[Bosnjak]

What do you think is the Western Society so developed that you have to know to code to be literate.

what do you think is this so or not

I can code Javascript and it is language you can you for every purpose and if you do not know this today are you not illeterate.

[mikema63]

Are you today illetarate if you can'write a Software Code

No that's silly. Coding is a useful skill, but not a necesary one.

[Lexington]

No that's silly. Coding is a useful skill, but not a necesary one.

No, no no.

We programmers are working on skynet as we speak.

Beware that phone next to you, it's about to sprout arms and ATTACK YOU OH MY GOD ITS BEHIND YOU!

[Harmattan]

Are you today illetarate if you can'write a Software Code

I (still) am a software developer.

a) In most fields programming is completely useless, in very few fields it is indispensable. Calling this being illiterate is completely ridiculous imo.

b) Knowing how to program brings you about nothing as everything you want to do requires tens of thousands of hours of work even for a veteran programmer. That's a fucking job, not a movie where you hack the alien mothership in thirty seconds after following a Python mooc on Youtube.

c) The ridiculous hype about programming is nothing more than a brilliant marketing and lobbying coup from the big IT enterprises to increase their wageforce and decrease their costs. They were helped by a few brainwashed wageslaves who have been told they are masters of the world by the masters of the world. Oldest trick ever used by humans; they never learn.

d) I think that programming will have mostly disappeared before twenty years, in favor of natural language and AI. Cobol and cockroaches will survive.

e) Even if I were wrong on the last point, I know that all languages enter maintenance rot after 10-30 years and join Cobol and Fortran. They yield in front of newer and higher-level concepts and languages. Python and JS are both about 20 years old, all programming languages suck, we are due for big shifts. Ok, JS may survive. Fuck.

[Rich]

I could be wrong but I suspect there's a lot more Fortran programmers now than there were in 1970, before Pascal and C completely "obsoleted" Fortran. In fact Fortran is a living language the next version is expected to be released in 2018

[Harmattan]

I could be wrong but I suspect there's a lot more Fortran programmers now than there were in 1970, before Pascal and C completely "obsoleted" Fortran.

In 1970 computers were still large and expensive furniture, there were very few programmers overall at this point and academics were only starting to widely use them by learning electronics and assembly. There are probably tens of thousands times more programmers nowadays, so the fact that Fortran's users also increased is only incidental.

But I remember the 90's where every future scientist was taught Fortran (academics are Fortran's market). Nowadays they are all taught Python or R, and this is where the highest concentration of scientific libraries are.

In fact Fortran is a living language the next version is expected to be released in 2018

It only means that there are still users. Cobol, too, sees improvements and there is a market around it. Yet those are nothing more than maintenance languages.

[Lexington]

I could be wrong but I suspect there's a lot more Fortran programmers now than there were in 1970, before Pascal and C completely "obsoleted" Fortran. In fact Fortran is a living language the next version is expected to be released in 2018

At the company I worked for for 6 years, we had a ton of old Fortran code dating back to the 80s. (er, sorry, FORTRAN, it is a syntax error to write FORTRAN in small letters without wearing a blue tie) In fact, because of compiler issues, we never moved past Fortran 77. Then they leaped into C and C++ finally. My lasting legacy at that company: I overloaded a comma operator.

The company eventually decided "no more fortran", so literally you could not checkin new fortran files. Clearly, there's the loophole that you could just extend an existing one, but no one wanted to do that.

[fuser]

Yes.

I also consider anyone who can't fly an aeroplane to be illiterate.

[Red_Army]

I consider anyone who says aeroplane to be illiterate.

[Eauz]

Most people are generally illiterate. We accept that as long as they can function alright in society, everything must be fine.

[fuser]

The only literate person on this forum is Cherry.

[pugsville]

I can see the case the computer system usage skills, how to find information, how to evaluate information can be critical to education. Far more so than coding.

I'm a coder, long time, seven a lot of fads come and go. There is no such thing as artificial intelligence, was passes for AI air increasingly sophisticated ways of faking it. such AI has server practical limitations. Predictions that AI and natural language will replace coding are just wrong. That said there is not an exhaustible demand for coders and developers. Vast amounts of work in IT is just wasted, and a few people writing the write stuff makes the real progress (though picking the write stuff from the infinite universe of crud is impossible) Coders are here to stay, how many is unknowable right now and which segment of the increasingly specialised profession the have long term future is pretty much bad guesswork at best.

The Computer industry is really really slow moving and getting slower despite the huge sweeping and manically fads and ideas that often only contain a few microns of actual progress and useful stuff (sometimes out weighed by the good stuff run out of time by the wining fad) Small parts move really really quickly at times, but the vast dross of everything else is treacle.


Everything in computing is built of the past mountain of backwards compatible stuff needed to make it work. Generally patches upon patches , layer upon layer rather than a new system.

[Dagoth Ur]

The only literate person on this forum is Cherry.

[Typhoon]

I really wish I had been taught a computer language at school, the option was just not available. As I was going down the science/business route it would have been far more useful to me now than the traditional German language lessons, the one year of French was a complete waste of effort.

[Rich]

Are you today illetarate if you can'write a Software Code

I can code Javascript and it is language you can you for every purpose and if you do not know this today are you not illeterate.

Um well I hope your JavaScript is better than your English.

[Godstud]

A laughable suggestion.
Coding is only useful if your work needs it. Most jobs do not require it, in any form.