Comment by JoshTriplett | Hacker News Reader

Comment by JoshTriplett | Hacker News Reader

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At one time, not everyone automatically agreed that everyone should learn to type, or learn basic computer literacy. Or to look back even further in history, at one point not everyone could read and write.

Imagine if we could expect a basic level of programming skill from everyone. Not the ability to write an operating system kernel from scratch; just the ability needed to put together a shell pipeline to get a job done, or a twenty-line script to automate some tedious task. Imagine how much that would change everyday life.

How would mass-market applications change if a tiny bit of scripting skill wasn't too much to ask? How would people's behavior change if their first reaction to any kind of tedious task was "I should automate this", and sometimes they actually could? How would public policy (especially on technology) change?

We're moving towards a future run heavily by computers; raising the baseline level of understanding seems critical to me, and it doesn't seem like too much to ask.

> Or to look back even further in history, at one point not everyone could read and write.

We still have that, in 1st world countries. (I've used the wikipedia entry for the US, but rates are similar across EU)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States

> This government study showed that 21% to 23% of adult Americans were not "able to locate information in text", could not "make low-level inferences using printed materials", and were unable to "integrate easily identifiable pieces of information."

I wonder, would those people be able to do those things if the information were presented by spoken word? I suspect (and could be way wrong, of course) that this is more about ability to understand stuff in general, and not really related to being able to read and write.

"just the ability needed to put together a shell pipeline to get a job done, or a twenty-line script to automate some tedious task. Imagine how much that would change everyday life."

Well unfortunately like learning a foreign language if you don't constantly use those skills they are near worthless. Especially as you get older. And in one way it's quite a bit different than learning a foreign language. There is a great deal of latitude to make mistakes in, say, Spanish. If you don't have it even slightly correct people can still piece together what you are saying. With programming as everyone knows it's got to be near 100% accurate in syntax or it's not going to run and/or give correct results. I agree that being able to do things in the shell is helpful if you are somewhat regularly doing that type of work. I question how useful it is if someone learns that in high school or college and then needs to apply it to do a task years down the road.

Edit: In other words it's not like learning how to ride a bike or play tennis.

Add into that, when I was at school I learned to code on a Research Machines 380Z in C/PM.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_Machines_380Z

Then a ZX81, then a BBC Micro

What would now be utterly useless skills if I was suddenly in need of adding some code to my work years later.

Ten years ago AJAX was just appearing [1], Web 2.0 was the buzz, and the iPhone was 2 years away. What would you teach kids today to equip them for their work in 2025 ?

[1] http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2005/11/javascript_a...

Could this be an argument for making computers harder to use by requiring programming for common tasks?

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