I feel bad about becoming yet another critic of what is a laudable idea. Code literacy, computer science for everybody, you can be sure to have the support of this blogster for the idea.
Yet, yet.
As someone who started out programming in that most ridiculed of programming languages Basic, then progressed to my very own text processing program in C, I subscribe to "everybody can".
But that's not really it.
There is much greater variety in computer science these days. While an individual can write an app or two, even make money doing so, much of the software we are using is the result of groups, small or large.
The software industry is a place where testosterone begins to condense on the cubicle walls at around lunchtime, where good guys talk way too fast, where someone can think in code and someone else needs to figure out how to explain to the rest of the company what that means.
It still is the prototypical industry where saying "I don't know, I'll find out and get back to you" is likely to stop any career.
Don't get me wrong.
I like the idea of code.org, it is good, it is probably necessary.
Just don't sell it as a job training measure.
I know so many people who have left computer science for something else because the relentless pressure of the egomaniacal chiefs big and small was ridiculous to see and seriously demeaning.
And just not worth it any more at some point.
If you need coders, there are more out there than you can employ, but you'd need to treat them like people, not like ninjas or code monkeys.
Between herding cats and ol' Henry Ford's assembly line implemented in enterprise software companies, there is the need for social interaction that is often lacking and often ignored.
And don't quote Steve Jobs on coding, please. He was a lot of things, but a coder he was not.
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