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Post by robstokie on Sept 1, 2014 19:43:45 GMT
Apparently, the government is going to make computer coding a compulsory subject for kids from the age of 5 upwards. What a load of bollocks because:
1. Plenty of kids are still leaving school unable to read, write or do maths to a satisfactory level, so wouldn't it make more sense to come down harder on literacy and numeracy levels.
2. There is no real need for home-grown Coding specialists in the economy because it can all be outsourced abroad.
3. Computer Coding is going to be pointless to 99% of kids in school, who will no doubt find writing long-winded instructions into some database framework useless, boring and frustrating, especially considering these instructions wont work unless they are written correctly down to the last letter, dash and indent.
4. I have had to do coding in the past (when I studied a BTEC in ICT) and, let me tell you, I still don't know how to code for toffee. I managed to get round this by copy-and-pasting off the net, but it is way too complex a subject for any primary school kid to get their head around, never mind some poor 5 year old.
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Post by bathstoke on Sept 1, 2014 19:51:19 GMT
Well my wife has put a code on our computer & now I can't get onto my favourite sites...
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Post by Billybigbollox on Sept 1, 2014 19:57:25 GMT
Well my wife has put a code on our computer & now I can't get onto my favourite sites... Ha ha bloody women |
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Post by ************** on Sept 1, 2014 20:00:59 GMT
Brilliant idea. It's not hard to start and any smart kid should be able to do a "Hello World" after a few tries. I taught myself Ruby and used Ruby on Rails to build a Twitter App with little previous experience. Try this if you're curious: tryruby.org/levels/1/challenges/0 |
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Post by pearo on Sept 1, 2014 21:09:29 GMT
Apparently kids are also going to be taught fractions from the age of 5, surely it would be better if they started at 4 and three quarters.
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Post by RichieBarkerOut! on Sept 1, 2014 21:22:39 GMT
Apparently, the government is going to make computer coding a compulsory subject for kids from the age of 5 upwards. What a load of bollocks because: 1. Plenty of kids are still leaving school unable to read, write or do maths to a satisfactory level, so wouldn't it make more sense to come down harder on literacy and numeracy levels. 2. There is no real need for home-grown Coding specialists in the economy because it can all be outsourced abroad. 3. Computer Coding is going to be pointless to 99% of kids in school, who will no doubt find writing long-winded instructions into some database framework useless, boring and frustrating, especially considering these instructions wont work unless they are written correctly down to the last letter, dash and indent. 4. I have had to do coding in the past (when I studied a BTEC in ICT) and, let me tell you, I still don't know how to code for toffee. I managed to get round this by copy-and-pasting off the net, but it is way too complex a subject for any primary school kid to get their head around, never mind some poor 5 year old. That's the most depressing post I've read for a while, including some of my own! Learning to code may help some children with literacy problems, and it won't make them any more likely to fail in the the future. Most things that people do in this country can be outsourced apart from stacking shelves, hairdressing and frying chips, failing to keep up with the developing world in terms of IT is only going to help send the country down the pan. It's about time we learned to make programs rather than teach people to use them. |
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Post by ************** on Sept 1, 2014 22:01:31 GMT
I think the main problem in learning to code is that it's very difficult for people to understand the connection between sitting there in front of a blank screen using the command line (text input) and how this actually converts into creating something colourful and usable that looks like a website and runs entirely online like the Proboards web app we are all using now. I think its important to understand that to create something commercially useful, like a Twitter type web-app for example, the process generally requires a number of people or a team of developers who each have relatively specific skills. A GUI (front end) person will know HTML, CSS & JavaScript, then you'll have someone who understands the SQL, Oracle, Postgre database or what's known as the back-end. Then you'll have a few people who have varying degrees of expertise in at least one language Python, C++ or Java for example who design the architecture (the blueprint) and who pull it all together, working collaboratively through online repositories (like a shared document) such as GitHub, or just chatting in an webdev studio environment. Thats not to say you can't do the whole thing yourself, but most coders spend their time solving problems and writing code to make certain functions happen. So it's best to do the development in a group environment, particularly if you are new to coding. To get pretty good in a given language takes around 10 years, i'm told. But that's not a fixed in stone thing. Some languages (like Ruby) have become popular due to an easy to use framework that has been written for that language such as Ruby on Rails (for Ruby) or Microsofts .net for C++. Frameworks enable rapid development as most web-apps share lots of common functions, like log-in, messaging, e-mail etc, so you can get the basic app up and running in very little time and then tweak and modify to your requirements. If you can make an app in half the time, you can see the attraction. The big problem we have is getting people to start to code in a fun environment. It's estimated that for web developers around 80% - 90% of what is taught on a Computer Science Degree is not strictly useful in the marketplace, so in the US several courses have sprung up, like DevBootcamp which cater for fastrack - and also pretty much guarantee you a job at the end of a 12 week hyper-intensive course. In the future there will be two types of employee, on two very different career arcs. Those that can code and those that can't. It will happen. devbootcamp.com/ |
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Post by StokieMatt on Sept 1, 2014 22:08:24 GMT
I'm trying teach myself how code iphone apps, used to dabble in web design and what not so thought I'd give it a go.
Ended up with few sheets of paper with it all drawn out and my idea... And that's it, can't for the life of me figure out how start it. I was going go into photoshop and get started on the graphic side of it but don't want waste my time if I can't code the bastard.
Good thing I find this sort of stuff fun.
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Post by ************** on Sept 1, 2014 22:28:49 GMT
I'm trying teach myself how code iphone apps, used to dabble in web design and what not so thought I'd give it a go. Ended up with few sheets of paper with it all drawn out and my idea... And that's it, can't for the life of me figure out how start it. I was going go into photoshop and get started on the graphic side of it but don't want waste my time if I can't code the bastard. Good thing I find this sort of stuff fun. iOS is coded in Objective C - not a quick learn. The thing is with development you have to get comfortable within the command line environment - so there's no Photoshop type GUI environment for coding. VB being the iffy exception. If I were you i'd try a tutorial. The best serious beginner tutorial is Michael Hartl's Rails Tutorial. It's renowned and incredibly well supported on GitHub. If you get stuck you can search and ask questions on Stack Overflow. It should take you between 2 to 4 weeks and you'll basically build Twitter. Tens of thousands of people have completed Michael Hartl's tutorial. The tutorial takes you from zero to deployment. Through the setup of the developer environment, all the way to hosting your app on Heroku. This is how most people learn Ruby on Rails with no previous experience. Give it a go. www.railstutorial.org/bookAnd here's my web-app (essentially Twitter) built using the Hartl tutorial: electric-leaf-1016.herokuapp.com/ |
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Post by StokieMatt on Sept 2, 2014 6:42:59 GMT
I'm trying teach myself how code iphone apps, used to dabble in web design and what not so thought I'd give it a go. Ended up with few sheets of paper with it all drawn out and my idea... And that's it, can't for the life of me figure out how start it. I was going go into photoshop and get started on the graphic side of it but don't want waste my time if I can't code the bastard. Good thing I find this sort of stuff fun. iOS is coded in Objective C - not a quick learn. The thing is with development you have to get comfortable within the command line environment - so there's no Photoshop type GUI environment for coding. VB being the iffy exception. If I were you i'd try a tutorial. The best serious beginner tutorial is Michael Hartl's Rails Tutorial. It's renowned and incredibly well supported on GitHub. If you get stuck you can search and ask questions on Stack Exchange. It should take you between 2 to 4 weeks and you'll basically build Twitter. Tens of thousands of people have completed Michael Hartl's tutorial. The tutorial takes you from zero to deployment. Through the setup of the developer environment, all the way to hosting your app on Heroku. This is how most people learn Ruby on Rails with no previous experience. Give it a go. www.railstutorial.org/bookAnd here's my web-app (essentially Twitter) built using the Hartl tutorial: electric-leaf-1016.herokuapp.com/thanks  been looking for tutorials for a while |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 2, 2014 6:56:36 GMT
It started yesterday
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Post by santy on Sept 2, 2014 7:51:05 GMT
A large amount of companies require coders locally/on-site for in-house applications that are often maintained by just 2-3 people and work in programming languages ranges from financial institutes such as banks to oil rigs out at sea. I've begun teaching my younger brothers bits of it here and there just because it opens up an awful lot of opportunities if you can do it. Sadly I don't think we have the teachers for it in this country, by the time I had reached 13/14 my IT knowledge was greater than that of the IT teachers at my school who were teaching the GCSE's - our teachers genuinely knew nothing of even visual basic, never mind more serious languages. I ultimately suspect that will be where this falls down, if or when something goes wrong or when they move away from the textbook there will be too few teachers who can actually help them understand.
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Post by StokieMatt on Sept 2, 2014 8:20:55 GMT
A large amount of companies require coders locally/on-site for in-house applications that are often maintained by just 2-3 people and work in programming languages ranges from financial institutes such as banks to oil rigs out at sea. I've begun teaching my younger brothers bits of it here and there just because it opens up an awful lot of opportunities if you can do it. Sadly I don't think we have the teachers for it in this country, by the time I had reached 13/14 my IT knowledge was greater than that of the IT teachers at my school who were teaching the GCSE's - our teachers genuinely knew nothing of even visual basic, never mind more serious languages. I ultimately suspect that will be where this falls down, if or when something goes wrong or when they move away from the textbook there will be too few teachers who can actually help them understand. At college they basically gave us Dreamweaver and told get on with it, we only had to make a 5 page website with a different editing technique on each one. Passed with a distinction by just adding a new page and doing the rest on photoshop. it was bullshit for me saying i wanted to lean how code, i lost all interest in it for a few years and didnt bother going uni with it. I'm now trying teach myself which i'm finding difficult, might see if there are any night classes but dont want be in one with a load of drop outs just doing it keep their dole payments up. |
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corky
Youth Player
What absolute twaddle.
Posts: 298
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Post by corky on Sept 2, 2014 8:24:38 GMT
I'll get me coat.
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Post by robboc on Sept 2, 2014 10:59:55 GMT
Apparently, the government is going to make computer coding a compulsory subject for kids from the age of 5 upwards. What a load of bollocks because: 1. Plenty of kids are still leaving school unable to read, write or do maths to a satisfactory level, so wouldn't it make more sense to come down harder on literacy and numeracy levels. 2. There is no real need for home-grown Coding specialists in the economy because it can all be outsourced abroad. 3. Computer Coding is going to be pointless to 99% of kids in school, who will no doubt find writing long-winded instructions into some database framework useless, boring and frustrating, especially considering these instructions wont work unless they are written correctly down to the last letter, dash and indent. 4. I have had to do coding in the past (when I studied a BTEC in ICT) and, let me tell you, I still don't know how to code for toffee. I managed to get round this by copy-and-pasting off the net, but it is way too complex a subject for any primary school kid to get their head around, never mind some poor 5 year old. No real need for home grown coding specialists? Pointless to 99% of kids? Are you serious? Let's not educate kids so that they can get a job when they come out of school |
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Post by santy on Sept 2, 2014 11:36:13 GMT
Apparently, the government is going to make computer coding a compulsory subject for kids from the age of 5 upwards. What a load of bollocks because: 1. Plenty of kids are still leaving school unable to read, write or do maths to a satisfactory level, so wouldn't it make more sense to come down harder on literacy and numeracy levels. 2. There is no real need for home-grown Coding specialists in the economy because it can all be outsourced abroad. 3. Computer Coding is going to be pointless to 99% of kids in school, who will no doubt find writing long-winded instructions into some database framework useless, boring and frustrating, especially considering these instructions wont work unless they are written correctly down to the last letter, dash and indent. 4. I have had to do coding in the past (when I studied a BTEC in ICT) and, let me tell you, I still don't know how to code for toffee. I managed to get round this by copy-and-pasting off the net, but it is way too complex a subject for any primary school kid to get their head around, never mind some poor 5 year old. No real need for home grown coding specialists? Pointless to 99% of kids? Are you serious? Let's not educate kids so that they can get a job when they come out of school Get em trained on the potbanks, maybe they'll be making a comeback. |
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Post by redstriper on Sept 2, 2014 11:43:26 GMT
I learned to code in BASIC at an itech in 1980 on the first commercial Pc's. Loved it, got a job as a programmer with British Coal at Cannock HQ off the back of it, and have never looked back. I will be teaching my own 5 year old, regardless of whether the school does or not.
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Post by lawrieleslie on Sept 2, 2014 16:09:03 GMT
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Post by ************** on Sept 2, 2014 16:48:19 GMT
A large amount of companies require coders locally/on-site for in-house applications that are often maintained by just 2-3 people and work in programming languages ranges from financial institutes such as banks to oil rigs out at sea. I've begun teaching my younger brothers bits of it here and there just because it opens up an awful lot of opportunities if you can do it. Sadly I don't think we have the teachers for it in this country, by the time I had reached 13/14 my IT knowledge was greater than that of the IT teachers at my school who were teaching the GCSE's - our teachers genuinely knew nothing of even visual basic, never mind more serious languages. I ultimately suspect that will be where this falls down, if or when something goes wrong or when they move away from the textbook there will be too few teachers who can actually help them understand. I think we have to move into an online teaching model as soon as you get past a very basic tutorial. Coding is a vast and complicated topic and students need to get onto Stack Overflow and GitHub as soon as they can. Expecting a single tutor to teach a classful of students is unrealistic if we want to deliver effective learning. People need to teach themselves. The resources are there. At the end of the day it comes down to a personal desire to learn. DIY. |
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Post by Nick1984 on Sept 3, 2014 20:51:06 GMT
Hopefully this will replace foreign language classes, useless in an English speaking world.
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Post by britsabroad on Sept 5, 2014 1:53:33 GMT
I'm trying teach myself how code iphone apps, used to dabble in web design and what not so thought I'd give it a go. Ended up with few sheets of paper with it all drawn out and my idea... And that's it, can't for the life of me figure out how start it. I was going go into photoshop and get started on the graphic side of it but don't want waste my time if I can't code the bastard. Good thing I find this sort of stuff fun. iOS is coded in Objective C - not a quick learn. The thing is with development you have to get comfortable within the command line environment - so there's no Photoshop type GUI environment for coding. VB being the iffy exception. If I were you i'd try a tutorial. The best serious beginner tutorial is Michael Hartl's Rails Tutorial. It's renowned and incredibly well supported on GitHub. If you get stuck you can search and ask questions on Stack Overflow. It should take you between 2 to 4 weeks and you'll basically build Twitter. Tens of thousands of people have completed Michael Hartl's tutorial. The tutorial takes you from zero to deployment. Through the setup of the developer environment, all the way to hosting your app on Heroku. This is how most people learn Ruby on Rails with no previous experience. Give it a go. www.railstutorial.org/bookAnd here's my web-app (essentially Twitter) built using the Hartl tutorial: electric-leaf-1016.herokuapp.com/Objective C is being replaced by Swift now. Only took them 30 years to realise it was shit |
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Post by ************** on Sept 5, 2014 1:57:31 GMT
iOS is coded in Objective C - not a quick learn. The thing is with development you have to get comfortable within the command line environment - so there's no Photoshop type GUI environment for coding. VB being the iffy exception. If I were you i'd try a tutorial. The best serious beginner tutorial is Michael Hartl's Rails Tutorial. It's renowned and incredibly well supported on GitHub. If you get stuck you can search and ask questions on Stack Overflow. It should take you between 2 to 4 weeks and you'll basically build Twitter. Tens of thousands of people have completed Michael Hartl's tutorial. The tutorial takes you from zero to deployment. Through the setup of the developer environment, all the way to hosting your app on Heroku. This is how most people learn Ruby on Rails with no previous experience. Give it a go. www.railstutorial.org/bookAnd here's my web-app (essentially Twitter) built using the Hartl tutorial: electric-leaf-1016.herokuapp.com/Objective C is being replaced by Swift now. Only took them 30 years to realise it was shit Isn't Swift a framework? |
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Post by ************** on Sept 5, 2014 18:54:56 GMT
A large amount of companies require coders locally/on-site for in-house applications that are often maintained by just 2-3 people and work in programming languages ranges from financial institutes such as banks to oil rigs out at sea. I've begun teaching my younger brothers bits of it here and there just because it opens up an awful lot of opportunities if you can do it. Sadly I don't think we have the teachers for it in this country, by the time I had reached 13/14 my IT knowledge was greater than that of the IT teachers at my school who were teaching the GCSE's - our teachers genuinely knew nothing of even visual basic, never mind more serious languages. I ultimately suspect that will be where this falls down, if or when something goes wrong or when they move away from the textbook there will be too few teachers who can actually help them understand. At college they basically gave us Dreamweaver and told get on with it, we only had to make a 5 page website with a different editing technique on each one. Passed with a distinction by just adding a new page and doing the rest on photoshop. it was bullshit for me saying i wanted to lean how code, i lost all interest in it for a few years and didnt bother going uni with it. I'm now trying teach myself which i'm finding difficult, might see if there are any night classes but dont want be in one with a load of drop outs just doing it keep their dole payments up. How are you getting on with Ruby? Did you look at Hartl? You could try looking for a local User Group. As Ruby is open source you'll find lots of people who are willing to go to incredible lengths to help you free of charge - Ruby has a great community. There are of course other languages, Python is hot, Node.js could become MASSIVE, then there's always PHP...very common and would certainly have strong demand in a Stoke on Trent web shop. rubyusergroups.org/ OR if you have a few thousand quid floating around and fancy some intensive training in India try Koenig (great value btw) and do a 60 day WAMP/LAMP course. Some courses have industry accreditation and should secure you something when you get back home. www.koenig-solutions.com/For me, it boils down to this. Learning a computer language is very similar to learning written French or German with 100% accuracy in the grammar. It is possible to do it on your own, but you just don't know if you're expressing yourself in the right way. Coding is definitely a team sport, but be warned...developers are great people but they can be a very peculiar, sensitive and super-cerebral bunch. If you do feel that coding per se is a little daunting, and that is exactly how you should be feeling, HTML and CSS (web markup languages) are a very simple way to test the water. Plus, all webdev teams need good HTML/CSS/JavaScript guys. It's the one thing that is pretty much ubiquitous. There are thousands of great online tutorials and it's not quite the mindfuck that coding newbies often find is waiting for them. |
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Post by StokieMatt on Sept 6, 2014 10:58:27 GMT
At college they basically gave us Dreamweaver and told get on with it, we only had to make a 5 page website with a different editing technique on each one. Passed with a distinction by just adding a new page and doing the rest on photoshop. it was bullshit for me saying i wanted to lean how code, i lost all interest in it for a few years and didnt bother going uni with it. I'm now trying teach myself which i'm finding difficult, might see if there are any night classes but dont want be in one with a load of drop outs just doing it keep their dole payments up. How are you getting on with Ruby? Did you look at Hartl? You could try looking for a local User Group. As Ruby is open source you'll find lots of people who are willing to go to incredible lengths to help you free of charge - Ruby has a great community. There are of course other languages, Python is hot, Node.js could become MASSIVE, then there's always PHP...very common and would certainly have strong demand in a Stoke on Trent web shop. rubyusergroups.org/ OR if you have a few thousand quid floating around and fancy some intensive training in India try Koenig (great value btw) and do a 60 day WAMP/LAMP course. Some courses have industry accreditation and should secure you something when you get back home. www.koenig-solutions.com/For me, it boils down to this. Learning a computer language is very similar to learning written French or German with 100% accuracy in the grammar. It is possible to do it on your own, but you just don't know if you're expressing yourself in the right way. Coding is definitely a team sport, but be warned...developers are great people but they can be a very peculiar, sensitive and super-cerebral bunch. If you do feel that coding per se is a little daunting, and that is exactly how you should be feeling, HTML and CSS (web markup languages) are a very simple way to test the water. Plus, all webdev teams need good HTML/CSS/JavaScript guys. It's the one thing that is pretty much ubiquitous. There are thousands of great online tutorials and it's not quite the mindfuck that coding newbies often find is waiting for them. I've been on noons all week at work so havnt had time look through it properly yet (just read the intro) going upload it on my kindle this week so can read through it that way, also got a uni visit next week see if there are any part time courses i can get myself on. |
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Post by ************** on Sept 6, 2014 11:01:01 GMT
How are you getting on with Ruby? Did you look at Hartl? You could try looking for a local User Group. As Ruby is open source you'll find lots of people who are willing to go to incredible lengths to help you free of charge - Ruby has a great community. There are of course other languages, Python is hot, Node.js could become MASSIVE, then there's always PHP...very common and would certainly have strong demand in a Stoke on Trent web shop. rubyusergroups.org/ OR if you have a few thousand quid floating around and fancy some intensive training in India try Koenig (great value btw) and do a 60 day WAMP/LAMP course. Some courses have industry accreditation and should secure you something when you get back home. www.koenig-solutions.com/For me, it boils down to this. Learning a computer language is very similar to learning written French or German with 100% accuracy in the grammar. It is possible to do it on your own, but you just don't know if you're expressing yourself in the right way. Coding is definitely a team sport, but be warned...developers are great people but they can be a very peculiar, sensitive and super-cerebral bunch. If you do feel that coding per se is a little daunting, and that is exactly how you should be feeling, HTML and CSS (web markup languages) are a very simple way to test the water. Plus, all webdev teams need good HTML/CSS/JavaScript guys. It's the one thing that is pretty much ubiquitous. There are thousands of great online tutorials and it's not quite the mindfuck that coding newbies often find is waiting for them. I've been on noons all week at work so havnt had time look through it properly yet (just read the intro) going upload it on my kindle this week so can read through it that way, also got a uni visit next week see if there are any part time courses i can get myself on. Weakling. |
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Post by pearo on Sept 7, 2014 7:24:30 GMT
There is a supplement in the Sunday Tiimes today, Learn Code In One Day, the aim is to take a complete beginner and get them to make their own App. Looks like there is more help on their site thesundaytimes.co.uk/learntocode with a second supplement next week.
Now as I am a complete novice in this field I'm going to give this a go before I move on to **************'s recommendations. I have some experience in Programable Logic Control with Siemens S7 in my work capacity but I think that's a completely different animal than computer coding .
Any other tips or help will be greatly appreciated
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Post by britsabroad on Sept 7, 2014 11:11:26 GMT
Objective C is being replaced by Swift now. Only took them 30 years to realise it was shit Isn't Swift a framework? No its slated to be Apples new thing some day. The govt plan is a good idea in my eyes, so long as they teach all languages rather than give us a generation who can only write smartphone apps. |
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Post by StokieMatt on Sept 7, 2014 11:39:27 GMT
There is a supplement in the Sunday Tiimes today, Learn Code In One Day, the aim is to take a complete beginner and get them to make their own App. Looks like there is more help on their site thesundaytimes.co.uk/learntocode with a second supplement next week. Now as I am a complete novice in this field I'm going to give this a go before I move on to **************'s recommendations. I have some experience in Programable Logic Control with Siemens S7 in my work capacity but I think that's a completely different animal than computer coding . Any other tips or help will be greatly appreciated That website is cool, going have a play with that tomorrow. |
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been looking for tutorials for a while
