Reading 14 Response

Becoming literate in programming can be a very helpful tool not only when it comes to the idea of creating software and getting a job in the tech industry, but also when it comes to expanding the mind and helping you to think in different ways. I believe that learning coding is not only beneficial from a career stand point, but also from the idea that learning to code which includes understanding data structures, syntax, and many other different things can help you to think more analytically or creatively because there are a multiple solutions to a problem in coding just like in many other professions. There are many difficulties which will be faced by schools trying to implement programming into their curriculum such as gaining access to computers and general child interest. For this to work in schools i believe that it should be offered as an elective, but one which is for the highest amount of credit which a HS class can be given for to encourage it as a challenging field but not make people feel like they are trapped into it. I believe that coding should not be initially tought, but that challenging and creative thinking assignments with modular programs like scratch and VB could be useful to help with developing computational knowledge and logic. Furthermore I have found it disturbing how many kids don't know basic computer short cuts that are helpful in every day life. Earlier this semester I was with some townie friends that are all business majors and none of them knew that CTRL+F allows you to find words on a webpage.

 There are two articles which stood out to me for the opposing side and that is the Please Don't Learn to Code article and whatever Jason Bradbury had to say. The author of the first article is trying to make learning to program out to mean that someone is necessarily looking for a job in the field and then tries to dis-sway people with saying that the current devs need to be pitied and that its not as easy as it looks. What type of crap writing is that for a something like tech crunch in the first place and second of all is he afraid of competition? Even if someone happens to not make it in programming as a software dev there are plenty of other places that knowledge can be useful and that persons ability to think and make decisions has been tested with CS so they can handle anything else.