Obama wants you to learn code

[Train]

Oh, a whole wall full, eh? Yea, that's different than the virtually infinite choice we have now. Programs were also easier to hack back then. Little DRM, and an amateur could look in the files, and make some sense of it.

You can't be serious.

 

[lxskllr]

You can't be serious.

I have access to 53k packages without leaving my desktop. We'll divide that by 10 to eliminate system libraries, and other non-fun stuff, and since I'm nice, I'll round that down to an even 5k, So how does that compare to your magical Wall O'Software? It's probably more than CompUSA carried for the whole decade of the 90s, cumulatively.

 

[Train]

I have access to 53k packages without leaving my desktop. We'll divide that by 10 to eliminate system libraries, and other non-fun stuff, and since I'm nice, I'll round that down to an even 5k, So how does that compare to your magical Wall O'Software? It's probably more than CompUSA carried for the whole decade of the 90s, cumulatively.

What the, I don't even....

So which is it? Is it the fact that there is MORE commercial software available now, or that there is less free software now? Tell me, which free, open source operating system existed in the 80's ? Tell me how corps like Midway and EA didn't make games for those early systems.

Tell me how DRM is keeping people from programming. Really, I'd love to hear what shit you come up with to explain that one.

 

[Train]

I have access to 53k packages

packages? packages of what? How many of those are open sourced?

GitHub alone boasts 6 MILLION public repositories. Tell me how closed source is keeping people from learning programming.

There's more free code on the internet than any coder could read or use in a lifetime.

 

[lxskllr]

What the, I don't even....

So which is it? Is it the fact that there is MORE commercial software available now, or that there is less free software now? Tell me, which free, open source operating system existed in the 80's ? Tell me how corps like Midway and EA didn't make games for those early systems.

Tell me how DRM is keeping people from programming. Really, I'd love to hear what shit you come up with to explain that one.

I have no idea what you're talking about. You took a portion of what I said, and created your own special story around it. I don't feel like gathering up all the bits, and dumbing it down for you, and I'm not interested in writing a research paper here. I gave you a rough outline that required thought from you to put into perspective, and context. That's as far as I'm going with this topic, at least with you.

 

[Train]

I have no idea what you're talking about. You took a portion of what I said, and created your own special story around it. I don't feel like gathering up all the bits, and dumbing it down for you, and I'm not interested in writing a research paper here. I gave you a rough outline that required thought from you to put into perspective, and context. That's as far as I'm going with this topic, at least with you.

No no no, what happened in this thread is you made some RIDICULOUS claims, and are completely unable to back them up.

 

[brianmanahan]

Obama, all I know how to do is Python


I can make a car in Turtle Graphics.




...Hire me?

if you know python, you can do django.

 

[Train]

No, there isn't much of one, I agree. It might simply be that the technology has become that much more commonplace, and the approaches to it more formalized. I mean, there are obviously a lot more programmers than when I started, but at the same time the demand for software skills has increased as well. The bottom line may be that there will never be more than a small subset of people who find this stuff interesting and have an aptitude for it.

I think there will be a hard limit on the % of the population that will be able to grok the general concepts. But I also don't think we have reached that saturation, better education and exposure will help.

I've often said jokingly that if programmers weren't mostly introverted geeks we could form a medieval guild and rule the world.

You're not alone in thinking that.

Non-jokingly, a free economy has a way of growing around obstructions like this. It's interesting to think about what technology could make programmers less important in software. It would have to be something that does away with the whole step-wise, algebraic approach to decomposing problems, and involves some sort of layer that can understand what needs to be done, and then employ resources to do it.

I've come to the conclusion that if it were possible through conventional means, MS or IBM would have done it years ago. I don't think you'll be able to remove the human coder-type layer from the problem solving pipeline until you create true AI, at which point a lot more professions than just coders are in trouble.

 

[Ichinisan]

Marked so I can read the rest of the thread later.

...I do agree with Obama here. Some basic programming knowledge would go a looong way to fight technology ignorance in future generations.

 

[Markbnj]

They're just structs that store functions. And usually give the functions special scope access to other members of the same struct instance.

I taught C++ back in the early nineties, and there would always be some Russian guys in the back of the room, and at some point one of them would say "I can do thees with ztructs and function pointers!" And then they would all look at each other and nod.

 

[Markbnj]

I don't think you'll be able to remove the human coder-type layer from the problem solving pipeline until you create true AI, at which point a lot more professions than just coders are in trouble.

I tend to agree, regardless of language the only way we can currently communicate what we want done is by breaking it down to these really simple pieces and then building it back up as things and actions.

 

[Leros]

I've attempted to teach some programming. Like others said, either your brain is wired for it, or it's not.

Yup. It doesn't seem to have much to do with intelligence either.

I majored in electrical engineering. The majority of the students were incredibly smart and had no problem solving complex math and physics problems. We had to take an introduction to programming class. The entirity of the course's material was covered in the first two lectures of my introduction to computer science class. Tthe most complicated things we did the entire semester was arrays and functions. About 90% of the class struggled pretty bad, which really surprised me considering the intelligence of the students.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I taught C++ back in the early nineties, and there would always be some Russian guys in the back of the room, and at some point one of them would say "I can do thees with ztructs and function pointers!" And then they would all look at each other and nod.

While driving! :biggrin:

 

[Fayd]

Sucks that school is always that way "Do it my way, or it's wrong" is typically how it goes. That's not how people learn.

HTML class was equally as hilarious. We were not allowed to use CSS. End of year project was to make a website. The guy who had the most blink/markee etc stuff is the one that got the highest points.

flamingtext.com!

 

[PingSpike]

I don't think everyone needs to know how to write code just like everyone doesn't need to know how to do plumbing. Actually, I take that back. Most people would could actually benefit from knowing some basic plumbing.

 

[alkemyst]

No no no, what happened in this thread is you made some RIDICULOUS claims, and are completely unable to back them up.

Hey bro, I know PASCAL, don't fuck with me! *flex*

 

[Train]

Hey bro, I know PASCAL, don't fuck with me! *flex*

Adobe flex with TurBRO Pascal?

 

[DrPizza]

Yup. It doesn't seem to have much to do with intelligence either.

I majored in electrical engineering. The majority of the students were incredibly smart and had no problem solving complex math and physics problems. We had to take an introduction to programming class. The entirity of the course's material was covered in the first two lectures of my introduction to computer science class. Tthe most complicated things we did the entire semester was arrays and functions. About 90% of the class struggled pretty bad, which really surprised me considering the intelligence of the students.

So true - I gave a project to a pre-calc class to write a program to do Simpson's Rule of approximation to find the area under a polynomial. I would enter the polynomial and the interval, their program had to do the rest. Had a student who failed the course, but on that project, he was done in 15-20 minutes & it worked perfectly. The rest of the class - multiple days for the 2nd person to finish.

 

[SP33Demon]

Hey bro, I know PASCAL, don't fuck with me! *flex*

Only a brogrammer would say this.

 

[alkemyst]

Only a brogrammer would say this.

Don't make me use my LISP on you Francis.

 

[brianmanahan]

Don't make me use my LISP on you Francis.

pfft, you wouldnt be able to keep your parens straight

 

[OverVolt]

Its like the Steve Jobs movie, just yell at people who actually know how to engineer and code things to do what you want. Who learns how to code? Suckers.

 

[Leros]

So true - I gave a project to a pre-calc class to write a program to do Simpson's Rule of approximation to find the area under a polynomial. I would enter the polynomial and the interval, their program had to do the rest. Had a student who failed the course, but on that project, he was done in 15-20 minutes & it worked perfectly. The rest of the class - multiple days for the 2nd person to finish.

That's a good argument for teaching higher math using programming. Calculus made a lot more sense to me when I was able to things like write a program to compute an integral.

 

[alkemyst]

pfft, you wouldnt be able to keep your parens straight

Actually I am a pretty seasoned coder. LISP, SCHEME, PASCAL, BASIC, LOGOS, C, C+, C++, ASP/VBSCRIPT, JAVA/JAVASCRIPT, BATCH files, and around their I gave up coding day to day and became more an analyst.

I wrote the www.khovmortgage.com website long ago. They found out I can program and put in on my duty list. 10k+ lines of code in less than 3 months.

I was limited with what I wanted for that site by the powers that be.

 

[SP33Demon]

Actually I am a pretty seasoned coder. LISP, SCHEME, PASCAL, BASIC, LOGOS, C, C+, C++, ASP/VBSCRIPT, JAVA/JAVASCRIPT, BATCH files, and around their I gave up coding day to day and became more an analyst.

I wrote the www.khovmortgage.com website long ago. They found out I can program and put in on my duty list. 10k+ lines of code in less than 3 months.

I was limited with what I wanted for that site by the powers that be.

It's there, not their. Are you sure you coded that many languages? /grammarnazi