Reply to: Teaching kids to program

[Cliphead]

Contracts & Procurement Manager.

[Pondlife]

What do I call the soon to be wife?

Contracts & Procurement Manager.

[Cliphead]

This cutesy nonsense of referring to your wife/kids by XX02/XX03 really has to stop. It's almost as bad as the mumsnet DH/DS/DD. In fact it's worse, because it was started by suity.

From now on all references to a wife must be given as "er indoors", or at a push "the old ball an chain", and kids must be known as "me brats".

What do I call the soon to be wife?

[Freamon]

SM03 started a computer course when 16

This cutesy nonsense of referring to your wife/kids by XX02/XX03 really has to stop. It's almost as bad as the mumsnet DH/DS/DD. In fact it's worse, because it was started by suity.

From now on all references to a wife must be given as "er indoors", or at a push "the old ball an chain", and kids must be known as "me brats".

[DodgyAgent]

It appears that in todays Times that a case is being argued that all children should learn to program and not just write macros. having read the article I would agree:

Hannah Devlin
February 29 2012 6:00PM
As far as computer gadgetry goes, the Raspberry Pi isn’t pretty: its green circuit board littered with electronic components and soldered-on sockets gives it the sad look of a high school technology project, but appearances can deceive. This is a credit card-sized computer with high-speed internet provision, Blu-ray-quality video and a price-tag of only £16. It went on sale last week and its creator, Eben Upton, thinks it could spark a social revolution.
By developing a computer so cheap that it could be available to every pupil in every classroom, Upton hopes to teach the nation to program, and he is not alone in this goal. By the start of the year, the US-based Codecademy website had attracted more than a million subscribers in five months.
A wave of initiatives are coalescing behind the goal to democratise computer programming in the same way that the Gutenberg press made the printed word available to the masses for the first time. It might be tempting to ignore this craze — despite the claim in the film The Social Network that programmers are the new rock stars, coding has so far remained firmly in the realm of the nerd. But to dismiss it would be foolish and short-sighted.
The digital sector is one of the few areas of economic growth and Britain needs a new generation of coders to capitalise on this. Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, has lamented the state of IT lessons as “children bored out of their minds being taught how to use Word or Excel by bored teachers”. He must now throw his support behind a new secondary school curriculum that arms pupils with the skills to write their own software rather than teaching them to be passive consumers.
In the shorter-term, learning to code may be the fastest way into employment for the one million young people in Britain who are seeking jobs. Google is so desperate for people who can program that it is taking over on average a company a week largely for the purpose of “talent acquisition”; while traditionally non-technical organisations such as newspapers face a sudden need for people to create apps and interactive infographics.
Learning to code does not require lengthy unpaid internships in London. For those who have a computer it is free and for those who do not, it now costs £16. No one questions the empowering nature of literacy. Similarly, those for whom computers remain mysterious black boxes will be opting out of a creative renaissance fuelled by digital technology. The advent of social networking has proved beyond any doubt that programming can do more than crunch numbers. Those who choose not to get involved risk becoming the illiterates of the future.

[doodab]

I would imagine that your idea of communication is conducted over the internet

Of course you would, because you lack imagination.

(c) 2012 sasguru

[Platypus]

you need a certain mind set

Yep, you sure do,
Coding Horror: Software Developers and Asperger's Syndrome

[DodgyAgent]

Maybe they would be better off learning both?

For someone who abhors thinking in binary you sure do a lot of it.

I would imagine that your idea of communication is conducted over the internet

[Platypus]

I think this looks fun:
Small Basic - Development for Beginners - MSDN

[doodab]

I think kids are better off spending time communicating with each other than sitting in front of a computer. having said that if they learnt to interact with other human beings I would be out of a job

Maybe they would be better off learning both?

For someone who abhors thinking in binary you sure do a lot of it.

[DodgyAgent]

I think kids are better off spending time communicating with each other than sitting in front of a computer. having said that if they learnt to interact with other human beings I would be out of a job

[Support Monkey]

How many kids could be arsed?

When I learned in the 1970s we didn't have a tenth of the other things to do that kids have nowadays. Especially the interweb.

My thoughts exactly, kids have a completely different attention span to back in our day, my lad used to modify all his cars in grand theft auto using a mod program but it was a visual GUI i cannot see him having the patients to sit looking at lines of code

We had nothing else to do back then but they have far to many other things to be doing now

[Spacecadet]

what happened to Microsofts KPL and that programmable Lego stuff (not sure they were related)

[Scrag Meister]

I think sometimes they have it and sometimes they don't

SM03 started a computer course when 16 and simply could not get to grips with coding.
Whether it was my teaching at home and over the internet or you need a certain mind set.

Me
Him

[Doggy Styles]

How many kids could be arsed?

When I learned in the 1970s we didn't have a tenth of the other things to do that kids have nowadays. Especially the interweb.