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Sorry, I don't intend to cast aspersions on your upbringing, but why does class availability matter at all to this discussion? Myself, and everyone in the smal

by throwit1979 13y ago

Sorry, I don't intend to cast aspersions on your upbringing, but why does class availability matter at all to this discussion? Myself, and everyone in the small group of middle school kids at my school who were interested, learned programming from books. Our school was extraordinarily poor, so the whole notion of CS classes was laughable.

deleted 13y ago
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kd0amg 13y ago
I remember trying that when I was in middle school and discovering that the local library did not exactly have a great selection, and I didn't know anyone who could recommend good resources. Searching the web kept bringing up the same few overly shallow tutorials which didn't even explain how to actually run a program. It's less of an issue today, but finding good resources to learn from matters.
- throwit1979 13y ago
  Our library was also mostly useless. Maybe it's opportunity cost, then. We lived a ~5 hour drive away from anything resembling a city, so purchases of anything other than food were very infrequent. This allowed us to save up until the next trip to purchase a few C++ or Pascal( yeah I know )books from Bookman's and a cheap (student edition can be had when you're 10 years old without a student id) copy of turbo c++. That would last a year of learning. The next year, perhaps a VESA graphics book, etc.
freyr 13y ago
> why does class availability matter at all to this discussion? It matters because that's exactly what this discussion is about: making coding/programming part of our educational system. It's about teaching kids programming in schools, and providing them with the same time, resources, and instruction they get to learn cursive or algebra or home economics or English. Of course, we could always get rid of those subjects too, and expect the kids who are interested to learn them from books in their free time. Also, not to cast aspersions on your upbringing, but how were you introduced to programming? Did you have a computer in the house or at a friend's house? Or did you just imagine sitting at a computer, and imagine typing commands into a computer, and imagine the results? Perhaps home computers are commonplace now, but it wasn't always the case. And it's not always the case in poor households. Is it likely that children from poor families and attending poor schools would have the same exposure to programming that you enjoyed?

deleted 13y ago

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kd0amg 13y ago

I remember trying that when I was in middle school and discovering that the local library did not exactly have a great selection, and I didn't know anyone who could recommend good resources. Searching the web kept bringing up the same few overly shallow tutorials which didn't even explain how to actually run a program. It's less of an issue today, but finding good resources to learn from matters.

throwit1979 13y ago
Our library was also mostly useless. Maybe it's opportunity cost, then. We lived a ~5 hour drive away from anything resembling a city, so purchases of anything other than food were very infrequent. This allowed us to save up until the next trip to purchase a few C++ or Pascal( yeah I know )books from Bookman's and a cheap (student edition can be had when you're 10 years old without a student id) copy of turbo c++. That would last a year of learning. The next year, perhaps a VESA graphics book, etc.

freyr 13y ago

> why does class availability matter at all to this discussion? It matters because that's exactly what this discussion is about: making coding/programming part of our educational system. It's about teaching kids programming in schools, and providing them with the same time, resources, and instruction they get to learn cursive or algebra or home economics or English. Of course, we could always get rid of those subjects too, and expect the kids who are interested to learn them from books in their free time. Also, not to cast aspersions on your upbringing, but how were you introduced to programming? Did you have a computer in the house or at a friend's house? Or did you just imagine sitting at a computer, and imagine typing commands into a computer, and imagine the results? Perhaps home computers are commonplace now, but it wasn't always the case. And it's not always the case in poor households. Is it likely that children from poor families and attending poor schools would have the same exposure to programming that you enjoyed?