Recently code.org publicized a promotional video featuring ppl like Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Bill Gates of Micro$oft saying American schools should teach programming more.
I don't like it.
I don't think programming is for everyone and that more programming is for social good or scientific advancement. It lowers cost of labor for all those people in the Advertisement, but it isn't as good as it sounds.
As a person who completed a CS degree, I feel that computer language can be made much better so that there won't be a "computer programming"
The day that I tried to teach my dad to program a for-loop in C and he turned around and teased me about forgetting the closed form expression for arithmetic series was the first time that I thought about how stupid this stuff I do is. It was the expression on my dad's face... I remember it vividly... For it was then that I realize that I did not comprehend the sheer vulgarity of
for(int x=0;x<100;++x);
so primitive, so stupid.
The next time is when I read about Map-Reduce--sooo freaking cool. I think tomorrow I will find another way to think, another way to say, and another way to program.
I want to make a better programming language. a better computer. That would be better than community colleges teaching Fortran IMHO
Oh, and p.s.
I think Yahoo!'s new no-policy is nice. I think is real progress for protection of civil liberty in America. Technology companies insists on ownership and monitoring of its employees while working, and admittedly justified to do so. Therefore when Marissa Mayers decided to cancel all WFH, she made a call that will end monitoring of employees' home networks--because if you don't work from home, the company will have no cause to instrument any kind of monitoring of your home network.
I think this is a really forward thinking technology leader who care about her employees. I am buying myself some Yahoo! stocks in support of this bold move.
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