Thursday, November 24, 2011

Is there an app for computer language?



When I Googled Steve Henry yesterday I learned that he has set up a company called Decoded, which claims to teach anyone to code in a day.

I was left wondering what coding means in this context, & today I got round to checking whether it is what I would, in my old-fashioned way, call computer programming.

The short answer is Yes, but that still leaves open the question of what anyone means by either 'coding' or 'programming' these days.

When I began, 'coding' was the really heavy stuff, written in source code, assembly language, or even binary; 'programming' was simpler, for those who were not computer scientists, merely 'users' - it involved so called high level languages, supposedly much closer to how humans thought & spoke.

Later on when I talked of ‘programming’ in SPSS I was told, sniffily, that that wasn’t programming – only ‘languages’ such as Fortran required programming skills, SPSS was just a ‘package.’

And so it goes.

But I was surprised recently to see that there are calls for computer programming to be taught in schools – what on earth are all those ICT exams for, if they do not include at least the basics of programming?

In the days of the BBC micro lots of people (well, mainly boys & their fathers) used to program in BASIC, & you might even sometimes find a newspaper article explaining how, for example, to write a bit of code to tell your computer how to draw a circle, or find prime numbers.

Even before that I remember Logo, & very small children being taught to ‘program’ a computer with a turtle (which could be said to have evolved into a mouse).

It is a very long time since I gave up any attempt to keep up with the developments in coding or programming, & in truth I am in two minds whether teaching coding in schools would really offer any benefits. For starters there will be endless arguments over what kind of coding, which languages etc, etc.

On the other hand even my limited experience taught me a great deal, not least of the many ways in which human thinking departs from the strict, & restricted, logic of computers, (however wonderful the results which flow from the latter), the time it takes to unpick the logic of any problem.

Who knows, even a little, but more widespread, knowledge might save us from politicians & policy makers who are to easily seduced or bamboozled by those who can both make & break the code.



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