Programming is rapidly becoming a foundational skill that has value across multiple disciplines. It is no surprise that scientists have come to rely on programming, but programming isn’t just for scientists! When you consider that computer programs are now used to analyze great works of art and literature to identify patterns, cross-connections and authenticity, one thing becomes clear: in nearly every field, those who understand how to program computers to have a profound advantage over those who don’t.
As a result of this many schools have taken to teaching simple coding early on in child’s learning, which can lead on to more easily understand the commonly used programming languages used today such as Python or JavaScript.
So today on #AGICHAT we ask you ‘Do you think coding is a critical literacy and should it be in the core curriculum alongside reading, writing and arithmetic?’
AAAAAABSOLUTELY. Peter Thiel approaches this question in his book From Zero to One by pointing out that the future valuable companies will be those that are able to use humans to increase the utility of AI or computers in general.
We are critical to the prevailing cybernetic world mechanism - not just as users but as amplifiers of computers’ capabilities
This. It is a very important skill. Not knowing how to code = illiteracy in the 21st century.
By the way, might be nice to contribute to Python Study Club for those interested in Python. We can also set it up for other programming languages (just DM me).
I suppose the best way to put it is: I consider learning coding as such to be a critical skill, however just learning to code simply isn’t enough.
Ex. I’ll find repositories at times where the very tutorial they come up with to help people use their service, leads to the very same errors a more thorough bug tester could have spotted, before the prototype was even released.
It’s a pretty major thing if say, the instruction for example Ruby gem were:
But then when you try it out, you find you could have just typed “this_library” in the terminal, and it would lead to the same error you were trying to avoid to begin with. (You basically go to the help screen.)
I think that both programming and team work classes are important to be able to avoid simple oversight and bug testing errors.
Sorry I guess a better way to put it is, they should teach community building, bug testing, repository building, along with programming classes, otherwise you’re going to end up with the mess like above, were people can’t get their projects done, do to oversight errors that could have easily been prevented in a formal organization.
