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The rationale for this rapid curricular renovation is economic. Teaching kids how to code will help them land good jobs, the argument goes. In an era of flat and falling incomes, programming provides a new path to the middle class – a skill so widely demanded that anyone who acquires it can command a livable, even lucrative, wage.
This narrative pervades policymaking at every level, from school boards to the government. Yet it rests on a fundamentally flawed premise. Contrary to public perception, the economy doesn't actually need that many more programmers. As a result, teaching millions of kids to code won't make them all middle-class. Rather, it will proletarianize the profession by flooding the market and forcing wages down – and that's precisely the point.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 24 2017, @02:54PM (3 children)
The onus of offering a better hypothesis is on you. In particular it has become clear that the 'STEM crisis' is a myth. [ieee.org] However it's certainly true that certain companies and government agencies have been pushing that myth that incredibly hard. So what is their motivation? This article offers a logical hypothesis that matches all the data and action we have. Nonetheless disagreement is perfectly reasonable. However, again the onus falls on you to offer a more viable explanation.
And this will certainly not benefit society. An overabundance of developers will collapse labor prices which benefits nobody except companies. They will, in turn, take the reduced labor costs and send that new "profit" straight onto shareholders and corporate executives which will result in greater wealth inequality and further accelerate our socioeconomic decline. Myopia is a chronic illness in corporate America today.
(Score: 5, Informative) by pvanhoof on Sunday September 24 2017, @03:09PM
> The onus of offering a better hypothesis is on you
No. That's simply not how it works. How it works is that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Another must not assume any claims to be true, and the onus of offerint a better hypothesis is not on whoever should assume something to be true. The guy making extraordinary claims must provide extraordinary evidence. And that's it.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday September 25 2017, @06:55AM
The "data and action" is ridiculously paltry. As I noted, not a single bit of evidence was provided aside from the observation that cheaper labor prices would theoretically benefit those who employ programmers. That's it.
Now let me provide a few pieces of contrary evidence. The first one is why should we have the expectation that this will work? As kurenai.tsubasa noted [soylentnews.org], one doesn't use marketing in isolation to get more entrants. They just pay more. The paying more is already happening and thus, we see an increase in programmers. Second, employers already have easy ways to hire cheap, foreign programmers and the supply of those is growing quite fast. And to anticipate a rebuttal here, why are the programmers gulled by marketing in the US going to be better programmers than their Indian counterparts?
Moving on, we have the investment horizon. Businesses are notorious for not thinking very far ahead in today's climate. So why are they going to put money into marketing programming jobs now just so they can have cheaper labor costs in twenty years? Not seeing it because it's past the next quarter.
Since you asked, here's my theory on the matter. This is just standard corporate status signaling via charity themes aligned with the business's markets. It may help dull criticism of H1-B games in US and similar attempts across the developed world to import developing world programmers or outsource to developing world destinations (a reasonable concern giving widespread immigration and outsourcing concerns among the developed world public).
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Monday September 25 2017, @07:50PM
Having more programmers out there can't help but drive up the quality of code that each of us uses every day. There will be more potential contributors to open source projects, so there will be more open source code, some of which will be good.
If that smacks of bullshit, how about the general trend of driving down cost, and thus price, for everything we use every day. More programmers will mean that more problems can be solved in software, so there is less need for an expensive hardware solution. Or, the feature set for a product can be expanded at the same price point.
Maybe, worst case, is all we (as a society) get out of a glut of programmers is a skinnable version of Flappy Bird. Don't overlook the small wins.
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