Why Johnny Can’t Code

7 points by mlongval 2 years ago | 7 comments
  • lordalch 2 years ago
    Title should reflect that this was published in 2006.

    And moreover, I don't think the article's point is true today. Python and JavaScript are both mature languages with massive libraries of online example code for anything you could want to learn about. You can get access to a JavaScript console with a single keypress in any desktop browser- F12.

    Teaching kids to understand how to program has benefits, not just for the ones that go on to specialize in computing- I think about a journalist being able to use R or PyPlot to map out crimes in their city based on publicly available police reports, or a lawyer using a script to call the Shopify API to collect their client's records to respond to a discovery request, rather than taking screenshots of the web pages.

    Exposure to BASIC doesn't help these people as much as more modern languages would.

    • SQueeeeeL 2 years ago
      There's a bunch of really great talks from Johnathan Blow and GameHut (head of Traveller's Tales) about how it's simply impossible to draw a pixel on a screen in any modern computer language.

      For all the endless fancy abstractions we have, the core truth of what must happen becomes lost and so people become slaves to the abstraction instead of masters of the truth.

    • questime 2 years ago
      Eh, I don't buy this - more people are learning to code than ever. There are infinite resources online, it has penetrated society's conscious that this is an easy way to get a really well paying job. And there have never existed as many people who can code ever before - Johnny will likely know someone who does it for a living. Johnny also consumes infinite amounts of software from birth.

      I bet there is no data backing the Author's claim except - "The way I learned to doesn't exist so noone is learning anymore." I will refer everyone to go look at the numbers - whether it's CS grads per capita or SWEs per capita we are rising quickly.

      • SQueeeeeL 2 years ago
        The author's point is that software consumption is fundamentally different from understanding of a machine. Just because there are thousands of SWEs being collectively paid billions of dollars to dump out enterprise code bases doesn't indicate understanding, simply that the skill is in demand. I'd honestly expect being somewhat tech illiterate is beneficial for a lot of these jobs, as it makes you care less about the decisions handed down from management
      • SQueeeeeL 2 years ago
        > For all of their high-flown education initiatives (like the "$100 laptop"), they seem bent on providing information consumption devices, not tools that teach creative thinking and technological mastery.

        Damn, yeah, my control over my own computer feels endlessly more limited each "cycle"

        • mlongval 2 years ago
          Classic article by author David Brin about the loss of coding in the space of a single generation.
          • cafard 2 years ago
            a. On Windows 10 and up, if you enter "python", it will take you to the Windows Store and offer you a free download of Python. (Which is irritating if you've just gone to the trouble of installing Python from python.org, but might please some.) b. the Windows scripting host supports Javascript and VBScript. Neither has a REPL, to be sure.
            • Kenji 2 years ago