It’s not something I talk about much, but when I went off to university, I had the intention of getting not one, but two degrees. The University of Saskatchewan at the time offered an engineering/computer science double degree program. There was so much overlap between the two programs, that by taking a few more classes, you could get both degrees relatively easily.
Or so I thought.
So, with a brand-new 486 computer on my desk in my university apartment, I went to university that September and took my first computer science class.
I immediately started drowning, academically speaking. Unlike every other class, where there was a bit of a warm up, the professor immediately started talking as if you had been coding for at least the last three years. He might as well have been speaking Chinese, although, ironically, he was the easiest professor to actually understand (as contrasted to the unintelligible Chinese professors trying to speak English).
The comp sci professor was talking about assigning operators and syntax and all sorts of gobbledegook that was totally lost on me. I had no frame of reference, no clue whatsoever. My friend, Kurt Wigton, basically carried me through that class, and upon its completion, I immediately dropped all follow-up computer science classes.
So it was with great interest I read today that the British Columbia government is planning on making computer coding part of its core curriculum, from Kindergarten to Grade 12.
Just a few days ago I tried to entice our 11-year-old daughter to watch how I rewrote the very basic HTML code for my internal website when doing sports tournament photos. I thought maybe this might be a way to get her interested at an early age. It’s about all I can do, coding-wise, these days, but I can get by for my own business’ needs.
If I had a strong grounding in coding, it would have definitely helped in my other engineering university classes. It would help even more so today, with my photography business, which depends on a web presence.
My best friend and former business partner (in a startup software company, no less), Jason Coutu, has bachelors and masters degrees in computer science. He codes for a living in Saskatoon. He has some interesting thoughts on teaching coding to kids.
For one, Jason said he wasn’t a good example, since he already had mastered the course material before he even started his high school coding classes. But he added, “Programming in high school or primary school, for that matter, isn’t about actually programming. It’s just the easiest way to engage the students to teach them problem-solving and problem dissection, which are really important skills many of the youth today are completely lacking in.”
Jason went on, “I have two degrees in computer science. I can tell you that I didn’t learn any programming taking them. I learned new ways to approach problems and take them apart. I learned that all problems are really a series of easier-to-solve subproblems. This is something that has been lost in schooling over the last several decades.”
I think Jason’s being a little humble here, in that he obviously learned some programming along the way. But his broader point is that coding is more about ways of thinking than just producing something that works on screen.
This reminds me of another friend, Jeff Gehbart. In a Youth Parliament debate about bilingualism, he once stood up 20 years ago and said, “Bilingual? I can speak seven languages. English, BASIC, C++, Pascal…..” and he went on to list numerous computer languages.
That always stuck with me. Programming languages all have their own grammar and syntax, very analogous to real world languages. Perhaps learning to program might help with language development, too?
When I was a kid, I was part of the first generation to have a “computer class.” It was basically an introduction to what computers can do. It also included basic typing. My kids don’t need a computer class, by-and-large, they grew up with them. I never taught them to type, but they can do it. So maybe coding every week would be a good thing, taking them beyond being simple users.
I’m not sure where they are going to squeeze these new coding classes into the curriculum, or how many teachers are going to be any good at teaching it (if they were true programmers, they probably aren’t working as teachers). But it’s a good start. I hope Saskatchewan does the same.
