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by wfo 3799 days ago
Is this a good thing? I'm reminded of the "well-meaning" pushes by large tech companies to flood the market with immigrant labor and drive salaries down.

Though I wouldn't say this is malicious I think it may have the same effect. We will get many, many more bad programmers. We still have no good way to tell a good programmer apart from a bad one. We have no licensing, we have no professional organization, we have no standards.

Right now the barrier for entry is really, really low for an upper or middle class person who wants to learn about programming and CS. For the poor, what good is CS if you don't have regular access to a computer? How many graduating seniors in poor communities own their own laptops? Have consistent internet access? I think a pledge like this needs to focus all of its attention on low-income students for it to be worthwhile.

1 comments

I think computers are pretty prevalent.