Question of the day #4:

Not much. I was required to take "keyboarding" in middle school, did almost everything in high school on the computer as a part of my usual classes and took a basic information security class in college.

I would love to take more IT classes and have considered doing community college so I can stay relevant in the useful trivia department at work.

 

I'm too old for that shit.

In my High School Physics class, the teacher had this new device called a calculator. Way easier to use than a slide rule.

I started in IT as a glorified repair man and just moved around as necessary. I had a knack for networking and it seemed to pay well, so that's the direction that I took..

A keyboarding class somewhere along the line would have been nice, when I went to school, that was considered a secretarial skill.

 

My school had exactly one (1) computer...it had only one program as far as I could tell, it was "The Hobbit" which was a word based adventure game.

 

If memory serves me right, all computer focused classes were optional. I ended up taking a class that was dedicated to Microsoft Office, and some editing programs. Things like gimp and photoshop were barely touched on and linux was on the agenda but we never had one lesson on it. But I did get certified in Microsoft Office as part of my final exam.

 

We had a Apple IIe in kindergarten, but it was only there for a few days. In 3rd grade, I wrote my first 'program' to paint an advertisement by drawing lines in the BASIC code. It was the first time I stayed up late to do a computer project. The next time was in 10th grade we had BASIC programming class. I taught myself C++ at home (it should have been a high school class).

I was a co-op helping with IT at the public school system in high school.

Now, I'm sure that there should be some computer/programming for some students. Knowing how to automate some tasks and making the computers do what you want is cool. But, I think that only the students who really like it and are good at it should take more classes. It is like how I would have been better off taking C programming in High School instead of English Lit. Even technical writing would have been better then a lot of classes.

But, we need to encourage more students to be doctors, nurses, dentists, and that right now. Eventually, once AI happens and those jobs are replaced by programs that can write themselves and learn, then schools can figure out what the next big thing to teach is.

 

Completely agree with this.
I had to take an intro class in college.
They were teaching us Fortran and I remember hating it, thinking "This is total bullshit. If I need a computer to do something in the future I will be buying a program not spending forever writing my own."

 

In first grade, we had a small computer lab and got to visit once a week. Very, very basic tasks, like, "open this program. Type your name. Type your name in a different color. Print the page." I also vaguely remember some kind of typing/spelling game. Second grade was more of the same.

I moved to a smaller district in third grade, and I don't remember anything computer-related there until middle school.

In sixth grade, I was in GATE (Gifted And Talented Enrichment), which meant I got to another school one day a week. There was a computer lab there that we always spent an hour or so in. Some simple programming was involved, stuff like "make a slide show and add music" (this was in the pre-Power Point days.)

Seventh...we had some kind of computer class, but I don't remember what it was called. Seems like we did a lot of spreadsheets and played a lot of Oregon Trail. Oregon Trail days were the best days.

Ninth grade was "keyboarding;" really just "typing," except we had Macs instead of typewriters. I joined the newspaper staff second semester that year, something I stayed with until graduation. Not a computer class, obviously, but everything was done ON computers. That was pretty much it for high school. I took two Microsoft Office classes in college...which I loved because the prof didn't care about attendance as long as we turned in our homework. I submitted all my stuff online and only showed up for tests...it was great!

Most of the stuff I learned was outside of school. My uncle has a BS in...something computer-y (it only now just occurred to me that I don't know what his official degree is...strange.) Anyway, he always let me play around on his custom-built machines. I was pretty much just into games then, but I learned to type playing Kings Quest & Space Quest, and I learned how to navigate DOS (man, I miss DOS.) I learned basic html commands from playing Neopets. I picked up a few tricks from being married to a computer tech, and now, hey, I work in a computer repair shop (that my SO owns), and I'm getting into programming!


I think it's rad that schools are starting to make it more of a requirement now. I see people every day that have no idea how to work their computers beyond facebook...and not just older people. I will admit to enjoying when someone tells me I'm a genius because I turned their wifi back on, but it's also frustrating to see someone just shut down mentally when computers are involved. I worked at a bank for a few years where something like a mouse coming unplugged or a program needing updates was cause for panic & mayhem. And on the other end of the spectrum, I've helped out with a programming club at an elementary level...LEGO Mindstorms is a lot of fun, and gets the kids thinking both more logically and more creatively. I would definitely like to see more of that.

 

We didn't have pcs in high school. I'm not sure even if they were available to the public.

 

PCs in school s really only started appearing when I was in high school. Suddenly, there was a computer lab full of Apple IIe's. I recall learning some basic computing (BASIC code, anyone remember "Turtle Graphics"? etc.). Fast forward to my kids in primary school, and every class has computer time, where they are learning about *using* a computer. The school also has a bunch of iPads for class usage. This is Martian's point - we are teaching them how to use something, not how to programme and not how the insides actually work.

They are covering things like Scratch (Scratch - Imagine, Program, Share), which is a programming tool, so at least they are getting their heads around the logic required. There is also a robotics group that are learning to make robots do "stuff" (yes, very descriptive!).

Am I concerned that my coding job is disappearing? Not just yet.

 

Might be showing my youth here, but state of the art $3000+ computers were I believe in the Pentium I 80 mhghz range when graduated high school (Chicago as it was codenamed then was released around that time). At home we had a 486 DX2 66Mghz Gateway 2000 tower which was very nice indeed.
My school has all donations at the time so my options there included:
An original IBM XT running at 4.77 mghz
newer systems with CGA and EGA displays
basically they all ran DOS 3.3 or earlier which made it interesting seeing what commands were missing compared to the DOS 4 & DOS 5 I was used to. There was this fun pirate game I remember playing at school which had CGA graphics.
I fondly recall the C64 systems the school had when I was in elementary school, and plan on buying one myself relatively soon. Probably a C128 as it has significant improvements and has the option to put it in C64 mode.

 

I started with a class in Fortran programming, as a college freshman, in the mid-1970s. Punched cards and all that.

 

I mean, I don't think fourth graders should be learning C++ or anything, but Scratch and Python would be beneficial. I loved chemistry and biology in high school, but I'm not directly using anything I learned in those classes today—and they were required to graduate. And even if learning to code isn't directly beneficial (though I think it might be in the future), the kids are still getting practice with logical thinking, problem solving, editing skills, and of course, patience & persistence.

I'll admit my point of view may be colored by personal experience, though. I went to several science panels at Dragon Con, and programming came up in ALL of them. As in, "learn to code, even if it's not directly related to your field, because it will be extremely helpful." And totally personal anecdote here, but maybe if I'd had more CS classes, instead of just playing around with games and Paint and stuff, I would've realized a lot sooner that it was something I was good at, and acted accordingly.

Definite thumbs up on computer literacy, though. Sweet jesus, please, let's do that in every school.

 

mine didnt, but i will say this. being able to use a computer is very important now a days. we all know i am a transmission man, with that said 90% of all new cars use networking to talk to modules on cars, and there are a shit load of modules on newer cars

 

Cars have tons of programming in them now. It isn't always good, but it is interesting what they are doing. It is even more interesting being a hacker and figuring out the CAN commands to make the equipment do what we want it to do.

All Your Drive Unit Are Belong to Us. - EVTV Motor Verks

 

No. I graduated HS in '79, college in '89. In '89 MacIntosh ruled GUI, while the Pentium 386-16 chip that allowed PCs to run Windows properly (more or less) was new and considered a major computer technology breakthrough.