Skip to main content

Teaching Kids to Code - Missing the bigger picture?

Sat in front of my TV one boring week night a while back I noticed an Advert for Barclay's bank and something they called Barclay's Code Playground. So, intrigued I went on their website and found this:


"You rarely see it, but computer code runs our world. Everything from the website you’re reading to the traffic lights on our roads relies on the mysterious world of code. It’s even part of the national curriculum now, and learning what makes tech tick could give your kids a head start in the world of work."

So what Barclay's have is a way for kids to learn how to program by letting them write simple code to change animations and other cool things. You can do this in selected branches or on the Internet.

Now I think it is great that a bank like Barclay's is helping to teach kids the concepts of coding. It is also great that England has become the first country in the world to mandate computer programming in primary and secondary schools. However I think they may of missed something.....

There are many more opportunities in the IT workplace than just coding and there are lots of other jobs that do not require you to have the ability to code. Such jobs would be things like: Business Analyst, Tester, Network specialist, Scrum Master, Project Manager - I'm sure you could think of a few more.  By all means teaching children to think logically through writing code will help them in the future but if they don't like coding will there be encouragement for them to pursue an interest in another area of IT? If not then we may, in a few years have a saturation of developers, and these developers may make amazing testers or network specialists. I think the curriculum of schools and programs run by companies like Barclay's, should not focus solely on code and should encompass all aspects of IT so that we can encourage kids to explore other areas of and hopefully find something that they will enjoy and love. 

The  danger with just targeting coding is that these other potential career paths are not explored and lets not forget that you more than just developers on a team to make a successful product. 

Now I know that not all kids that learn to code will become coders but I just hope that this focus on coding is not just a panic response to the ever changing world of IT and the 'Internet of things',  which will surely require more IT staff worldwide.  Yes there may a a shortage of good quality IT staff but lets not be so short sighted and think that solely coding is the way to mitigate this risk.

If you have any thoughts please feel free to comment. 




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to deal with pauses and timeouts in specflow

So this blogpost is in response to the weekly Specflow blog posts and challenges that have been written by Gojko Adzic. This weeks challenge was how would you rewrite or rephrase the below scenario: Given a user registers successfully When the account page reloads And the user waits 2 seconds Then the account page displays "Account approved" My initial though was something like this: Given a user registers successfully  When the account page reloads   Then the account page is displayed within a satisfactory time period     And the account page displays "Account Approved" Now the problem with this scenario is what defines a satisfactory time? You could add it as a comment or in a scenario outline but over time the time a user waits could change and if this is updated in the code behind but the scenario outline or comments are not, then what the test does and what is described do not match - this would potentially cause issues in the future. My next ide
Post a Comment
Read more

Testing and Mindfulness

How aware are you? Do you live in the here and now or is your mind always somewhere else? This blog post is about Mindfulness. Mindfulness is a simple meditation and is defined as (According to Wikipedia): "The intentional, accepting and non-judgemental focus of one's attention on the emotions, thoughts and sensations occurring in the present moment" Now Mindfulness has become more popular in the west in recent years as it has shown to have benefits for people who are suffering from Depression and Anxiety. It has been around for a while and is often thought to of originated from Buddhism and some people believe it started thousands of years ago. Now modern life is hectic and I’m sure we all have lots of things going on in our lives that keep our Brains busy and trying to focus on one thing at a time can be a challenge. I can't remember the number of times I've been doing something and my mind is somewhere else entirely. Mindfulness helps you focus on
Post a Comment
Read more

Building a test strategy for a new team

Teams, we have all been on them. Some are good and some are bad. Some we never wanted to leave and others we probably couldn't wait to leave. Now most of the time (well in my experience anyway) you tend to get put into a team that already exists. Maybe you are a new hire or maybe you have asked to change to a different product team.  When you do this, more than likely there will already be a testing strategy in place. It may be that you adapt it and change it in any way you see fit to improve the testing. But imagine if everyone on the team was new? How would you decide your testing strategy? This post will go through some useful things you can do to help a new team develop a test strategy. Table of Contents 📈 What is a Test Strategy? 🤔 Where should I start? 🎯 Understand the company and their goals 💪 Play to the teams strengths 👁️‍🗨️ Understand what quality looks like 📏 Understand Scope 🧪 Understand the type of tests you need 📊 Measure your success 🤝 Collaborate 📝 Summar
Post a Comment
Read more