And the article talks about teaching coding. I'm tired of seeing that. We need to teach kids to <i>think</i>, to <i>question</i>, to be <i>creative problem solvers</i>. If we do, some of those kids will end up in CS eventually, but all will do well.<p>I'm tired of reading "we need more coders" articles that read just about the same as "We need more kids to study diesel mechanics at community college so that we can keep the trucks rolling to WalMart."<p>Standardized testing is killing our kids brains. Instead, they should be required to <i>ask</i> questions, not give stock answers.
Heard this one before.<p>Studying comp sci in the mid to late 90s, my classes were full of people who didn't have a passion for programming but knew the jobs paid well, presumably because demand outstripped supply.<p>What followed was a seeming glut of applicants for unexciting "low-end" jobs - writing Java at insurance companies, for example - then they all disappeared. And here we are today.<p>Am I remembering this wrong? This was my anecdotal experience from far outside of SV.
"The United States faces a global competitiveness crisis that, if not addressed, will put our nation at a strategic disadvantage for decades to come. In just a few years, there will be 1.8 million jobs unfilled in our nation"<p>would love to see the data behind this as it seems unlikely to me. what i see is many american companies offshoring large swaths of their software development efforts to foreign satellite offices, or outright replacing in-house IT development with SaaS solutions. from my perspective, i have a hard time imagining some confluence of events resulting in "1.8 million jobs unfilled" here in the US any time soon.
I see it as a chicken vs egg problem. The reason only 1 in 10 schools offer programming classes is probably the same reason CS jobs go unfulfilled. There are not enough people with the required expertise. I'm not studying Computer Science so I can get a job teaching programming classes at a high school.
> Third, we must ensure innovation in the classroom through the use of digital content and tools to provide individualized, data-based learning and improve educational outcomes.<p>Wow, that really doesn't sound like something that will help kids learn to code. How about instead of trying to get millions of dollars of multimedia content and one off coaching apps built, we just have kids build a web page for themselves in 1st grade?<p>People learn to code by coding things and researching what they need to build the thing they're working on.<p>I also don't think there's any kind of programmer shortage. There's just a misallocation of capital into the executive ranks. Start paying 1M a year for engineers and you'll have excellent people lined up for your roles.
Companies complain that there are not enough people, and use the 'shortage' as a reason to go H1b a la Disney, but they won't lift a finger to TRAIN people for what is needed because they say the employees will bolt - well STOP treating employees like crap and they'll stick around... The H1b fiasco just reduces wages and standard of living. sometimes there ARE legitimate reasons for unions...
"In just a few years, there will be 1.8 million jobs unfilled in our nation because we don’t have enough individuals trained with the necessary technical skills to fill them." Source?<p>"we must ensure innovation in the classroom through the use of digital content and tools to provide individualized, data-based learning and improve educational outcomes"<p>The author is asserting computer science is the solution, but gives ZERO evidence for if it's a workable or good solution.
Hahahaha. No. Currently, approximately ten in ten schools offer math education, and there isn't a glut of mathematicians. On the contrary, the majority of adults now <i>hate</i> math.<p>If you want to have more skilled American programmers, the solution is probably more along the lines of lead paint remediation, childhood nutrition, and anti-poverty measures. Create an environment where children can succeed at playing around with computers, math, and logic, and you'll go much further. "Programming class" at a typical school is not this environment.
There is no skills gap. That is just propaganda put out by tech companies so they can lobby for more H-1Bs. A great article on this: <a href="http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/education/the-stem-crisis-is-a-myth" rel="nofollow">http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/education/the-stem-crisis-i...</a>
And what happens when all these newly minted coders look for jobs at roughly the same time?<p>I disagree with the common belief that somehow coding is the path to a stable economic future.<p>History has shown time and time again that if a profession has no regulatory barriers to entry then corporations will eventually bid labor to the lowest value.<p>And that seems to be exactly what's going on here. Corporations are pressuring the state to basically pay for their human capital development.<p>Job trends follow capital market trends and capital markets are wildly irrational. For the last five years there's been an ideology among top management that suggests just hiring a bunch of developers is somehow going to create great products.<p>There has been little to no serious cost controls.<p>Right now management has overhired, there's simply not enough economically viable projects to keep all the massive development staffs busy. So there's a lot of work on projects that don't have a realistic shot at a financial return.<p>Eventually those projects are going to get cut.<p>Around the same time this is happening there will be a glut of newly minted junior developers jostling desperately for work to pay off their student loans.<p>I know this is highly contrarian, but it's just realistically how capitalism works. The good times always come to an end.
My own take is that this suffers the same problem as all the other "Teach everyone to code" initiatives.<p>Learning to be even a moderately good programmer requires the willingness to keep screwing around with an annoyingly stupid, complex machine for however long it takes to adjust your thought processes to match the challenges of computer programming. It's not enough to think logically. You have to be able to think logically where applicable while at the same time understanding that some stuff makes no sense -- either it's so complex that it feels nondeterministic, or you're faced with the social complexity of a ridiculous software stack, or even though you're working on a "simple" high-level problem you have to cut through nearly all the layers of abstraction to get a clear understanding of what the real problem is. And many real problems end up being twice as hard as you'd ever have imagined.<p>And I don't think our culture is doing a good job of raising people with the values to be willing to do that. If anything, childhood education teaches to spit out the "correct" answers and to follow the rules. This does not help develop the mental strength to be a good programmer.
I went back to school for my MS and saw many people who were there simply because this could get them a stable job. Their interest was virtually zero and they hated coding or understanding algorithms. They are all in software jobs now but in roles that support programmers and the tech industry
Isn't a shortage of computer programmers really a symptom of some type of market signaling failure? Or at least the slowness of supply responding to demand?