[rimo]

I think the author completely misses the point here. Coding is learning how to write and read. It does not prevent one from learning other disciplines but rather helps make links between disciplines such as literature and mathematics. As for computer accessibility, with initiatives like the raspberry pi, decent computer power is more and more available.

[TazeTSchnitzel]

Coding without first having very good English literacy is quite difficult, especially considering that programming languages use much field-specific technical jargon.

[lawl]

Disagree. I'm a non native english speaker and picked up english after coding. If and for aren't hard keywords to memorize, really. As long as you don't interact with complex libraries or docs you'll be just fine. I just named my variables and functions in german back then. Sure, these programms were trivial. Or what you'd expect from someone coding basic for the first time. But that's were i found my passion for code. Without any english skills.

So please allow me to call bullshit.

[digitalengineer]

No so fast please. The article mentioned "The reading proficiency of Americans is much lower than most other developed countries, and it’s declining." It's not about English, it's about being able to properly read and understand what is written. Very basic stuff, really. For us-writing here in a 2nd language- this is hard to grasp I think.

[lawl]

Upvoted you because you do have a point there. But I still think it's flawed because I litterally was a 5th grader at that time. In my opinion coding is about understanding the concept, everything else is syntax, and for that you can just memorize keywords. At least I feel like my coding skills are very much decoupled from my reading/writing skills though I really don't know, so YMMV. When reading a book I have to read it linearily and hope the author wrote it in a way so i can understand everything at a point in a book if I have read everything before but I probably won't understand much by just reading the last page. When reading a large codebase I find myself wildly jumping around often ignoring stuff because it doesn't matter right now or assuming stuff because it's obvious or just not that important. For me that's a very different skillset than reading written text.

Last but not least a very provocative analogy but I don't have a better one right now. But for me "they shouldn't learn to code, they can't even spell everything correctly" sounds very much like "we shouldn't try to stop HIV in africa, they don't even have fresh water".

Again sorry, but nothing better comes to mind right now.

[digitalengineer]

Thank you for the good discussion. I try to think of it more as 'learning to walk before running'. You are right, a lot of people can learn how to code and to them it is a good skill to learn.

A much larger part of poor people would benefit greatly by learning how to speak/write/read better. When I visited the US I was shocked by the large difference in people. I literally couldn't understand some people. For us (Northern European) folks it's hard to imagine so much Americans really do live in a 3rd world part of the US it seems.