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Comment by collyw | Hacker News Reader

No, why not familiarize yourself with operating system concepts. It will be a lot more use. Maybe after that learn to code.

I am a developer. If I am installing a piece of third party software and it doesn't work, the last thing I am going to do is to dig into the code. It more likely that an environmental variable needs set, or a library is missing. No coding knowledge required to fix these things, but an understanding of how everything fits together is.

(Getting bored of these kind of statements from Obama and the likes).

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You're a developer, so for you learning OS concepts is more useful. If you look at comments from non-developers who have learned the very basics of coding, you'll see their minds have been opened up to dimensions they never before considered possible. Looking at an OS after you have a rudimentary understanding of the building blocks is totally different than trying to learn each black box independently.

I used to think like you, I don't anymore. We (Axiom Zen) co-organized the HTML500, Canada's largest free learn-to-code event. In one day, 500 people came together and learned the very basics. The response was overwhelming, check it out for yourself: https://twitter.com/search?q=%23html500

These folks are looking with totally fresh sets of eyes at what you and I take for granted. Learning the basics gives them the same appreciation you and i have for the abstractions that can be built on top.

I had done a number of basic programming classes well before I went to university to study it. The stuff they teach you is not especially useful. For loops, and if staments. Its easy. Learning to structure a larger scale project is a lot more difficult, and that requires at least some experience that you aren't going to learn in a beginers coding class.

I took a number of basic math classes well before I went to university to study it. The stuff they teach you is not especially useful. Addition, multiplication tables, and trig identities. It's easy. Learning to model large systems is a lot more difficult, and that requires at least some experience that you aren't going to learn in a beginner's math class.

Should I do the physics version as well?

you don't find addition useful?

Addition is as useful as the logic of an if statement.

The point I intended to make is that after various beginner level programming classes, I still couldn't create anything especially useful to anyone else. I could draw something on screen, but I couldn't ship it as a standalone.

I am fairly certain that you will use basic addition / multiplication in everyday life without having to be a maths expert, and have it be useful, even essential to you.

Anyway, nice strawman argument you are creating. On you go with the physics one.... (funnily enough I don't find myself using my school pyhsics in everyday life the way I use maths)

Then the physics version:

I took a couple of basic physics classes well before I went to university. The stuff they teach you is not especially useful. Elastic and inelastic collisions, deceleration from friction, F=ma. It's easy. Learning to model large systems is a lot more difficult, and that requires at least some experience that you aren't going to learn in a beginner's physics class.

So what do you use your high school physics for in day to day life?

Control flow is not obvious to everybody.

I expect there are a lot of people who benefit from the lesson that computers do things in a certain order (I realize that this isn't necessarily true...).

Do you think? I remeber doing flowcharts in school, in the 80's before computers were the norm. I don't remember anyone struggling with the concepts.

You don't need to be a developer to know system administration. Hell, it used to be a given, but the barrier to entry has diminished significantly with the advent of the GUI and now consumer electronics.

I agree with the OP. It's important to learn system administration before programming. Know your environment.

Writing markup is fine and will help you understand what's going on when you view page source, but it's hardly the enlightenment you make it out to be.

"...but it's hardly the enlightenment you make it out to be."

I really can't understand how anyone who does sysadmin work and any amount of programming can say this.

My mastery of computers grew organically. I started out with "power user" stuff. Namely, tweaking my computing environment (Windows, at the time) to my liking. As I tweaked, I inevitably broke things, which meant I had to learn to fix them. It wasn't long before I realized that being able to fix computers when something goes wrong was a valuable skill, so I developed that skill further.

I had a friend who wrote simple programs in VisualBasic from around the time that Windows 3.1 came out. He wrote a baseball card database application that we both used to catalog our collections. From that, I understood the utility of programming as a means to solve problems that were imporant to me, but I was too consumed with other things. It wasn't until the internet gained popularity that I started to write programs. What I'm getting at is that I was late to the game. I was in to computers for a long time before I had much interest in programming.

My skills as a sysadmin were pretty decent to begin with, but I became a troubleshooting superman as my programming skills developed. It literally changed my entire perspective, and even my methodology, when troubleshooting. I could read a stack trace! I could load up dump files, import symbols, and dig around to find the offending file, which would lead me to a specific application or a device.

Even at a very basic level, learning to program taught me a tremendous amount about how software works. Those insights led me down the correct paths when working as a sysadmin. I began to understand not just what to do, but why.

I was specifically referring to markup. Sorry if you misunderstood me.

It's not that people need knowledge to code professionally it's that they benefit from knowledge about how coding works. The difference is huge.

yes it beneficial to know how coding works, but I would say knowing how eveything fits together is much more useful, and probably teaches a similar line of logical thinking - breaking problems down into smaller pieces.

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