If you haven't seen the video, check it out here: http://www.code.org/

I've been reading a lot of negative posts on various tech sites about that video. Some of the biggest complaints are the selection of people in that video.. particularly that some of them most likely don't actually code at all. I've read suggestions to have more well known computer scientists in the video as a way to pitch CS for "real".

My take as a high school programming teacher AND computer science degree holder (from Penn State University) is that people outside of education are completely missing the point. This advertisement targets the people making decisions about education as much as it does the students it is trying to engage. One suggestion I read was to put guys like Linus Torvalds in the video.. no offense to Linus, but he is *not* the person to pitch computer science to the masses. Not because what he has done isn't important, but because he can't connect to regular people on the level that some of the people you see in that video can. The people holding the purse strings have to realize that this is something actually important. Guys like Bill Clinton/Gates, Zuckerberg, etc. have the clout to actually convince them.

Think about your programming experience in high school. How many classes did your school have? What was the credentials of your programming teacher? Right now it is mostly the biggest schools with a lot of tax resources at their disposal that can afford to include programming classes. But computer science definitely not a priority in our education system.. but there are forces at work trying to push things in a different direction. This code.org video is another effort to do exactly that.

In fact, most states (it most likely is all states, but I'm not positive) do not have a computer science certification for teachers. It falls under either math or business education.. and the degrees that these people get typically require exactly one programming class sometime in their freshman/junior year. That is the state of things..

The point I'm trying to make is that we desperately need *some way* to start engaging the public on the idea that simply focusing ALL of our efforts on math/reading is not going to do much for our youth. We need to be able to expand their ability to think critically and think logically, and computer science is one such place where problem solving is everything. More importantly, it gives students an opportunity to solve problems in a way that is enjoyable.

The more people you can draw in and give the opportunity to at least explore what programming is about, the more truly talented individuals you are going to see entering the field.

I'm pretty much of the same opinion. This video was a marketing thing, pure and simple. You have to have people who can connect with the folks watching it, people with a bit of charm and charisma if you want to market successfully.

I think general people knowing how to write code could be kind of a pros/cons thing though.

I started writing out my thoughts but it largely ended up as a kind of cynical rant about education, which people would probably just end up disliking anyways (like with education being a "cornerstone of society" and so on, even if sometimes it does just seem like it is all there to take ones' time and money for sake of some "the future" which will possibly never really materialize anyways, and a person can learn things much more much more quickly via searching for information on the internet, ...).

another part ended up being mostly about the pros and cons of having more people know how to write software vs the potentially higher profitability where all this is kept in the hands of a select few (where there is the select few who can write code, and everyone else giving them money for it). like, a world where code and coding abilities are readily available is also one where there isn't a whole lot of money to be made from selling software. so, it is a tradeoff between a world where everything is tightly controlled by a select few, or a world where, for the most part, software isn't particularly profitable (for example: a world where programmers have to be licensed to write software and pay a high price for development tools and possibly yearly dues/...; vs a world where compilers and tools are pretty much free, but compilers-and-tools as a viable market segment is pretty much all but dead, ...).

I guess the relative pros and cons depends a fair amount on who the person is in this scenario (it is good to be the one on the receiving end of the money, but not so good for the person on the paying end, ...).

or this is the short version, people are free to disagree if they want...

I'm all with getting more people into computer science and using it to get people to think more logically...

But I also think that computer science is not for everyone. Programming isn't something everyone can grasp - I've met people, perfectly normal and otherwise competent, who could not wrap their heads around the flow of a program, despite several attempts (from me and others) to explain.

So I don't think that attempting to teach programming to everyone will be helpful. But giving more opportunities to learn programming - yeah, definitely better.

Almost a year ago Jeff Atwood gave compelling arguments of why not to learn to code.

Our school offered optional coding classes, which I took and I think was nice. I don't think it needs to be integrated into the standard line of classes though.

I'm all with getting more people into computer science and using it to get people to think more logically...
But I also think that computer science is not for everyone. Programming isn't something everyone can grasp - I've met people, perfectly normal and otherwise competent, who could not wrap their heads around the flow of a program, despite several attempts (from me and others) to explain.
So I don't think that attempting to teach programming to everyone will be helpful. But giving more opportunities to learn programming - yeah, definitely better.

The possibilities are endless if you start young enough. Children will learn 3 or 4 languages fluently if exposed to them growing up with 0 effort on their part.
Why not make one of them a programming language?

The biggest problem with our educational system is that we constantly underestimate how spongy kids are. While there are exceptions, many of them are only limited by how much information we choose to throw at them. We decided for whatever reason what is “too much” for them, and in doing so we stunted their growth. Nothing else.

There are very few people I would agree would be unable to grasp it no matter what. Here is a conversation I had with a coworker when I worked at the Wichita Greyhound Park as a youth:

Her: “Did you know Wan has never been outside Kansas? Poor guy.”

Me: “Huh? He is from Vietnam. He has lived outside of all of America almost all of his life.”

Her: “Vietnam? Where is that?”

Me: “Um, it is in Asia, across the ocean.”

Her: “Asia. Oh, that’s in China!”

Me: “Uh- No, Asia is a continent, like North America, and China and Vietnam are both countries inside that continent, like the United States of America is inside North America.”

Her: “Oh wow Vietnam is a country? Oh my God is that why they call it the Vietnam War??”

Me:

Obviously some people will never succeed at some things no matter how hard they try, but it certainly doesn’t hurt to give them exposure, and earlier is better.

Otherwise, keep watching your software jobs go to India.

L. Spiro

Almost a year ago Jeff Atwood gave compelling arguments of why not to learn to code.

Thank you for this.

In my opinion, learning how to use a computer is just like learning how to use many of modern technology's other amenities, such as automobiles, telephones, Xerox machines, etc. Like automobiles, there are different levels of knowledge. There are people that just know how to use the machine, people that know how to crack open the hood and work on their engine and the internal parts of the car, and the actual engineers that design the parts and are working with the physics of the components of the car. If programming a computer (IMO akin to working on the insides of an automobile) is to be taught in American schools (its already taught in India), don't give the kids a fresh install of Windows 8 with Alice or Scratch "visual drag-drop programming," give them gcc on Debian (with, of course, X Window System not available). My logic is that when you just give them a drag-and-drop interface to "coding" something like a 2D graphics (or even 3D, in the case of Alice) with instructions like "rotate" and "move" you are doing it entirely wrong, as they aren't necessarily being interested in computer programming, just the high level problem solving game-ish things. Maybe introduce (like in India, just not that outdated *ahem Turbo C ahem*) them to programming after Algebra I (which should be given much earlier) and teach them those things, but only if they sign up for the class. I don't care how good it sounds, teaching programming to a class with a few people who don't want to learn it WILL ruin the learning process for everybody else. The reason I mentioned disabling X before was that I find that using bash/terminal is much more of a boon to your attention span than using a GUI. A lot of kids these days have this false image of programming, a highly academic and professional occupation, that it is some job filled with "hacking punks who do stuff on a black and white screen to make kool stuff for people for fr33."

I'm all with getting more people into computer science and using it to get people to think more logically...

But I also think that computer science is not for everyone. Programming isn't something everyone can grasp - I've met people, perfectly normal and otherwise competent, who could not wrap their heads around the flow of a program, despite several attempts (from me and others) to explain.

So I don't think that attempting to teach programming to everyone will be helpful. But giving more opportunities to learn programming - yeah, definitely better.

I absolutely agree with you. Computer science and programming isn't for everyone, and I can tell you that students who do take the courses in high school figure that out. Let's say that out of every group of students 10% of them really get it and can excel.. in some cases it's a numbers game because there are plenty of students who can think with the mindset of a programmer but who may just not get exposure to it. In this case a class of 20 students will yield 2 students who are talented. What we need is to expand our computer science class enrollment numbers and mine for the truly talented individuals in each school.

And Spiro is right.. students will gain an interest in the things you give them exposure to at a young age. Many programmers can talk about how as kids they developed an interest in the craft through some project or piece of software they worked with. Most people graduating don't have positive experiences like that because they simply aren't exposed to them.

The possibilities are endless if you start young enough. Children will learn 3 or 4 languages fluently if exposed to them growing up with 0 effort on their part.
Why not make one of them a programming language?

I don't think learning to program is the equivalent to learning a natural spoken language. Sure, programming languages have syntax, spelling and sort of grammar rules, but there's far more to learning programming than just learning how to write valid code. In fact, most of my education in getting a CS degree was langauge-agnostic - only in classes that were named "Java ###" or "C++ ###" did we focus on language specifics. (that is to say, there's more to 'programming' than just knowing a programming language)

If I can make another comparison, learning to program is kind of like learning to write novels. You can write understandable code or paragraphs, but whether you can achieve something with that in the end (be it a well functioning program, or an engaging and interesting book) is another set of understanding entirely. And just like programming, I don't believe that everyone can write novels.

And just like programming, I don't believe that everyone can write novels.

In my own opinion, I don't really think it's a question of can, but wants to.