Forcing children to learn to ``code

https://theconversation.com/taking-a-second-look-at-the-learn-to-code-craze-86597
It's amazing how much emphasis American schools put on teaching children to kode while not understanding an ounce of what that consists of. The irony is that (in trying to attempt) teaching everyone to program, there's no particular benefit to most students, in part because they would rather teach children about using worthless proprietary software that's going to be deprecated in two years than teach something universal like simple markup or assembly or basic computer logic. The point is, kids hardly benefit from these kind of efforts, but it sure feeds a lot of money to computer companies while getting students hooked on their products. Too bad their software is nearly always fundamentally different by the time they reach the work force. Laypeople seem terminally scared of anything programming related, even if it's something simple like LaTeX, yet they have no qualms wasting an entire year learning to use a certain program if it has a polished GUI.

When I was a child, I took three consecutive computer science classes before giving up entirely. In each of them, they taught me how to use the Microsoft Office suite. All three of them, over and over again with no progression. The same thing happened to me the CS class I took in community college. To this day, I still don't remember how to write those stupid Excel macros. I would literally ditch computer science class to read programming manuals in the school library (note that the library itself didn't have any manuals of note, I would read them online on the school computers). If it weren't for the fact that you would be expelled if you were to ditch too many classes, I probably would have done it every day, and I would have been better off doing so.

Yeah, that's a common sight.
As for the reason they force them, it's to create a new generation of code monkeys for cheaper labour.

the solution would be to make a polished GUI for an education-oriented dialect of Scheme. good old Logo was a step in that direction, but it suffered from incompetent educators who couldn't go beyond 'procedural drawing'

''

This is largely due to lobbying efforts by proprietary software corporations to get students to only use their software. At this point, you're honestly better off homeschooling your child, and getting them to learn on their own machine. Schools are largely beyond reform.

>>5

proprietary software corporations to get students to only use their software.

What does that have to do with programming?

>>6
It has a big effect on the programming community. It encourages large segments of the population away from using and writing libre and non-proprietary software.

>>7
"proprietary software corporations" don't have good reasons to force kids to make proprietary software.

>>8
They do if their interest is in having potential customers for life. Same idea behind having franchised fast food companies sell their junk. We had Domino's Pizza served in the cafeteria, and Coca-Cola in the vending machines at my high school, for example.

>>9
lots of them steal code from open source software, though

>>10
Only from BSD licensed software.

>>10
Yeah, I've noticed that they've had no choice but to partially adopt that model. You still have problems will things like walled gardens and whatnot.

>>10
Maybe for BSD code, but you have to make your program open source if you steal GPL code.

>>13
open sores != free license

>>6-9
That's the obvious argument, but there's a secondary penalty in that children don't have the freedom to experiment with the software they're using. They can use the tools they're given to learn about other things, but not the tools themselves. Part of the reason why so many younger programmers are allergic to low-level languages, because they're not used to it. Look at the Apple engineer whose daughter got him fired. You think she got the chance to play with the iPhone beyond the capacity that's expected of the average consumer? Her father was an engineer, so we know she had the genes that would make her smart enough and curious enough about the topic, but she simply couldn't. And look where she ended up: your typical, vapid valley girl, the daughter of a fucking iPhone engineer.

>>10-13
Well, for the record, most open sores advocates don't consider that to be stealing. Most big companies aren't dumb enough to steal code and face the easily avoidable repercussions. It's important to remember that copyleft isn't the same as copycenter. The latter can be used freely along with proprietary software under some pretty lenient terms. In spite of that, it is technically possible to pirate copycenter software, as with this thread:
https://dis.tinychan.org/read/lounge/1513160407
Although it's really hard to pull off, Intel somehow managed to do so. But it's not often.

>>9
Is it even possible to sell a brand-less homemade soft drink in cafeterias though?

>>17
Are you implying that the American public school system is that bought out or that in-house food isn't allowed in school cafeterias? If the latter, well, I just let you think about your question for a second; I trust you'll realize the obvious.