In this case to code more.
Published on 26 Feb 2013
Learn about a new “superpower” that isn’t being taught in in 90% of US schools. Starring Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, will.i.am, Chris Bosh, Jack Dorsey, Tony Hsieh, Drew Houston, Gabe Newell, Ruchi Sanghvi, Elena Silenok, Vanessa Hurst, and Hadi Partovi. Directed by Lesley Chilcott. Code.org owes special thanks to all the cast and the film crew, and also Microsoft, Google/YouTube, Facebook, Amazon, and Twitter for helping us spread the word
When Hadi and Ali Partovi immigrated to America from Iran in 1984, they slept in the same cramped bedroom as their parents, who exhausted their life savings on the teenage boys’ education.
Nearly 30 years later, the twin brothers are firmly planted in the tech industry’s elite circles, after selling companies to Microsoft and News Corp‘s MySpace, and tapping the rare connections to invest early on inFacebook, Dropbox, and Zappos.
Bill Gates, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, andTwitter co-founder Jack Dorsey – three people who became billionaire tech industry luminaries thanks to their computer programming abilities – appear in a new video released Feb. 26 by the Partovi brothers as part of their new computer science-education nonprofit,Code.org.
“Computer programming, right now, is the best embodiment of the American Dream,” Partovi said. “The American Dream is to be the next Mark Zuckerberg.”
Gates, Zuckerberg champion computer programming in a new nonprofit video
It’s being taught in the tech schools, could be at least started in the traditional high schools, which often look lame. I think the trad high school and the trad way of going to college are both on the way out.
Absolutely!!
The most worthwhile characteristic (imho) of any cv is work ex and skill set.
Lady V:
I wrote my first computer program at a high school lesson when I was 17 (a fact I would refrain from mentioning at work). It was the infamous ‘Hello world!’ program which printed the phrase on the screen. It was like magic. The ‘cool’ feeling only lasted for a few days before I was exposed to the tedious turmoil of coding for problems more harder than printing nice messages on the screen. It was years before I could actually write real software. I regret I did not start early.
Today, kids have disproportionate access to technology (all technology under the hood is just code) but can’t read or write code. I cannot think of a single profession which would not benefit from knowing how to write software. The overlap of life with technology is huge and inescapable. Infact at this very instance you are reading this message on a piece of software with its code running on some server in California perhaps (dont quote me on this). The point is its really easy to code if you start early and its biggest selling point is that its not theoretical like math ..its real and alive, it runs and breaks and rebuilds and crashes and the world can’t run without it. The world needs more people who know how to program at this point than at any other time before. (er it can also make you rich, remember the guy who wrote the code for this ?). To the all the young ones I know (especially the really young ones
– be cool and learn to code ! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKIu9yen5nc
“I cannot think of a single profession
which would not benefit
from knowing how to
write software.”
+1
I am training to be a doctor and we are taught R/SPSS for statistics and some of us also decided to take up Python(purely on our own initiative). Its been fantastic.
“The point is its really easy
to code if you start early
and its biggest selling point
is that its not theoretical
like math ..its real and alive, it runs and breaks
and rebuilds and crashes
and the world can’t run
without it.”
+1!
Coding is NOT at all math heavy as is often believed. One needs basic math skill set(high school level) but after that its all Verbal. Infact, many of the early(70s) IBM/Intel programmers who laid the foundation of modern softwares were graduates in English and other non-M subjects.
Not to plug in Kerala all the time but its among the handful of states that take Computer literacy seriously. The Akshaya Mission and the move towards open source in government work being the prime examples. Also, children are taught Linux/GIMP/OpenOffice etc. There is a modified Linux distro for Class 10 students with animations/question papers/graphical, geometric tools and the like. Also, as an anecdote, I missed the boat on this but my sister luckily caught it. I am insanely jelous of her cause all the things I had to learn by myself in my spare time like shell scripting is being taught to her at school!