<p>It’s unfortunate that the author seems kind of smug, and it seems like he’s turning a lot of people off to the idea of learning how to program. I think it would be great if everyone learned how to program, in the same way everyone learns physics, and poetry. Programming requires a sort of critical thinking that I think is hard to replicate in other subjects.</p>
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<p>Are you saying that people shouldn’t learn how to write?</p>
<p>I’ve been in advertising for 30 years. Lots of different companies, different industries. Never had to learn a bit of programming. Absolutely no reason to. I learned enough about each company and its industry to write about it. But I never had to know the technical details. I write marketing material, not tech manuals.</p>
<p>Is it possible to short PubMatic? An understanding of the business is always necessary. Requiring all new hires in all departments to have programming skills is myopic lunacy.</p>
<p>While there may be only one graduate with a bachelors degree in Computer Science for every three jobs that require programming skills, there are going to be graduates in other majors that will fill many of these positions. For example, my younger son is a Physics major finishing his sophmore year. He has made it clear that he has no desire to go to graduate school after he gets his BS in Physics.</p>
<p>I have told him that with only a BS in Physics, finding a job in that field will be very difficult and he might have to do something else like computer programming. He seems fine with that and has already completed three semesters of computer programming courses.</p>
<p>I suspect that a fair number of Physics, Astronomy and Math majors who for one reason or another will not continue to graduate school and not really employable in the area that they majored in, but because of their quantitative skills, will find employment in computer programming.</p>
<p>Well, I’ve got one econ major and one history / American studies major, and I certainly won’t encourage them to take computer science programming if they aren’t interested. I have the opposite reaction. I think it’s very vocational in nature, and not part of a core liberal arts background.</p>
<p>Umm, can you give any reason for this? Like I said, I don’t see programming as any more important or useful than learning physics or poetry. Lots of people get by in life without using poetry, and programming is no different. I don’t think that’s a good reason for not teaching poetry, and the same is true for programming. And I think there is a lot of merit to learning how to program, even if you’re never going to program again in your life.</p>
<p>I personally don’t really enjoy programming, and I don’t enjoy analyzing poetry either. But I feel like I learned a lot from both activities. I don’t see the need to look down on it.</p>
<p>I think it’s possible to teach programming in a way so that it’s not as vocational, and fits into a traditional liberal arts curriculum. It’s probably true that many schools don’t teach programming this way.</p>
<p>Programming, in its finer form, is an art. In this form it really can’t be taught. One has to have the innate skill to do it. </p>
<p>My money would be that the businesses that require programming are doing so as a screening tool. Whoa, I need an admin assistant that knows Word, Excel, and Python and dare we ask, Lua?</p>
<p>Programming is creeping into every profession. It just makes sense to have at least a little programming experience. Just look at how people use spreadsheets today. That’s a very simple version of programming. </p>
<p>Also, programming teaches logic, sequential thinking, priority setting. Learning the basics of programming can only help.</p>
<p>Programming is not vocational. It’s problem-solving, and often of very high order. That said, not everyone has to know how to do it, but many of us have to understand the process and the nature of the work.</p>
<p>S1, with math-physics background but with a liberal arts degree, started work within 2 weeks of graduation doing computer programming with excellent salary and benefits.</p>
This is a truism - it could be said about a wide variety of skills. What I do is problem-solving as well - and it has absolutely nothing to do with programming.</p>
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To what depth? I understand that programmers write code that computers understand, creating software that people can use. That’s really all I need to know.</p>
<p>I don’t see anything wrong with an employer wanting everyone to have some baseline skills in the area of their business. </p>
<p>I work in an elementary school. We wouldn’t hire someone without some basic child-related talent or skills. Even if you do something completely behind the scenes, like the IT guy, I might expect you to be able to hold someone’s hand if we’re evacuated during an emergency, to greet children warmly when you pass them in the hallway and to put up with the ones who come to your office and ask questions when they are studying careers. I also expect you to value children and be invested in their safety and learning since they are, in the end, the point of having an elementary school.</p>
<p>I’m not sure I get the point of the article though. I’m not sure why the writer thinks his company is a “dream” place to work. I think I wouldn’t want his job any more than he wants mine. If his advice is that people who want to work in computers should learn to computer program, I can agree with that, but I don’t think it’s news. Should I write an article saying that if you want to work in schools you should think about spending some time with children?</p>
<p>I think what the guy is pointing at is that any company doing any kind of business today better have people ready to deal with computer programming and writing their own code in-house. Isn’t it nice when you learn a much easier shortcut to do something in your computer that you’ve been doing perfectly fine until now? (the teacher usually being a 16 year old ).They want the ones that will find shortcuts to the shortcuts.</p>
<p>I actually think programming should be taught in schools alongside writing and math, and have a lot of sympathy for employers who want to hire tech-literate people for jobs that don’t revolve around programming. Knowing your way around a computer in this day and age is incredibly empowering for you as a consumer/computer user, and potentially useful in any professional context. I’ve used my “superfluous” computer skills to map historical data from 12th-century China for my history papers and to format my lit essays in LaTeX, for example.</p>
<p>Plus, programming is not some foreign land where only “nerds” and computer geniuses can go. It’s a skill like any other, and to insist that not everyone can learn it is to perpetuate the same harmful stereotypes that are holding children back in math and science.</p>
<p>Ran the article by S1 (don’t know if he read through the thread or not, though) and I’ll quote from his answer:</p>
<p>“I think the most important point he’s making, which a lot of people seem to be missing, is how little programming you need to know to be able to have a basic conversation with someone who knows a lot more. To me the big problem is that outside of the sciences, people have a mental block just like they do with math, where they somehow enjoy being able to say, “I know absolutely nothing about programming.” It really would take very little effort for these people to learn just enough.”</p>
<p>I don’t have to know how a hybrid engine works to drive my Prius. I don’t have to know how programming works to use a spreadsheet or a computer.</p>
<p>^right. knowing different bodies of knowledge is great, but no one can know them all. Writing and reading involve our basic communication in the common language; I think that programming is more analogous to other sub-language in which different parts of the culture work: math, music, electronics, mechanics, chemistry, etc. And more sub-technologies: gardening, cooking, woodworking, sewing, web design, etc.</p>
<p>It’s good to know some different technologies and languages. No one needs to, or can, know them all. Writing is on a different level–it is the organized use of our basic communication. Programming is not necessary in order to manipulate a spreadsheet, or even a webpage for that matter. no more so than one needs to be able to program the computer that runs Chedva’s Prius in order to drive the car.</p>
).They want the ones that will find shortcuts to the shortcuts.</p>