
Biden announces, “Anyone that can throw coal in a furnace can program ” - gleepglop
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/biden-tells-miners-to-learn-to-program-in-order-to-find-jobs-of-the-future
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dane-pgp
The relevant question for a politician shouldn't be "Can they program?" but
rather "Can they program in a way that produces enough value to a company per
day to justify a wage that the person can live off?".

One limiting factor in that calculation might be not just the speed/skill of
the programmer, but the number of companies with such positions available.

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anonu
I'm waiting until someone creates Alexa for programs skill.

You have no clue how many times I've wanted to program through voice commands.

I think one day we'll get there.

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sebazzz
You think programming is only about learning syntax?

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technologyvault
Not sure what throwing coal in a furnace has to do with the mental exertion
required to be a programmer, but maybe the point of being persistent makes
sense.

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ftvy
It is very insulting to expect that the experience of working in a factory or
mining environment will translate at all as skills necessary for programming.

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kbos87
It’s also very insulting to imply that all some group of people is likely
doing all day is throwing heaps of coal into a furnace. Even most seemingly
simple blue collar jobs are usually pretty detailed and complex in their own
way.

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Turing_Machine
> It’s also very insulting to imply that all some group of people is likely
> doing all day is throwing heaps of coal into a furnace.

Indeed. Not to mention that no one has been doing that for a very long time.
That's not what coal miners, nor has it ever been what coal miners do.

A guy who shovels coal into a furnace was called a "stoker", and that
unskilled labor job was automated out of existence about a hundred years ago.

A coal miner is a skilled laborer who (nowadays) uses advanced machinery and
technology. Look into how "longwall mining" works. It's pretty cool.

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moneytide1
He assumes "Anybody who can go down 300 to 3,000 feet in a mine can sure as
hell learn to program as well" couldn't just do the opposite and go up 3'-30'
for the massive amounts of residential solar roof mounting jobs required to
quickly ween Residential Zoned surface area off of being fueled from things
"thrown" in a furnace.

Class C truck pallet delivery, crane, climb, connect, organize individual or
aggregated items weighing 5-30lbs. None of these is sit, type, wait, compile,
ponder and I know many of them would not want that life.

However, without violating NDA I can tell you there are furnaces and
"throwing" involved in making components for the Tesla Model 3.

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dazilcher
Sure they can, but why bother? Perfecting snark take a lot of work...

The real question is can they learn to be a politician, or say a Burisma board
member?

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johnwallz
It's not surprising that a career politician doesn't know anything about
programming or coal mining.

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hokey_smokey
You can find similarly silly statements about other skilled work. The bottom
line is that humans can learn something; valuable experts are the priduct of
an extensive training process.

I would argue for the benefits of retraining people of dying industries for
work in growing industries.

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gigatexal
There’s more to a healthy economy than everyone being a programmer.

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hirundo
This seems like the Dunning-Kruger Effect or maybe Pointy-Haired Boss
Syndrome. Having never coded Biden miscalibrates the skill and effort required
for competence. His words would have more weight if he took the time to learn
to write FizzBuzz. After that he might want to qualify "Anyone".

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Turing_Machine
He doesn't know anything about coal mining, either.

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hirundo
He said "throw coal in a furnace", not mine coal. When I was a teenager I had
a summer job keeping a coal furnace burning overnight. It's hard to
underestimate the skill required for that. They probably could have trained
pigeons to drop in coal chunks in return for bird seed. The best part of the
job was the time it gave me to read programming books.

~~~
Turing_Machine
But he was talking to/about coal _miners_ , not furnace stokers.

"They probably could have trained pigeons to drop in coal chunks in return for
bird seed."

Yeah. Other than on very small scales, that job was automated out of existence
a hundred years ago. I'm surprised to hear that _anyone_ is still employed
doing that, frankly.

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Turing_Machine
"Throwing coal into a furnace" hasn't been a job for about a hundred years
now. On other than the smallest scale (say, a home coal furnace) that's been
done with machinery for longer than Biden has been alive.

Does he really not know the difference between being a coal miner (which is a
skilled trade, if dirty, strenuous, and dangerous) and being a furnace stoker
(which historically required nothing but a strong back)?

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aiscapehumanity
The very fact he used a bogus comparison should be self-disqualifying, like,
what?!

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hourislate
It's election time and things are getting crazier every day. The whole thing
is a shit show and I am trying to ignore it.

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hootbootscoot
I rather agree. Call them a front-end engineer and let's get back to
simplifying what is supposed to be an indexed document delivery platform.

The dewey decimal system is more complicated that the request/response cycle
should be.

We invent busywork and it will take coal miners to break this farce, so bring
on the coal miners!

Hindsight 2020

(just kidding, Sanders 2020)

