Comment by WilliamMayor | Hacker News Reader

Comment by WilliamMayor | Hacker News Reader

I disagree with very little of what she said. OK, so she doesn't know how to code, she admitted that, and she doesn't know a great deal about technology. She confuses graphic design and coding at one point.

Here is an MP on Question Time saying all the things I want to say on Question Time. Coding is a vital skill that our education system is ignoring. Children that grow up without any idea of how computers work will be disadvantaged. An economy that has no young work force even introduced to coding will not be digitally productive.

When I'm trying to sell the "teach children to code" course that I occasionally run I like to use this metaphor: people that don't know how computers work to even the most basic level aren't people that don't know how an internal combustion engine works. They're people that only know how to get taxis.

So don't hate on this woman (even if she is Tory, even if she does know powerful people) because she's standing in our corner fighting our fight.

I'm pretty sure I was taught to code in a day.

  10 PRINT "HELLO"
  20 GOTO 10

My first hack was:

  10 PRINT "IM A COMPUTER"
  20 GOTO 10

Now the system was leaking internal information.

The next 30 years have just been variations on a theme. Spawned Erlang processes, in my head, are 20 GOTO 10.

edit: The thing that freaks me out about computer illiterate people being in charge of teaching people computing is that they aren't equipped to choose the experts to hire. She can only evaluate them by their connections, their pleasantness, their respect from peers (who also can't be evaluated), and their massive marketing budgets.

I remember hacking

    print "Hello world!"

into

    print "Hello World!"

and crossing my fingers, pressing the button, and being amazed that it worked! I was convinced that somehow it would be more complicated than that.

I wish Guido van Rossum had left well enough alone, so that the above line was valid code in current Python (it works for Python 2, not Python 3).

When I was about 15 our teacher was supposed to give a 30 min class on programming but knew nothing about it so I stood up and taught a bit along the lines of

  10 INPUT "Name",N$
  20 FOR X=1 to 10
  30 PRINT N$;" is an idiot"
  40 NEXT

which was quite a hit with my fellow teens. Sophisticated stuff eh?

Sounds like the beginning of a wonderful career as a web UX designer:)

Or v0.0.0.1 of http://foaas.com/ ...

Most of what she said was obvious, but there was one point that she got badly wrong: You can't really learn to code in a day. You can learn a few bits and pieces, what a variable is, what basic flow control is, displaying something on a screen. But that doesn't make you a coder. By implying that coding is something that can be done with an hour here and there, she's setting children up for failure.

If she wants to really have an effect on education and the digital skills we'll need children to grow up with she should be treating the subject of coding as a serious topic that deserves respect, time and a great deal of support from government and industry alike.

Disagree. You can learn all you need to know in a day to get "hooked".

As stated elsewhere,

10 print "Hello!" 20 goto 10

Then just variations on that theme, lookup other functions etc.

We don't need schools to teach programming either. Anyone who is interested in it can learn it themselves easily.

My son just made his decisions for GCSE options. He decided against doing IT, because they just play around with spreadsheets. He's learning to code at home, by himself, writing games and apps for his phone. That's the way to do it IMHO...

At school, you're going to be in a class where 50% couldn't care less about programming, and the rest will just slow you down. Self teaching is much better.

> You can learn all you need to know in a day to get "hooked".

So what? That's not the point, of course you can become strongly interested in something in a short space of time. The problem is you really can't learn to code in that time.

> Then just variations on that theme, lookup other functions etc.

This statement is so broad as to be meaningless. Would you say you know quantum mechanics just because someone wrote down a few axioms for you and the rest is 'just' busywork and maths?

> At school, you're going to be in a class where 50% couldn't care less about programming, and the rest will just slow you down. Self teaching is much better.

If the self teaching environment is available and good, of course it is. However, there's nothing special about computing here, and one reason we have schools in the first place is that the environment is not always otherwise available.

The crutial thing for people wanting to learn programming is to get "hooked". Once you're hooked, you'll learn everything there is to know about programming as and when you need it.

What is more important than teaching people to program, is showing them how to teach themselves.

Programming doesn't really have any big concepts that need massive amounts of prior knowledge to understand. It's just 1s and 0s. You can't really compare programming (Building stuff), to quantum mechanics.

I'd say pretty much all kids these days have access to a computer, and to the internet - a perfect environment for self teaching.

Just like 25 years ago when I was teaching myself, there is no barrier to anyone who wants to learn.

While I agree with the general idea that getting people enthusiastic is an important part of teaching programming, I think you're still underestimating the complexity of some topics.

The initial realisation that everything is just simple conditionals and loops is very empowering, and will probably lead to a burst of creativity in many people. However, the reality is that these tools are not sufficient for many complex tasks, and left to their own devices, students may lose interest before discovering the alternatives.

Having a teacher there to say "This might be easier if you learn about arrays" is very valuable.

I think we overestimate the difficulty of some things because of the intense proliferation of useful middleware and macros that we live in.

Variables, loops, branches, I/O (input/print). Did I miss anything?

Just because those things are technically sufficient does not make them practically sufficient. Your "proliferation of middleware" (which apparently includes all modern programming languages) isn't just a convenience, it's absolutely essential to developing anything useful.

Not really. You don't need to know about iterators, closures, generators, concurrency, exceptions, etc etc to be able to make useful software. Sure, learn about those things if it looks like you might need them for something, but all of those things are completely optional.

Learning programming at its rawest form, is giving someone a list of assembly code instructions, explaining what they all do, and saying "go build stuff". And it's fairly simple to learn. It can certainly be explained in a day.

Just like painting - give someone a pencil and paper and say "go make something".

You can actually opt out of IT now ?? Was compulsory when i was doing my GCSEs 10years ago. Wow, seems like a step backwards for the education system in my opinion

Depends where you are. Sadly, he cannot opt out of R.E which seems like a massive step backwards to me.

His school also allows you to opt out entirely from foreign languages, which he has done, which is a good move IMHO.

I hated having to do French or German 20 years ago...

I think he was suggesting his son wasn't going to do a GCSE in IT which is eminently sensible. 15 years ago, I don't think many people could do a GCSE in IT. There were a few compulsory computing classes where we got to play with spreadsheets and word. But they didn't count towards anything and didn't distract much from the core curriculum. And we had a computer programming after school club that was very popular but then immediately shut down when a senior teacher discovered we were making games.

This is a great point - I think the article really fails to acknowledge that there is a heavy technical presence behind this initiative. Amongst the advisors are people like Rohan Silva, Zach Sims, and several CTOs and founders that are extremely well-placed to direct the initiative properly.

It might have been a clumsy performance, but there's a serious need to address the current under-qualification of teachers to teach programming in schools so we should be glad someone, somewhere has found financial and political backing to tackle it.

"Even if she is Tory".

Oh dear.

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