For Beginner

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It seems like everyone is trying to learn to code: Code.org has celebrities like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Chris Bosh telling you anyone can code; CoderDojos are springing up all over the country; the UK has made it part of their official curriculum for all grade school kids.

I think this is slightly misguided. Dont get me wrong - I do think the world would be better off if everyone had some familiarity with coding - but coding itself should not be the goal. Computers and programming are just tools. They are a means to an end.

The real goal should be to teach people a new way to think. In other words, we should be trying to teach computer science and not just coding. In this blog post, Ill explain the difference between the two, and why focusing on the right one is critical for the movement to succeed.

If you prefer a video explanation, I highly recommend Simon Peyton Jones wonderful TED talk Teaching Creative Computer Science, which was the inspiration for this post:


Still here for the written version? Great. Lets get started by asking a key question: why should you care about coding or computer science at all?

To answer that, well take a walk.

Welcome to the real world
Youre probably reading this blog post in Chrome or Firefox, running on Windows or OS X, on a laptop or desktop. Im guessing you also spent some time today reading email, checking your friends Facebook statuses, or watching a video on Youtube. Much of your life is on computers these days: your medical records are in a database; you resume is on LinkedIn; you use Google and Facebook to market your products; you use Amazon to buy them; you file your taxes online; you manage your bank account on a website; perhaps you even dabble in digital currencies.

Now, look up from your computer: in your pocket, purse, or on a desk nearby, you may have a smartphone. Its loaded with a GPS, camera, touch screen, and tons of apps. If youre in your living room, you might also have an LCD TV hooked up to digital cable, a DVR, DVD player, Apple TV, XBox, or PlayStation. The movies, music, and games you may play on those devices are packed full of computer graphics and digital audio processing.

Lets head outside. Did you walk past your car? Modern cars are designed using software, built in a factory full of robots, and stuffed full of computers. If you drive your car, you might use Google Maps to find your way around, Yelp to find a place to eat, or TripAdvisor to find a place to stay. Now, look up: somewhere above you, a plane will pass by that is controlled by auto pilot, has in-flight Wifi and entertainment systems, and is constantly communicating with other planes, traffic controllers, and its manufacturer. Somewhere above that, satellites and space stations are orbiting the earth, taking pictures, measuring the weather, and routing phone calls.

Software is eating the world. But this is only the beginning. Before you know it, youll be wearing technology, locking your doors with computers, using robots to deliver goods and clean your house, building your own electronics, running your own manufacturing plant, living in virtual reality, traveling in self driving cars, and flying to space.

The matrix is everywhere
Absolutely all of the technology I just described is powered by software. In every aspect of your life, you are surrounded by code. And the amount of code is only going to increase in the future.

Now, just because a technology is ubiquitous doesnt mean you have to study it in school. For example, we all fly in airplanes, but getting your pilots license is not part of the K-12 curriculum.

However, the tools you need to understand how to think about flying are part of the curriculum:

1. Physics and math help you understand gravity, forces, pressure, velocity, friction, and lift.
2. Biology teaches you what happens to the human body at high altitudes, with limited oxygen, and extreme cold.
3. History explains how the airplane was developed, how it evolved, and its role in travel, commerce, and warfare.

By the time you graduate high school, you have an idea of what a plane is, how it works, and how to use it safely. General purpose classes like physics, math, biology, and history teach you how to think about a wide variety of topics, including airplanes; this is in contrast to a class that teaches you how to use a tool, such as how to fly one specific type of airplane.

For the same reason, we should focus on teaching computer science and not just coding: the former is a general purpose way of thinking, whereas the latter is a specific tool. Lets look closer at computer science to get a better understanding of the distinction.

What is computer science?
Computer science is the study of computation: that is, how to represent and process information. Here are just a few of the concepts you might study:

1. Problem solving: youll learn algorithms - that is, general strategies, such as divide and conquer, recursion, heuristics, greedy search, and randomized algorithms - that help you model, decompose, and solve any kind of problem.
2. Logic: you will start to use precise and formal methods of thinking, including abstraction, boolean logic, number theory, and set theory, so you can solve problems in an air tight manner.
3. Data: you will touch information theory and start asking questions like what is information? How do you represent it? How do you model the real world?
4. Systems: how do you design and build complex systems that satisfy a set of requirements and constraints? Systems engineering is an essential topic in almost every business.
5. Thinking: one of the best ways to understand the human mind is to try to replicate it. Topics like artificial intelligence, machine learning, computer vision, and natural language processing are at the forefront of not only computer science, but also biology, psychology, philosophy, and mathematics.

Putting it all together
Lets recap:

1. Computer science is a new way of thinking. The concepts in it are useful for every single person in a technology-filled world.
2. Programming is an essential part of learning computer science by applying the new way of thinking. However, by itself, programming is not nearly as general purpose.

Confusing these two concepts is causing problems for the learn-to-code movement. Slate published an article called Maybe Not Everybody Should Learn to Code; the Atlantic wrote Should Journalism Schools Require Reporters to Learn Code? No; Jeff Atwood wrote Please Dont Learn To Code, where he asks a question that neatly summarizes the confusion:

"How [would] Michael Bloomberg be better at his day to day job of leading the largest city in the USA if he woke up one morning as a crack Java coder?"

This is, of course, the wrong question. It is the result of public campaigns that suggest that learning to code, as opposed to learning to think, is the end goal. If even Jeff Atwood, an experienced and respected programmer, is fooled by this distinction, then the average person has no chance of getting it right. The question we should be asking is:

Would Bloomberg - or anyone else - be better at their job if they improved their ability to think by learning new problem solving strategies and developing a better grasp of logic?

I think the answer here is obvious. As the world fills up with more and more technology, I think the answer becomes even more obvious. This is why we need to focus on teaching computer science and not just coding.

How to get started
The good news is that you dont need to wait for Code.org to get this message - you can start learning computer science right now! In fact, its one of the easiest topics to learn, as all you need is a computer and an Internet connection, and if youre reading this post, you probably have both.

Here are some great resources to get you going:

University courses

1. Coursera
2. Udacity
3. MIT OpenCourseWare
4. Stanford Engineering Everywhere
5. Academic Earth

1. CoderDojo
2. Girls Who Code
3. Girl Develop It
4. Code.org
5. Coding meetup Groups