Everyone can and should learn to code? RUBBISH, says Torvalds Outspoken Linux creator Linus Torvalds has taken issue with the oft-repeated assertion that in today's world everybody should learn computer programming, saying he just doesn't believe in it. In an interview with Business Insider over the weekend, the Linux kernel king said that even though he grew up with computers and he …
Sorry.. but this is just mince.
Most kids come out of school able to add numbers together and read and write.
those are important skills. Skills that, as a society, we have deemed important enough to benefit their lives (and our society).
IMHO logical thought, problem solving, 'working how how to do things' or describing them in algorithms is as important.
It is nothing to do with coding: that is just the vehicle to learning.
If you are seriously say that some kids cannot pick up logical thought I fucking despair.
It's one of the true things you learn which cannot be learned by rote. It provides the building blocks for self learning in the future.
It has FA to do with learning japanese or music as later commentards state. And yes, it can be learned with lego (of you happen to be a boy.. since lego (and most other logic related toys are still gender specific).... 'coding' simply provides a shared canvas to which everyone can learn.
Perhaps there are some kids that will never learn logic - who will grow up to piss there money away on the lottery for example, through a lack of basic logical thought (which would then lead to them thinking about the stats, etc) like the fuckwitted adults we have today, but I'd like to think we could do better with the next generation.
Unfortunately (?), it's absolutely true. Some people really don't have a hope in hell of picking up logical thought. My girlfriend (whom I love dearly) is one of them. Logic is not something she has any aptitude for, interest in, or could care less about. In her world, it's "not important".
"Unfortunately (?), it's absolutely true. Some people really don't have a hope in hell of picking up logical thought. My girlfriend (whom I love dearly) is one of them. Logic is not something she has any aptitude for, interest in, or could care less about. In her world, it's "not important"."
What she meant to say was, "I have a vagina, what do I need logic for?"
@stu4 by your extension everybody in school should take electrical engineering and car mechanics if they want to drive or use a toaster.
I agree logical thinking is important, but learning to write a computer program isn't the only way to learn logic. In fact for most it is incomprehenisble and they will quickly become bored. There are much better ways to learn logic than computer programming. In fact it is needed in most professions, whether they need to code a computer or not.
"""If you are seriously say that some kids cannot pick up logical thought I fucking despair."""
The sooner you realize that not everybody is the same and has the same abilities the sooner you'll be on the path of enlightenment.
And the least inclined to tamper with education for political reasons, least inclined to tell people what to do, society works better etc.
People often confuse equality in people's abilities with equality of opportunities.
"It has FA to do with learning japanese or music as later commentards state. And yes, it can be learned with lego (of (sic) you happen to be a boy.. since lego (and most other logic related toys are still gender specific).... 'coding' simply provides a shared canvas to which everyone can learn."
My daughter loved Lego as did every child I ever saw in the near vicinity of a box of Lego bricks.
You need to get out more.
"Spend some time with some kids, and you'll find that some will pick up logical thought, problem solving, deduction .. and others will struggle with the concepts regardless of how they're presented", Stuart Longland
And these are the ones who will go on to be promoted to CIO ..
No, they go on to become CEO, implement a stack-ranking system, laugh off competitors with truly innovative products then finally after they realise they got it wrong, try and fail badly to correct the situation by once again applying the same flawed logic, only to finally resign from the position 10 years later.
Hell, I have enough problem with the logic of technical people, bugger the kids...
How come no one has recommended teaching coding to people who do it for a living? Quite frankly that would be a good place to start. If anything we might need less programmers, not more. Competent management on the other hand remains the true bottleneck.
As for the interview, it was pretty tame, straight forward, and Linus presented a balance viewpoint on what could and could not be achieved by introducing coding to more children. The more I read other peoples' reactions compared to the context he says things in, the more I am beginning to think he is, if anything, too kind.
"That said, I think people should have some way of getting exposure to $SUBJECT, just so that people who find that they enjoy it and have the aptitude know about the possibility,"
One of the main purposes of education. Glad Torvalds agrees. Coat icon because I'm helping students revise for their Paper 2 Maths exam Friday morning.
There is no point teaching everybody to do the same thing. Its pointless because its self destructive. If everybody can lay bricks you'd never call a bricklayer but you'd all be fucked getting an electrician because everybody is a bricklayer.
With coding while I believe you should have the opportunity to be exposed to it but its not for everybody. My wife thinks its pointless and boring (she's a teacher and supposed to teach it from september!) But its not going to cure all that's wrong with IT or education. Art, music, science and literature are just as important in a diverse market.
You could force me to learn French. I was shit at it. I was certainly never going to make a living at it. So it stands to reason other people are the same with coding.
So imho linus is correct.
"My wife thinks its pointless and boring she's a teacher and supposed to teach it from September!"
I can remember the teacher who put me off school for most of my schooldays. (But I was easily persuaded.) She's going to do a great job. Maybe her boss is being paid by Microsoft?
Well at least somebody's thinking of the children.
>You could force me to learn French. I was shit at it. I was certainly never going to make a living at it. So it stands to reason other people are the same with coding.
True but - the point of skool should be to find talent and develop it. You throw a bunch of basic experiences at kids and see which ones stick. You give the ones who are good at stuff extra time and training so they get really good at it. You keep a balance with the other subjects so they don't grow up with a lumpy brain where some bits are much more developed than others.
Does it work like this? Not in most state schools, because they don't have the resources for personal attention. Public schools are better at it, but they often go to the other extreme and hothouse the kids so they're good at stuff, but also insane.
Some basic coding at school for everyone is fine. No one sane (see above) expects everyone to be good at it. Some experience is enough.
What's not so fine is trying to train up a generation of coders who will lead the march into a glorious British capitalist future of economic innovation. That's moronic, because the real problems with innovation and business in the UK are social and political, and creating a generation of kids who know Python won't even come close to solving them.
It's also moronic because ten years from now coding won't look much like it does now. Twenty years from now it may well not exist in any recognisable form. Even if it does, it will be done better and cheaper in China, India and Vietnam (etc) than it is here.
But the political and social problems will remain. If Gove really wanted to make a difference he'd be teaching kids how to deal with those, instead of trying to make a generation of pliant useful little vocationally trained employees.
"It's also moronic because ten years from now coding won't look much like it does now. Twenty years from now it may well not exist in any recognisable form. Even if it does, it will be done better and cheaper in China, India and Vietnam (etc) than it is here."
Couldn't help laughing at this para, I've been doing this shit for nigh on 35 years and it hasn't changed one little bit, I don't think it is likely to in the next 20. (Yes, tools, APIs, terminologies and languages have changed but the base concepts haven't.)
"What's not so fine is trying to train up a generation of coders who will lead the march into a glorious British capitalist future of economic innovation. That's moronic, because the real problems with innovation and business in the UK are social and political, and creating a generation of kids who know Python won't even come close to solving them."
Well said. That's my biggest issue with the policy, not that they want to give kids a taste of what programming is about, but that their aim seems to be to produce an army of coders who'll keep the UK ahead. Aside from not being the most effective way to teach things like logic, or that if a child does take an interest the teacher will be unlikely to have the skills to help them progress, I find it somewhat insulting that they assume that programming is the only area in computing that anyone should care about. Are they going to follow it up with a year of networking, a year of sysadmin'ing, a year of DBAing etc?
"With coding while I believe you should have the opportunity to be exposed to it but its not for everybody."
Agreed. At school, it ought to be taught to some extent at least as a taster for a year or two. After all, I didn't end up as a physicist, chemist, biologist, carpenter or metalworker and much of what I learned in those subjects at school is long forgotten now, but it's all part of general knowledge and education.
Physics sparked my long term interest in electronics and woodwork taught me enough to build my new kitchen. Doing some programming at school is likely to spark some kids into the IT industry and even if not, will help some understand more of what their own computers and phones are doing. Even if a small percentage learn enough to be able to script their own small functions or tools then I'd call it as much of a success as many of the other subjects studied at school.
> There is no point teaching everybody to do the same thing. Its pointless because its self destructive.
"Mommy. The teacher is being mean to me. She's making me do something that's hard."
In a sufficiently diverse curriculum, EVERY ONE will say that at least once.
Not everyone is going to be Newton or Dickens or Picasso. That doesn't mean that you don't expose them to stuff and at least try to teach them things.
That can be learned playing with a box of Lego.
Why did that brick fall off? Maybe if it was clicked together better...
You don't need code for that.
Trying to teach logic and deduction through coding is taking the hardest possible route to teaching some broad principles. Worse still, it is beyond what the teaching system (teachers, parents,...) can generally provide.
You don't need teachers to teach kids logic.
Just pit them against a crow in problem solving tasks with treats as rewards.
If they fail to learn from the crow, and win no sweets, I guess logic is beyond them, but there's always the cage of ravenous dogs, where they may prove themselves to be budding politicians.
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No, he sees the point... coding is not something everyone should do...
I've taught students at university that could barely throw together a basic html page after 3 years at university... I had to hand walk them through basic things.. and these are people who chose to take computer science at university! When I was 8 I knew more than them about how to program...
(But I would not actually call HTML or CSS coding, I call that a markup language)
I doubt it is possible to teach everyone how to code, we have enough trouble teaching everyone how to spell. Cheap shots aside, I think it is you who is missing the point.
Everyone can be taught how to kick a ball, but you'd be mad if you thought everyone could be a professional footballer.
I understand what you're trying to say with regard to teaching people how to think logically and I agree that it is more important to teach people how to think rather than teach them how to pass exams but I think you're failing to grasp an important issue.
You think teaching to code will teach logical thought process because you're interested in code.
Those that don't have that interest will gain very little.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for putting coding on the syllabus, but an expectation that you can teach everyone to code is not only delusional, it's dangerous.
Assume you have no kids, or perfect A student kids.
I have a car, apart from a little work on changing brake pads and filling the right holes, I've no interest in it other than it getting me from A to B. My Dad was a mechanic and technical department manager, he's a handy with tools and working with his hands, I'm not and I don't want to be as I've no interest. My Dad has some basic knowledge about computers so I help him with those and he organises my DIY jobs while I work as the gopher on the jobs we need to get done together. He doesn't mind that I'm not good with my hands, just happy I got into a job I like doing.
I've worked with computers for over 30 years but my daughter has no interest in them, my wife is more interested in them than my daughter and my wife is a nursery school teacher. My daughter wants to be a theatre set designer, something none of us expected with me and my wife being techies. My daughter is very comfortable using computers, knows a little BASIC programming, understands enough to see technology as a tool and nothing more and I'm happy with that. I want her to find a career she really wants to do, not one I force on her just 'cos it's what I like. That's called parenting, knowing your child is an individual, guiding them and encouraging them to do what makes them happy.
"I've worked with computers for over 30 years but my daughter has no interest in them, my wife is more interested in them than my daughter and my wife is a nursery school teacher. My daughter wants to be a theatre set designer, something none of us expected with me and my wife being techies. My daughter is very comfortable using computers, knows a little BASIC programming, understands enough to see technology as a tool and nothing more and I'm happy with that."
I think this is an important point. Programming isn't just about writing kernels and drivers. If you get into theatre or stage stuff, then you may well end up getting into lighting routines, which may involve a level of programming at professional production level.
Likewise a teenage artist who decides they want to get into animation is going to find the ability to program Blender with Python plugins rather useful.
Similarly developing Photoshop add-ons, etc. Programming is becoming ubiquitous not just in actual application programming but as a supporting tool for other hobbies, interests and careers.
They don't need to learn all this in school, but they need to learn enough that they can dip further into it if they want to, and the idea of programming isn't scary and perceived to be at the top of an ivory tower.
The little bit of BASIC I did with an enlightened IT teacher at school certainly made life easier when I had to learn MATLAB and some R at university (the teacher's view was that teaching people to use Word or Excel was the job of English and Maths staff as they are effectively tools to extend the content of those subjects. In his mind teaching IT did not constitute how to use a specific productivity package, which was good because it meant he used his lesson time to actually teach us a bit about how computers worked, why they tended to break (user error), etc).
You're getting a lot of grief but i for one kind of see your point. kind of.
i think in this day and age, coding is fast becoming an essential skill, like how calculator/telephone/tv remote use was/is.
the world is changing. and whilst it's not important for everyone to be a coder or understand code right now, i suspect it'll seen be ubiquitous and common knowledge. maybe not so much knowledge of compilers and kernels and memory heaps and what not. but thinking in an algorithmic and/or functional sense. being confident in the use of abstract symbols to express logical thought.
technology will drive the future. it's about whether we want kids to be in the driving seat or not. we need to stop thinking of coding as a specialised skill. it'll very soon become essential for anyone that wants to get ahead. just as computer use is practically essential, even in jobs you wouldn't expect to need any knowledge of computers.
He is missing the point, but so are you. It's a 'straw-man' rebuttal. No-one is proposing that all kids are taught up to be programmers. Merely that it's put on a national syllabus so that kids are exposed to it, just as they're given a taste of history, geography, economics, foreign languages, music, particular sports, and a myriad other subjects they can then choose to go on to study in depth or (in most cases) never look at again their entire lives.
@Joefish, thanks, and I agree with the "expose", perhaps some will better understand "to be given an opportunity" or "to throwing shit against the wall and seeing what sticks". I think "In this, he differs with folks like Rohan Silva" is a bit unfair as I doubt Silva expects that everybody should or would become a programmer. I would expose kids to programming as early as possible. If you look at people who are world class, be it music or F1 or whatever quite a few where exposed as very young.
One story I find superb is about Blaise Pascal who as a kid with his class was forced, by his teacher, to add together all digits from 1 to 100 before going home. Pascal got it, wrote down 5050 and surprised his teacher. The way I like to look at it is that that task exposed him to logic, calculus in early years is not about logic but about how to do things. Also he was exposed to his teacher who took interest in him.
was a dick who hated kids. The reason they were given the 1+2+3... +99+100 was to keep them quiet for a bit. He was upset, not pleased, when Pascal came up with the answer rapidly. I don't think this is a great example of how teaching creates genius, somehow.
But I agree with the "everyone should be exposed to it at school" cos it certainly helped me (not learnt at school, vague attempts to learn on my own), despite the fact I have nothing to do with programming now.
You should have finished reading the article. I had a similar initial gut reaction, but Torvalds clarification at the end makes it clear he thinks all kids should be exposed to programming. It may be that as a professional programmer he has a somewhat different definition of "programming" than you or I do, and that, like his coding standards, it is somewhat higher that of a political carbon emitter.
You are missing a few points and so is Torvalds:
1. Unless you try, you will not know if you can. For example, I did not graduate with CS and I earn a living by coding and problem solving. I am grateful that I was exposed to IT in school when IT meant coding and not Microsoft Office indoctrination and office slavery training. It is the same as with other things - math, english, history, physics, chemistry, etc. None of them is for everyone, but that for some reason is not a barrier. So why software should be special?
2. Software development and the parts which distinguish real from fake software developers such as finite state machines, data representation, etc teach you how to formulate a problem, represent the data needed to solve a problem and how to go about solving it. This is universally usable across a very wide area of human knowledge. However, it is presently taught only to CS and math. I agree, it is not for everyone - I know plenty of people who suck at solving problems regardless of their knowledge area. However, those who can will benefit from it even if they do not write a single line of code after leaving school.
3. Having some knowledge of what it takes to code will decimate the parasitic "we will charge you 30 warm and himid client man years" industry and that cannot be bad. This is besides the "developers" (quotes intended) in that industry having graduated with CS from and earning a living without even knowing what a finite state machine is and how to go about to implement one (I usually start interviews with this question and 95% of them inevitably fail at that point).
If they are going to be part of this "driving culture", then they must know how a car works. It is shocking that the ICE is an unknown entity to so many people who use a car on a day-to-day basis.
Before a person turns 16 and can get a driver's licence, the person must be able to display a good knowledge of thermodynamics, mechanics and the chemistry of hydrocarbon combustion. Then they should also learn how to weld and spraypaint.
Sounds a bit stupid doesn't it?
Look, it is fine to make opportunities available to kids so that they CAN learn programming if they want to, but forcing everyone to become a coder is as stupid as forcing everyone to be be a grease monkey.
"Before a person turns 16 and can get a driver's licence, the person must be able to display a good knowledge of thermodynamics, mechanics and the chemistry of hydrocarbon combustion. Then they should also learn how to weld and spraypaint."
That doesn't sound stupid at all. That sounds incredibly practical and useful.
> Before a person turns 16 and can get a driver's licence, the person must be able to display a good knowledge of thermodynamics, mechanics and the chemistry of hydrocarbon combustion. Then they should also learn how to weld and spraypaint.
>
> Sounds a bit stupid doesn't it?
It only sounds stupid because you're building a false strawman. None of what you are blithering on about is on topic when it comes to cars. On the other hand, studying the basics of the technology or putting together a plastic model of an engine or just becoming familiar with basic maintenance tasks all are on point.
Knowing enough to grok the difference between Petrol and Diesel engines does not require a PhD in physics. Although a Cub Scout might be able to assist you.
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