Programming should be part of the school syllabus

Tikkabhuna · 26 Nov 2011 at 13:32

The only reason to have any programming in schools would be to give those who might be interested in doing it a little push to get started and show them what they need to do it. It will be useless for the vast majority of children. And while there are a some fundamentals that would be useful in other aspects of life I believe that most kids would hate it so much they wouldn't even pick those up. Perhaps having it as an after school class would be a more reasonable idea.

Theophany · 26 Nov 2011 at 13:33

nex20 said:
Well I wouldn't class Pascal as a spreadsheet jockey language.

I was highlighting that programming means different things to different people. None of the schools nor colleges in my area ever taught anything more sophisticated than Excel spreadsheets at GCSE, Access databases at A/S (no actual SQL, all GUI with a touch of VB here and there) and VB.net at A level.

nex20 · 26 Nov 2011 at 13:37

Theophany said:
I was highlighting that programming means different things to different people. None of the schools nor colleges in my area ever taught anything more sophisticated than Excel spreadsheets at GCSE, Access databases at A/S (no actual SQL, all GUI with a touch of VB here and there) and VB.net at A level.

True, that and MS frontpage was as far as my school got in the AVCE IT.

Turambar · 26 Nov 2011 at 13:51

AberystwythLAD said:
The UK has a problem. There is a shortage of software engineers with the advanced skill set to work in the top end of the sector. A few make it, however, they end up in countries like the USA, Germany or the Middle East working for top firms such as IBM and so forth.

This is a problem the UK IT industry could fix by being willing to train staff.

Nexus · 26 Nov 2011 at 14:06

qqg3 said:
We live in a world full of tech, apps and complex web sites etc. Programming is an essential part of this new world, I think children should be in introduced to the basics. As they are with French or German for example. That way they can make their own mind up whever or not they want to pursue it further.

Programming is only any essential part of the world to people who use it in their work environment.

I can't think of a single piece of tech, app or even a website that requires me to know programming to be able to use it. Infact, the whole point of websites and such is to make them easy for the end user.

You can just as easily argue the case of teaching people and then let them make their mind up to many other niche subjects.

qqg3 · 26 Nov 2011 at 14:18

Nexus said:
I can't think of a single piece of tech, app or even a website that requires me to know programming to be able to use it. Infact, the whole point of websites and such is to make them easy for the end user.

I wasn't saying programming is required for the user, it's required for the creator.

All those nice things that rely on tech, you wouldn't have, if not for a programmer somewhere down the line.

Dewotter · 26 Nov 2011 at 16:32

I'd love to have had some programming experience before university. Final year project is all HTML/CSS/Javascript/SQL/PHP and my heads a bit fried with it all. For me I'd have needed more time years prior rather than just a module beforehand.

I know not all of those are real programming languages but being introduced to the core concepts earlier would have been beneficial.

BlackDragon · 26 Nov 2011 at 16:36

As a software engineer myself, I don't think programming should be taught outside of the relevant module.

What should be done is to encourage youngsters to study more technical/science based subjects, and change the opinion that it is 'uncool'. When I studied computing at school, I was the only one to finish the A-level, and this was in a school that focused on technology.

AberystwythLAD · 26 Nov 2011 at 16:38

drunkenmaster said:
x

I agree to a degree but as most parents have never come across code then its unfair to initially put the burden on them. If schools taught programming for a generation and then it was removed from the syllabus then yes you could say 'parents should know this as they've been taught it as a child and its on them to pass it on to future generations'. Thats entirely fair. I think its a bit unfair to blame parents when most of them struggle with basic computing concepts never mind anything like programming, Unix shell, hardware etc.

Knowing a computer inside out for most people in this day and age would be vital. Most companies use computers. If a computer goes down and someone there knows how they work inside out they could essentially get back up and running quicker and their loss would be less.

thedoc46 · 26 Nov 2011 at 17:15

If you do that you'll taking away otherwise precious time for students to learn other more important things. I've been in Corporate IT on both sides of the Atlantc since 95. I can't program anything outside of a batch file. Giving that the OP is struggling, then perhaps its not for you and you should look more towards the engineering side of IT, rather than the programming side.

dowie · 26 Nov 2011 at 17:22

Glaucus said:
Why would you want them to learn programming, what programming are they going to lern, be horribly outdated by the time they leave school.

Learning a programming language is a useful and applicable skill in itself. It's unlikely that the skills you've developed will be out of date when you finish education - we're not talking about vendor certificates or learning about particular applications here.

Schools teach core subjects, not some hugely minority skill, what else do you want to teach them?

Schools teach French... I'd wager that learning to talk to machines is as relevant (or even more so) as learning to speak to French people. Tis certainly more useful, from an employment perspective, than subjects such as RE and home economics. (though obviously there are other factors other than employment concerning education in general and subjects such as RE have their place)
IMO it shouldn't be compulsory to take it particularly far but kids should at least be introduced to it. certainly where ICT is offered computer science should also be offered.
Main issues will likely be lack of people who can teach the subject - similar to problems with finding maths and physics teachers - most people qualified to teach the subjects are much better paid elsewhere.

nex20 · 26 Nov 2011 at 17:28

dowie said:
Learning a programming language is a useful and applicable skill in itself. It's unlikely that the skills you've developed will be out of date when you finish education - we're not talking about vendor certificates or learning about particular applications here.

Also don't forget the fact, in school you wont learn how to make a huge system. Your learn basics, variables, mutators, accessors, classes, design patterns etc... These basics will apply to all languages all your need to do is get used to the new syntax. That's what i've found personally.

sigma · 26 Nov 2011 at 17:30

Programming won't prepare them for stabbing people and sitting at home playing Xbox whilst on the dole.

AberystwythLAD · 26 Nov 2011 at 17:57

thedoc46 said:
If you do that you'll taking away otherwise precious time for students to learn other more important things. I've been in Corporate IT on both sides of the Atlantc since 95. I can't program anything outside of a batch file. Giving that the OP is struggling, then perhaps its not for you and you should look more towards the engineering side of IT, rather than the programming side.

like RE, media studies, etc etc? french? for people who never plan on leaving the country? or have an interest in French? yet so many people here use computers and it would be of great interest to them to know more in depth stuff about how they work.

As far as I'm concerned, the school syllabus should include things like programming, understanding and manipulating a UNIX/Windows filesystem through terminal/etc. So many people don't understand how to use the command line when they should as the GUI doesn't always do as you want plus the command line can be a lot quicker. It should include marketing and how to sell your product and great communication skills. It should include finance/accounting and so forth so people know how to manage money and how to cope with the tax system and so forth. All of which are far more useful to life than RE, media studies and so forth.

dowie · 26 Nov 2011 at 19:02

I'd also add that it is useful to people who don't want a career as a programmer.

Any number of people will find some basic programming knowledge useful these days.

How many people use excel in their office, VBA gets used by plenty of non programmers and there would be plenty more people who 'd probably be more productive if they could code.
An artist wanting to go into web design might appreciate having some background education in the subject, nit necessarily because they need to code but because they need to talk to people who do. It would be useful for lots of people working in technical areas or amongst technical people.

A brief introduction to how we talk to machines is relevant to education regardless of whether you go on to a related career. We teach kids about photosynthesis in plants and get them to learn algebra... learning a bit about programming is no more specialist than either of those. The fact that you might not directly apply what you've been taught in your future career shouldn't rule something out as a potential area of study.

sniffy · 26 Nov 2011 at 19:16

Seems pretty pointless. If kids were screaming from the rooftops for programming classes then yeah that's great. However the majority of kids are going to find it incredibly boring and consequently perform poorly. They should concentrate on making programming material accessible for children if they wish to learn about it in their own time. I actually enjoy programming but I can't imagine sitting my little Sister down at a computer and getting her to code. Just wouldn't interest someone like her.

steve-h · 26 Nov 2011 at 19:23

High level programmers aren't usually the ones who wait to be taught by a teacher in a classroom.

UK-AL05 · 26 Nov 2011 at 19:53

I think you could teach math interactively using programming, vectors, matrices etc

Model movement using vectors, and then transformations and scaling using matrices in a game. Linear mathematics is used a lot in certain realms of programming.

This became intuitive from when I was making 2d games way back.

UK-AL05 · 26 Nov 2011 at 19:56

thedoc46 said:
If you do that you'll taking away otherwise precious time for students to learn other more important things. I've been in Corporate IT on both sides of the Atlantc since 95. I can't program anything outside of a batch file. Giving that the OP is struggling, then perhaps its not for you and you should look more towards the engineering side of IT, rather than the programming side.

Programming is the engineering side of I.T? Unless your talking about hardware engineering, in which case you must be an electronics engineer?

Some people might automate their own jobs with programming skills =P

AberystwythLAD · 26 Nov 2011 at 20:07

UK-AL05 said:
Programming is the engineering side of I.T? Unless your talking about hardware engineering, in which case you must be an electronics engineer?

Some people might automate their own jobs with programming skills =P

Programming is software engineering which is computing.

IT is top level stuff. Only true computer scientists delve into the deep stuff. Programming, command line, Assembler, OS's, algorithms, etc. IT is basic in comparison and thats why computer science/software engineering grads are much more respected than IT grads unless the IT grad done their degree at a university where the IT degrees have a common first year to computer science degree students.

Trust me, I'm an engineer.