Re the robots thread below, the Analysis programme on R4 tonight had a speaker who suggested learning how to code is increasingly important. Personally I’m not sure how it would make me any more employable but knowing absolutely nothing about computer coding I reckon a short course can’t do me any harm.

Any idea how an utter coding novice would go about finding a useful beginner’s course? I’m thinking about a couple of days, or a week, not a qualification or anything academic, at this stage at least

Ta-da !

http://www.codecademy.com/

http://www.barclays.co.uk/DigitalEagles/BarclaysCodePlayground/P1242686640999

Wow. This robot thing is true – we don’t even need teachers anymore!

https://www.coursera.org/course/pythonlearn

http://code.org (more aimed at kids but a good place to start)

I find having a real problem to solve is better than a course with contrived problems. I just lose interest.

I really have to find some time to learn Python as my old copy of matlab won’t run on my new w8 laptop.

Coursera is good. I’m learning how to code and I’m taking a graduate diploma in Statistics. However, it seems research Biologists aren’t really at risk of being automated. Which is the career path I intend to go down.

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-2642880/Table-700-jobs-reveals-professions-likely-replaced-robots.html

interesting interactive graph here

http://qz.com/202312/is-your-job-at-risk-from-robot-labor-check-this-handy-interactive/

Computer programmers are pretty high risk, Data Science researchers however are low risk.

No substitute for a real problem to solve.

(Coding since 1990)

Bento is good for starting out
https://www.bento.io

Codeacademy is good but lacks context

Code school and Lynda are good but are subscription based

If you want a really entertaining, and challenging experience then I don’t think you’ll do better than CS50, especially if you are really new to it all.

https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-computer-science-harvardx-cs50x

learning how to code is increasingly important.

I’d say it’s less and less important.

More and more systems are being created using tools for modelling business in a variety of ways – this is not code. Likewise using tools to analyse and simulate your operations and the data you can harvest – this is not code. It’s technical, but it’s not code.

Technical awareness of things like service orientated architecture, databases, analytics, business process modeling and so on. Yes, we do still need developers, but arguably not as many as those other things.

You can create a system with far fewer developers than in the past – but figuring out WHAT to create, and how to make it work for your business is harder than ever.

Saying you need coders in the modern world is a bit like like saying you need panel beaters to make cars.

Wrong. But I sort of get your point. It really depends on what you are trying to develop. Lots of true coding still gets done and will need to be done. Learning to code, and coming at that from a computer science angle will give you a good grounding in Architecture, databases, data structures, optimisation etc.

And if nothing elsw that will help you become a power user who can make magic happen instead of relying on existing software features to get the job done.

I’m wary of making predictions, but I’ve seen people claiming that programming is being automated away for twenty years now and it doesn’t seem to happen.

If anything, as tools get better, we just do more elaborate things, which then require more people to make sense of them. At the end of the day no matter how glossy all the marketing brochures, as a profession we do produce an incredible amount of shockingly awful and wildly over-engineered software, which then needs armies of very clever people to make it work.

Just look at C++, which is now completely incomprehensible, for no really good reason, and which guarantees jobs for anyone prepared to wrap their brain around it’s insanity.

Sorry, not much help. How about this: get a raspberry pi, and spend some time making it do something – e.g. can you use your RPI to securely control a light from your mobile phone? By the time you’ve done all of that, you’ve learned a fair amount of stuff.

also been coding far too long and tbh theres always been a ‘wont need coders line’more as a hoper thing as people think programing is an easy thing and they dont want to pay.

The ‘last one’ program(?) in ooow around 1980 something was apparently going to be the last program you would ever need to buy as it would allow any user to create what they wanted 🙂

seen people claiming that programming is being automated away for twenty years now and it doesn’t seem to happen

I think it does! I see it every day. Websphere application server, message broker are pretty widely adopted. You still need coders for those, admittedly, but not many.

I didn’t say we would not need coders, I said we won’t all need to be coders. In the same way the travel industry doesn’t need everyone to be aircraft engineers.

Just ace ones.

😉

Tom_W1987: Coursera is good. I’m learning how to code and I’m taking a graduate diploma in Statistics

Could you add a bit more about the diploma? I’m considering doing something along those lines…

I’d also second the vote for Coursera – at least for the programming courses. They’re well structured, with exercises and homework to keep you motivated. The process mining course I’m doing right now is awful, though!

I’ve started my first “computer programming” job in 1978. I sometimes used to dream in assembler. But to this day I’ve never felt that it’s vital to know how to code, just as it’s not necessary to know how to assemble a car engine or mobile phone.

These are all just semi-skilled occupations that will be performed in low wage economies.

I think the general thrust of the “teach kids to code” isn’t really about creating a nation of programmers – it’s just about teaching them a bit about how a computer works and the more general abstract skills of logic, procedural thought, problem decomposition, and the like.

For instance, one of the Year Of Code games is LightBot, where you have to “program” the little robot with a series of commands (Forward, Turn, Jump, Switch on Light). That’s not going to get anyone a job, but it’s a useful mental process to teach (my four year old enjoyed it anyway).

I sometimes used to dream in assembler.

I loved 6502 Assembler, used to write code in a notebook at night in bed (age 11)……

I think the general thrust of the “teach kids to code” isn’t really about creating a nation of programmers – it’s just about teaching them a bit about how a computer works and the more general abstract skills of logic, procedural thought, problem decomposition, and the like.

I fully agree with that. A huge skill for the modern world. But it’s not the same thing at all as learning how to code. They should be more specific!

They should be more specific!

It’s a lot harder to market “Learn Logic and Procedural Thought Processes” 😉

Besides they do use “code” to make stuff happen, it’s just not code that you’d get a job writing.

@ dudeofdoom

The ‘last one’ program(?) in ooow around 1980 something was apparently going to be the last program you would ever need to buy as it would allow any user to create what they wanted

Yep, I remember that, it’s what I was thinking of in fact!

I suspect it will be a while before the reality of AI catches up with the marketing.

It’s a lot harder to market “Learn Logic and Procedural Thought Processes”

I’ve always thought schools should have proper philosophy classes.

I suspect it will be a while before the reality of AI catches up with the marketing.

The problem’s deeper than that really. For a robot to be able to solve a problem it needs to be cogently expressed in a way that the computer can understand. The more complicated the problem, the more difficult that will be – for the foreseeable future there will be roles for people who can break down big complicated ideas into communicable procedures and designs; those people are going to be coders – even if the language they speak is abstracted away from program flow. There will also always be a need for designers who can code for similar reasons.

As above, pick an interesting problem and solve it. Don’t follow a course…

That’ll get you so far, eventually you do need some learning on theory etc and some deeper understanding, and for working on larger projects some engineering knowledge. But if you just want to hack code, just crack on.

easy

step 1. If you are going to code, you won’t need to relate to people. Get rid of any social skills you might have. Got a wife/girlfriend? sorry, they have to go. Your odor is something to cultivate.

step 2. How long can you look at a screen? Forget health and safety, real coders don’t step away for 10 hours plus. Start building up your exposure time. Practice eating and drinking over the keyboard too, those crumbs need to go all over, when the stains start appearing on your shirt, you are nearly there.

step 3. If you are a coder you need to develop your sense of technical superiority over others. Start practicing on your customers by using phrases like ‘it’s waaaay more complicated than that’ and ‘are you sure that’s what you _really_ want’. Once this is mastered you can move onto other coders by picking a language or technology and being a dick about it at all times, preferably on the internet.

see – the actual programming is only a really small part of it

#!/usr/bin/perl

print “Hello World!\n”;

Done. You can now code (or so think the various people I’ve interviewed lately).

The importance of “coding” is being stressed more now due to the higher levels the languages are at now in part and the amount of libraries and tools that do all the complex work. Essentially coding has moved into the arena of non computer scientists and is being exposed to allow people to customise and automate things.

Also, the world of the web has been taken over on the front end by media guys, great at the artistic elements, but a lot of front end work is dynamic and relies heavily on Javascript. This used to be a geeky area and a web designer might hand over the coding to a developer, but now there are so many libraries that can do fancy things with little effort the web designers just get into the coding side instead.

see – the actual programming is only a really small part of it

And most of that’s just blindly copying Stack Overflow answers until it works anyway.

edit: hmmm… I wonder if that will be the basis of the AI that replaces me.

And most of that’s just blindly copying Stack Overflow answers until it works anyway.

SO is a pretty amazing resource, Googling SO is much faster than bothering with man pages…

Stack Overflow – the resource of the overseas outsource company staffed by people who have no clue, but will do the job for £1.

Half the content are questions from the outsource guys where clearly they’ve been given a task and they just paste the task on SO and wait for people to give them the code. Add to that the guys posting interview and coursework questions.

The real value I find is for tricky software that isn’t behaving as it should due to quirks and bugs or poor documentation, and finding people who have the same problem. It’s far easier than trying to contact support, or in the case of open source software posting on the relevant forum and get snooty answers back telling you to read the man pages or fix the problem yourself.

The comments are far more important that the code

/**
* For the brave souls who get this far: You are the chosen ones,
* the valiant knights of programming who toil away, without rest,
* fixing our most awful code. To you, true saviors, kings of men,
* I say this: never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down,
* never gonna run around and desert you. Never gonna make you cry,
* never gonna say goodbye. Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you.
*/

I like this one:

// Replaces with spaces the braces in cases where braces in places cause stasis
$str = str_replace(array(“\{“,”\}”),” “,$str);

The ‘last one’ program(?) in ooow around 1980 something was apparently going to be the last program you would ever need to buy as it would allow any user to create what they wanted

I think it was called TK!Solver and in 1978 it featured in the copy of Computer Weekly which I was reading during lunch on my 1st day as a trainee programmer. I thought I’d made a terrible mistake…