Code Perspective

I came across an article on the very popular slashdot.com tonight that was very interesting in my opinion. The article is a user based question asking which language is best to teach 11-14 year olds with varying computer knowledge. The article found here, surprised me very much when I looked at it the first time.

Now this may be because of changing times and school’s are getting more computer literate now, but, wow, 11-14 year olds now have computer programming as part of their curriculum? This is extremely great to hear! I just wish that we would have had something like that back when I was in school and that age. Even if just basic concepts are taught like loops, variables, etc, it opens up the possibility of programming to be taught at a very young age.

This being said, I think we will see a major jump in programming skills in the next 10-20 years as more kids are now being taught these things earlier. This leads to maybe the posibility of an even easy language than maybe Basic or QBasic to be able to teach the fundamentals at a younger age.

I think that there is a dark side to this as well. Computer programming will take away from fundamental subjects such as math, science, and social studies that all kids must learn to be successful. This could be good or bad, up for you to decide…

Cheers

First of all I would like to welcome you to Mark’s blog on technology. The first topic I’d like to talk about is from a book called Dreaming in code. The book says, ” Why can’t we build software like we build bridges?” We all know that bridges are usually pretty safe, sturdy, secure. All in all they rarely fail us.

I have to say, why can’t we build software like that? How many hours of man time and corporate money are wasted each year on software that is not functioning perfectly? Could the time that is spent on ill-conceived software be re-routed to perfecting it? Computers understand the code that humans put into it. So I ask… Is it possible to have a piece of software in today’s market that’s perfect? I’m talking no flaws, no errors, just perfection?

With the software changing the way it is today, I can’t answer that question. Having been coding for only about 6 months, I really am not best suited to answer that. Who can answer that question? As consumers why should we have to accept that software does not function the way we want it to? Is there not a single company out there that can make this type of software? I’m asking these questions because I think that there are companies(not naming any) that can change how the world is run. I’m not talking politically or religiously, I’m talking digitally. Almost our entire world runs on digital equipment… I mean almost everything you can think of. So why is the world putting up with digital equipment being almost “faulty”. Going back to the bridge analogy from the book dreaming in code. Imagine if bridges were built like software is built today? People would not stand for things like that to happen…

So why do we accept it with software?

Cheers