Also, pointing out that not every coal miner can learn to code is seen as culturally insensitive and perpetuating the stereotype that rural people are dumb. Which I understand, but a little honesty could have seen these resources better leveraged to help these people in different ways.
Knew a guy who could do the most precise joins, its a skill people seem to be born with, or its grown somehow. If the only jobs in demand demanded the ability to construct a dovetail joint, I'd be in big trouble.
It used to be taught to grade school kids. I distinctly remember building adirondack chairs, picnic tables, and benches in wood shop, from dimensional lumber, for use in local parks. Thirteen year old kids can build practical objects using wood, with guidance.
While physics is voodoo. Even genuinely intelligent people have difficulty grasping it.
CS probably lies somewhere in-between, intellectually, but is seen as something that can just be taught to any person and they can be productive.
Honestly, the classicist/entitled bullshit about what we (technologists) do is completely unearned. What most of us do isn’t special and the gate-keeping many people in this industry do to prevent others from entering this industry (and I’m guilty of it too at times) is unearned.
I’m glad Amazon is doing things like this. I’m glad programs are encouraging coal miners to learn a new skill.
Programming wasn’t always seen as white collar work.
From my perspective this not much different than building pickups in Detroit in the 60s. I bet that seemed like a pretty awesome job back in the glory days.
In reality most technologists are in manufacturing and we will eventually be replaced by robots.