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Comment by Zhyl | Hacker News Reader

I feel like 'tiny personal programs' is one of the bigger reasons to teach 'everyone' to code.

Everyone has something in their life that is very specific to them that they would be much happier if it were 'just so'. Writing tiny scripts or being able to dive into the config/settings of something is a good way to get rid of some pain points.

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For this reason, I often recommend 'Automate the Boring Stuff with Python' (https://automatetheboringstuff.com/) to beginners. It hits the basics and then moves pretty quickly to address: OK, what can I actually use this for?

I am not a programmer, but it has been fun learning little bits of Python and making scripts to automate tasks.

We have folders for clients at work and everything older than a couple of years should be archived, aside from certain legal documents. Building a script to check if any file is older than a certain date and checking that it does not contain certain words in the filename, was really easy, and useful, and gave me a good feeling of satisfaction seeing it actually work.

Sounds like you’re a programmer to me!

For me it really hit home starting with autoit on windows years and years ago. I still have scripts I wrote that work almost 20 years later!

> teach 'everyone' to code.

I wonder if coding classes will be the new "shop class" . https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/shop_class

In 8th grade, I took a compulsory wood working class. I guess it was a skill that adults thought children should learn.

By that point, I had already been coding for 6 years. My school had a computer lab, but no coding was taught .... just typing. Also we played networked Oregon Trail Deluxe once or twice.

I wish more of the engineers I work with had taken a wood shop class, so that they would learn about things like kerf, working with things that are out of square, tolerances, and how certain milling or lathing operations are impossible. Most of the young engineers I work with only know about drawing things and running simulations on them, rather than how things are actually built.

I took a wood shop class in high school and did not learn any of those things, I learned how to make spoons, boxes, and cabinets.

Fair point. But even learning how to measure things, mark them, cut them out, and how to assemble things would help my young engineer coworkers.

This right here. So often general purpose software winds up being some feature anemic app that focuses on some common denominator functionality. Plugin and extension support has been great to expand capabilities in general to make said software less confining.

My plumber runs his business off Excel and a ton of VBA code. He is convinced it gives him an advantage over his competitors.

I think we need to teach people the basics of computer operations before learnToCode...

Computer Illiteracy is still very high, even today lots of people can not tell the difference between their computer monitor, and their computer.

Apparently Gen Z has trouble even understanding filesystems

https://futurism.com/the-byte/gen-z-kids-file-systems

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