alt Hacker NewsMy partner is an outdoor ed teacher at a no-screens school. I tried to teach her to code a few months back and it was hilarious. We started with "First download VS Code". We never made it to another step.
I had a similar experience showing her Skyrim. She never quite figured out how to walk and look at the same time. Made for an absolute berserker of a barbarian.
In any field, when you're surrounded by competent people, you'll begin to take that baseline competence for granted. I think especially so in ours due to virtual forums. I can work with my peers all day, go home, and talk with more online. It's enlightening to walk a curious outsider through your day (and probably also a great test of the systems you have in place).
Replies
Literally perfectly relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2501/
> I tried to teach her to code a few months back and it was hilarious. We started with "First download VS Code". We never made it to another step.
This has been a serious regression in the industry for a while: popular operating systems (I'm looking at you, Windows) don't encourage and are not set up for their users to program or even do the bare minimum of random automation unless it's embedded in an application and meant for automating just that application (excel macros).
You are encouraged and directed to install and use "apps" which are either a one-size-fits-all lowest common denominator or a tries-do-everything dog's breakfast frustration.
The Commodore 64 turned on instantly and said "READY." and effectively gave you a blank canvas to poke (no pun intended) at. It was BASIC, but it was a real (if simple and limited) programming language and you could get immediate feedback and satisfaction from playing with it to learn what it could do. The syntax of BASIC is simple, the stdlib is comprehensive and unopinionated. There was nothing to download to get started to try to get that initial dopamine hit and to start to realize the true power of what computers can do and what you could make them do.
If you want a better chance at getting someone excited about programming, there are much better places to start than VSCode. pico8, scratch, even the browser's developer toolbar is more accessible than VSCode.