Learn to Code, It's Harder Than You Think

Re:Learn to Code, It's Harder Than You Think by panglott on Friday December 04, 2015 @11:24AM (#10677195)

Excatly. There's a huge difference between "everybody needs to learn to become a professional software developer" and "everyone needs a higher level of software literacy, including basic coding skills"

Lots and lots of office jobs involve stuff like updating content on a Django app or shoestringing together Excel VBA and Access stuff. There's all kinds of tasks where scripts and low-level automation would be useful.

Now the tools for this tend to be awful and workers tend to be locked out of trying it, but that's another story.

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Re:Learn to Code, It's Harder Than You Think by serge2k on Friday December 04, 2015 @11:35AM (#10677284)

I would argue that neither of those statements is true.

I think this idea that coding is some sort of silver bullet is ridiculous.

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Re:Learn to Code, It's Harder Than You Think by dragonwriter on Friday December 04, 2015 @12:41PM (#10677733)

> I think this idea that coding is some sort of silver bullet is ridiculous.

Its not a silver bullet, but it is as a core component of developing of computer literacy, a broadly applicable foundational skill for non-menial jobs in the modern world, even if programming itself isn't a central duty of the job.

(In the right context -- though its possible to learn programming without developing much of this -- its also a valuable way, and perhaps the most accessible in terms of providing concrete feedback, to develop technology-neutral systems literacy, which is an even more broadly applicable, foundational skill.)

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Re:Learn to Code, It's Harder Than You Think by paulcole on Friday December 04, 2015 @12:12PM (#10677524)

It's not a silver bullet, but it is a bullet. Coding can't solve every problem, but it can help solve some of them, including some that would be very tedious to solve otherwise.

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