GNOME Launches Coding Education Challenge With $500k In Funding

[coder]

Everyone has to discover something for the first time, just because they haven't found out how the Insert key works doesn't mean that they can't program well:

I think uid313 was talking about professionals.

Someone who doesn't know what the Insert key does probably doesn't have any particular passion for computers or programming. That means that they're likely to put the minimal amount of effort into their work, which (unless they're a genius) means loads of crap code. This is how you get buggy, insecure products, or at least makes more work for everyone else on the team.

Software development should not be a default career choice. I'm 100% supportive of making tech available for kids and noobs, and even giving all students a rudimentary understanding of programming. From there, they will sort themselves - those with the right temperament will gravitate towards it, while everyone else will tend to drift away. You don't need to push and lure and cajole loads of kids into the profession. That's not actually good for anyone - even those kids, who will probably not be very successful or fulfilled in their careers and meanwhile might've missed out on their true calling.

[uid313]

Sounds like the average Rust dev.

No, Rust is a programming language that is not the first language someone picks up or something that is taught in school or a popular 30 day course.
The worst offenders are web developers, people who took a course in React without knowing JavaScript, or people who do WordPress. So they code some PHP and JavaScript without understanding what executes on the web server and what executes in the web browser.

While anyone is encouraged to join, it does not mean they are *forced* to. If they don't want to join, they can simply ignore the program.
Let's hope this will do something because I'm tired of his

Yeah, but there are students who are 18 and have never written code in their life, and they get told they can become programmers, they hear its popular, and its for the future, there are job opportunities, and they don't know what they want to do so they go for that. They hate reading documentation and think its a boring chore, they don't keep themselves up to date with API changes in new releases of software frameworks and libraries. These people are not passionate about programming.

[moilami]

I think uid313 was talking about professionals.

Someone who doesn't know what the Insert key does probably doesn't have any particular passion for computers or programming. That means that they're likely to put the minimal amount of effort into their work, which (unless they're a genius) means loads of crap code. This is how you get buggy, insecure products, or at least makes more work for everyone else on the team.

Software development should not be a default career choice. I'm 100% supportive of making tech available for kids and noobs, and even giving all students a rudimentary understanding of programming. From there, they will sort themselves - those with the right temperament will gravitate towards it, while everyone else will tend to drift away. You don't need to push and lure and cajole loads of kids into the profession. That's not actually good for anyone - even those kids, who will probably not be very successful or fulfilled in their careers and meanwhile might've missed out on their true calling.

Extremely well said. Everyone does not have to become a programmer, it would be a ruin, plenty of talent wasted and abused.

But programming is good to teach in schools like languages and mathematics is good to teach.

[coder]

But programming is good to teach in schools like languages and mathematics is good to teach.

I think about 1 year of mandatory computer science is enough, in K-12. And, really, I mean high school, when kids have enough mathematics background to appreciate it. By that point, you'd have gotten deep enough into programming to know if it appeals to you and to have a basic sense of how most software works.

My high school actually offered 2.5 years of CS, but the minimum was 0.5 years. Of that, I took 1.5 years, testing out of 1 year worth. And it was all pure CS - no BSing about with robotics, games, VR, or crap like that. That stuff might be fun for after-school or summer camps, but I think you can waste a lot of time on it without really covering much of the fundamentals of CS.

[kurtstovall]

To be honest I doubt this will be the case because the outcome of this program most likely will be semi-experienced programmers that wouldn't like to stay in the project.

What makes you think so? They may not stay in the project but why are they called semi-experienced?

write my essay