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Comment by gfodor | Hacker News Reader

Encouraging kids to try to become astronauts is not an ignorant statement despite the fact that becoming an astronaut is really hard. Telling kids to try to design iPhone apps or make video games is much less so. It's a shame that HN can't recognize what is fundamentally a good thing: a statement from the president encouraging curiosity and proficiency in computer science and programming. It's incredible to me that this community of so-called "hackers" can be so quick to shit on it. Perhaps it's an insecurity thing, and they are afraid if others learn their skills they may no longer be in the position of power they are in now?

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"encouraging curiosity" this.

I've tried to talk to younger kids in my family about building things with computers. You'd be surprised how hard it is to get them interested, even if they play Minecraft all day.

For many of us, we got interested in programming though randomly hacking a game at one point in time. Telling kids that they can build their own games or apps and helping them potentially get interested is a big deal in itself.

> Perhaps it's an insecurity thing, and they are afraid if others learn their skills they may no longer be in the position of power they are in now?

Most of the objections seem to boil down to this. For better or for worse, HN is an entrepreneurial community, and everyone seems to be approaching this with an ultra-logical "this policy will decrease my worth by $X" approach. Post this video on a forum that's geared toward, say, developers of open-source software and see how different the reaction is.

One thing isn't inherently harder than the other. To put things in linear dualistic terms like

hard vs easy good vs bad moral vs immoral

can sometimes be over simplifying due to the normative nature of these concepts.

For someone who knows Vietnamese to learn Chinese is easy, but for someone who only knows English learning Chinese can be harder.

Each discipline has its' own linguistic domain. The difference between a software programmer and a rocket scientist is the rocket scientist knows a set of specific terms/vocabulary that distinguishes different parts of rocket, fuel, working process of aerospace and other stuff I don't know anything about. Not only does the rocket scientist knows all the terms, he/she also understands the relationship between each terms. It is mastery of this Linguistic Domain that make it possible for rocket scientists.

Programmer has mastery of a different Linguistic Domain and for some rocket scientists it may seem hard.

I do some what agree with you on the 'insecurity thing'. Although I think that is only a case in below stage 4 working culture (see Dave Logan, Tribal Leadership for reference on organizational culture stages http://www.ted.com/talks/david_logan_on_tribal_leadership.ht...).

I agree. Generally, I think criticism comes easier than praise. And no doubt, selection bias contributes to perceived hostility in forums. But I think CS cultures like in HN especially pride themselves on detail and pedantry. Let's be honest, I think most of us here have a superiority complex to some degree. It was probably ingrained in us through debugging. "compile? damn, segfault. gotta fix ALL THE ERRORS."

Lately, I've realized the motivational impact of having a hero. Something to aspire to. Kids go after what you expose them to. This ties in to what pg said in his essay about "nerds", and I imagine it has a lot to do with the unevenness of the CS demographic. I think the president's video is great. Not all of us have to become CS grads. But for some, the meekest exposure can sow the seeds of a great career path or hobby.

When coca cola tells me to smile in an advertisement I don't get a warm fuzzy feeling in my heart for their advertising team that agonized for weeks over just the right kind of generic appeal to get me to drink more sugar water.

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