I saw this today, pushing for more and better programming education for UK schoolkids.
I'm ambivalent about it - I like that it's for strengthening programming, but I feel that the globalization of software development makes it disingenuous to try and get more programmers in the developed nations when all the corporations are looking to ship the programming jobs out to less-developed nations where developers are cheaper.
The conspiracy theorist in me suspects that the CEOs who keep pushing this without bringing programming jobs back home are just looking to hedge their bets in case India and China become too expensive; having a lot of unemployed programmers at home will make it easy to offer lower pay.
I'm ambivalent about it - I like that it's for strengthening programming, but I feel that the globalization of software development makes it disingenuous to try and get more programmers in the developed nations when all the corporations are looking to ship the programming jobs out to less-developed nations where developers are cheaper.
The conspiracy theorist in me suspects that the CEOs who keep pushing this without bringing programming jobs back home are just looking to hedge their bets in case India and China become too expensive; having a lot of unemployed programmers at home will make it easy to offer lower pay.
5 comments:
I question what education is for. Is it to prepare the children for jobs, or is it to give them accumulated knowledge so they don't reinvent the wheel.
Programming fits into the first category and makes your point, perhaps.
I agree that education is to instill knowledge, but as Berthold Brecht said "Grub first, then ethics" - it is foolish to exhort people to train for a skill that has less and less a future for a paying job.
Unless it trains them nicely.
Like learning assembly, for example.
Learning assembly is like learning Latin - not much use in the day-to-day, but gives you the background info for a lot.
It matters how much Assembly. Learning the basics of how the processor works will change the way you code. Jeff Duntman's Assembly Language Step By Step is an excellent resource.
Well, or so i think. :)
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