> I really don't get why "computer skills" should be conflated with learning how to program completely.
Speaking as someone who has been on both sides, you do not fully understand how a computer works until you understand how to write code for it in some form. Do they need to know how to write a compiler? Absolutely not. But knowing how to write a script with conditional outcomes is probably a worthwhile exercise.
> The world is very large and needed skill-sets change very fast.
If you believe that computing is going to go away in the next 30 years, that would be a fair point. But we both know that computers are creeping further and further into everyday life. Having a basic grasp on how to direct and control them is an obvious advantage.
Your litany of courses does nothing to counter the reality that we are already forcing kids to learn certain subjects. What about computing makes it less valid than history, science or mathematics as a required field of study? We can say with certainty that students are more likely to encounter a computer than they are to encounter Henry VIII, Schrodinger's Cat, or a sperm whale.
If you wanted to teach computer science by rolling it into mathematics curriculum, I would be all for that. Throw in some basic discrete and you would have yourself a very solid class that could be reasonably taught by teachers you can already find in school districts. Make it one of the elective mathematics, like it should be.
Required coding courses though? That would be like a required shop class. I wouldn't support anything of the sort because it won't be useful to people who are interested in it (it would be far to basic) and it would almost certainly poison the minds of the people who have no interest in it.
Furthermore, I think your perception of what highschool course loads are like is very out of date. When I was in highschool in the early 00's we didn't have required sciences, required history courses, or even required maths (with the of a single algebra course, for those who had not already taken it). You would have to take N out of M offered science courses, but you could easily get through highschool without taking any particular line of class. For example, I have never taken a single course on biology. Not in highschool, not in university. Why? I had no interest in it. Similarly, while I did take history courses, I could have just as easily not taken them and loaded up with other sociology courses instead.
So in answer to your query, "What makes programming so special" I am going to answer with a question: What makes you think programming is so special? Can you really claim that programming is more essential than a rudimentary grasp on physics, chemistry, or the human body? It makes perfect sense to make it a track to choose, but it has absolutely no business being required. It is not special.
> Furthermore, I think your perception of what highschool course loads are like is very out of date. When I was in highschool in the early 00's
I graduated in '03.
It was required that I have X credits in the sciences, Y credits in language, etc. I took biology, but dodged physics. But there was no way I could choose not to learn language. No way I could choose not to take science classes.
> What makes you think programming is so special? Can you really claim that programming is more essential than a rudimentary grasp on physics, chemistry, or the human body?
I'm amazed I need to point this out on Hacker News.
Everyone in the developed world needs a computer to be competitive. Not understanding how it works – and I do not believe you can understand the workings of a computer fully without a rudimentary grasp of logic and control flow – leaves you at the mercy of people who do.
Between your mobile device, your desktop, and all the mechanisms that control your data, there are few other disciplines with a more 24/7 impact on your life than computing.
Understanding the human body is probably the only other subject approaching the same 24/7 impact, and in the United States, we acknowledge this with a physical education requirement.
You know, everyone, in the developed world or otherwise, has a human body... You know what you really need to compete though? Professional writing courses. Forget coding, just teach kids how to write a proper business proposal. I don't see anyone suggesting that they be mandatory though.
Since we are on HN after all, I think you should keep in mind that it is very easy to ascribe undue importance to what you know and do. You can code, so it is inconceivable to you that anyone could succeed without that. I am sure accountants are just as baffled that any adult can get through life without accounting classes. Should we make those mandatory too?
But by all means, make a required "computer skills for the workplace" class that actually targets what computer skills the majority of students will actually need.. It will be a complete waste of time for everyone involved.
You seem to have missed my broader point. Regardless, school resources are certainly finite and it only makes sense to prioritize efforts based on need.
Youths in today's world only need to "understand how computers work" in order to use them in an academic sense not unlike we need to "understand how the human body works" in order to maintain one. Get the basic mechanics of use down and you're good to go. In the case of a computer that could be "touch here to facebook", in the case of a body that could be "wear a condom, listen to your doctor, and a caloric deficit will drop the weight."
Wait, so it isn't even worth prioritizing a field which heavily influences pretty much all of today's economy and the influence will only grow in the future. Your input about business proposals is certainly valid, but it dodges the issue at hand.
> it would almost certainly poison the minds of the people who have no interest in it
...what exactly do you mean by "poison the minds"? I think "rolling it into mathematics curriculum" is the best way to make a large portion of students averse to it! In my country, we had a pretty advanced chunk of probability and statistics rolled into the math curriculum - it was a disaster, even the teachers tried to skip it because they thought it ate away precioud time that could be spent delving deeper into calculus (yeah, we had what you in the US would call "college level calculus" put into the high school curriculum but that's a different story...).
...now, for example, if those probability and stats courses would have been a different course or maybe some kind of "workshop", maybe someone else besides the "math geeks" would have gotten something useful out of them! Lots of high school kids hate math, but if you chip away chunks of it and present it as something else they tend to love it. On the other side, if you want them to viscerally hate something, teach it to them as part of "math"!
>> it would almost certainly poison the minds of the people who have no interest in it
> ...what exactly do you mean by "poison the minds"?
Not the OP, but I think he's afraid that the level of education provided for coding will be like the level of education currently provided for english or math. How many people do you know who claim to hate classical literature? Many of those are probably because they were forced to churn through and regurgitate about grommets instead of just enjoying a book. How many people claim to hate proofs because they were forced to write down "a straight line is straight" a million times in basic geometry?
So, one must know how a car works in order to drive?
I'm really torn on this topic. I'm a programmer, and I can understand how understanding how a computer works can be useful. And if I were to be extreme, I would demand that every programmer should not only learn assembly, but write one non-trival program in it. I mean, it's not hard. Tedious, yes, but not hard. But I'm realistic enough to know that not everyone will agree with that sentiment. What worked for me won't work for everyone.
Back in high school (August 1983 to May 1987) I took two classes that taught programming---Advanced Computers (Pascal on Apple ][ computers, each with a single floppy drive, during the 85-86 school year) and Drama (84 through 87). The Advanced Computers is obvious, but Drama?
Yes. Drama.
I preferred working backstage, with a specialization in lights. And at my high school we had a programmable light control board. So, working with a numeric keypad, you would type in a typical "program:"
1@1
2@1
3@1
4@1
5@2
6@3
7@3
(and so on) The first number is the light number (technically, the outlet the light was plugged into) with the second being a dimmer switch (dimmer slide? I'm not sure what to call it). You slide dimmer number 1 up, and lights 1 through 4 would light up. That was the program (I think there were up to 50 or 60 outlets, and 32 dimmers---it's been quite a few years). And I wasn't the only one who knew how to program this (some might argue that this isn't "programming." I would counter---I am instructing the computer on what to do (you could also program a timed transition between multiple settings). Yes, it is not Turing complete, but than again, pure regular expressions aren't either).
And let me say, that computer was more relevant to the students using it, than the Apple ][s. Let's see ... 1985---the computer that year was the Amiga, a 32 bit multitasking computer, followed by the Atari 1040 (also a 32 bit computer, although I'm not sure if it had a multitasking operating system or not); The first 386s had just come out so most PCs where either 286s (mid range) or 8088 (mid to low range) and all 8-bit computers were fading by then. Technology was highly volatile then.
I don't know. The technology has changed too much to really settle one what needs to be taught. Heck, even the concept of a "file" is going away these days.
Would we require people to know the basics about car mechanics if 90% if out jobs were depending on driving a car and if people had about 50 of them on average? I think yes, Sir.
Unless the work from rate is vastly higher or mass transportation vastly better where you are than me, 90% of jobs requiring a car is a huge understatement. People own several cars over their lifetime and it's one of the largest purchases they will ever make. Mistakes in a car are far more dangerous and expensive than mistakes with a computer.
You know, maybe bringing back driver's ed wouldn't be a terrible idea after all.
I wasn't able to find exact numbers, but several sources hinted that the vast majority of the population, in the US at least, do depend on driving a car for work (notably for getting there).
People always bring up cars in these discussions like it's a counter argument, when they're actually a perfect example.
You don't necessarily need to know how a car works to drive one, but if you don't you're completely at the mercy of those who do when something goes wrong. Even when things are going okay, you can only do magic rituals to your car, with no understanding. That's how most people interact with computers. It's a bad thing.
What to teach? The very basics. Some idea of processors, machine code, compilers and interpreters. Skim over computability, Turing completeness, the halting problem. Designing an algorithm to catch edge cases. Conditionals, loops, variables. Strings. I think that's enough to start off with. If they're still interested, set them loose with some real coding classes, or just point them to the Python tutorial.
>> Speaking as someone who has been on both sides, you do not fully understand how a computer works until you understand how to write code for it in some form. Do they need to know how to write a compiler? Absolutely not. But knowing how to write a script with conditional outcomes is probably a worthwhile exercise.
Oh, good, now people think I came out of the womb with a computer in my hands. You're barking up the wrong tree with this argument since I'm probably much "younger" than even you are.
What about computer literacy, at the level of understanding the software that makes such devices work, makes it less valid than history, science or mathematics as a required field of study?
Put your fingers in your ears if you'd like, the crucial point is that we've already got a system where you have to learn things you don't necessarily want to learn. What is it about the most important growth subject of the next century that exempts it from such an externally-imposed curriculum?
I'm not arguing against teaching students to use their computer as a tool. I'm arguing against programming specifically...
When people that spend thousands of dollars to learn programming can't even do simple coding exercises, what makes you think a high school student struggling under the current workload will do?
I don't think learning to code is fundamentally more difficult than learning Spanish. I taught myself both and they took about the same amount of time and effort.
High school students take Spanish. Why not programming?
Speaking as someone who has been on both sides, you do not fully understand how a computer works until you understand how to write code for it in some form. Do they need to know how to write a compiler? Absolutely not. But knowing how to write a script with conditional outcomes is probably a worthwhile exercise.
> The world is very large and needed skill-sets change very fast.
If you believe that computing is going to go away in the next 30 years, that would be a fair point. But we both know that computers are creeping further and further into everyday life. Having a basic grasp on how to direct and control them is an obvious advantage.
Your litany of courses does nothing to counter the reality that we are already forcing kids to learn certain subjects. What about computing makes it less valid than history, science or mathematics as a required field of study? We can say with certainty that students are more likely to encounter a computer than they are to encounter Henry VIII, Schrodinger's Cat, or a sperm whale.