I thought there was a misspelling and the article was about coddling our children.
oops.
He was co-founder of id Software, who created Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake.
Only a 10 year old would spend time coding for a game where the object was to get to Winnipeg.
- Racing across the U.S. in a taco truck
- Fighting off animals mutated by fallout from nuclear war
- Turning mutant animals into food
- Living in fortified towns
Sort of sounds like one version of a Post-Obama Dystopian World, doesn’t it?
And according to those responsible for teaching them, programming is just the beginning. What those kids are learning now—what they must learn, if they hope to be employable in the 21st century—is something educators call “procedural literacy.”
“When you learn to code, you start thinking about processes in the world,” says Mitchell Resnick, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor heading up the effort to build the child-friendly programming language Scratch.
[...]
Whether it’s understanding how complicated systems like economies work or tackling a problem in a stepwise fashion, coding is uniquely suited to training children not just how to solve problems, but also how to express themselves, says Mr. Resnick.
“What’s fascinating about computer science is that it requires analytical skills, problem solving and creativity, while also being both foundational and vocational,” says Hadi Partovi, co-founder of Code.org, a nonprofit organization that promotes coding education. “I’m not sure there’s any other field that’s all those combined.”
So the future is creating games to mindlessly entertain morons? You have a better chance of becoming a big league ball player than making it big time in computer games.
The highest paid graduate last year had a degree in petroleum engineering. Will always be needed. Won’t go out of fashion like some game. Skill set transferable.
Bkmrk.
Always disappointed your tough soldier guy could eat the dog food but not the dogs in Wolfenstein. Guess the son of the guy who created the game felt the same way.
It doesn’t hurt their cause that the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that there will be one million unfilled jobs for programmers in the U.S. by 2020. And that may be an underestimate, says Mr. Partovi.
The problem: software development is being either "off-shored", or people are being imported into the US to fill positions. I work for different customers across the US, and it's not unusual to find an entire department staffed by people on H1B visas. My own company has sent software development to the other side of the world.
The quality of the work stinks. The people I work with lack basic analytical and problem-solving skills. But, those deficiencies don't appear on a balance sheet, and the result is a slow descent into irrelevancy, as customers find better vendors to meet their requirements.
I've been in the software development business for over 3 decades. And my advice to anyone that wants to enter it: go for it, but only if you are willing to stay at the top of your game for your entire career.
There are still great opportunities in the US. But, not everyone can work for Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Only the very best get offers from these companies, and even after you get the job, it's very competitive. If you don't invest your own time in developing new skills and keeping up with the rapid changes in technology, you'll slide to the bottom of the bell curve and be "eased out".
I agree with this.
No, training in the skilled trades like troubleshooting a circuit on the burned out control panel of a robot or repairing the hardware in a server farm, if not being a plumber or mechanic is what will guarantee your child a job.
But, I do question the wisdom of blocking airflow with that "Taco Truck" model -- even if it is only for a photo op.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Looks like (at 77) it is time for me to teach myself yet another coding language.
If that kid can learn it... '-)