Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by frozenport | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

frozenport

I humbly disagree.

Lets focus on one point.

Literacy facilitated efficient information exchange.

Likewise programming facilitated efficient information exchange.

But, not everybody needed to program the Internet for this advantage.

I think you are confusing a personal advantage and societal advantage. Certainly, we need programers but I am uncertain if everybody needs to be a programmer.

I work a full-time software job, and I can say that the software is the easiest part. I do big data HPC, C, C++, learning models and physics simulation. I need people to come up with models, Ontology and even vision. I think at the Hacker News Ivory Tower of software-for-software or software-for-programers, we often underestimates the value of domain specific knowledge.

Teaching kids is certainly rewarding and a CS degree is a bright future, but I am more worried about the lack of US PhD's then the lack of user facing javascript.

View on HN

He's not saying everyone needs to be a programmer, but everyone needs to be able to program.

The number of times in all my jobs where I've seen people working on problems that could be done orders of magnitude faster with a bit of coding knowledge, is beyond count.

Reformat that document? How about a Regex? Analyse this data? Automatic graph generation and statistical methods. Keep records updated? Database with automated queries. Always building weekly reports? Template substitution and HTML generation.

There are so many jobs, that would not be considered anything to do with programming, that can be made hugely more efficient with a bit of coding knowledge.

As this video says, for most of this you don't even need to know algorithms or data structures or the 'important' stuff for being a programmer.

You just need to understand 'SELECT date FROM records WHERE quantity > 10'.

Or 'println("Report Week Ending " + date.GetToday()))'

Or 's/\[[A-Z]*\]/(&)/'

In many cases the people in these positions don't even need to be able to program, they need to be able to see the solutions that programming can give them. I think this is the number one issue right now. Not everybody needs to be a programmer, but everyone needs to be educated about some of the ways programming can help you.

With that said, we mostly come up with these ideas because we are able to program, so yeah.

Domain specific languages have a role to play there. You already mentioned Regex and SQL but things like R, MathLab or even Excel can be invaluable tools in some professions.

Uh no. He's saying everyone needs to be a programmer.

> companies will benefit most from hiring great coders and teaching them how to be CEOs

The problem is that today 'being able to read/write code' and 'being a programmer' is as good as synonym. It shouldn't be, that's the issue. We won't call CEOs with programming skills 'programmer's just as we don't call them 'readers' today.

The problem is people don't even realise what types of problems can easily be solved by computers. It doesn't even cross their mind that something they do every day could be automated or made better.

That's why everyone needs to learn how to code (a bit). So they can go "Ah, I think software might improve this thingy here; let's call in an expert and ask"

Programming enables automation of your domain-specific knowledge. Animators who could program gave us CG movies. Musicians who could program gave us software music composition tools. Would garbage collectors who could program give us robots to do parts of their jobs? Or apps to communicate real-time problems? Or public education websites? I think it very likely.

Any field -- any field at all! -- that can benefit from information organization and retrieval, automation, scripting, robotics, internal wikis, private smartphone apps, information dissemination, etc., will benefit from people who have deep domain knowledge ALSO being programmers.

And I think that's just about all of them.

Absolutely !

This recent article is basically the same concept: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5275313

> Despite these challenges, we republished the updated graphic without too much delay. But I was left thinking how much easier it could have been had I simply recorded the process the first time as a makefile. I could have simply typed make in the terminal and be done!

In other words, the key "transferrable skill" of programming, is being able to describe a process in enough exacting detail, that nobody ever needs to "reconstruct" it again. The computers-being-able-to-execute-the-process thing is just a nice side-effect.

It's not about user facing JavaScript apps. It's about adding another tool to the mental toolbox.

Calculus, statistics, physics simulations - all of these will be of use in a persons career, yes, but like you I think that is not important. What is utterly important is that the most expressive and flexible tool in the mental toolbox for two hundred years is put in the hands of as many human beings as possible.

I want the next Einstein to be literate, able to use Lisp on her OLPC device and change the understanding of the universe from her school hut in Rwanda, circa 2039.

We live in a world of wonders, invented by the brightest few thousand humans who ever lived. Let's give ourselves the best chance of the next thousand adding their full worth too.

It sounds like you think all scientists should learn how to code.

I am certain that there are many people who rarely use calculus and physics simulations in their work, and who would never need to program even if they knew how.

I don't think I have ever used my Secondary School chemistry, or my knowledge of the biology of frogs.

But that does not mean learning those was useless - either to make me a more rounded person, or to pass me through a filter so that those who do want to contribute to society through chemistry actually discover their interests

School is a process for finding and educating those who will invent the next 100 years, and persuading the rest of us that we should support them.

I think that what humanity gained in literacy when Gutenburg invented the printing press is akin to what humanity can gain in problem solving skills upon the invention of the microprocessor. An everyday problem solver is a more peaceful, more level headed, and more thoughtful person than someone who is not. Just like an everyday reader is someone who is more informed than someone who is illiterate.

The best way to teach problem solving skills is through computer science without a doubt. A smarter population will lead to more peace and prosperity for the human race.

Do I think that computer science can lead to a more peaceful and thoughtful society? Absolutely; therefore I think that it's crucial to teach it.

> A smarter population will lead to more peace and prosperity for the human race.

Or language wars fought with real weapons.

I don't think the Gutenberg thing applies at all. I think we're getting carried away. You could make a argument about digital information and the Web as a way to disseminate information as a Gutenberg style invention but I don't think programming is.

I don't think programming and learning to code is the "everyday problem solver," "more peaceful" person. I think what you're talking about is the phenomena that intellectuals tend to be more circumspect, perhaps less violent whatever. We don't need programming for that. We have a whole history of knowledge and art in philosophy, literature, other sciences, logic, mathematics etc. I fail to see how programming is special in that sense?

The average person, say in the US, may be more likely to be able to read than in the past but they do not tend to be less "ignorant" of many societal issues, cultures, etc (because you bring up peace and harmony) even thought we have educational tools long standing to solve that problem, much better than programming.

Honestly, I dispute this outright. I've been programming a long time, met many programmers and computer scientists; it does not seem like the ability to produce CRUD correlates in any real sense to a person being less likely to join the Tea Party.

You're viewing programming as this great society benefiting solution to social ills or something that makes you a better person; large swaths of people would just view it as an engineering and say "fine, sure, programming skills make it easier for you to get a job, great" but not anything that substantially creates peace in the world -- that's too much I think.

I think this is a good point and I am surprised by the downvotes your post received.

I wanted to add that Internet culture has facilitated many people to realize their most twisted fantasized this perhaps not good. Consider the desensitizing effects of r/spacedicks.

lack of US PhDs? We already produce way more PhDs than the economy can absorb; if anything we should either produce less PhDs or create a better job market for them.

We already produce way more PhDs than the economy can absorb; if anything we should either produce less PhDs or create a better job market for them.

When I was a kid and first learned about the Roman Empire and its fall, and of all the other historical empires that collapsed, one of the things that I wondered was how these people could be so "stupid". Of course, I didn't understand the day-to-day nuances involved. I saw these as personalized historic entities rather than complex patterns of behavior. I just couldn't grasp why such things would "allow" themselves to fall apart.

When I look at what has happened to the U.S. job market for scientists, researchers and academics and place that in the context of what we were as a society and what we've become... I get it. I now know what it is and what it looks like when a complex society "chooses" decline.

Historically speaking, wasn't the temporary boost in demand for PhDs after WW2 the abnormality?

Personally, I dislike the argument that recent progress is an "abnormality". A large middle class (post-1925) is an "anomaly". Slavery being illegal is, historically speaking, extremely unusual.

Right on. I was at the Smithsonian Natural History museum in DC a few days ago. They had an exhibit on pollution in the world's oceans. I was shocked at the reasons they gave to reduce pollution. To paraphrase: if we don't stop polluting, we will hurt the local economy, etc. My jaw dropped. That's the reason why we aren't supposed to destroy the oceans???

As a scientist, it is totally sad to see the state of research, and the standing scientists have in society. I don't understand why sane people would choose to get themselves into such career paths.

The job market certainly sucks, but it maybe because a large number have uncompromising dreams of working in academia. In EE a PhD will land you a job at a company of your choice.

As does the U.S. in general, the NavLabs suffer from an increasingly severe shortage of trained replacement civilian personnel in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (= STEM topics). The Navy’s problem is more severe than the nation’s because only U.S. citizens can work at NavLabs, and a great many U.S. STEM graduates are foreign nationals.

[1] The following is a report http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a503549.pdf.

This is true for EE, but that's an engineering degree. Sciences PhDs have a much harder time, even in industry (e.g. biotech is languishing).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com