Dear Editor,
Re: “Out with the cursive in with the coding,” News, Dec. 18, 2015.
Teaching kids computer science is a great movement; however, to overly dilute the magnitude of the difficulty in regards to the subject area of coding and to create the illusion of mastering a “superpower” (Code.org) is a huge mistake.
There are many videos and articles on the Internet these days that have demonstrated positive support towards computer science education.
Below these articles, one can find many comments, left mostly by parents and supporters. These people usually express how proud they are that their children have an opportunity to learn computer science or how proud they are that computer science is being integrated at a more substantial level into the education system.
Not surprisingly, one will also find comments left by technical geeks themselves which usually express a deeper consideration into the skill sets for certain aspects of computer science.
However, this “Learn to Code” movement today, is no longer a movement, but an Internet catchphrase that has been materialized into reality.
I’m 17-years-old and a full time student; I’m also a back-end web developer. From a technical standpoint, the effective “dumbing down” and oversimplification of computer codes does not teach students “programming,” nor does it teach them “coding.”
Rather it is a tutorial on writing a list of instructions and basic computer functions thematically designed to look like coding.
Code.Org is the perfect example of this issue. It has effectively turned a widely-used, non-class based, object-oriented language used to give functionality to websites, Javascript, into a drag and drop interface that has nothing left to do with the original raw language. It’s only a symbolic representation with a label on it.
This is a process I like to call over simplification, as implied earlier; these programs are not effective in the learning process, but rather a detriment because they give kids a sense of easy rewards without much effort.
In programming, attention to detail is key. Take for example that a kid finishes Code.Org’s Hour of Code, which teaches kids Javascript in a drag and drop style.
Now suppose he or she is introduced to real Javascript. Do you expect the hour he or she spent in the perfect world where no attention to detail is required and where every mistake is obvious will have any positive significant impact in the learning process of real Javascript?
Or, would the kid become quickly frustrated after being unable to read error messages and correct typos?
Coding is the act of typing code and programming is coming up with the logic behind it.
Parents and teachers today who aren’t technical need to be aware that the drag and drop code or the candy-coated learning process does not effectively teach children programming but eventually causes a huge amount of shock once they are immersed in real code.
David Yue
Richmond
