"Learn to code". What would be a new expression to replace it, for Twitter employees?

[Doug]

Learn to show up at a job and work.

 

[oze]

I know this is satire for poops and laughs, but despite that, competent developers will never be uttering any of those phrases. I was a returning adult at uni and every CS class I had was absolutely packed, more butts than seats. When it came time for finals there were maybe 8-10 people taking the exam. I have nieces and nephews I'm trying to teach and convince to go into the field, but they're more about playing on their phones than how they actually work. It's a giant misconception that the "youth" are tech savvy. Most are not, they just know how to get around in an OS or that the "hamburger" button means "more options."

That's exactly how it was in the late 80s at Purdue Cal. 1st semester, 1st day: 70 people in Calculus I. After midterms, maybe 30. Day of the final: 15. 2nd semester was about the same. 3rd semester, at least for EEs, was the big weedout. About 10% of the people sitting in class on the first day of Electromagnetics and of Multivariate Calculus were still there for the respective final. I would guess that out of the 150 or so total freshmen who started in the combined Electrical and Mechanical Engineering curricula, 30 or so graduated with degrees in one or the other.

 

[Alamo]

That's exactly how it was in the late 80s at Purdue Cal. 1st semester, 1st day: 70 people in Calculus I. After midterms, maybe 30. Day of the final: 15. 2nd semester was about the same. 3rd semester, at least for EEs, was the big weedout. About 10% of the people sitting in class on the first day of Electromagnetics and of Multivariate Calculus were still there for the respective final. I would guess that out of the 150 or so total freshmen who started in the combined Electrical and Mechanical Engineering curricula, 30 or so graduated with degrees in one or the other.

Yes, but STEM is the next big diversity target, so actual objective standards will be dispensed with in favor of making sure that the appropriate number of non-binary whatchamacallits pass each class.They will do to the value of an engineering degree exactly what has been done to the value of every other degree on campus. Engineering graduates and education degree graduates will be indistinguishable…

 

[indyblue]

This is a somewhat depressing thread for me.

I've been in the tech field since '87 when I got my first job as an electronics technician at AT&T Bell Labs. I was self taught in electrical/electronics tech with no degree, so getting that job was a big break for me. Kudos to the management that recognized my potential there. I began as just a contract electronic assembler but over time I proved that I excelled in troubleshooting, breadboarding and prototyping complex circuitry and within 18 months was promoted to Jr. Technician status and eventually Sr. tech and was finally hired on as an employee as a Technical Associate and finally a Senior Technical Associate.

I was good the the physical real-world aspect of it all and it didn't hurt that I was mentored by some of the finest EE's around. But designing circuitry and the math involved escaped my simple mind.

When electronic R&D began slowing down in this country I made a lateral move into IT. Started doing DOS/Windows desktop support for the engineering staff. Then the team got a Sun server and several diskless workstations running Solaris. I was handed the systems and documentation and told to set up the development environment for the software engineers to do DSP programming. I taught myself everything UNIX, setup a 10bT network and was the defacto sysadmin for many years.

I have always been interested in programming, but the subject is daunting for me, I just couldn't figure out where to begin or how to learn the details of advanced programming with it's thousands of functions and API's.

Today as a Linux sysadmin I can write simple bash/php/sql scripts and modify existing code but I still cannot fathom how to advance into full programming. It has always been a mystery to me how one goes about learning it all. "Learn to code" my ass, not everyone can handle it even if they want to.

 

[oze]

Yes, but STEM is the next big diversity target, so actual objective standards will be dispensed with in favor of making sure that the appropriate number of non-binary whatchamacallits pass each class.They will do to the value of an engineering degree exactly what has been done to the value of every other degree on campus. Engineering graduates and education degree graduates will be indistinguishable…

Reminds me of those days. There were exactly 3 females in our class that made it to graduation. I don't know how they even breathed, being constantly surrounded by a bunch of panting nerds. Present company excluded, of course. I was 27 and married when I went back for my EE, and the 18-19 year olds called me Dad.

 

[oze]

This is a somewhat depressing thread for me.

I've been in the tech field since '87 when I got my first job as an electronics technician at AT&T Bell Labs. I was self taught in electrical/electronics tech with no degree, so getting that job was a big break for me. Kudos to the management that recognized my potential there. I began as just a contract electronic assembler but over time I proved that I excelled in troubleshooting, breadboarding and prototyping complex circuitry and within 18 months was promoted to Jr. Technician status and eventually Sr. tech and was finally hired on as an employee as a Technical Associate and finally a Senior Technical Associate.

I was good the the physical real-world aspect of it all and it didn't hurt that I was mentored by some of the finest EE's around. But designing circuitry and the math involved escaped my simple mind.

When electronic R&D began slowing down in this country I made a lateral move into IT. Started doing DOS/Windows desktop support for the engineering staff. Then the team got a Sun server and several diskless workstations running Solaris. I was handed the systems and documentation and told to set up the development environment for the software engineers to do DSP programming. I taught myself everything UNIX, setup a 10bT network and was the defacto sysadmin for many years.

I have always been interested in programming, but the subject is daunting for me, I just couldn't figure out where to begin or how to learn the details of advanced programming with it's thousands of functions and API's.

Today as a Linux sysadmin I can write simple bash/php/sql scripts and modify existing code but I still cannot fathom how to advance into full programming. It has always been a mystery to me how one goes about learning it all. "Learn to code" my ass, not everyone can handle it even if they want to.

Don't sell yourself short. Modern languages are so much more intuitive than the nasty structured stuff we dinosaurs had to use. Some of my worst nightmares involve hauling shoeboxes of punch cards across campus to the computer building, handing the box(es) of cards to the guy at the Fortran IV compiler, and pray that a comma wasn't in the wrong column on one of the cards. Debugging was a nightmare.

If you can write Unix sorry, Linux shell and SQL, you can learn today's much less-rigorously demanding languages.

By the way, which Bell Labs location were you at? I worked at the Lisle/Naperville campus from 1988-2017.

 

[GrammatonCleric1982]

Learn to flip burgers.

Learn to clean up roadkill

 

[jamil]

This is a somewhat depressing thread for me.

I've been in the tech field since '87 when I got my first job as an electronics technician at AT&T Bell Labs. I was self taught in electrical/electronics tech with no degree, so getting that job was a big break for me. Kudos to the management that recognized my potential there. I began as just a contract electronic assembler but over time I proved that I excelled in troubleshooting, breadboarding and prototyping complex circuitry and within 18 months was promoted to Jr. Technician status and eventually Sr. tech and was finally hired on as an employee as a Technical Associate and finally a Senior Technical Associate.

I was good the the physical real-world aspect of it all and it didn't hurt that I was mentored by some of the finest EE's around. But designing circuitry and the math involved escaped my simple mind.

When electronic R&D began slowing down in this country I made a lateral move into IT. Started doing DOS/Windows desktop support for the engineering staff. Then the team got a Sun server and several diskless workstations running Solaris. I was handed the systems and documentation and told to set up the development environment for the software engineers to do DSP programming. I taught myself everything UNIX, setup a 10bT network and was the defacto sysadmin for many years.

I have always been interested in programming, but the subject is daunting for me, I just couldn't figure out where to begin or how to learn the details of advanced programming with it's thousands of functions and API's.

Today as a Linux sysadmin I can write simple bash/php/sql scripts and modify existing code but I still cannot fathom how to advance into full programming. It has always been a mystery to me how one goes about learning it all. "Learn to code" my ass, not everyone can handle it even if they want to.

Specialization. Then you keep adding skills to the stack. Today full stack software engineers is the trend. So not just various languages and coding. Front end. Web services. Backend. Middleware. Configuration management. Build. Deploy. Automation. Cloud. Devops.

Probably most of the journos telling displaced coal workers to learn to code would cry.

 

[indyblue]

Don't sell yourself short. Modern languages are so much more intuitive than the nasty structured stuff we dinosaurs had to use. Some of my worst nightmares involve hauling shoeboxes of punch cards across campus to the computer building, handing the box(es) of cards to the guy at the Fortran IV compiler, and pray that a comma wasn't in the wrong column on one of the cards. Debugging was a nightmare.

If you can write Unix sorry, Linux shell and SQL, you can learn today's much less-rigorously demanding languages.

By the way, which Bell Labs location were you at? I worked at the Lisle/Naperville campus from 1988-2017.

INH (Heritage Park) Consumer Products Labs at 6612 E 77th. The three office buildings inside 69 and I 465.
This was one of my product teams when desiging the first digital recording answering system.

I really miss working there, this country lost a great asset when it closed.

I just did a little test project since I just rejoined Fall Creek Valley Conservation Club hoping it may help them.
I took their pdf membership form and converted to an html fillable form. I will offer it to them to make signing up simpler without having to read folks bad handwriting to avoid mistakes. Might eventually integrate itwith a mariadb to insert the info directly. I have a freind who is an Oracle pl-sql wizard to help me through the programming.

 

[Salty]

Forget to code.

 

[jamil]

I forgot to code today. I meant to write some code. Just got busy with other stuff and forgot. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[indyblue]

Specialization. Then you keep adding skills to the stack. Today full stack software engineers is the trend. So not just various languages and coding. Front end. Web services. Backend. Middleware. Configuration management. Build. Deploy. Automation. Cloud. Devops.

Probably most of the journos telling displaced coal workers to learn to code would cry.

This is my current dilemma. Although I am an experienced competent sysadmin, companies want sysadmins that can do DevOps automation. I have tried learning some of that (can do basic saltstack, puppet, etc). I get stuck really quick because the documentation assumes you are a programmer. I look at the example yml and similar pseudo scripts and wonder where some of the things used come from and how they came up with it.

I get lost just trying to figure out CloudForm on AWS.

 

[BugI02]

Some of my worst nightmares involve hauling shoeboxes of punch cards across campus to the computer building, handing the box(es) of cards to the guy at the Fortran IV compiler, and pray that a comma wasn't in the wrong column on one of the cards. Debugging was a nightmare.

You are much older than I thought, possibly not that much younger than I am

 

[TheGhostRider]

“Thank you for calling tech support”
“Have you tried rebooting?”
“I’m sorry I can’t seem to fix your issue.”
“Let me escalate your ticket to my manager”

 

[GodFearinGunTotin]

Want to super size that?

 

[DoggyDaddy]

You are much older than I thought, possibly not that much younger than I am

My first programming language was Fortran IV, but we didn't have to punch our own cards (General Motors Institute in 1978). Still took a whole day to get your compile results back.

 

[JCSR]

 

[jamil]

This is my current dilemma. Although I am an experienced competent sysadmin, companies want sysadmins that can do DevOps automation. I have tried learning some of that (can do basic saltstack, puppet, etc). I get stuck really quick because the documentation assumes you are a programmer. I look at the example yml and similar pseudo scripts and wonder where some of the things used come from and how they came up with it.

I get lost just trying to figure out CloudForm on AWS.

Eh, maybe you're making it harder than it is. CloudFormation isn't really programming. You're specifying settings to provision the various AWS components. The hard part is knowing what all the settings are and do. It's a lot to learn.

 

[jamil]

“Thank you for calling tech support”
“Have you tried rebooting?”
“I’m sorry I can’t seem to fix your issue.”
“Let me escalate your ticket to my manager”

You forgot, "Try clearing your browser cache."

 

[indyblue]

Eh, maybe you're making it harder than it is. CloudFormation isn't really programming. You're specifying settings to provision the various AWS components. The hard part is knowing what all the settings are and do. It's a lot to learn.

I get it, my point is simply it’s not as simple as “just learn to code“.
Especially for non-technical people. programming concepts, best practices, and design patterns can take years to get right.