Posted on 06/19/2014 8:04:57 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
#YesWeCode looks to close the coding inequality gap
Shortly after Trayvon Martin was shot and killed in February 2012, liberal activist Van Jones was talking with his friend Prince—yes, that Prince—about the circumstances of the shooting.
More “I think he made the observation,” Jones told TIME, “that when African-American young people wear hoodies people think they’re thugs, but when white kids wear hoodies you assume that they’re going to be dot-com billionaires,” a reference to the outerwear favored by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his ilk. “We just started thinking: ‘Well, how do we turn that around?’”
Out of that spark was born Yes We Code, an ambitious initiative of Jones’ Rebuild the Dream organization aimed at preparing 100,000 low-income children for careers writing computer code. While good-paying blue-collar jobs continue to disappear in the U.S., computer science is a rare bright spot of opportunity for people without a college education. “This is another opportunity for people to make a really serious, solid middle-class income,” said Jones, a former environmental aide in the Obama Administration.
It’s an old yarn by now that computer science is one of the fastest-growing, highest-paying career paths in America. By 2020, half of all jobs in the STEM (Science, Tech, Engineering and Math) fields will be in computing, according to the Association for Computer Machinery. The latest salary survey from the National Association of Colleges and Employers says the average starting salary for computer science majors in 2014 is more than $61,000—just about $1,000 shy of the top earners, engineering grads.
Contrast that with the fact that computer science education in STEM has seen a decrease in enrollment in the last 20 years, with a particularly precipitous drop in the past decade as school districts have reconfigured curriculums....
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
Their motto - “keeping apps relevant for brothers keeping it real”
I would like to learn coding myself, but the few computer classes I’ve taken become very boring very quickly. I’ll keep looking for the right class and the right instructor.
and don’t forget the app that will find you a gun in less that 2 seconds...
Well, now I've seen everything. Van Jones saying something I agree with. My contention for years has been that the personal resources of the black community are America's greatest wasted asset.
If these rich black men want to spend their money to incentivize black youth, it's fine with me. More power to them. I withhold judgment until I see results however. They could just as easily join the Jesse Jackson/Jim Brown racial scam brigade.
I would like to learn coding myself, but the few computer classes I’ve taken become very boring very quickly. I’ll keep looking for the right class and the right instructor.
Obviously you have not yet discovered the appropriate learning environment
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYQcCE_yhDI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-zpOMYRi0w
Great. I look forward to the Rap Virus.
and don’t forget the app that will find you a gun in less that 2 seconds...
and for chasing down all of the mixer components to make purple drank
A few observations:
1) There is no coding language in Ebonics;
2) To code, English must be read;
3) At least they won’t hack or write malware - that would be called a code “cracker”...
3) At least they won’t hack or write malware - that would be called a code “cracker”...
Now that’s just so wrong :-)
Thanks for posting this. An interesting subject.
“that when African-American young people wear hoodies people think they’re thugs, but when white kids wear hoodies you assume that they’re going to be dot-com billionaires,”
hmmmm..... wonder who they could blame that on ?
“We just started thinking: ‘Well, how do we turn that around?’”
Well... we could lower our standards to rock bottom.
[good luck on this one]
I code. Coding is hard. Good luck indeed.
A guy in our fortran class made this interesting comment (Which I agree with):
The difference between Fortran , Cobol, and Assembler is...
In Assembler you tell the machine what to do.
In Fortran you ask it.
And in Cobol, you get on your knees and beg.
In basketball, you can’t coach height. In IT, you can’t teach IQ or creativity.
What we used to call 'an infinite loop', and the shortest one possible.
I wrote one that was:
10 Print "hello"
20 Go to 10
Ran it on the agencies' minicomputer. Brought everything else to a complete halt. Never used that one again.
Good luck with that. Writing computer code for public use is one of the most tedious jobs in the world. Some people are cut out for it, most are not. Moreover it tales a good bit of knowledge of common things such as the English language and mathematics to be any good at it.
As usual, the dumb just keep getting dumber
and it is as easy as that
and Hello back at ya
Would you trust the code these kids would write? I can only imagine the crash of American life as their poorly written code induced all kinds of problems. And would you trust them not to include some deliberate sabotage code if they actually learned how to code?
To code well, you need several attributes:
— Ability to read and quickly comprehend technical material
— Ability to think logically
-- The ability to break down large problems into smaller, solvable pieces.
-- Reasonable math ability. Maybe not calculus to be a programmer, but algebra and trig are a must. You MUST take calculus, however, if you want a BS degree in computer science.
— Perhaps most importantly though: patience and perseverance. If you can't deal with frequent frustration (and over come it), programming is not for you.
In short, these are skills that most Americans lack, let alone those in the inner city. Can't help but wonder if Mr. Van Jones ever coded himself? I'll wager not.
About 27 years ago I bumped into McFarland while on vacation in Australia. (The M of RM-COBOL).
Nice guy.
Sudden I find myself eager for the next class. Here’s one entitled “Have You Ever Matriculated?
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