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posted by martyb on Sunday September 24 2017, @11:02AM   Printer-friendly
from the Programming-Jobs dept.

Commentary from The Guardian

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.


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  • (Score: 2) by stretch611 on Sunday September 24 2017, @09:57PM

    by stretch611 (6199) on Sunday September 24 2017, @09:57PM (#572466)

    There may well be no shortage of programmers.
    There is a shortage of competent programmers.

    The only problem is that big business puts no value on programming. It is a chore that they must do and as such try to send it to the lowest bidder and depress wages. They pay the low wages of the incompetent, not the wages necessary to get the job done right.

    This is why Equifax had multiple hacks against it for months without realizing it or properly applying patches.

    This is why Adobe had its security team tweet its private key.

    This is why a Fortune 500 company I used to work for started to encrypt credit card numbers only after a PCI audit found them deficient and was starting to fine them. I was on the development team that did the work and they refused to allow us to encrypt SSNs in the same database at the same time. (because SSNs were not in the budget and they were only being fined for credit card numbers not SSNs.)

    And believe me, the stories I have with other companies are just as bad... and a lot of it comes down to profit. They will do the bare minimum at the cheapest price as long as they are not held accountable. And which will be cheaper? the symbolic slap on the wrist that Equifax will receive, or the price to hire competent people and build a system the right way with the security it should have? Even when adding the "campaign contributions" to the money equation we all know the answer.

    --
    Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
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