SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Today's 6th graders will hit their prime working years in 2030.
By that time, the "robot apocalypse" could be fully upon us. Automation and artificial intelligence could have eliminated half the jobs in the United States economy.
Or, plenty of jobs could still exist, but today's students could be locked in a fierce competition for a few richly rewarded positions requiring advanced technical and interpersonal skills. Robots and algorithms would take care of what used to be solid working- and middle-class jobs. And the kids who didn't get that cutting-edge computer science course or life-changing middle school project? They'd be relegated to a series of dead-end positions, serving the elites who did.
Alternatively, maybe Bill Gates and Elon Musk and the other big names ringing the alarm are wrong. A decade from now, perhaps companies will still complain they can't find employees who can read an instruction manual and pass a drug test. Maybe workers will still be able to hold on to the American Dream, so long as they can adjust to incremental technological shifts in the workplace.
Which vision will prove correct?
30 years into the Information Revolution and schools are only just now realizing they should teach kids how to code...
(Score: 4, Interesting) by frojack on Friday December 15 2017, @12:13AM (7 children)
Exactly This.
People who speak like this have never set up a CNC machine to do something as simple as drill a hole.
Clue: coding is no longer necessary.
Teaching coding is probably a waste of time. The skill sets needed to manage robots are probably being ingrained into kids with joy sticks and game controllers in their hand. It sure as hell won't be written in C.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 4, Informative) by DECbot on Friday December 15 2017, @12:56AM
It's not. It's mostly carol, but the robot operators don't need to write that--just a few of the robot vendors that program the cabinets. Once sold, the carol code isn't touched. The customer just jogs the robot to the next point on the path the robot has to make and then saves a coordinate. Where the robot has to make an action, like following a curve or picking an object, you use the appropriate command and program that point. It's easier than training monkeys. Motoman has a new(ish) robot [youtube.com] where you don't even have to know how to jog the robot. You put it in a kinetic teach mode and physically push the robot arm to the next teach point.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 15 2017, @01:40AM (3 children)
Have to disagree with you there, even with modern CAM software calculating tool paths, the best setters will still tweak gcode on the machine itself. Just as the best computer programmers still tweak assembly.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday December 15 2017, @04:54AM (1 child)
Not if the programmer did their job right. Maybe quick write a main that calls all the programs to run over night, but everything else should post without any need for edits. This is especially true with five axis and dynamic/HFM paths.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 15 2017, @02:21PM
Code generators (compilers, CAM) can only ever be optimised for the general case. A valuable skill is being able to shave a microsecond off a tight loop in a program or being able to save 5 seconds on a 2 minute CNC program running 50,000 parts. We are so far from being able to automate the design and preparation required for these tasks that the skills will remain useful for the foreseeable future.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 16 2017, @01:47AM
Still the disagree mod, from someone doesn't realise they're ultimately disagreeing with Autodesk. Anyone who 'disagree's can ask autodesk how to offset both the toolpath and the job to cut a spiral flute because their kernel simply cannot do it. TopSolid may be able to but who care's when an engineer can build a solution themselves for a fraction of the price of their software? Human ingenuity is the job that cannot be replaced and if you're an engineer that is what you are selling.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Friday December 15 2017, @01:48AM (1 child)
It's worse than that. Teaching coding when kids are young is a cruel waste of time, unless it's something like Logo Turtles. You shouldn't even try to program in a computer language until you're ready of elementary algebra, since the thought skills required are about the same.
This isn't to say that things like Scratch are a bad idea, but don't try to push them. A few kids will be able to take it and run with it, and let them. Most kids won't have a clue, and will just get turned off. A bad math teacher who tries to coerce kids to do math they aren't ready for is behind much of the hatred of math. Programming could go the same way.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Adamsjas on Friday December 15 2017, @02:42AM
A computer language is nothing like elementary algebra.
98% (number from ass) of programming is get it here. change it this way. put it there. count it. rinse. repeat.
Maths departments have fucked up more good programmer/analysts than than they can count.