Coding, Everyone?
There’s been an
increasing call in the US that everyone learn how to code (write computer
programs). This call comes even from Obama. Part of the reason is to improve
the employability of people as software continues to step into more and more
fields.
A software
engineer, Chase Felker, argued against
this call. He correctly points out that there is a world of difference
between knowing the basics of programming v/s being a good, employable
programmer:
“Without knowing more of the bigger
picture, you’re forced to hack away at a problem, which can take you pretty far
until you run into one that is better solved by more careful design.”
Then there’s the
problem of identifying who you would learn from? Because software expertise is not tied to degrees:
“Your credentials are primarily the
programs you have written, not the stature of the professor whose lab you
cleaned.”
Unfortunately,
you can’t see the programs anyone else wrote (they’d be owned by the company
that guy works for). So quacks and charlatans would have a field day!
And unlike, say,
physics, Felker says programming is never a spectator sport:
“I imagine that people get excited about
physics by reading some Bad Astronomy or Richard Feynman’s QED, but no one
jumps from reading about physics to doing physics...With programming, however, there’s
very little separation between appreciating and making something.”
Reading and
appreciating is easy; writing (doing) is hard.
Sure, people can
learn programming for the problem solving high you get:
“Yes, it is a creative endeavor. At its
base, it’s problem-solving, and the rewards for exposing holes in your thinking
and discovering elegant solutions are awesome.”
Or they could
learn it for specific applications relevant to their area of work, like in
genetics or fields involving statistical analysis or whatever. But please,
please don’t confuse that with knowing how to be a programmer.
Ultimately, as
Felker says:
“We don’t need everyone to code—we need
everyone to think.”
And that’s a
tough ask any day, anywhere.
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