Teaching kids to code is self-defence, not a vocational skill At a glittering reception overlooking Sydney’s Opera House, chatting with the local MD of one of the world’s biggest tech companies, the conversation turned to education. “At least we’re all talking about the importance of teaching coding,” this exec pronounced. “Better than a year ago.” Around the world, there’s a growing …
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"It's a bit like the difference between teaching somebody how to use a calculator, (useful but you only learn how to get the result), and teaching them how to use a slide-rule, (they also learn how the mathematics works in general and can apply it to other things)."
I never used a slide rule, but I was taught how to use 4-figure tables, so I guess the same principle applies. However, before I had a calculator or table book, I'd already been taught properly how to do arithmetic by hand. I believe there is a difference between teaching someone how to press the buttons on a calculator and teaching how to use the calculator properly with a mental check of whether its answer looks about right.
Here, for many professions, it is part of the application test to become an apprentice to be able to calculate in your head.
For example, if you want to become a painter, one of the interview questions will be, given a room with such and such measurements (length, width, height) and the wall paint that uses x ML per square metre and the ceiling paint uses y ML per square meter and the ceiling needs 1 coat and the walls 2 coats, how many 5L tins of wall and ceiling paint do they need to decorate the room.
If you can't work that out in your head, you don't get any further in the interview process.
Besides security, there's is simply the ability to recognize when you have a problem best solved by computers. It is always frustrating to see these powerful computers be wasted on ms word and flash while the users manually muddle through the sorts of problems computers where invented for.
Pie in the sky. Like the hysteria years ago about "getting back to basics" ... which led to "No child left behind." If added to the already over-burdened public school system in the US, it's just another wedge issue. Public schools get lip service, and private schools surge ahead, along with demand for more specialized charter schools.
One major problem? Poor families with limited resources, living in low tax-base districts, struggling to support inadequately funded schools that state legislators are strangling with funding cuts.
Judges sue states to support poor districts, and get ignored. (Ex: Washington State) Until a session of legislators sit six months in prison for contempt of court, schools will remain underfunded.
Oh ... that call for coding for all students: does that include a budget for hardware, and qualified instructors? Hmmm ... thought not.
This sounds like a good argument against over-reliance on the state. What if we consider the article as advice to parents instead of a call to teach coding in schools? Parents: help your kids learn to code and here's why. There are lots of books and resources for self-teaching coding, and computers are cheap.
Spreading arguments like the ones in this article might also inspire people to set up local groups or even large philanthropic organisations to help people learn to code.
I think limiting this to a call for the state to teach coding in schools (which we all know they will do badly) is thinking too small.
" If added to the already over-burdened public school system in the US, it's just another wedge issue."
That's not an argument against teaching coding, it's an argument that the US needs to spend less federally, and more locally. And it all comes down to "defence" spending.
In summary America chose to spend $2 trillion on offensive operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, and then to incur pension and veteran benefits costs of the same again. It is still trying to get the F35 into service, as part of a programme that will have a lifetime cost in excess of $1.5 trillion. America spends an estimated $50 billion every year to have the NSA spy on all Americans. It is currently pouring more weapons and "advisors" into Syria, and less openly into Ukraine. It is spending $50bn on three Ford-class aircraft carriers that can't be used anywhere that opponents have sea skimming missiles
All of those choices are America's to make, but if the US public education system is failing, then maybe it is a poor choice for a country that has 4.5% of the world's population to spend 39% of the world's total military spending. And that 39% does not include intelligence agencies, "democracy-spreading" slush funds and the like.
Not that many other countries make wise choices about public spending. In the UK we can't even defend our territorial waters due to defence cuts, but we spend vast amounts of an out-of-balance budget on free healthcare, an out of control welfare programme, and then government give away more than £1 in every £50 of tax receipts as unproductive and routinely abused foreign aid.
Well, the F-35 program gives a lot of jobs to engineers and the like. You may not like it, but this is true. Developing countweapons to allow carriers operate against cruise missiles is another opportunity for more science and engineering jobs - why do you believe they are developing direct energy weapons and advanced radars able to track and kill smaller, faster missiles?
Other countries - Russia first - are "pouring" a large amount of weapons and soldiers in other countries too - just they pretend they aren't.
US understood Monroe doctrine doesn't work in the XX and XXI century. That said, crippling the education system is not a good idea - especially developing weapons needs very skilled people, and you can't expect them come only from wealthy families.
"Well, the F-35 program gives a lot of jobs to engineers and the like. "
I'd suggest the jobs the US needs are commercial jobs paying a decent breadwinner salary, and that means they need to be core manufacturing and skilled service sector that contribute to the productive commercial economy, not a handful of well paid people working out more expensive ways of killing other people, as part of large corporations entirely dependent upon the Defense department's gravy train.
Funny thing is I can remember why the USSR collapsed. In a nut shell, because it spent all its money on an overly large military, and used all its R&D skills to design new weapons, until it got to the point that the productive economy simply couldn't pay the tab anymore. Having bankrupted the Soviet threat, all the Star Wars defence spending should have been canned. But instead of a peace dividend, all the American people got was more defence spending and more wars.
A long line of empires have been built and perished in this way, and the US empire is currently on the well worn step marked "hubris and overstretch". The one thing that you can say about the US empire is that it was built and lost far more quickly than any before it.
You mean Alexander's Macedonian empire, right ? The one he carved out before his 30th birthday, conquering the entire known world of the time, right ?
Seems to me that one was the one fit for your sentence.
USSR collapsed because its technology was inferior in many areas (i,e. materials), and was unable to benefit from weapons investmen to raise the general conditions of its people.
While US economy had a huge benefit from Colf War weapon investments. Many of the developed technologies had civil uses also, and later became avalable to build new industries on them - where most of the electornics and computing thecnologies came from?
This is what was missing in USSR - without a private sector - and no private customers - there were no will to use new tecnologies for civil products. You can easily see it when USSR kept producing the same cameras (Kiev, Zenith) with the same production lines raided in the occupied part of Germany in 1945, well into the '80s.
The weapon industries stimulates (and pay for) a lot of researches in many different fields. You may not like it, but it is true. Very few private companies will invest so much money in some kind of researches (i.e. new materials) without a quick ROI. And that also means a lot of jobs down the line.
US killed its manufacturing jobs because Far East and Mexico are cheaper - but it was exactly the "civil" economy to offshore as much as it could - "military" one for obvious reason is not eager to use Chinese-built weapons.
Unluckily the fall of USSR didn't brought a peace era - other dictators around the world tried to fill the gap, and Putin itself is a nostalgic of USSR and its colonies.
Many people in the US just wish to pretend they're not dangerous, probably they need another Pearl Harbor to awake and understand those kind of dangers don't disappear by themselves.
Then there's the issue that a war is a war, and fighting it pretending it's not is very dangerous. Wars kills people, and usually ends when after killing a lot of people, the ones left think it's better to stop and accept the defeat instead of dying. This is horrible, but it's the only way to win a war. Otherwise, it just lasts years and years, and if you're afraid of killing, while your enemy is not, you lose.
Yes, it has been America's choice. Allied Commander General Dwight David Eisenhower (later President Eisenhower) warned us about the "military-industrial complex". What he failed to forsee, and that America blithely ignored, was the rise of the "military-industrial-political" complex. We've got no defense against that. Eighty percent of the American public wanted a national healthcare system, so we got a $4 Trillion off-the-books note for a never-ending war in the Middle East (currently on-going, no end in sight).
As for spending less federally, and more locally, that's hard to do when the Feds suck up the lion's share of the tax dollars, and dribble portions of it back to the states with puppet-master strings attached.
I used the example of Washington State which has for years chosen to ignore judicial orders to more adequately fund public schools; the state has been wrestling with a $10 Billion ( !! ) budget deficit, so it's hard to see where more money for schools will come.
Anyway ... we could have kept our soldiers at home all these many years, and just sent over squadrons of C-130 cargo aircraft to drop bales of $100 bills on the terrorists, with a map to the closest WalMart locations just over the border. Would've been a helluva lot cheaper!
Yes, because the peak of US economy during Ike years and those that followed it was just casually associated with the huge investments in weapons and related technologies due to the Cold War - and benefitting from those made in WWII and the injection of German technology "borrowed" after the victory, wasn't it?
Even computers started as military projects. A lot of technologies common today were developed for military use first. And military projects lead to huge investments in many different areas, from new materials to advanced software projects.
Maybe the difference was that a lot of '50s-'60s military investments were in technology, not in Halliburton-style companies selling expensive "contractors" to perfom tasks that then were simply perfomed at a much cheaper price by military personnell.
And a state healthcare system is pretty useless when you got half of the world controlled by ISIS-style morons with a strong desire to kill you. We're facing a new form of nazism, and like that in 1939, it's pretty dangerous. You can hide your head under the sand, and hope it goes away itself, or do something to eradicate it. The "head in the sand" attempt in 1936 didn't work...
Meh, we had 5 computers for a class of 35. We learnt to code long hand, debug it, then take turns sitting at the computers and typing in the code and running it, printing out the results and comparing to the dry runs.
That led to far fewer errors than today, because you had to think about it and doing the dry run in your head, you found a lot of the mistakes before you got anywhere near the computer. Today you can usually just hit the compile button and a few seconds or minutes later you can see what happens, or you get a list of silly syntax errors, that you would probably have spotted 2 decades ago, long before the code got anywhere near the computer.
I'm not saying that there aren't advantages to modern technology, just that we have become lazy using it.
You're DNC talking points memo doesn't pass an even cursory reality check. DC schools get more money per student than almost anywhere else in the country yet churn out some of the worst illiterates in the country. Despite all that money they regularly hold "Community Service Days" to have volunteers come in to paint the walls then turn around and beg parents for money to buy school books (assuming they even care about school books in the first place). The numbers and stunts are similar in Philadelphia, Detroit, and Chicago.
Until schools do actually get back to teaching the basics (reading, writing, 'rithmetic) nothing else, including attempting to teach coding skills, will matter. And the truth is, you don't need computers to teach those.
Here's why... you can teach them Python or the language of the day, but what happens when it falls out of favor. The kid really need to learn two things in school and in the States, it isn't taught. One is logic. If you understand logical thinking, coding in any language will be easier. The second is the tough one... they need to learn to think. Yes, think. Schools today teach kids to memorize the trivial and also whatever is the politically correct curriculum of the day. Thinkers we are not making. Logical thinkers, eve less so.
If they can learn to think on their own and think logically, they can code, learn mathematics, physics, etc. If they are not taught that, they'll end up flipping burgers or worse.
Downvote away as I'm sure this isn't politically correct or popular, but it must be said.
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"You don't NEED to nowadays, but the ability should be there to dive into the guts of a system when it fucks up, and really understand what is happening."
But we don't need every school leaver to do this. Coding is a useful skill, we should encourage it. But (as is the case for every other subject taught at school) the majority of the population will not be very good at it, will not be interested in it, will not have a job involving it, and even amongst the code writers we probably only need a small number of experts to delve under the bonnet. Look at the complete waste of time that is domestic science (aka cookery): As far as I can see it teaches no useful practical culinary skills, develops no love of cooking, no finer values of taste and discernment, no enthusiasm for healthy eating. You could say the same for PE. And that's the risk, that coding gets forced down the throats of an unwilling and unreceptive audience, and does more damage than good.
I think all the points about logic, reasoning, and critical thinking are absolutely correct, but perhaps the need is for a more wholesale change in the nature of education rather than bolting on another topic. IT and the internet have made facts easily verified and free. There's no longer much value in rote-learning and the ability to regurgitate . But that's what schools are still doing too much of. Horrible Histories shows how to engage kids with a subject, by making it entertaining. Or computer game tutorials that teach kids the background, rules and controls of a complex game in a matter of minutes. But more than just these techniques of edcuation, it needs to become more discursive - do the e-learning or watch the documentary, and then discuss it in workshop environments. Assessing ability also needs to change, because you can't make it contingent on marking people for recalling facts. Maths and science need to focus far more on the logic, reasoning and method, and to move away from the dull chalkboard and textbook teaching methods.
And, and, and......it's never going to happen.
Yes, but schools were born to teach you what you can't easily learn at home, especially in days where most people were illiterate. You can learn to cook at home from your parents, even illiterate people can cook and teach you.
The idea that the education system should teach everything, alike a "Big Parent", is very stupid and dangerous.
School needs to focus on those skills endowing students to grow beyond what they can learn at home.
No, learning to code not always teaches logic the correct way. I've seen many "developers" (including people with university level education) using flawed logic in their code.
Often, they are obsessed with the programming language itself, and with the easiest "solution", and they lack the ability to look at the software they're implementing at different level of abstraction to produce an overall sound design and implementation.
When you're too busy to understand a programming language, you try to write code that "works" (often, just withing strict boundaries...), instead focusing on code that is really "good".
I still have to thank my high school math teacher, she put a great emphasys on logic (especially through geometry) and not only on algebra - and also on looking for "elegant" solutions, not just a "working" one.
"Don't worry about languages falling out of favour. Thinking about how to programming is a skill that transfers between them."
Tell that to the recruiters. If you're not currently right now being paid to program using whatever today's language de jour is, you're immediately binned.
Schools today teach kids to memorize the trivial
Schools still need to teach some wrote memorization. Adding, subtracting, and multiplication tables for 1 to 9 for example. You need those basics before you can proceed to teach thinking. Given what you wrote, I don't think you meant to imply it is irrelevant, but in the current environment it needs to be stated clearly. Too often I see chowder heads take your entirely correct criticism and extend it to all memorization, which defeats what I believe your intention are.
The ability to "memorize" properly is very important. Just look at developers: the one who remembers what algorithm to use, what API or library to call, will not waste time reinventing the wheel - often delivering a square one. Just like those who "memorized" more words and language structures can easily speak, write and understand better than those who didn't.
Some basic concepts are "postulate", and you can only memorize them, and then build upon them. But if you lack that basic knowledge, going forward becomes very, very difficult.
"We’ll end up with a generation capable of little more than pressing buttons and watching as the pretty emojis float by." - Isn't this the ultimate result of decades of educational policy dumbing things down year by year? The elite might prefer to keep the masses stupid, but there's a point where it becomes a greater problem in other ways.
"A generation of sheeple ready to be fleeced by every hacker, everywhere." - why? Isn't intrusive surveillance by the state ("and selected partners") supposed to catch the bad guys and keep us safe?
The very first comment said it all - what is the point in "coding" without the logical processes to back it up? Quite a lot of the coding thing has nothing to do with a computer. You need to identify the problem. You need to identify the end result that you want. Then you need to work out how to get from here to there. Then you need to do it again while breaking it down into little pieces, step by step. Then, finally, you can start thinking in terms of a computer...
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"Then, finally, you can start thinking in terms of a computer..."
There were occasions in my IT career when colleagues tried to solve a problem in a way that was ineffective.
They basically used what they had been trained to do - serial programming. Where they had no background in electronics they ignored the much more cost-effective use of parallel hardware logic. When presented with an "expert system" language it was found that some people appear to be almost incapable of handling parallel "thought".
Was it the training that caused them to only think in a serial way - or is parallel thinking an aptitude?
Teaching kids to code is what they called a 'hospital pass' when I was growing up.
'Here you go kids. Learn coding! What's that? You're good at it and you enjoy it. That's great! Well no. There are no coding jobs because they were outsourced to low wage countries before you started school.'
The CEO mentioned in the article wants kids to learn coding. Fine. But did he happen to mention any plans to hire any coders in the foreseeable future?
"did he happen to mention any plans to hire any coders in the foreseeable future?"
Well it just didn't seem necessary - the last time they opened the basement hatch and shone a flashlight down there still seemed to be enough rattling of chains coming up from the darkness to suggest the current batch is still alive. Why "hire" any new ones...?
...but what gets dropped?
We hear from hundreds of different self vested organisations and groups about "this NEEDS to be on the curriculum" but in order to do these hundreds of other things, hundreds of other things need to be dropped.
Have it as a Lunch club, or after school club fines, but a core skill? Really?
I think you underestimate the potential usefulness of coding skills in the real world. Computers are now more ubiquitous than pocket calculators and allow to address problems at a much higher abstraction level. Just as with the pocket calculator, you might argue that most people don't really need it (what's wrong with multiplication tables?). But if people have the skill they might use it. The python interpreter definitely replaced my pocket calculator and a good number of other tools.
When you look hard at any subject taught in school, you can always argue that most of it is wasted on most of the pupils. But some of them may be inspired by what they learn and go on to do great deeds.
I agree, sure every kid doesn't need to be a boffin with a computer... BUT teaching them about python and scripting allows them to go beyond the 'click here' mentality of most computer users...
Take photoshop, you can script it in python! so even an arty person can have need for a little bit of scripting...
I wouldnt' want them writing the back end of a website I use, but a few scripts to get a job done faster, sure why not?
"...but what gets dropped?"
Cookery, physical education, religious education, "textiles", PSHE, "citizenship". Or if that offends too many people, let kids choose two of those at most. In my local schools this would free up about two and a half hours a week.
Music and all Languages should also be optional - there's real benefit teaching the interested and capable, but zero benefit trying to teach the uninterested and untalented (which I was for both of those).
@ Ledswinger:
Cookery - always a need for this. And I'm not being sexist, I wanted to do cookery at school but got laughed at as it was considered a "girly" thing. So I taught myself some of the basics. I'm not much of a cook but I aspire to more than "pierce lid and heat at 800W for 3 minutes". Plus, everybody should be taught the basics, if only for safety reasons. You could have beef like the Europeans (still with a heartbeat), but try pork or chicken like that and you run the risk of a rather unpleasant visit to the hospital. Plus, you'll die fairly young and in pain if your life's cuisine is nothing but ready meals and McWhatever. There's a plethora of vegetables, meats, and styles of cooking - try some.
physical education - at my school we just called this "games" as there's no education behind running around in the pouring rain in the middle of winter wearing shorts and a t-shirt. That said, we weren't lardasses, so at least the physical part had a purpose, back then and now. Maybe more so now as consoles were kind of crappy and the internet didn't exist so we had less excuse to sit around all the time.
religious education - depends on the mindset of the person teaching it. I believe RE should introduce the major religions, the differences and reasons, and throw in one or two of the lesser known (eg Shinto) as well for alternative viewpoint. The stress here being that people do have different ideas, no there is no "right" or "wrong" (though obviously the believers will tell you that their way is the right way) and most importantly of all - tolerance. Just because somebody calls their God by a different name, doesn't mean it isn't your God in drag... Unfortunately my 1st form senior (I was 12, whatever nth grade that is these days) RE teacher was a Born Again Christian. Those incoherent rants are what started me seriously examining the bible and made me the agnostic that I am today. ;)
"textiles" - is this what we'd call "sewing class"? It's a useful skill to have, the ability to make things. When the zombie apocalypse arrives (or the civil war following the outcome of a "No" vote on Europe and Great Britain splitting into a bunch of not-so-united parts), you might need to mend your own clothes, not go buy something from Tesco.
PSHE - I had to look this one up. It's sad that children appear to need to have a lesson instructing them how to interact socially with each other and look after themselves. This just seems like a bloody HUGE parenting FAIL.
"citizenship" - This probably depends upon the country. I know citizenship, pledging allegiance, etc is a Big Deal in America. I don't recall ever doing that sort of thing once in an English school.
Music - while there is, as you say, benefit in teaching the interested and capable, you run into the problem of how do you know without risking elitism. Sure, the kid who fiddled around with the household piano from an early age may well have aptitude; but not everybody grows up with musical instruments around the place. And then take me as an example. I enjoy music. I listen to a lot of songs I don't really understand the words to because I like how they sound. I now know that one of the reasons that I like a lot of Japanese contemporary music is because the bass and melody are running at different beats (such as 6 beats to a bar for the bass, and traditional 4:4 for the melody (try "Dear You - Feel" for an example, it ought to be on YouTube somewhere) - I believe this turns up a lot in jazz, though I'm not really familiar with much). I like understanding the technical aspects. Not just "this sounds nice", but why. Why does one chord sound like somebody died, but moving just one note suddenly makes it sound happy? I have bugger all talent and I'm still playing Fur Elise on my Yamaha keyboard and screwing it up. I will probably die before I get that right. Does this mean I should be denied any sort of education in "music" because I am not going to grow up and join an orchestra and make it my life's vocation? You don't have to be good to appreciate it, just...interested.
and all Languages - The problem with English speaking countries is all too often they seem to think that everybody can just speak English, and trot out the same "it's the most spoken language" mantra (I am happy to be corrected, but I believe English is third, behind Mandarin and Spanish; though English is perhaps the most widespread). But actually the reason for this is not just to make you more able to get on in other countries, it is also because by learning a language (properly) you will also be learning about the culture that surrounds the language, the way the speakers think. There is a long philosophical discussion regarding how people perceive the world when they may be limited or enhanced by their language. Get to know another language, even if non-proficiently, you'll get a taste of the sort of people who use it. And that can be a fascinating experience in itself. [I'm a native Brit, I speak French and live in France, and I'm teaching myself Japanese (very slowly, mostly by watching subtitled drama); each language and each country is remarkably different in as many ways as they are similar - like I said, fascinating].
but zero benefit trying to teach the uninterested and untalented (which I was for both of those). - perhaps what is required is not so much to drop the "boring" lessons, but instead to find teachers who can motivate their pupils to want to learn. I could have done with some of that myself - my memories of history lesson was the Romans, the Second World War, and a lot of blah in between punctuated by a procession of Kings and Queens of varying degrees of insanity. History was tedious and boring and delivered in a monotone. Yet, so much cool stuff happened in history - us, alone on this "pale blue dot", all of our technology, everything. If it has happened, it is a part of history. These days, the Beatles and Saturday Swap Shop as well as several billion wars and the discovery of x-rays. History could be an exciting subject, if we could just move on from the idea of "romans blah blah everybody died" spanning two thousand years in a six word sentence.
tl;dr: your loss... ;)
Only people speaking English believe that foreign languages are a waste of time - just one they discover not everybody around the world speaks English... and being English just one language of a specific family, without learning at least one from a diffrent one, it becomes very difficult to understand anything outside it...
What gets dropped? Useless busywork. Do you know how long a typical child spends in school (in the US since that's that I'm familiar with)? Around eleven thousand hours. I don't know exactly what they're filling that with nowadays, but I know that 1000 hours is about how long you'd expect to spend training for an entry-level skilled labor job. So clearly they have time to teach reading, 'riting and 'rithmetic, 'rograming and seven other skills which may or may not have an R near the begging at moderate to high level of competency. If that isn't happening it's because much of the time is being wasted.
Is that an over simplification? Hell yeah. But I think my point stands, there's plenty of room for improvement without bumping anything that matters.
"They didn’t get coding instruction in school"
No, we disassembled BASIC code on our BBC Micro to make games say rude words, or added infinite lives, etc.
My son uses Scratch in school and wanted to install it on my PC, after watching him fiddle with it and make something really basic, I showed him the Unreal Development Kit, and he acomplished more in the same time, and learned about variables, creating instances, etc. Give him another 6 months and he will probably be doing C++ on there to get around the limitations and frustrations of the blueprints.
Kids are smarter than people give them credit for, stuff like Scratch are for wasting time, not learning to code.
Actually many of those attenting schools in the early '80s, when "home computers" became fashionable, were "exposed" to coding much more than those who came later, when PC became just "tools" for other disciplines, and people became just "users". People actually in their forties I'm sure got a better understanding of computing than those in their twenties/thirties, who were shielded from computing principles by more and more layers of more advanced and easy to use software.
With the early home computers you had two choice: load a game from tape and just play, or use it to write some code to perform something useful. Magazines published code you could type and run - and also modify. Sure, it was mostly BASIC but for those who dared to learn assembly.
I attended my first "coding" class the last year before high school. It was a math teacher who introduced it. We had only one computer, so we had to write code on paper before typing it - and you wanted it to work, because you had only one chance to run it, and didn't want to look bad - it wasn't a "trial and error" approach, you had to think before...
It looks that after all these years, I'm still writing better code right away than most of my younger colleagues - just because I'm still trained to think carefully about it before writing it. Others start to write a lot of lines of code, which usually requires a lot of refactoring later.
@ LDS: I think additionally one of the benefits of the BBC Micro (etc) as opposed to modern machines is that it is possible to take the lid off and truly understand how the machine works. The address lines track out to a big mass of logic gates which select memory or one of the peripherals or the ROM. You could prod the machine with a 'scope and literally see the binary wiggling as the machine operates. Couple that with the datasheets for the major chips (or the Advanced User Guide), you could fairly easily come to see life from the point of view of the processor. So when you write your code, you understood what was actually going to happen.
Can you say that about the RaspberryPi? A chip the size of your thumbnail that contains a mindblowing amount of stuff hidden inside and a big bit of memory on top. Apart from the basic I/O, it is not only closed in the sense of not visible, but it is closed in the sense of undocumented APIs and a datasheet that redefines "minimal". Sure, a person can write code and use frameworks and libraries to get stuff done - but I am not sure that a person who grows up with this will ever be able to understand the internal workings, maybe never entirely understanding such seemingly simple things as "int" or "long"? If I'm only storing a small value, should it be a short or a long? Should my structures be packed? And so on.
I absolutely disagree that Scratch is a waste of time. It's a fantastic introduction to almost all the basic concepts used in computing. And as an added bonus there is the instant gratification of seeing stuff working, which you don't generally get with textual languages, even python.
@James Hughes 1
Sure, as an introduction it's fine for basic concepts, but it's probably a "first week" sort of thing. My son knocked up a Flappy Bird clone in very little time, including creating his own graphics, added music and had it running on his tablet. Being simple doesn't mean it has to be limited, the "blueprints" in Unreal Development Kit let you do similar things to Scratch (drag and drop, but more like a Visio chart we would use to map software logic) and while they could do with simplifying the language used for the logic blocks (but it's not really aimed at kids), you can get just as immediate results but with more options.
For younger kids, yeah Scratch is great, but it shouldn't be sold as "coding"
@David Pollard
Thank you, appreciate it!
My son also uses Scratch in school and has access to it at home - if he so chooses. But he doesn't choose to as often as I would like to see. He'd rather lump blocks together in Minecraft or smash things in Lego Batman game, or just play with Lego itself
I suspect what happened with in your case kit is that your child saw what they wanted to achieve and that motivated them to use the kit and in doing so find what they had to do to use that kit.
Scratch can do many things but a child has to want to achieve something in it. When they've exhausted the capabilities or tired of the environment and there's still something they want to do then the child may move onto another language. If not then they might go outside and kick the ball with their friends, or watch TV.
Coming back to Minecraft, my child has done some redstone circuits because some sort of trap or hidden door operation was what he wanted to achieve. For the moment with Lego bricks he hasn't progressed to mechanisms with all the Technic parts that he has inherited from me, because as yet he doesn't want to make mechanisms. If/when he does, I suspect he will learn about gearing ratios.
What the kids need, to learn how to use computers (more) safely in everyday life, is to have their computer infected by a malware laden USB stick given to them by their teacher, with the specific intention of wiping out their project work files - they won't have been told to make backups of course.
That experience alone will introduce them to data backup and restore processes, anti-virus apps and the problems with autorun for external media.
After that, they can be encouraged to visit a school LAN based website that throws a shedload of malware into their computer with various effects. That would give more experience of what can happen to you if you're not careful and then they can learn how to put protection mechanisms in place and practice self-protective behaviour..
Some good points raised here. Coding is great, but the ability to analyze a real world problem (yes, games included) and work out the steps needed to solve it is equally if not more important. There's little more frustrating for many people than learning something purely abstract. (Says the man who had to learn Latin at school and couldn't understand why at the time).
Teaching "coding" is just a sop to the masses, and is of no use in isolation.
Without the underlying knowledge of logic and how to break down any task into achievable steps, and also some basic knowledge of what your code does in a computer, then abstract copying and pasting of code snippets until it works is worthless.
<rant>
I'm constantly amazed by young developers with nice new shiny degrees in "Computer Science" who don't know why "Object reference not set to an instance of an object" messages happen.
They have no concept of memory allocation, or how pointers work, or how garbage collection works, either. Just because their chosen language is supposed to clean up after itself doesn't mean they shouldn't be taught what's happening underneath.
</rant>
The problem here is that the biggest engagement point for kids in computing is games, and how games have changed since "the early days".
Back in the late 80s, you were lucky if you got more than 320x200px at 16 colours, with a bleepy soundtrack and basic 2D "game" physics ie: enough to make the game playable. So when you were able to make a bunch of characters move around on the screen by pressing the arrow keys, it wasn't such a mental quantum leap from where you were to "game".
Whereas now, we're flooded with games filled with beautiful photo-realistic graphics, 3D surround sound, huge storylines, character voice acting, realistic physics, world-wide online multiplayer capability, cinema quality special effects and more... the gulf between this and "I've made a blob of colour move round the screen" is immense.
As soon as kids realise that they won't be able to make the next Grand Theft Auto in a week, they'll lose interest.
In the early 1980s I let the neighbours' kids play games on my Apple II. In spite of being shown that they could get extra lives etc by modifying the BASIC - they never showed any interest in anything other than playing the games.
In the Windows era - one friends' boy did take an interest in HTML at an early age - and gradually taught himself how to make games without any help from me. When he was starting a career as a Java programmer he built himself a PC. Impressed - I asked a few questions about the motherboard and cpu type. He didn't know. A friend had given him a shopping list and he assembled the bits.
These days a new neighbours' generation has Lego, mountains of it. I gave them a jumbo bag of wheels and gears from the charity shop. However - all they do is make things that have interesting shapes - but nothing that actually "works" apart from rolling on wheels. My expectations had been that they would build things like the differential gears that my childhood No2 Meccano set produced.
They have been wowed by my Halloween SFX. It uses the laptop with simple electronic controls and Heath-Robinson mechanics - but they have shown no interest in learning how it is done.
I often buy interesting boxes of electrical, electronic, or electromechanical toy proects from the charity shop. Often they are marked "new - unused". The neighbours' kids have shown no interest in them either.
In a way it is not surprising - many of my colleagues in my 45 years in the computer industry had no interest in electronics or even in computing outside of the office. They were content to do their job to the required API - and never wanted to know "the whole picture" of "how" and "why".
Don't understimate the "I did it!" self-gratification. Children do a lot of "ugly" things - just look at a children drawing or Lego constructions... - and they know someone else can do far better, but they are gratified by the effort of trying, and see their own results.
Even in those days of blotchy graphics, many games were beyond the novice reach - especially those that were coded in assembly and not the BASIC available in ROM. Yet many people enjoyed being able to "take control" of the PC, and not just press some keys when required so.
Better IT skills? Yes!
However, you don't improve security by teaching 'coding' - that's a dangerous oversimplification of both topics. If you just teach a room of 30 people how to 'code', you'll probably end up with 28 programs with gaping security holes, and a couple with subtle security holes.
If you want better security, teach logic and philosophy. Teach kids to be constructively skeptical, and question assumptions - even their own. Teach them how to debate, and how to accept if they're wrong. Teach them how to be critical. Teach them how to spot an assumption.
Remember, most (probably all) of the major security flaws in modern software were coded by very smart, very experienced and very educated people who forgot, for a moment, the mantra "Trust nothing, check everything".
Kids can't use computers... and this is why it should worry you
TL;DR? Why not just go watch another five second video of a kitten with its head in a toilet roll, or a 140 character description of a meal your friend just stuffed in their mouth. "nom nom". This blog post is not for you.
Unfortunately these are few and far between. If a task is "hard" is is learned quite quickly. Even more so when it is "expensive" (money or time here). If one trades thought for the "expensive" then lessons are learned.
I suspect that in modern time, if one is asked what is "2 + 2", and the typical answer might be: one (no!), two (no!!), three (no!!!), four (yay, you got it have a gold star!). People don't learn that way, they just keep guessing until a somewhat correct answer appears.
If you want to be humbled, go back to an ASR33 teletype, and any significant program (over a page), and get it to work. You do a LOT of thinking to get to the answer, and very little "guessing". Of course go further back with punch cards and a 1 day turn around time (don't get me started).
Before "coding", some logical thought training is in order (at ALL levels!).
I guess that learning a few basic coding skills might be of use, alongside woodwork, Latin, algebra etc, but fooling people into thinking that learning to code is going to be life changing is wrong. If it teaches problem analysis, logical thinking, checking, testing etc, and other portable skills, that’s great but I suspect it’s just another government box ticking exercise.
I finished my 40 years in IT recently and was fed up with seeing programs written by people who could code but had no concept that what they had written was unusable, because they did not understand the solution they were trying to provide, could not be bothered to test their solution or read the spec. Getting some mods written by Indian programmers for a world leading business package so it could support Indian Tax proved almost impossible. They had learnt everything parrot fashion with little understanding of a fit for purpose solution.
OH – I never did do any coding in my 40 years – thank God – too boring, got others to do it, but I could come up with quite good business solutions and write quite decent functional specifications. And anyway, if I had learnt to code and become proficient in it my Cobol, Fortran, etc languages would have been obsolete a long time ago.
"[...] OH – I never did do any coding in my 40 years – thank God – too boring, got others to do it,"
Ah - so you missed out on the literally orgasmic high when an elegant piece of code makes something come to life and do something useful. I spent 42 years in hardware and software - troubleshooting and development. The amazing thing was that the company actually paid me to do it.
Now I'm retired their pension fund pays me to do whatever I want in hardware and software - with the bonus that there is no one pressuring me to cut corners that would only cause problems later.
This is like claiming that because cars exist, children should be taught how to be automotive engineers. NO!!! They should be taught how to drive, those who are interested in automotive engineering should be *allowed* to explore automotive engineering, everybody shouldn't be forced to do automotive engineering just because.
When children born this year graduate from high school, most of them will be living in buildings. It's vitally important that they understand carpentry, plumbing, and electrical work.
In the future most young adults will eat food. Food presents a tremendous range of attack surfaces, from poor nutrition to food allergies to food-borne diseases to slipped mickeys. It's vital that children be taught to cook.
The children of today will almost inevitably wear clothing. If they don't know how to sew, they won't be able to correct even the simplest of wardrobe malfunctions.
Many people, at some point in their lives, will cross bodies of water, ravines, etc on bridges. Without a solid grounding in engineering, how will they know whether those bridges are safe?
And, really, how can we continue to let our children breathe without teaching them basic atmospheric chemistry? It's madness, I tell you.
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