We are in the midst of the “hour of code” week. I am a bit unclear on the intended purpose of this focus. I have no quarrel with the vocational opportunities in knowing how to code as I have benefited greatly from developing this proficiency. I did it later in my life and it certainly required that I spend hundreds of hours in acquiring the basic skills I needed. A more formal educational approach probably would have been helpful.
I am less of a fan of efforts to promote “coding for all’ and the benefits of computational thinking. I tend to view coding for all as not accomplishing much and in the big scheme of things I think brief exposure to other skills and knowledge bases could be more beneficial. I admit that coding for all offers an exposure to what coding is and this exposure may encourage the later commitment that is required to develop skills that are useful. Computational thinking is kind of a mystery to me. One reaction is that it is an alternate way of describing problem solving skills which I know can be developed in a variety of ways and some experts argue are domain specific and thus of limited transfer value. Note at one time educators believed learning Latin would have transfer value and some still make similar arguments for activities such as chess.
Another argument is that some exposure to coding takes the mystery out of experiences that influence our daily lives and few truly understand. This used to be called computer literacy which fell from favor as teaching things that were transitory skills and knowledge and could best be acquired in the context of actual application rather than as a stand alone experience.
It is certainly the case that Google’s algorithms and AI are opaque and not available for examination anyway. Consider that to understand issues such as the commitment of so many to Facebook and the types of information that get shared, the basics of how we engage in online behavior are not best understood by learning to code but by understanding the findings of Pavlov and Skinner. Perhaps we should invest in a few hours of basic psychology for all.