
Why Pushing People to Code Will Widen the Gap Between Rich and Poor - Libertatea
http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/12/stop-thinking-that-coding-is-the-answer-to-all-of-societys-problems/
======
shubb
I'm not sure that knowing how to code is even that useful for most people.

Let me explain - coding is neccesary when you are doing something technically
innovative. As things become less inovative, layers of abstraction are built
to make them easier. Until eventually, there is a nice GUI that lets you
achieve that thing without too much trouble.

So once, displaying a square to the screen involved assembley and custom
hardware. Then the hardware got commodotized, and we got graphics libaries.
Now, you just fire up MS paint and draw a square.

10 years ago, my mum wanted a website, so I coded one in HTML. 5 years ago,
she wanted a website, so I coded a wordpress theme and she maintained it for
years without trouble. This year I asked her what she does. She uses a
facebook page. You don't need to code to make websites.

The website isn't important to her - the day to day activity of the charity
are important to her, and the website helps them do that stuff. It is worth
considering that while technology is a big part of what we do, most people are
trying to do really hard things, sell stuff, help people, whatever, and only
need a small amount of easy to use technology where it makes them more
effective.

We learn math at school. I used trigonometry last week to create some cool
android interaction mode, but I bet most of my classmates forgot it at 18, and
only wish they remember it when it comes up on a TV quiz show. It will be the
same with code.

~~~
randomdata
I am left wondering: When did coding become not part of the public education
system? My father recounts learning how to program on punch cards when he was
in school. In my day we learned BASIC in elementary school and Pascal in high
school. I've talked with people who are several years younger than me and
apparently they learned on different languages again, but were introduced to
coding just the same.

It certainly wasn't an intensive computer science education, but I'm not sure
anyone is advocating for that anyway.

~~~
mmagin
Today they seem to assume knowing how to type and use a word processor is
equivalent.

------
GeneralMayhem
This article, and most of the comments here, are, IMO, missing the point of
teaching programming in school. You don't teach kids to code because they're
all going to write code for a living. A semester or two of Python in high
school is not going to leave most kids capable of building anything
worthwhile. A few will be caught by it and learn on their own or continue
studying, but that's a tiny minority and not the main benefit.

The reason we should teach programming is to force kids to _think like
programmers._ Even if they hate it. Even if it's only for a couple hours a
week for a few months. Programming is problem solving. Think about the mental
processes involved: pattern recognition in complex systems, breaking down
problems into their smallest parts, stepping through a potential solution one
step at a time, managing multiple changing pieces of state at once. _Those_
are your practical skills.

How many arguments could be ended if people knew how and were willing to think
through their potential solutions one step at a time and see where each move
left them? I'm the first to laugh at "STEM master race" arguments,
particularly in education, but just because an engineer-like perspective isn't
panacea doesn't mean it isn't a valuable tool that I wish more people had.

~~~
sologoub
Had the exact same thoughts running through my mind as I was reading this -
"you are missing the point of why you should strive to give kids the
opportunity to learn this!".

Learning to "think like programmers" is essentially teaching kids to think
like engineers, in other words, recognize complex systemic interdependencies
and understand that things usually form a system that has it's own rules,
constraints, etc. When you start to understand these relationships, it helps
you immensely even outside the realm of tech. For example, the Monarch
butterflies are not having such a good decade. Why? Well, the system that
enabled their migration (the prevalence of milkweed) has been modified
extensively by humans, and now is at the breaking point where there may not be
clear avenues for the butterflies to continue their migration patterns. This
is a gross oversimplification of course, but the point is that now we can look
at the other "nodes" in the system that will be impacted by lack of migration.
Birds could be impacted, which in turn impacts whatever feeds of those birds,
etc., etc.

Computers offer some of the more understandable and finite systems that we can
learn, yet offer incredible flexibility, illustrating how complex things can
get. Learning to speak in these languages helps with that understanding.

Also, I don't think anyone is advocating learning assembly or what not. When
most people talk about "learning to code", it's picking up a higher-order
language that does a lot of the complex things for you. It's not the same as
teaching real computer science. It's basic comprehension and knowing how these
systems form.

~~~
GeneralMayhem
Exactly. Process tracing is applicable to everything.

My personal favorite, that I'm always painfully reminded of when reading
political news, is the ability to hold multiple interrelated systems in your
head at once and check that they're mutually consistent. There's so much
unintentional doublethink out there that I think could be significantly
improved if people would just stop and walk through their own thought
processes in a logical manner. It's not the only way to think, and it's not
appropriate for absolutely everything, but it is a good sanity check for many,
many domains, and it's frustrating when people tend to look at me funny and
end the conversation when I try to, for example, explain that two ideas cannot
possibly be held at the same time because they're contradictory when taken a
step down the line.

Come to think of it, the concept of a sanity check itself is something that I
got from programming and use in everyday life.

~~~
sologoub
Yeah, politics could definitely use a lot more of "sanity checking" and "unit
testing" ;)

But in all seriousness, it's shocking how many people turn a blind eye to
inconvenient contradictions/conflicts.

------
bowlofpetunias
I think this argument is flawed on two fronts.

First, the gap between rich and poor is a ridiculous argument for saying the
"rich" should stop learning new skills. Property is one thing, we can debate
that forever (as far as I'm concerned, neither capitalism nor communism nor
any of their variants can yet claim victory, if ever), but knowledge? We now
have to stop our children from _knowing_ stuff in order to create a more
egalitarian society? That's too insane even for my European "socialist"
standards.

Second, learning all kind of basics, from math to biology to chemistry are all
accepted parts of the curriculum. In this age computer sciences should be a
normal part of that. We don't teach kids to write so that they will become
literary geniuses, we don't teach them biology so they'll cure cancer. We
teach them a basic understanding upon which they can either build, or at the
very least use it to have better grasp on the world around them. Just like
mixing some chemicals in the lab, or writing a simple essay, basic coding is
an exercise to help them learn. There is neither the intention nor the
expectation that they will become programmers when they grow up.

------
danso
This reminds me of a Reddit thread I've saved from more than a year ago:

"Reddit, my friends call me a scumbag because I automate my work when I was
hired to do it manually. Am I?" \-
[http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/tenoq/reddit_my_f...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/tenoq/reddit_my_friends_call_me_a_scumbag_because_i/)

> _Hired full time, and I make a good living. My work involves a lot of "data
> entry", verification, blah blah. I am a programmer at heart and figured out
> how to make a script do all my work for me. Between co workers, they have a
> 90% accuracy rating and 60-100 transactions a day completed. I have 99,6%
> accuracy and over 1.000 records a day. No one knows I do this because
> everyone's monthly accuracy and transaction count are tallied at the end of
> the month, which is how we earn our bonus. The scum part is, I get 85-95% of
> the entire bonus pool, which is a HUGE some of money. Most people are fine
> with their bonuses because they don't even know how much they would bonus
> regularly. I'm guessing they get €100-200 bonus a month. They would get a
> lot more if I didnt bot._

 _So reddit, am I a scumbag? I work about 8 hours a week doing real work, the
rest is spent playing games on my phone or reading reddit..._

~~~
tixocloud
That's a very interesting scenario and for me, there is no right or wrong
answer. I would never label you as scumbag because the compensation structure
was setup by the management team partially allowed the scenario to happen.
It's a pity because it sounds like you have a lot of potential and your skills
can be better used elsewhere to improve other areas of the company. Your
managers should be aware enough to realize this.

Of course, on the other hand, you could also take the initiative to try to
help your coworkers improve themselves and their productivity. Time spend
playing games on your phone or reading reddit could've be partially used to
help encourage other members on your team. Maybe the compensation structure
deters you - but I am sure some if not all of your coworkers would really
appreciate your help (technical or non-technical).

------
grownseed
Sometimes I wonder if I'm crazy for thinking this way, but I dream of the day
when more people realize how little relevance the subjects being taught have.
If Education, and I guess by extension personal and social growth, was about
cramming knowledge into kids' heads, we'd have countries filled with geniuses,
and the Internet would already have supplanted schools.

Knowledge is worthless and potentially dangerous without the means to properly
use it, and that, in my opinion, is where Education has a place. It's about
providing the tools necessary to process and accumulate knowledge and cope
with unknowns, and fair enough, basic writing/reading and calculus skills are
a good start, but far from it all.

In all the countries I've lived in, I've never once seen a school system which
properly addresses this problem. I find the very idea of putting children
through knowledge cramming and regurgitation sessions utterly appalling. Sure,
it makes for a measurable system, but what exactly are we measuring?

I'm not saying the author doesn't have a point, I'm just saying his point
doesn't address the real issue. As far as I'm concerned, it doesn't matter if
you're teaching kids programming or the art of growing tomatoes, what matters
is that if and when they want to do so, they can.

~~~
Nursie
I'm sorry you had such a terrible time with school. Some of learned a lot, and
not just parrot fashion.

~~~
grownseed
Sorry if this is going to sound harsh, this is certainly not my intention, but
I wonder how you got from my general point about Education to your comment
about our personal experiences at school.

~~~
Nursie
You seem to have formed the conclusion that all schooling is worthless parrot-
fashion recitation and cramming knowledge into the students' heads without any
understanding.

My assumption is that this is your experience of your own schooling, and
possibly that of your experience of your childrens' schools.

It's not how my education went, and I was taught subjects, but I was taught to
understand them and to approach them all in rather different ways. The
subjects are _very_ relevant. Languages bed down better in younger minds.
Scientific understanding is different from mathematical understanding and
different again from historical understanding.

So I repeat, I'm sorry if you felt your schooling was terrible, if you felt
you were being asked to cram worthless knowledge into your head, that's not
how it went for all of us.

------
edtechdev
I've seen this argument before in other scenarios (open education, etc.). It
is technically correct but pointless. Just about anything we do to raise
living standards in society increases the gap between rich and poor.

Does that mean we need to stop trying to raise the living standards of the
majority of people and stop trying to offer things like free food, free
healthcare, and free education? No.

It's like if someone argued against the use of penicillin because it increased
the lifespan disparity between rich and poor. I'm sure it did and still does
(for those with no access to pencillin), but what is the point? Are we
supposed to stop using penicillin then to keep lifespans closer together? Or
should we instead focus on getting more people access to penicillin, similar
in a (very rough) sense to how the "learning to code" movement is focusing on
making computational literacy more accessible to everyone.

~~~
interstitial
I think Vonnegut wrote a short story about this. Oh yes,
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron)

------
rimo
I think the author completely misses the point here. Coding _is_ learning how
to write and read. It does not prevent one from learning other disciplines but
rather helps make links between disciplines such as literature and
mathematics. As for computer accessibility, with initiatives like the
raspberry pi, decent computer power is more and more available.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Coding without first having very good English literacy is quite difficult,
especially considering that programming languages use much field-specific
technical jargon.

~~~
lawl
Disagree. I'm a non native english speaker and picked up english after coding.
If and for aren't hard keywords to memorize, really. As long as you don't
interact with complex libraries or docs you'll be just fine. I just named my
variables and functions in german back then. Sure, these programms were
trivial. Or what you'd expect from someone coding basic for the first time.
But that's were i found my passion for code. Without any english skills.

So please allow me to call bullshit.

~~~
digitalengineer
No so fast please. The article mentioned "The reading proficiency of Americans
is much lower than most other developed countries, and it’s declining." It's
not about _English_ , it's about being able to properly read and understand
what is written. Very basic stuff, really. For us-writing here in a 2nd
language- this is hard to grasp I think.

~~~
lawl
Upvoted you because you do have a point there. But I still think it's flawed
because I litterally was a 5th grader at that time. In my opinion coding is
about understanding the concept, everything else is syntax, and for that you
can just memorize keywords. At least I feel like my coding skills are very
much decoupled from my reading/writing skills though I really don't know, so
YMMV. When reading a book I have to read it linearily and hope the author
wrote it in a way so i can understand everything at a point in a book if I
have read everything before but I probably won't understand much by just
reading the last page. When reading a large codebase I find myself wildly
jumping around often ignoring stuff because it doesn't matter right now or
assuming stuff because it's obvious or just not that important. For me that's
a very different skillset than reading written text.

Last but not least a very provocative analogy but I don't have a better one
right now. But for me "they shouldn't learn to code, they can't even spell
everything correctly" sounds very much like "we shouldn't try to stop HIV in
africa, they don't even have fresh water".

Again sorry, but nothing better comes to mind right now.

~~~
digitalengineer
Thank you for the good discussion. I try to think of it more as 'learning to
walk before running'. You are right, a lot of people can learn how to code and
to them it is a good skill to learn.

A _much larger part of poor people_ would benefit greatly by learning how to
speak/write/read better. When I visited the US I was shocked by the large
difference in people. I literally couldn't understand some people. For us
(Northern European) folks it's hard to imagine so much Americans really do
live in a 3rd world part of the US it seems.

------
astrofinch
_Why should a startup or tech goliath worry about concerns such as not
exploiting users when people can examine the source code? When members of the
coderati can customize changes, live in private clouds, and protect only
themselves?_

What I'm about to say is probably obvious to most HN readers, but I'll say it
anyway in case the author is reading the comments: right now the large
majority of commercial software is closed-source, and teaching everyone to
code is probably not going to change that. Even if it did somehow change, and
there were a bunch of eyes looking over all the software that companies wrote,
it would probably make it an expensive PR blunder to not implement privacy
best practices, etc... you wouldn't want your software's failure to implement
proper protections to be a top story on HN.

------
stackcollision
Can we talk about the real issue in this article? Forty-five MILLION people
are functionally illiterate. How was I not aware of this? Why aren't people
more concerned about this?

~~~
tixocloud
Is it mandatory for U.S. citizens to all have a basic level of education? I
wonder because we learned in economics class long time ago about how Asian
countries were basically requiring everyone to have a basic level of education
to help drive growth in the country.

~~~
pawn
According to Wikipedia
[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_United_States](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_United_States)]

"Schooling is compulsory for all children in the United States, but the age
range for which school attendance is required varies from state to state. Most
children begin elementary education with kindergarten (usually five to six
years old) and finish secondary education with twelfth grade (usually eighteen
years old). In some cases, pupils may be promoted beyond the next regular
grade. Some states allow students to leave school between 14–17 with parental
permission, before finishing high school; other states require students to
stay in school until age 18"

This Wikipedia page also happens to conflict with the article on our literacy
rate, claiming it's 99%. Would be interested to see why the difference exists.

------
mattlutze
The author seems to be mainly arguing in favor of focusing on traditional
literacy. The point isn't how much time or effort is spent on a topic, but the
way in which it's taught. Many of the countries doing better than the US in
literacy have their students in school less that the US over their primary and
secondary school careers.

(At 180 days * 6.7 hours a day[2], the US would hit ~ 1200, vs the 960 hr /
year average for OECD countries, and many fewer for some of the top
countries[1]).

The difference is in the way subjects are taught. As many people learn through
many different ways, and are inspired to learn by many different topics, we
should be encouraging schools to increase the number of subjects we teach, not
limit them.

It would only make sense, then, to offer classes in algorithmic math or
integrating coding and art classes, to offer further opportunities to discover
new ideas and expand kids' minds.

Edit: fixed US hours

1: [http://www.oecd.org/education/skills-beyond-
school/48631122....](http://www.oecd.org/education/skills-beyond-
school/48631122.pdf)

2:
[http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pss/tables/table_15.asp](http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pss/tables/table_15.asp)

------
riggins
I thought the primary argument was kinda weak.

Allocating resources to teach coding will take away from teaching the
fundamentals ... hence leading to worse outcomes and greater inequality.

Something about that argument doesn't sit right with me. It doesn't seem like
the answer is to say 'we can't teach literacy well, therefore we shouldn't
teach coding'. Seems like a better answer is 'fix how we teach literacy'.

~~~
Already__Taken
I'm not quite sure how it isn't a fundamental. You'd at least most certainly
have a very hard time do any code without using any other fundamental area.

Anything with a GUI? Ok there's all your principals of design to chuck in.
Geometry, proportions or what have you can't be ignored so hello maths
already.

It might not be a fundamental application but its skill set certainly is.

~~~
riggins
that too.

it just seemed like the 'income inequality' is an orthogonal issue.

A headline of 'Fix fundamentals first' or 'You need fundamentals before you
can teach coding' would have made more sense to me.

with that said, for me, coding is actually a huge motivator for learning. You
can actually see why you need to linear algebra, calculus, statistics,
trigonometry, etcc. Instead of some abstract purpose you can very concretely
that you need to master all those topics if you want to make a robot function
... for example.

------
krstck
Simply adding "code" to the current grade school curriculum would change
nothing, I'm afraid. Programming would be taught the same way that all of the
other subjects are currently taught: memorize for the standardized test, then
promptly forget. Maybe the subject will reach a few kids with the aptitude to
be a programmer that wouldn't otherwise be exposed to it, but I think that
most kids that would be interested in programming find their way there
regardless. I got my introduction by creating games on my TI-83 while bored in
class.

And frankly, if the rest of the world needs to learn programming in order to
function in society, then we haven't done our jobs correctly. We create
programs to automate tasks that we don't want to or can't solve manually, with
the idea that people have other stuff they want to do.

------
squozzer
The article is absolute drivel - almost. The last paragraph saves it.

"Technologies should adapt to our needs and values." Period.

Off to research how education dealt with the horseless carriage and the flying
machine back in the old 20th cent.

------
mcv
This article sounds more like criticism of a badly functioning educational
system, than criticism of the idea itself. How about teaching kids to code in
countries that don't have as many functional illiterates, then?

Or how about fixing the educational system, and add programming while you're
at it?

Should the illiteracy problem be a reason to drop other non-essential courses
from the curriculum? Is every course currently on the curriculum really more
important than coding (which teaches problem solving, logic, systemic
thinking, and in fact even involves quite a bit of reading at times)?

------
Houshalter
No one is suggesting that we should focus on computer education over literacy.
That's like saying we shouldn't teach mathematics because literacy is more
important.

The school I went to had computer classes. And they were crap. I took all of
them hoping I would learn to program or do useful things. But they are
entirely about teaching Microsoft Office and Excel. Not a useless skill, but
it shouldn't take hundreds of hours of class time to learn that.

>What’s more, a society where people are expected to know how to code is one
where powerful players like big corporations and government are more likely to
ignore responsible design obligations — design decisions such as building in
privacy protections and making sure technologies have a degree of transparency
about how they operate. It would be like saying safety-enhancing features in
vehicles aren’t necessary because everyone learned the basics in driving
school… or worse, who needs to learn when autonomous cars do it for us anyway?

No, this makes no sense. Even programmers don't want to have to manually
inspect and work with the code of every program they use. I feel like the
author might be misled here.

>If coding becomes a required skill to navigate a technological environment,
then a large part of the population without the privilege of becoming fluent
in code will be left behind. It will be the gap between the coding haves and
have-nots. A world where filter bubbles and sameness rules over the messy
realities of life.

This isn't entirely wrong, but still seems like a zero-sum fallacy. Some
people learning how to code doesn't mean everyone else is therefore worse off.
And hey, you can say this about literally anything at all. Does driving skill
being normal make the world more unequal and worse? Or math education. Or
internet access. Or numerous other examples. Would taking those things away
make the world better?

That is, I don't want people to be poor, but making everyone else poor for the
sake of equality doesn't actually improve the situation.

Sidenote: Is OP, Libertatea, a bot? I thought there was a reddit bot of the
same name that just posted articles, and he has a lot of submissions and only
a few comments. Just curious, don't mean to accuse OP of anything.

------
al2o3cr
"Focusing on the additional, costly skillset of coding — rather than the other
more essential, but still lacking, types of literacy — is the product of
myopic technical privilege."

And assuming that educational resources are bounded by what's currently in
place is the product of myopic acceptance of the status quo.

Maybe for the next Wired exercise in futurism, they could imagine an
educational system that isn't being suffocated to death by anti-tax zealots
and privatizers / privateers...

------
guylhem
Question that nobody asks : why should we care about the gap if it increases
productivity?

What bad consequences will it have?

I don't mean that theoretically people will feel bad, but how exactly will
this be bad for a random joe to have a slightly smaller share of a much much
bigger pie??

------
SoulMan
Especially in when we have people around complaining about their "IT/Tech" job
in India and wanting to apply for bank jobs or do grocery business . Teach
basic communication first ( may be how to write a complete sentence ) then
code.

------
lispylol
> We have enough trouble raising English literacy rates, let alone increasing
> basic computer literacy: the ability to effectively use computers to, say,
> access programs or log onto the internet. Throwing coding literacy into the
> mix means further divvying up scarce resources.

This puts into words my feelings towards this techno-movement of "teaching
everyone to code". Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against increasing
computer literacy; with technology so deeply embedded in our modern industrial
society, the fact that the majority of our citizenry have little understanding
about how these machines work is very real cause for concern. However, I
really don't think it's what we should be concerned about right now.

I used to tutor at at an after-school program in a neighborhood in Boston
called Bowdoin-Geneva. It has one of the [highest crime rates]
([http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/specials/68blocks](http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/specials/68blocks))
in the state of Massachusetts. The high school graduation rate in that region
is abysmal, and of the ones who enroll at four year universities, the
percentage of students that actually complete their degree is even worse. It's
also a neighborhood with a large population of Cape-Verdean immigrants, and
many of these immigrant families send their children to after-school programs,
including the one I was at. I was mainly involved with the 7th grade classes,
and the environment was often very chaotic. I couldn't really blame them - I
mean, it was "after-school". But in interacting with these kids, and working
alongside them on their homework, what struck me wasn't so much the fact that
they lacked even the most basic knowledge of English and Arithmetic (I knew
the stats), but how incredibly curious and energized they were as humans, and
yet how utterly pointless and enervating they found school to be. For most of
these kids, fun was anything but school. School was like a prison, and this
program was a brief escape. It was where they could get help on their dreaded
assignments, and then go play for the rest of the day.

Unfortunately, that sentiment isn't endemic to Bowdoin-Geneva. And that, to
me, speaks volumes about what's really wrong with public education. It's not
just the curriculum (more coding?), it's school. The teachers, the
administrators, the culture. Who are we paying to teach? Who are we paying to
lead the organizations that build our future? What do we have to do so that
kids actually want to learn for learning sake? It's a challenge, and there's
no one answer. But adding more features to a broken product is not the
solution.

------
CmonDev
Well, maybe people who can't learn to code should be poor?

------
aaronem
Paging Diana Moon Glampers -- Diana Moon Glampers, please pick up the parti-
colored courtesy phone.

