn't efforts be better placed in the Jr Colleges, online courses, and similar institutions. Grade-school level curriculum is a pretty far-future return on investment is the only goal is cheap workers.

> to provide cheap workers

doubtful, rarely the self taught can pass the hr screening

it does help unemployed people

Unemployed people would be helped if business wouldn't be so greedy in their selection criteria, and would give a position to anyone actually wanting to work there, instead of spending months looking for the perfect candidate that would be willing to work at the misery they want to pay.

EDIT: typo

> spending months looking for the perfect candidate that would be willing to work at the misery that want to pay.

That's what I don't understand. These companies completely forget the law of supply and demand when it comes to hiring. They keep complaining they can't find anyone yet the salary they are offering stays the same. I'll bet that if you double or triple what you're paying that shortage you're complaining about will mysteriously disappear.

If the salary stays the same it's because that is the value having someone in that position produces for the company. Paying your employees more than the value they produce is a quick was to bankruptcy.

Then maybe you should draw the conclusion that your company no longer has a valid business case.

Absolutely. But it explains why many companies are so reluctant to raise their wages. Admitting you no longer have a valid business is hard.

> They keep complaining

The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

(PR honchos are kept from idleness, newspapers pipelines are filled, company didn't want to hire anyway, and maybe the gummint will drip in some cash for training internships. Win, win, win, win.)

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