11/29/2017

Learning to Code Will Eventually be as Useful as Learning Ancient Greek

But it's still useful

On the threshold of the Santa Fe Institute (SFI), the world’s epicenter for complexity science, a plaque in Greek characters shares Plato’s admonishment: “Let no man ignorant of geometry enter here.” While it’s far more impressive in Ancient Greek, few visitors to SFI can read it. Eventually the same will be true of computer code. It will become the Ancient Greek of the late 21^st century.

STEM has become a ubiquitous call-to-action in response to technological change, and learning to code in particular is often positioned as a panacea. The Wall Street Journal recently suggested that coding bootcamps can “rapidly retrain American workers for the 21st century.” And Apple CEO Tim Cook has said that learning to code will eventually be more important than studying English as a second language.

I agree that coding skills are important. Groups such as Girls Who Code bring coding to young women, and school systems worldwide have added coding to their curriculums. Bravo!

Please click here to read the complete article from Quartz.