So Apparently I’m An Exceptionally Dull Weirdo …

 Computing, General, Media, Politics  No Responses »
Oct 252013
 

Apparently this idiot thinks that all coders are exceptionally dull weirdos. I’ll quite happily admit to being a weirdo, but as to exceptionally dull … I only seem that way to the exceptionally thick, or prejudiced.

Concentrating for the moment about this journalist’s (in the loosest possible sense of the word) insult to a good number of people, we can probably deduce the following :-

  1. He doesn’t know many developers socially. If he accidentally encounters one in a social setting one of the following occurs :-
    1. The developer denies all knowledge of computers because of the prejudice of idiots like him. This is a bit of self defence we geeks learned in the past and used in the past. So we can also assume he’s a bit of a dinosaur (like me).
    2. Once he learns someone is a developer, he will climb the walls to get out of the way.
    3. He converses in his own specialised area, and anyone who runs away is classified as an exceptionally dull weirdo.
  2. If he thinks that coding is mechanistic, he is totally clueless about programming, and thinks that anyone can simply start writing code immediately. As a little hint, the majority of the time spent programming is thinking; simply grinding out code is a relatively small part of the job.
  3. Lumping coding in with car mechanics, or plumbing in a derogatory manner indicates this guy is one of those fools who think that anything technical is a low-status activity. Hope his plumber tells him to fix it himself when his next water leak occurs, or charges him double!

Now onto the main point of his ill educated rant on the subject of teaching “coding” to school children. Hopefully the government plans to teach “programming” rather than “coding”, but does he have a point? Perhaps, although it’s a bit difficult to take an idiot like this seriously.

It really depends on exactly what and how it is being taught.

If the plan is to turn out vast swarms of fully fledged developers, everyone is going to be disappointed; apart from anything else, if we were going to turn out fully fledged developers it would have a catastrophic effect on every other subject being taught. After all, it would take so much teaching time away from other subjects, there wouldn’t be enough time for Maths, English, History, etc.

But if the intention is to teach programming in a fun way (say with Logo and robots), with the intention of giving students a better idea of how computers work and how they are instructed, it could well be a good thing.

Not everyone needs to code he claims. Actually most people may find themselves coding in ways that may not be thought of as programming – setting up formula in a spreadsheet, setting up a database, automating a task in a word processor. Although none of these are “true” programming, they do share some elements with it – not least to think about the task in hand, dividing it up into sub-tasks, and setting about telling the computer how to do those tasks in a way that the computer will understand.

Does everyone need this? Perhaps not, but they will find using computers much more effective if they have a better idea of what is going on.

A Growlery?

 General  No Responses »
Oct 122013
 

Sometimes people get amused when they see my blog’s tag line (“Grumbles from the Growlery”), because they get the word “growlery” confused with the word “growler”. Just to show this isn’t that sort of blog, I’m going to define it.

It’s a room for growling in; nothing more and nothing less. See “Bleak House” by Charles Dickins which has: “This, you must know, is the growlery. When I am out of humour, I come and growl here.”.

Other definitions come from :-

  1. The Collins dictionary: “a place to retreat to, alone, when ill-humoured”.
  2. The Phrontistery list of unusual words (you have to scroll down): “a retreat for times of ill humour”.

And you can probably find many other definitions yourself.

The Growlery

The Growlery

 

Autonomous Vehicles – Who Needs A Driver?

 General  No Responses »
Oct 122013
 

If we are getting to the stage that autonomous vehicles can drive themselves – probably safer than most human drivers – do we need to think about whether a human driver is necessary at all? Although there are people who enjoy driving, not everyone does and even those who do may not enjoy it all the time.

Why bother with a driving license if you can get a robot driver to do all your driving for you?

Who Decides What Public Inquiries Should Take Place?

 General, Politics  No Responses »
Sep 292013
 

Who decides whether or not to hold a public inquiry? The government of course, and they usually make their decision on the cost of a public inquiry.

But it is rather convenient when a public inquiry delves into embarrassing subjects such as :-

Never mind the fact there has been no public inquiry into political corruption after the MPs expenses scandal. Which all goes to show that we cannot trust the government to investigate themselves. Or the police: Look at how hard people have had to work at getting at the truth behind the Hillsborough disaster.

Or in other words, we cannot trust the government to determine whether public inquiries should be held, nor the scope of those inquires. Whilst the government usually does reasonable work in setting up public inquiries, and the reason for refusing to establish public inquiries is down to cost, it is not unreasonable to plan for the worst case scenario where a future government may refuse to establish an inquiry to conceal their own bad deeds.

As such the decision of what public inquiries should proceed should be in hands of a third party. An independent third party with no past or present politicians, senior policepersons, etc. Essentially a panel of the powerless.

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