The next generation of programmers

[cfbsoftware]

I was intrigued to see what the next generation of Bill Gates's, Steve Jobs's, Linus Torvalds's etc. are cutting their teeth on:

https://codakid.com/coding-tools-for-teens/

[magic]

Is this an advertisement?

Oh wait, this shit is written by one of the companies being "reviewed"

They also aim to encourage participation from women and underrepresented minorities which is a worthy mission.

Say your teen starts coding an app on the school computer but can’t finish it before school lets out. When he gets home, he can easily log back in to App Inventor using to pick up where he left off.

How did this blog even pass their social justice review process?

[pcprogrammer]

With these drag and drop tools I fear a flood of more and more crap programs on your tablet, phone or computer.

That is layer upon layer of possible errors, with the need for update upon update, even worse than seen today.

Sure it is nice to get some acquaintance with "programming" but should be followed up with decent learning about "real programming".

[MikeK]

I don't understand the need to change "programming" to "coding".

[DC1MC]

I don't understand the need to change "programming" to "coding".

A "coder" is usually way cheaper than a programmer.

[SiliconWizard]

I don't understand the need to change "programming" to "coding".

A "coder" is usually way cheaper than a programmer.

There you go. Who would have thought there would be any other motive than decreasing costs and increasing profits?

[langwadt]

I don't understand the need to change "programming" to "coding".

A "coder" is usually way cheaper than a programmer.

typist vs. writer ?

[magic]

There you go. Who would have thought there would be any other motive than decreasing costs and increasing profits?

Actually, there are. Some of those "learn to code" activists are driven by little more than feminism or other forms of egalitarian fundamentalism. But any money they get comes from donors, and the donors are those who have money to throw at this particular issue, so go figure. Besides, Americans at large really want to believe all that tabula rasa stuff and insist that there are great untapped resources of cheap intellectual labor among the underrepresented/underfunded/undereducated/overlooked/overneglected/etc.

A "coder" is usually way cheaper than a programmer.

typist vs. writer ?

It's not really a serious distinction, nobody working professionally calls himself a "coder", and frankly in English "programmer" is not common either. In their pretentiousness, coders usually self identify as "software developers" or "software engineers", even in absence of any engineering degree

The word "code" is exclusively used by activists trying to get the unwashed masses to program computers. Maybe they don't want to make it sound too serious or scary. And I'm glad they picked their own word instead of piggybacking on "programming" or "development", it makes them easy to spot.

[SiliconWizard]

There you go. Who would have thought there would be any other motive than decreasing costs and increasing profits?

Actually, there are. Some of those "learn to code" activists are driven by little more than feminism or other forms of egalitarian fundamentalism. But any money they get comes from donors, and the donors are those who have money to throw at this particular issue, so go figure. Besides, Americans at large really want to believe all that tabula rasa stuff and insist that there are great untapped resources of cheap intellectual labor among the underrepresented/underfunded/undereducated/overlooked/overneglected/etc.

And... the only real motive for all of this crap is IMHO to increase profits as well. The rest is just rosy bullshit to sweeten the pill.

So, in the end, there aren't.

[JPortici]

In any case, drag and drop programming environments are really nothing new

[cfbsoftware]

I don't understand the need to change "programming" to "coding".

It was required when "programs" were replaced by "apps"

[tooki]

I don't understand the need to change "programming" to "coding".

It was required when "programs" were replaced by "apps"

FYI, in the Mac world, where executables have always been officially called “applications”, the abbreviation “app” has been common since the 80s, with no negative connotations about the program’s complexity. (In fact, rather the opposite: apps were the things you do work in. The little helper tools were “utilities”.) Photoshop, Quark Xpress,, FileMaker Pro, Word and Excel: those were your apps.

(Weird historical footnote: the original Mac system software could only run one application at a time — you had to quit to change to another app. But there was an exception: little utilities like the calculator, notepad, and scrapbook (clipboard storage) that you could open from the Apple menu. Those things had a special name, “desk accessories”, and didn’t exist as standard applications on disk, you had to install them into the central System file. In later versions of classic Mac OS, long after it became capable of running multiple regular applications simultaneously, Desk Accessories did become standalone applications instead.)

In modern usage, “app” to mean a “mini program” is really an abbreviation of “mobile app” which then got extended to the desktop, with the added connotation of “procured from a central software store”.

P.S. Steve Jobs was never a programmer. He was never an engineer of any kind.

[magic]

And... the only real motive for all of this crap is IMHO to increase profits as well. The rest is just rosy bullshit to sweeten the pill.

Have you never met a crazy feminist?
They aren't in it for the money. The whole movement might be funded by the usual suspects for the usual reasons, but all the worker bees are taking it seriously.

Also, Americans are completely insane and they take everything the TV tells them at face value. After all, it's been decades of "Russian TV bad, American TV good" for them. Here in the former commie block, if somebody announces a great campaign to change the world where everybody must participate, common people will joke about it (as if we haven't seen similar things before...) and at best see it as an opportunity to get free money for pretending to do something for the cause. I mean, just look how EUSSR grants get spent here, 'nuff said. Meanwhile in America, the drones actually believe all that SJ stuff and worry about being good little drones and meeting expectations. That's the difference and the reason why I stayed the hell away from that shithole like blueskull

[magic]

I don't understand the need to change "programming" to "coding".

It was required when "programs" were replaced by "apps"

FYI, in the Mac world, where executables have always been officially called “applications”, the abbreviation “app” has been common since the 80s, with no negative connotations about the program’s complexity.

IOW, since the iPhone brought computing to people who shouldn't be doing it. It all started around 2010.
That's why if I ever get an opportunity to go back in time and kill one historic figure in his crib, I promise it won't be Alfred Hutler but Steve Jobs

[tooki]

I don’t think we (or anyone) should be gatekeepers to computing technology.

[pcprogrammer]

That's why if I ever get an opportunity to go back in time and kill one historic figure in his crib, I promise it won't be Alfred Hutler but Steve Jobs

Classic time travel paradox problem. Go back in time, take out the thing that annoyed you, then in the present there is not that thing to annoy you and so no reason to go back in time

[pcprogrammer]

I don’t think we (or anyone) should be gatekeepers to computing technology.

Maybe not, but it does not hurt to think about what is good and what is not, and at least stay away from the bad to prevent it from becoming main stream.

[tooki]

What on earth are you talking about?

[pcprogrammer]

I assumed that with gatekeeper you meant guardians of how things are done and in that capacity judge over how and what is produced.

And what I meant is that by not using applications that are crap you can try to avoid them from becoming so popular that everybody wants it and more of it. But as a single person you don't stand a chance in keeping crap from entering the world.

[Nominal Animal]

Over a quarter of a century ago, a company called MacroMind created Director.  In 1995 –– 27 years ago –– the company, now called Macromedia, created a Shockwave plug-in, so that applets created in Director could be run in a browser.  There were hundreds, if not thousands, of CD-ROM games created in Director sold for children, both tie-ins and edutainment, for both Windows and Macs.  I did some educational and commercial work with it for a few years.

As an environment, it looked very much like CodaKid does now: fully visually driven.  You had a 'stage', representing the window (or screen, if run full-screen), with actors or sprites representing the visual elements; with a timeline for how the visual elements would move, and scriptlets written in Lingo to control looping, events (mouse clicks), and even frame (timeline) changes; it was the first purely event-driven language I learned.  Very intuitive, very easy to learn.

So... what is exactly new here?

As far as I can see, true learning is at best tertiary, with "do this and this will happen" -type copying without understanding the focus.

That's absolutely fine for a hobby and leisure time, but aside from being an interest trigger for some, it won't produce new software developers, just copy-paste types.  (Which is not an exact description, but an emotive characterisation of the type of person who completes tasks by repeating actions without understanding why those actions lead, or should lead, to a successful outcome.)

In the Director era, you could tell how certain children show tie-in products were made by people who really weren't software developers, and the "games" easily locked up, glitched, et cetera...  And consumed ridiculous amounts of processor resources –– this being the era before widespread 2D or 3D acceleration.
Some were nice, sure, but on average, it really just enabled cheaper productions by people who maybe should have done something completely different.
You know, cheaper crap for the masses.

[magic]

Classic time travel paradox problem. Go back in time, take out the thing that annoyed you, then in the present there is not that thing to annoy you and so no reason to go back in time

That's the whole point.
I would gladly live in an alternate world where Apple's consumer garbage doesn't exist and I don't feel an urge to murder people

I don’t think we (or anyone) should be gatekeepers to computing technology.

Tell this to all the arseholes who filter what software you are allowed to run on products which they try to sell as general purpose computing devices.
Americans are all liberal until it comes to OMG think of the children or OMG think of the malware, which usually translates to OMG think of the money.

[Ed.Kloonk]

../
  In 1995 –– 27 years ago –– the company, now called Macromedia, created a Shockwave plug-in, so that applets created in Director could be run in a browser. 

:puke:

[magic]

Flash was the best thing to happen to the Internet because you could disable it.

Now they reinvented the wheel, called it HTML5, implemented it in every browser with no way of disabling it, and most of the webshits in the world rely on it for basic functionality and completely break if you try to browse them with Internet Explorer 5.0 to avoid all that flashy rubbish.

This is the progress Flash haters dreamed about

[pcprogrammer]

Americans are all liberal until it comes to OMG think of the children or OMG think of the malware, which usually translates to OMG think of the money.

This applies to many people, not just Americans. Liberal and concerned people live everywhere.

[magic]

This applies to many people, not just Americans. Liberal and concerned people live everywhere.

It's a matter of concentration, enough of them being in one place to be able to do something about it.
The outcomes can be seen by everyone.

We are already witnessing first rats abandoning the sinking ship