I think you completely missed this part of the comment:
> The thing that bothered me, though, was that he didn't even think that he could do that, purely based on where he was from and what he saw around him.
There are many many kids at the primary and secondary school level, and especially minorities and kids from poorer backgrounds, who don't know they could possibly even get into this line of work. It's not like saying you want to become a doctor or a lawyer, which requires a ton of money and time for a post graduate education. They could get started coding now and relatively cheaply, they just don't have the right people directing them and showing them the tools to do it.
Having volunteered at the high school levels teaching kids html/css/js it's very clear there is a total disconnect between what these students could be doing with technology and the ability of our school system to provide it. What really upsets me about these sorts of comments is it really comes from a background of ignorance.
I don't mean any disrespect by saying that, but have you tried to talk to kids at this level and see what the situation might be like in public schools that don't offer any resources for learning how to code? And if you had that experience do you have the perception that we aren't failing students miserably by not getting them more comfortable with technology? If you have then great share your experience, but I find it troubling people can write it off as simply "oh, coding isn't for everyone" when you really don't have much experience to draw from other then how you learned your skills as a developer.
Clearly not every profession is for everyone, but we need to be giving more kids a chance and our schools have not been up to the challenge outside of teaching the standard subjects in their curriculum that we've been teaching for 100's of years. It's good to keep in mind cheap computing and widespread internet access didn't really occur until the mid 1990's. It's barely been 20 years and it's going to take some time for our schools to catch up, but you first have to admit there is a problem.
> The thing that bothered me, though, was that he didn't even think that he could do that, purely based on where he was from and what he saw around him.
There are many many kids at the primary and secondary school level, and especially minorities and kids from poorer backgrounds, who don't know they could possibly even get into this line of work. It's not like saying you want to become a doctor or a lawyer, which requires a ton of money and time for a post graduate education. They could get started coding now and relatively cheaply, they just don't have the right people directing them and showing them the tools to do it.
Having volunteered at the high school levels teaching kids html/css/js it's very clear there is a total disconnect between what these students could be doing with technology and the ability of our school system to provide it. What really upsets me about these sorts of comments is it really comes from a background of ignorance.
I don't mean any disrespect by saying that, but have you tried to talk to kids at this level and see what the situation might be like in public schools that don't offer any resources for learning how to code? And if you had that experience do you have the perception that we aren't failing students miserably by not getting them more comfortable with technology? If you have then great share your experience, but I find it troubling people can write it off as simply "oh, coding isn't for everyone" when you really don't have much experience to draw from other then how you learned your skills as a developer.
Clearly not every profession is for everyone, but we need to be giving more kids a chance and our schools have not been up to the challenge outside of teaching the standard subjects in their curriculum that we've been teaching for 100's of years. It's good to keep in mind cheap computing and widespread internet access didn't really occur until the mid 1990's. It's barely been 20 years and it's going to take some time for our schools to catch up, but you first have to admit there is a problem.