A software engineer’s take on the new education call to
arms.
In the past few years, programming has gone mainstream, as
celebrities from Chris Bosh to President Obama jump on the “everyone should
learn to code” bandwagon. The idea is that teaching kids to code will make them
employable and help American students keep up with their competition abroad.
But this idea has generated substantial whining among
programmers—including me. Like a good computer scientist, I took the edict
quite literally and had a pretty visceral reaction to it. I value the spread of
programming knowledge to the extent that I value generally making all kinds of
knowledge accessible. It gives a window into the crossover that computer
science has with some interesting intellectual problems, and this exposure will
undoubtedly help the field as it tries to attract the most capable people to
join its ranks. Something has to trick people into banging their heads against
the wall, whether it’s plush offices, intellectual rigor, prestige, or sheer
beauty in the work.