Learning to code requires you to learn how to structure and subdivide a problem. Large parts of software engineering training is devoted to teaching people to think about problems in more formal ways.
More people should learn to code earlier exactly because it helps practising reasoning skills.
Most software engineers think about problems in bureaucratic (object-oriented) ways and not in formal ways, because they have been ruined by their "training".
Once they have a job, they discover that convoluted OO code bases offer great job security, so nothing will ever change.
No matter how much you might dislike those ways of coding, they are still vastly more formalized that how most people are used to dealing with problem solving.
Because to learn Latin you usually (at least in the country where I learnt it) have to read Virgil, Seneca, Tacitus and so on. They are not mandatory if you instead want to learn Python.
It appears to be a PR stunt to promote putting programming on the core curriculum.
I guess they're either trying to attract foreign IT investment or creating a wedge to create space for more privatization in the Finnish schooling system (they're bringing in private sector expertise to teach programming).
It might be a reaction to the slow death of Nokia, too.
I think your cynicism is unwarranted. What I've understood, Reaktor's Code School for Children has been a very much grassroots effort and not a calculated PR stunt.
I'm wondering if they are obsolete, like quill pens and slide rules. Who has a wood shop? What jobs are available with those skills? and so on. Its an old middle-class ideal that every kid should learn those things, plus flower arranging and calculating a bearing on your yacht.
This is the kind of comment I would expect on hacker news.
Who has a woodshop?
Carpenters, cabinet makers, furniture makers, CNC operators, instrument makers, boat makers, the list goes on.
The basic ability to decompose and fix real world objects is quite important, and our cushioned zones of computer bliss may make us forget that we need all of those people to keep not posting on hacker news and learning how to use physical tools.
Again, those are things that people with money can do. The vast mass of humanity doesn't have any access to a CNC mill, nor do they make boats in their basement (e.g.because they live in a small apartment). Its a first-world middle-class idea, was my point.
I don't understand. Nobody's talking hobbies. Its absurd to imagine the average high school student will be a boatmaker or woodsmith. One in a million get to do things like that. Might as well be learning to make buggy whips or opera glasses.
You might just want to take a chill pill and get off the internet a bit; I know it can be frustrating when you get a downvote for an honestly held opinion, but the best thing to do is take your licks instead of what you are doing here.
Perhaps don't put your system in the path of a proton beam? I've had a large test suite that consistently used 8GB running for three years without ECC RAM. Any bit flip would have been caught by the test suite. My conclusion is that bit flips are entirely exaggerated (probably by the hardware industry for obvious reasons).
Do you have the suite published? The frequency of errors depends on how much memory and in which conditions it is being used. Datacenters, supercomputers, even personal workstations used for scientific calculations benefit from error correction. Check this out: http://techcrunch.com/2009/11/02/new-study-proves-that-ecc-m...
Usually comments that complain about downvotes are downvoted. Have another go, perhaps you'll reach -20. If you persist, you will be eminently qualified as a Wikipedia admin.
> His startup essays tended to be bit artificial, as if he had to force himself to write them.
He was basically doing content marketing for YCombinator, which is understandable and probably served him/them well. But this is probably the sort of thing he's actually more interested in writing.
WWII had a cohesive effect on the American society and economy that lasted approximately until the 1980s. The results were more equality and less fragmentation during that period.
Since the 1980s technological progress and also social factors brought an ever increasing re-fragmentation, which, if not properly addressed, might lead to problems soon.
Acknowledging these problems is remarkable -- I think it's the first time pg did that.
The current design is closer to the original design. Wait a couple of years, and the design you like will be back. Everything goes in circles for the reasons other people have mentioned above.
The process of creating cross links in one's mind that are actually still available when not staring at google.com works far better when in sitting in a library and reading actual books.
I think science (as opposed to hype like "big data") will progress faster again once the Internet goes out of fashion.
I think Python is a good language, but not for learning.
Everything that relates to theory (scoping, object system, typing) is poorly specified and has loads of special cases that can only be understood by using the language a lot.
