If you haven't seen the video, check it out here: http://www.code.org/

I've been reading a lot of negative posts on various tech sites about that video. Some of the biggest complaints are the selection of people in that video.. particularly that some of them most likely don't actually code at all. I've read suggestions to have more well known computer scientists in the video as a way to pitch CS for "real".

My take as a high school programming teacher AND computer science degree holder (from Penn State University) is that people outside of education are completely missing the point. This advertisement targets the people making decisions about education as much as it does the students it is trying to engage. One suggestion I read was to put guys like Linus Torvalds in the video.. no offense to Linus, but he is *not* the person to pitch computer science to the masses. Not because what he has done isn't important, but because he can't connect to regular people on the level that some of the people you see in that video can. The people holding the purse strings have to realize that this is something actually important. Guys like Bill Clinton/Gates, Zuckerberg, etc. have the clout to actually convince them.

Think about your programming experience in high school. How many classes did your school have? What was the credentials of your programming teacher? Right now it is mostly the biggest schools with a lot of tax resources at their disposal that can afford to include programming classes. But computer science definitely not a priority in our education system.. but there are forces at work trying to push things in a different direction. This code.org video is another effort to do exactly that.

In fact, most states (it most likely is all states, but I'm not positive) do not have a computer science certification for teachers. It falls under either math or business education.. and the degrees that these people get typically require exactly one programming class sometime in their freshman/junior year. That is the state of things..

The point I'm trying to make is that we desperately need *some way* to start engaging the public on the idea that simply focusing ALL of our efforts on math/reading is not going to do much for our youth. We need to be able to expand their ability to think critically and think logically, and computer science is one such place where problem solving is everything. More importantly, it gives students an opportunity to solve problems in a way that is enjoyable.

The more people you can draw in and give the opportunity to at least explore what programming is about, the more truly talented individuals you are going to see entering the field.

I'm all with getting more people into computer science and using it to get people to think more logically...

But I also think that computer science is not for everyone. Programming isn't something everyone can grasp - I've met people, perfectly normal and otherwise competent, who could not wrap their heads around the flow of a program, despite several attempts (from me and others) to explain.

So I don't think that attempting to teach programming to everyone will be helpful. But giving more opportunities to learn programming - yeah, definitely better.

I'm all with getting more people into computer science and using it to get people to think more logically...

But I also think that computer science is not for everyone. Programming isn't something everyone can grasp - I've met people, perfectly normal and otherwise competent, who could not wrap their heads around the flow of a program, despite several attempts (from me and others) to explain.

So I don't think that attempting to teach programming to everyone will be helpful. But giving more opportunities to learn programming - yeah, definitely better.

I absolutely agree with you. Computer science and programming isn't for everyone, and I can tell you that students who do take the courses in high school figure that out. Let's say that out of every group of students 10% of them really get it and can excel.. in some cases it's a numbers game because there are plenty of students who can think with the mindset of a programmer but who may just not get exposure to it. In this case a class of 20 students will yield 2 students who are talented. What we need is to expand our computer science class enrollment numbers and mine for the truly talented individuals in each school.

And Spiro is right.. students will gain an interest in the things you give them exposure to at a young age. Many programmers can talk about how as kids they developed an interest in the craft through some project or piece of software they worked with. Most people graduating don't have positive experiences like that because they simply aren't exposed to them.

The possibilities are endless if you start young enough. Children will learn 3 or 4 languages fluently if exposed to them growing up with 0 effort on their part.
Why not make one of them a programming language?

I don't think learning to program is the equivalent to learning a natural spoken language. Sure, programming languages have syntax, spelling and sort of grammar rules, but there's far more to learning programming than just learning how to write valid code. In fact, most of my education in getting a CS degree was langauge-agnostic - only in classes that were named "Java ###" or "C++ ###" did we focus on language specifics. (that is to say, there's more to 'programming' than just knowing a programming language)

If I can make another comparison, learning to program is kind of like learning to write novels. You can write understandable code or paragraphs, but whether you can achieve something with that in the end (be it a well functioning program, or an engaging and interesting book) is another set of understanding entirely. And just like programming, I don't believe that everyone can write novels.