Valve boss, Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and others on the benefits of programming in schools
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Valve MD Gabe Newell have joined a wealth of other top developers and programmers on the importance of learning to code in schools in a new video.
Newell and Zuckerberg spoke of the benefits of learning how to code, how easy it can be and the lack of enough skilled programmers to fill jobs in a number of industries.
They were also joined by the likes of Valve technical artist Bronwen Grimes, Bill Gates, Twitter creator Jack Dorsey, Will.I.Am, Dropbox creator Drew Houston and Facebook’s first female engineer Ruchi Sanghvi.
“The programmers of tomorrow are the wizards of the future,” said Newell.
“You’re going to look like you have magic powers compared to everybody else."
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Zuckerberg added: “Our policy is literally to hire as many talented engineers as we can find. The whole limit in the system is there just aren’t enough people in the system who are trained and have these skills today.”
Valve’s Grimes also stated: “Valve technical artist ‘you don’t have to be a genius to code. Do you have to be a genius to read?
“Computers are everywhere, do you want to work in agriculture, entertainment, manufacturing? It’s just all over.”
The video claimed that only one in ten schools taught students how to code, echoing similar problems in the UK highlighted by the Next Gen Skills report, although the government has recently introduced computer science in the curriculum in an effort to overcome the digital skills gap in the country.
You can watch the video by CodeOrg below.
...I will wholeheartedly dispute some of the comments made by the people highlighted in the video reel, particularly Grimes' comment "you don’t have to be a genius to code".
While coding isn't rocket science, being a *good* coder takes time, experience, and effort to attain. I've worked on many projects where my first task was to clean up and/or refactor the codebase to make it easy-to-read, maintainable, portable, and reusable. Not every coder has the skills or aptitude to do that. I worked on a recent project where someone literally wrote multiple functions in which the only change was the input value; that's a waste of time and effort, but he thought nothing of producing piles of unmaintainable code.
Most of the skills can be learned, but time and experience are absolutely necessary to progress beyond entry-level coding. Aptitude for the subject also helps immensely.
The education system can barely teach the general population (chavs) to speak or spell coherently, each year we simplify the tests and "lower the bar" just so on paper it looks like we are getting smarter, so how can we teach everyone to code?
While I strongly agree with the principle, it riles me when companies talk of am I.T/developer shortage. Look to the salaries, if developers are so in demand why aren't we paid more? 30 years of coding experience. I left Google cos they don't pay enough, I don't work in the games industry cos it doesn't pay enough. I get paid better because I have business consulting experience as well as development experience. If you want to be paid well, train as a lawyer, doctor, financial adviser, banker. If you want to dig into the future, learn to code. Coders do it because they have to.
I am quite surprised with the amount negative comments. This is a great initiative attempting raise awareness about the importance of coding skills in today's world. Nobody is claiming that you don't have to work hard to get really good at it, or that you are going to get rich doing it.
It would be great seeing some of the skilled people that use this site support this instead of spending there time and energy criticising it..
In reply to Jaco: learn to code, absolutely. It's the building block of our data based future, why wouldn't you want to? But talk of lack of talented programmers being the 'limit in the system' strikes me as nonsense and sounds rather like a plain lady complaining of a lack of quality men. We always seem happy to ignore what economics is telling us in this debate, in this case annoyingly underpinned by Gabe's and the Zuck's cognitive bias, drawn from their own Wizardly self-image, happily ignoring their own stated truth: Coding isn't magic.
And yet, as someone who's highly skilled & qualified for a multitude of engineering, development, and cloud positions, I'm finding that these purported positions are not actually out there. In addition, those that are available seem to have decreased in salary and/or benefits.
There appears to be a disconnect here somewhere...
It's the Management that sucks up the Programmers Salary. However, I know several Programmers that are in the six figures with only 3 years Corporate Experience only because they focus on one specific type of coding and are very good at it. Don't be a jack-of-all-trades Developer unless you expect to run your own company where multiple skillsets give you a broader view of your product development.
