Turnbull: Coding skills 'will be almost as important as literacy and numeracy' Australia's Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has come out in favour of teaching kids of all ages to code. In a blogged transcript of a speech delivered last weekend, Turnbull notes that the review of the national curriculum recommended digital technologies not be taught as a discrete subject, and industry discomfort …
So, Malcolm, can you please explain how this squares with your party's goal of deregulating university fees - a move that is almost universally agreed will result in the cost of a university degree (like, say, Computer Science) jumping dramatically?
What good is it if you "improve the pathways for students to study IT from Foundation through to Year 12 and onto university" but pass legislation that makes it much more expensive for those students to actually go to university?
If you teach coding, you have to teach logic.
Teach a kid logic and he might improve his capacity for rational thought........from what I see nowadays this would be the last thing any contemporary government would want, although I am sure that Ayn Rand would just shrug and know immediately how to use then in her atlas.
You also need to teach kids to give a flying crap about the quality of their work. I'm getting graduates who consider good enough to be the goal rather than the bare minimum and it takes a huge investment to get them to appreciate the benefis of quality.
Programming can help towards this. Give kids a limited number of processing cycles and force them to write efficient code. Make them realise the benefit of commenting and documenting. All these would have knock-on benefits in the workplace where efficient workflows and comprehensive task documentation can offer a significant benefit to the bottom line.
Here is a text which teaches problem solving through programming in arguably the most efficient language. http://www.forth.com/starting-forth/sf0/sf0.html
An old book kids would be able to learn from, I first got a copy in the 80's and still open it on the rare occasion.
Programming isn't just apps on tablets.
Most of the processors and code on this planet is in small computers embedded in devices we use every day.
Embedded programming can make math, science and engineering come to life for a student in real world applications. Exceptional students might try to build a Tardis for their friends doing history.
the feral HR departments who have a fixation on a degree for anything, whether relevant or not. Finally, what has coding got to do with basics ? Standard English, Maths and formal logic is more effective. Kids who cant read are not going to be good coders in _any_ language. And for that matter, just how many App coders does the planet/consumers need anyway ? No doubt this will be eventually shown to be another taxpayer subsidy for big end of town.
Not this old chestnut again. Like there are going to be any coding shops onshore in the next decade, except for maybe games developers, and the few businesses creating software (niche products, often).
Outside the US, I'd be surprised if any country cracks a few thousand employed in such businesses. Yes, a few enterprises have in-house coders, but that's dying a slow death (and the less custom code written in VB4 that's maintained in-house, the more I'll be happy).
No, you teach the kids logic and problem-solving. Yes, simple programs can be used as *examples* of boolean logic flow, but assuming that learning to code automatically teaches logic is exactly backwards.
Once you've got kids grounded in the basics of logic and problem-solving (and yes, not just in mathematics either, where this stuff is mostly taught these days), then the ones who have an aptitude can move on to bigger and better things. Like kids with an aptitude for maths getting fast-tracked into calculus or physics early.
Somewhat perversely: I belive that religion needs to be put onto the curriculum. At present, Queensland schools have 'religion' classes which are essentially Christian indoctrination and differ little from a church's sunday school.
By formalising religion as a part of the curriculum that deals with society and history, this insidious creep of evangelism can be halted.
...but this article was on the topic of programming so apologies for the diversion...
My understanding is they want to start teaching this crap in Primary School. HUH??? How can you teach this sort of subject to students who DON'T even know their times tables when the depart for High School. It's a WOMBAT. I know of Primary Schools that spend thousands of dollars on Adobe Creative Suite licences. WHY? Their students can't spell, can't construct simple grammatically correct sentences, can't add, subtract, divide or multiply whole numbers but they can do minor Photoshop operations. Now they want them to program. It's Microworlds all over again.
> How can you teach this sort of subject to students who DON'T even know their times tables when the depart for High School.
Why would they ever need to learn their times tables when they know how to write:
int m, n; for (m=1; m<=12; m++) for (n=1; n<=12; n++) printf( "%d times %d is %d\n", m, n, m*n );
(I wanted to code that in Python, but the indentations don't survive El Reg's forum comment formatting.)
And this is exactly the problem with languages which don't factor out problems in an elegant fashion but instead reduce to horrible nested loops of incomprehensible symbols which vary between languages but to the young student all look like crap, yuck.
You can make it even more incomprehensible in Python, wow.
The most important part of programming is understanding the problem and deriving a solution starting with documentation, maybe writing pseudocode, commenting, then finally writing your code.
If you want to teach crap like that you have to document what is happening with lots of words.
Come on Ralph, give the kids (and the parents) the easy learn-able version,
at least 4 lines with verbose commenting.
Then you can stay back and write the application in at least 10 languages for being a smarty.
Y'know, I'd love to see programming added to the curriculum but there's a whole layer of digital literacy that I percieve as lacking from the nation and so would worry that these kids may enter into a workforce that doesn't know how to use them.
I've worked in the UK, India and Australia and have found a resistance to the use of digital technologies amongst (some of) my Australian employers. Remote working is shunned and the precautionary principle is used to nix potential cost savings and/or efficiency gains.
If programming is to be introduced, it needs to be a part of a greater STEM push with funding for subsidies that will encourage overseas businesses to move here or Australian businesses to develop. Policies need to be introduced to encourage teleworking and flexible working arrangements to further push us away from the bricks-and-mortar-and-suit-and-tie world and into the contemporary employment landscape.
Doing this may ease pressure on CBDs (because I've yet to see an out-of-town business park like Green Park in Reading, UK) and reduce housing and transportation costs for Australians.
I confess that I've conflated at least two discrete concepts, but since this story involves a politician I'm hopng that I can be excused just this once!
A twat of a statement from a twat who doesnt even understand technology,its akin to listening to impact technical statements from an uneducated persons or academic who has no experience.
Malcolm in the middle please stay clear of areas you know jack about,that being education and technology,that would only leave you in sales or accounting.
Put a muzzle on this guy or get him a new advisor and speach reviewer fps .
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