What do you mean?

I mean for the recent past my (several) employers have been companies who are/were struggling to fill their UK vacancies with good employees. They weren’t sending any work overseas by any kind of free choice. Which is also the case across engineering in the UK, more jobs than good engineers.

I don’t think we need more coders. In my (20+years) experience you can train just about any monkey to code.
What is needed, at least in enterprise, is good analysts.
This is the skill we should be developing.

In my (20+years) experience you can train just about any monkey to code.

You know bugger all about coding then.

You can train anyone to code BADLY, maybe. If you can’t tell the difference, you aren’t qualified to comment.

molgrips

Funny you should say that I was wondering if I should have recommended using Git

If you are using a windows laptop then Small Basic is a great place to start.

Well.. you did just call me a monkey.

Because something like an Arduino is about as “seamless” as embedded processing gets! I know plenty of “coders” who even now have no idea how a processor actually works, and you can see that in poorly optimised code they write!
…
Then we get to the fact that using something like a Arduino to even flash and LED is much more “hands on”


public static void Main()
{
    OutputPort led = new OutputPort(Pins.ONBOARD_LED, false);

    while (true)
    {
        led.Write(true);
        Thread.Sleep(250);
        led.Write(false);
        Thread.Sleep(250);
    }
}

Netduino – probably poorly optimised though 😉

A typical coder

I don’t think we need more coders

You’re not a large and successful company employing 1000s of tech staff, I would wager.

I’m only a qualified primary school teacher with a Masters in IT and a decade experience of teaching IT at A level, and who has a ten-year-old daughter, so take my advice with a pinch of salt:

Scratch is probably the best starting point. It’s pretty easy to build relatively sophisticated little programmes and games with it, and there are tonnes of examples online that you can download and build on. Loads of tutorials, too.

If you want to build from that, and especially if you’ve an old Android phone laying around, you can step up from Scratch to App Inventor, which is built by the same people.

I’d only go down the Raspberry Pi or Arduino route if she wants to try installing operating systems or building little ‘machines’.

I mean for the recent past my (several) employers have been companies who are/were struggling to fill their UK vacancies with good employees. They weren’t sending any work overseas by any kind of free choice.

Hmm well the UK is a tough place for an Oracle Apps techie these days, salaries got too high I suppose.

an Oracle Apps techie

Too narrowly skilled perhaps?

Oracle Apps tech is a huge area and getting bigger – not just tech but knowledge of the business suite required. It is possible to switch to general Oracle dev but that’s a bit of a career change.

The thought of being skilled only in a particular product area terrifies me tbh. Even though product SME is my current job, I’m at pains to avoid being pigeon-holed as much as possible.

I’ve ordered this for my 6 year old – not arrived yet but it looks the ticket

http://www.kano.me

I don’t think we need more coders
You’re not a large and successful company employing 1000s of tech staff, I would wager.

Probably didn’t make myself clear enough.
We don’t need more people that can convert detailed specs into modules, we need more of the analysts that can convert a set of vague business desires into a coherent process flow and then into specifications suitable for coding from. The coding from spec should be straightforward providing that design has been done correctly- coding is one of the later steps in the process, and I’d argue that most of the work in any unit of development should be done by the stage you fire up the coding environment, irrespective of whatever development methodology you’re using.
We need the ability to analyse and design.

maga – Looks similar to Scratch, can you post a review when it arrives

Yeah and I’ve seen the results 🙂

I’d argue that most of the work in any unit of development should be done by the stage you fire up the coding environment, irrespective of whatever development methodology you’re using.

Aaaahhh.. the Waterfall model. Circa 1956.

Do people ever actually code anything moderately complicated like that in reality?

we need more of the analysts that can convert a set of vague business desires into a coherent process flow and then into specifications suitable for coding from.

Ah, see, that all comes under ‘coder’ to me, in the same way that the guy who fits your exhaust wrongly at Kwik Fit and a Formula 1 team member are both ‘motor mechanics’.

The kind of code factory where people get a spec for a ‘module’ and write the code is pretty old fashioned these days. That started off being outsourced overseas, now it’s being disposed of altogether and replaced with SOA tools and the like.

Last project I was on – one or two Message Broker devs, a few architects, a few more product SMEs and no Java devs. For a project handling huge transaction volumes that will affect us all every day. Everyone was doing the analysis.

Yep, project I’m on at the moment (embedded medical device) all the “coders” do “analysis” as we work in user stories and each story has the relevant requirements attached to it as part of its definition.

Anyway.. this is getting pretty far from the OP…

No, not waterfall. Agile development is the same, albeit on a micro scale. You don’t just alter or build code without having put thought into what you have, and what you want to go to from an iteration, and it’s this that needs to be taught, not the specificities of syntax.

In fact the ease of transition in IT over the years between different design methodologies and languages illustrates what I’m saying- it’s not the coding that’s difficult, it’s the correct capture and breakdown of business processes, and the resultant design of the solution.

You don’t just alter or build code without having put thought into what you have, and what you want to go to from an iteration

Of course, but IMO that’s the job of a codersoftware engineer, not an analyst.

We don’t employ any pure analysts, just good software engineers who can take reqs, come up with a good design and implement it well.

and it’s this that needs to be taught, not the specificities of syntax.

Of course, but it always is – I don’t think anyone trains up people without this ability, do they?

If someone describes themselves as a coder, I assume they can do all these things too.

maga – Looks similar to Scratch, can you post a review when it arrives

sure – will do

mega: why didn’t you just buy a Pi? You could get those bits for less than £60 – or did you want it all in a single box?

GrahamA: It is scratch.

Always scratch. Its ace, scratch 2.0 with its online aspect is good, it takes some getting used to. But its great. Don’t entertain anything else for a year or so.

Then maybe as others have said app builder.

GrahamS – Member
Of course, but IMO that’s the job of a codersoftware engineer, not an analyst.

We don’t employ any pure analysts, just good software engineers who can take reqs, come up with a good design and implement it well.

Exactly. And software engineering is a quite different discipline to coding. Coding is just writing down instructions in a manner the machine can understand. Software engineering is designing which instructions to write.

Often, and usually, the two are confused, mainly because our industry has built up this mystique of the ‘leet haxor coder’ who does it all. In the real world, apart from a few exceptions, they don’t and can’t. At least not well.

I’d love to employ software engineers and have them on my teams. But I get coders.

So by the logic on this thread, what else should we stop teaching as 99% of people won’t get it or ever use it again?

I think the point of the Year of Code was that it is useful for people to at least understand a little about code and how you tell machines to do stuff in a structured way. And I don’t disagree with that goal.

Most people will spend quite a bit of their life telling computers what to do in one form or another so it makes sense to offer some basic pointers to explain what’s really happening.

I guess an analogy might be electricity? Not everyone is an electrician, but most have a basic understanding of how a switch, plug, fuse, socket and lightbulb work.

A box of 7400 series should do her right. Once she has written her own instruction set you can let have some water.

I’d love to employ software engineers and have them on my teams. But I get coders.

Huh.. maybe some training on the job? Or pay more? I’ve not met anyone who was a ‘coder’ as you put it since ooh.. when I worked for Logica or CMG.

I don’t agree that people need to learn about coding to use computers. That’s like teaching people how to change a big end bearing when you teach them to drive. Technology has moved beyond that now.

However I do think people need to learn about how the software they already have works. General IT skills should be much more than Word and Excel.

General IT skills should be much more than Word and Excel.

Excel would be a good example of software which hasn’t “moved beyond that” and is considerably more useful if you know how to “code”

(though to be honest when it starts getting into complex conditional array formulae then I struggle a bit despite my mad skillz)

With some of the convoluted rubbish I’ve seen in excel sheets, I wish more people could script.

molgrips That’s like teaching people how to change a big end bearing when you teach them to drive. Technology has moved beyond that now.

All of the very best drivers i have had the privilege of sitting next too have understood at a base level how the car they are driving works, and that is what makes them exceptional drivers.

Literally anyone can “code” these days as so much of the process is “plug n play” but the number of people who can, imo, code exceptionally well is very much lower 😉

All of the very best drivers i have had the privilege of sitting next too have understood at a base level how the car they are driving works, and that is what makes them exceptional drivers.

I’m not talking about racing drivers ffs. Knowing what a big end is makes no difference to being able to drive down the shops properly.

Bloody geeks.

And what’s ‘exceptional coding?’ Really good code should be really basic and simple, because you’ve designed it well in the first place 🙂

Really good code should be really basic and simple, because you’ve designed it well in the first place

I’d call that exceptional coding

Typical STW:

Q. My 9-year-old wants to learn to code, could anyone suggest a starting point?

*argument about the structure of the workforce and the global location of different workplace functions*

Yes, but this isn’t a Q&A site it’s a chat forum, So we’re chatting 🙂

And what’s ‘exceptional coding?’ Really good code should be really basic and simple, because you’ve designed it well in the first place

Exceptional coding is done by the sort of people I never employ who take 1000000000000000 years to do everything in minimalist obfuscated bollocks that no other bugger understands or can support. Always advocated by people who would never pay a stonemason to build a wall as it would be too expensive and take too long.