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Comment by rokhayakebe | Hacker News Reader

I think EVERYONE should learn to code just as everyone learns ARITHMETIC.

Imagine a world where only a few of us knew how to balance an account, or a few of us understood how much will they have left if they spent x amount at the gas station.

Now imagine a world where everybody has a basic ability to develop software.

All the above being said, the beginning is not programming, but learning how to Think, Read, and Write. Not programming language, but human language. When we have learned some basic thinking process (logic), then having the ability to easily program will follow.

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Imagine a world where only a few of us knew how to balance an account, or a few of us understood how much will they have left if they spent x amount at the gas station.

You're living in it. Math illiteracy is very common.

But Arithmetic is not. I am not making the case for Math, but Arithmetic. I am not making the case for Computer Science, but programming.

>Now imagine a world where everybody has a basic ability to develop software.

Pointless, I think. They'll only be able to make the most basic of software. Existing programmers complain about bad code and naive solutions already. This will only compound the issue.

I'm not sure if programming teaches critical thinking, reading and writing any better than the existing subjects we have.

Pointless, I think. They'll only be able to make the most basic of software.

If every doctor could write their own SQL queries against their own data, if the dentist office manager could pull the list of customers who live within 2 miles, if the marketeer can put his own static site very quickly, if the scientist can write code the parses his text and automatically pull related text from wikipedia and links to relevant papers written between 1738 and 1776. Why must they wait for you and I to do this? Why the wait?

I'm not sure if programming teaches critical thinking, reading and writing any better than the existing subjects we have.

My point is that learning critical thinking, reading, and writing is what we should focus on because it ultimately makes better programmers.

For what is a good program if not a well thought through problem (logic) turned into a few lines of text (writing, reading) that provide the solution.

They get us to do it because we have more practice. They're going to be spending a bunch of time hacking away at a query or parse to make sure they have everything or else they might have missed some of that data. At worst, they make a decision with that bad parse or data. Language gotchas are a real pain for people at this stage. I agree it's not rocket science and any of those examples possess the capability to learn that sort of thing. The key difference between a doctor and I is confidence that we did it right.

How about this... go and spend a few hundred hours to acquire a skill you may never use again. It has to be one with which you have had no previous exposure or proficiency.

It sounds a bit stupid when it's put that way doesn't it?

That's essentially what "everyone should learn to code" boils down to.

There just isn't going to be any meaningful return on the mental investment unless coding is going to be your new career.

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