Re:Programming Is Not for Everybody
by jacalata on Monday March 04, 2013 @02:21AM
(#5317093)
so, an alternate example
1. speaking english will give people advantages
2. learning a new language may quite well introduce you to new ways of thinking
3. so you'd prefer that not everyone had the opportunity to learn english, regardless of the individual benefit to them, in order to maintain the kind of society you want to be in.
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| on HN ]
That is not the case at all. I'm not saying that we shouldn't give the opportunity to learn programming to everybody, I'm saying that trying to get everybody to learn programming (which, in the ideal case, the end goal would be pretty much everybody on the entire planet learns to program when they were young) may not be all good.
Just like we shouldn't force everybody to learn English. People who can speak English may think quite differently from people who can only speak Korean or Chinese or German, and I don't think it's good to try to get everybody on the planet to learn to speak English. Part of it may be cultural, as with learning languages (programming languages included) you are inevitably exposed to the culture.
As a non-native english speaker I assure you everything has a cost even a supposedly universal good thing like english. The more fluent I am at english the more my thought process changes. There are already cases where I find myself unable to relate to the simple joy that people around me seem to get for free.
Slightly off topic, there's evidence that not having the language to articulate a concept can mean it is incredibly difficult to understand. http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2004/oct/21/research.hig...