President Obama calls on every American to learn code
Speaking as a non-coder, but as one who did minimal things with programming-like higher-level stuff ranging from the old DOS batch files to VBA and some dabbling with SQL, I am curious whether real engineers believe the idea of broad literacy in coding truly would be valuable and, if so, how exactly.I am not speaking as a skeptic, just as one who does not readily see the point and wants to know.Of course, we are in a digital age and there is incredible value in knowing how to code for the person who really masters this skill. And, among those who do master it, you will of course have various gradations in skill level ranging from profound to excellent to good to competent to serviceable, and these in turn will give the bearer of such skills a range of opportunities commensurate with the acquired skill level (and, when I say skill, I don't mean mere technique but also inspiration, insight, imagination, and whatever else it takes not only to pound something out but to do it in ways that stand out).That said, however, if I were to look, say, at 100 random friends and acquaintances, I would question what good it would do for them to learn a few basics about the syntax of some programming language, to learn a few things about programming objects, and to learn a few things about control structures if the sum total of all those few things is simply to understanding minimal things about how coding works without being able to apply that knowledge effectively to anything in their real-world lives. In my own case in having hacked through some minimal interpretative stuff, I at least had some professional uses for this sort of thing (e.g., using VBA to systematize a few MS Word functions needed in our office). But, even at this level, most of the people around me - being non-programmers - would run in horror from the idea of even getting into that level of trying to interact with a computing environment. For the most part, they were content to know as little as possible about any of the inner workings of a computer and were totally uninterested in delving any deeper. And these are the people who are out there by the millions who have always been drawn to the simplest ways of interacting with their computers (e.g., mouse and not keyboard). In my experience, unless people naturally have a mathematical or engineering "bent," they simply would rather not deal with understanding how something like a computer works beneath the surface but want only to grasp its benefits at the highest level with the least effort possible.If most people are indeed like that (and I believe they are), how would it benefit them in a practical sense, say, for future educational curricula to mandate taking a prescribed course in learning to code. Even if this sort of thing were required, wouldn't this be just like a prescribed foreign language course in middle school that one has but a fleeting acquaintance with, only to have little or nothing stick beyond getting past the requirement for the purposes of passing a class. What residual value would stick from such fleeing interactions with the rudiments of coding?It seems to me that, if one is to derive true value from learning to code, one needs to devote a significant level of dedicated hard work toward that effort and, if one fails to get beyond a minimal threshold, the only value gained is that of a very generalized form of knowledge that has little practical use in the real world. And I would suspect that most people really do not want to devote such an effort to this task. A good many do, of course, and, as noted, this does have huge value in our digital age for those that do. But why expect it of most people?There is nothing wrong, of course, with our political leaders encouraging young people to learn to code and this may inspire some to do so. But coding is not really like, say, writing, where gaining a minimal proficiency leaves one in a much better position than not knowing how to do it at all. It seems that, if most people can't get beyond some minimum threshold to make the endeavor worthwhile, learning to code would not help the great majority of people who are not interested in making the sort of dedicated effort that only a relatively minority will in fact make to justify the effort in practical terms.That is my layman's view. Do those who really know this stuff agree or is this just some disconnected elitist view of people that doesn't fit with modern understanding? I would genuinely like to know because, to me, it does not seem like a close question. Am I just being prejudiced here?