I say this as someone who codes professionally and for fun: insisting everyone can learn to code is wrong. It’s like saying everyone can learn to play the violin. Furthermore this sentiment is too often used as a cudgel to silence debate on systemic problems with the labor market
@Xibanya everyone should be able to learn it, but they can't because computers are a fuc.
but even then, expecting them to learn to code on a professional level is just unreasonable.
(and I really don't want more web developers writing horrifically glued together web apps.)
@grainloom I agree. coding — good coding — takes more “soft skills” than even the people who do it realize. I think it’s good to expose everyone to coding and give everyone opportunities to learn, but not everyone is gonna be a programmer that can produce pro-quality work
@Xibanya @grainloom eh, I think there's something to be said for everyone learning the basics of coding badly. Computers are basically magic to a significant chunk of the populace right now: vitally useful, but utterly inscrutable to everyone outside a small cadre of experts. Not everyone needs to learn how to make webapps from scrate, but a basic level of 'this is what a computer is and here's how it works' seems generally useful. Trying to teach every school kid to become a professional programmer seems dumb, but teaching people to break problems down into minimal logical steps via small targeted programming challenges seems like a generally useful skill worth cultivating.
@spinflip @grainloom look at the OP again. The point is that we can’t blame people for their low wages by saying “you should have learned to program,” we should make sure everyone can afford to live, whether they can program or not
@Xibanya @grainloom I think I misread the OP... I absolutely agree that teaching more people to code won't do anything to change the structural requirement for low wages and unemployment in capitalist economies. I still feel that it's important to teach that code isn't magic and that writing thoroughly mediocre but still useful code is actually pretty easy.
