Suppose everyone could program computers. In other words, suppose computer programming were taught as a basic skill to every child, starting in kindergarten, and continuing on to the senior year of high school.<\/p>\n
I’m not suggesting that little children be taught C++ or Javascript. I would imagine that they would first be introduced to the concepts of programming in an age-appropriate way, perhaps through simple play, then progress to a blocks language like Scratch, and eventually move on to something like Python, supported by a well designed user interface.<\/p>\n
I am guessing that if we were really to do that, we would think about programming differently. For one thing, it would be used for different purposes than it is now.<\/p>\n
Rather than being a specialty craft — akin to being a plumber or an electrician — it would be something done every day by hundreds of millions of people, like cooking. I also suspect that programming languages themselves would evolve to meet the needs of this much broader user population.<\/p>\n
Advances in user interfaces to support programming would have a very different flavor, once the ability to program is no longer just an advanced professional skill, but also a basic literacy skill. The kind of programming language that ends up getting used by everybody might look very different from anything we have seen so far.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Suppose everyone could program computers. In other words, suppose computer programming were taught as a basic skill to every child, starting in kindergarten, and continuing on to the senior year of high school. I’m not suggesting that little children be taught C++ or Javascript. I would imagine that they would first be introduced to the … Continue reading “Suppose everyone could program”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22640"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22640"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22640\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22641,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22640\/revisions\/22641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}