Is Coding the New Literacy?

motherjones.com

11 points·staringmonkey··3 comments

Tasneem Raja, of Mother Jones, on computer literacy, problem solving, education and diversity.

Although this is a long article, it's one of the best things I've read about computer literacy, diversity, and being prepared for the future. The main point seems to be that we should teach "computational thinking", first and foremost. Not everyone needs to learn how to "code", in the sense of learning Java syntax or whatever. Even if they couldn't implement the program, it would be helpful if more people in all professions were more comfortable with generally how computers could improve a process in their government or community. Plus, it seems that if you start with that, learning to code per se will be more appealing to a broader group of people. So in that sense it's win/win.

tl;dr: Engineers think the world would be a better place if only everyone was an Engineer.

Well if you read a few paragraphs into the article, there are examples like Code for America doing an adopt-a-fire-hydrant app in Boston. Which gets repurposed as an adopt-a-tsunami-siren in budget-strapped Honolulu, at a cost of ~$20/month. I don't think people need to be rabid nerds to see processes in government that could be improved. The article is about more people having the general mindset about how they could be improved.

In the middles ages, maybe some scribners thought the world would be a better place if everyone were literate? That doesn't mean everyone should be a professional author. But they should be able to participate in a world full of writing and reading.

By the way, the article has a comment by rms, so it's worth at least scrolling to the end, even if one lacks time to read the whole thing.

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