Stop "Teaching Kids to Code"

25 点作者 lemcoe9超过 11 年前

16 条评论

kd0amg超过 11 年前

I definitely do not think this is in the best interest of young people. It prepares students not for a fruitful career, rather it forces a trade that is not necessarily suited to the majority of students.Or perhaps it just teaches them a broadly-applicable skill that does not have to be taken up as a full-time job in order to be useful.

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dzink超过 11 年前

Dear D. Marshall Lemcoe Jr.,When I started high school I rebelled against by brick-and-mortar entrepreneur parents by going into tech and teaching myself how to code. I was volunteering at internet cafes, because my family considered computers expensive toys and I was making an average worker's monthly salary in a couple of days by coding after hours. Even my highly respected grandparents suggested I should go into a "reputable career instead".That was 15 years ago. Since then my work has been used by millions of people and I have been able to amplify the impact of my time far beyond what I could have ever done with two hands and a brain in the same amount of time in a reputable profession."Coding" is no more a forced skill than learning how to write. It is a form of literacy. If you have it, you have choices and access to reach and change the world if you need to. Without it, you are limited to your location, means, and circumstances in what you can do with your time.If you ever need a slap-in-your face moment 10 years from now, feel free to re-read your blog post.

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jdlshore超过 11 年前

I read the entire essay. As I read it, I found myself wondering who D. Marshall Lemcoe Jr. was, and what experience he had in the industry. After I clicked through to his app.net profile, I found this biography, which I'm sharing in case you had the same question:"18-year-old business owner, web developer, systems administrator, high school basketball official, diction junkie, computer enthusiast, car enthusiast, college student."

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300bps超过 11 年前

Teaching kids to code isn't about turning them into future code monkeys. It's about exposing them to skills that will very likely be essential in the future.I work at an investment bank. Believe it or not, there are executives there that have no idea how to use email. Their secretary prints every email out, reads them to them in their office and the executive then verbally dictates a response that will be typed out by the secretary. These executives honestly don't even know how to use the phones. They can get away with this because they're in their 60s and have four decades of experience.Now imagine a 20 year old getting hired today and on his first day he discloses that he doesn't know how to use email and doesn't know how to use a phone. And worse - he has no interest in learning either. How long until he would be escorted out the door?In the future, there will be fewer IT departments. Using commodities like CPU, disk and RAM will be as familiar to the common workforce as using electricity is today. There will be 60 year olds that don't know how to extract data from a database and group it, sort it and transfer it from one application to another. But you better not be a 20 year old in that situation.Teach your kids to code. Not to be a code monkey - but so they can do whatever it is they choose to do in the future.

kylemaxwell超过 11 年前

Yes, what we need for a better future society are more lawyers and accountants. Because that's what wrong with today: too many people making cool shit and not enough people counting beans or drawing up contracts.

samstave超过 11 年前

I have an idea;instead of teaching "kids to code" -- how about putting together a list of [N] things every [kid/child] should know how to accomplish by [end of grammar/middle/highschool/college] using development languages [x, y, z]---By end of grammar school a child should be able to confidently navigate the internet, and have a basic understanding of how websites work.By end of middle school, be able to create simple web pages. * Create a blog about themselves * Create a site about an interest or passion * Create a forum where their friends can talkBy end of highschool, be able to create simple applications. * Create a time-managment app * Create a budgeting app * Create a goals tracking appEtc....Make sure that all kids have a common shared lexicon in this area and experience taking a stab at developing apps and sites that have the same requirements. Allow them to expound upon execution through social interaction about these items.

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duncan_bayne超过 11 年前

I can imagine an article just like this, several hundred years ago, with the title Stop Teaching "Kids To Write".Programming is fast becoming the new literacy.

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kevando超过 11 年前

This is a good example of "as wrong in the opposite direction." American families and secondary education should place more value on providing resources and encouraging computer science. For sure. But saying "teach kids to code" misses the mark just as much as "dont teach kids to code." It's a buzz phrase. And I love a good pivot into creating an MVP growth hack for lean movement, but the education of our students is too important. Lets have a more serious conversation

gremlinsinc超过 11 年前

This article pissed me off, coding is a skill that teaches math, logic, comprehension, --all extremely important skills, it also teaches about consequences of actions via if/then statements we learn if we do something, it has a result. Kids need to learn this. It also teaches problem solving another crucially important skill - and I read STORY after STORY about a doctor, or lawyer who taught themselves to code to build an app...Why would a rich doctor or lawyer need to code if it wasn't important? Why waste the time or money to learn? There will be hundreds of areas in a person's life where they could potentially find a way to make something easier through coding, and coding can also be translated into REAL world stuff via arduino, raspberry pi, etc -- the fact is w/ the internet of things, wearable tech, and robots taking over the workforce -- coding is something that we all should know at least a little bit about, and NO student will be worse off for having learned it.If this is your logic, then why should we teach Music, Sports, or Art? (All important parts of our lives... but not something crucial to get along in life w/ unless your profession is in one of these fields, but if we didn't teach it, less people would go into it. )

dllthomas超过 11 年前

"I definitely agree that students should have a good foundation for how to use technology as a tool in their lives, but going as far to say that students should be able to program the tools they use is a stretch. Do we emphasize writing skills to the extent that every student should become the next best-seller?"Should we expect every student to be able to build a full-fledged (say) statistical modeling package? No, of course not. Should we expect students to know their way around "programming" well enough to express what they want to do in the domain they choose to work in without clicking through menus? Absolutely. To compare the latter to "writing a best-selling novel" would be inane. We should teach kids to write well enough that they can write a moderate length letter, and we should teach kids to program well enough that they can write a moderate length script.The notion that the kind of programming instruction we give to anyone pre-college (outside of exceedingly rare circumstances) is more like the former than the latter is, I think, entirely off base - generally, we don't even give the latter.

ufmace超过 11 年前

I've been feeling somewhat more doubtful lately on the whole idea of compulsory education based on lists, tests, and lectures. Sorta in the same vein as that, I don't really see the point in "teaching kids to code". I fully support giving them all of the tools that they need to learn how to code, or to learn and do things in any other field they might be interested in. In the internet age, most of this is already online for free.I am much more doubtful that there is any value in making kids sit in a programming class and write whatever programs the instructor tells them to in whatever language the class uses. I've had to sit through a few classes like that, and I don't think any of them have really taught me anything besides how to game the class grading system. I learned everything I know by going out and doing stuff on my own.

mappu超过 11 年前

I went into this article assuming it would take the position that we should instead be teaching people to code rather than children specifically. There are plenty of adults who have had their jobs displaced by software that could do with a hand.But it's a thinly disguised rant about the author's personal preferences in life direction. It seems like the author thinks there's no middle ground between creating a startup and being a "code monkey". What's wrong with "taking a corporate job"?I agree that programming as a profession isn't for everyone, but the article almost contradicts itself - if the author hadn't learned to program, the apparel company wouldn't be able to rely on his software. A perfect example of how software literacy can be used outside an explicit programming position.

tuananh超过 11 年前

I dislike the whole idea of teaching code to kids, only if they show interested in logic stuff and stuff alike.Maybe they're talented at other stuff you know, like literacy, painting, etc... Why would they need to learn how to code?However, making programming a general subject is good though. Show them their career choice early.

krrishd超过 11 年前

I woudn't go as far as to say that it isn't going to help kids if they learn to code, but I agree the term 'hacking' has been beaten to a pulp; when people talk about 'hacking', they aren't talking about bypassing some server's security to access secure data, they're usually like "OMG I just learned HTML I'm a hacker now". I talked a bit about this here - <a href="http://krrishd.github.io/blog/post/to-code-or-not-to-code" rel="nofollow">http://krrishd.github.io/blog/post/to-code-or-not-to-code</a>

disputin超过 11 年前

I don't see a problem with kids having a computing class, just as they have history, biology, physical ed, etc classes. I do have an issue with the glamorisation, rockstar bandwagon that people outside the industry have jumped on. Presumably policy makers talk to the silicon valley people, who pass on their rose tinted view. If policy makers spoke to the rest, the blue collar crud shovellers, I expect they'd be less caught up in the gold rush.

bkeating超过 11 年前

Coming from a teenager, this article makes sense and I enjoyed the point of view, but this is horrible advice, D. Marshall Lemcoe Jr. You should consider letting this one hit the floor.