
Learning to Code no longer good advice - bryanrasmussen
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/learning-code-yields-diminishing-returns-douglas-rushkoff
======
dino-neil
I agree with a lot of things this article says, displacing labour, short term
'money-saving' projects reducing the health of our economy etc...

But the idea that we will have 'too many' techies is absurb. At least in the
UK, kids coming out of school have no idea how this IT stuff works. It's just
a magical iPad to them.

The world is becoming increasingly focused on technology, and the general
public has no idea how any of it _actually_ works. I'm not talking about
transistors and 1's and 0's. I'm talking about databases, text editors and
command lines. How are the youth of today supposed to gain exposure to this
stuff, when installing a program means typing in the name and and clicking
'Get' in the App Store?

Stuff like Minecraft helps, but the desktop PC is no longer something that
families tend to have lying around. My 7 year old niece can use her iPhone,
but if I put her in front of a keyboard, she would be clueless.

Maybe tools will evolve, but people will still have to make the tools.

------
supercoder
Yep, general programmers are the blue collar workers of this generation.

It's important to understand the technology but just programming alone is not
enough of a valuable skill to separate someone.

------
protomok
The author lists 3 reasons (2 are essentially the same argument) why ""learn
to code" is looking like bad advice."...I disagree with all of them...

> CODING CAN’T SAVE YOU

The author essentially states that coding will increasingly be outsourced and
so don't bother. But this logic assumes that the size of the market is
static...in fact it is not.

Literally every industry right now is already or on the verge of being
dramatically changed by technology. Even traditional companies IKEA to
McDonalds are turning themselves into tech companies, and all of these
companies need coders. Regarding "learning code is hard"...yes...it is. But it
is immensely rewarding and provides a very in demand skill set.

> TRAINING OUR ROBO-REPLACEMENTS

> HIGH-TECH UNEMPLOYMENT

I'm not disputing that automation will trigger widespread job losses but an
individual is still far better to be the robo training worker than the person
being replaced by a robot. If learning to code is such bad advise what
alternative does he propose for the individual? Deny the fact that high tech
is disrupting traditional industries?

My two cents.

------
untog
An immediate thought here is that learning _data_ may be better than learning
code. When I was just starting out I was an "admin assistant" at various
companies - I lost track of the number of poorly structured Excel spreadsheets
I found that contained all of the data required, but in a format that made
them utterly impossible to parse programatically.

Not that people shouldn't learn to code if they can. But learn to use Excel,
and when you should turn that spreadsheet into a database. You don't need to
learn a new programming language for that, just some broad concepts.

------
brador
Learn to create things that provide value to the world and can make you money.

Code is one of them. There are others. Carpentry, art, product design...

------
retrogradeorbit
The link sends me to the linkedin login page.

