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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: 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.