Code Literacy
Reading and writing is the central medium, which people use to connect via books, manuscripts, text messages, health checkup forms, and shopping sites. In a case where a child becomes an adult without being capable of reading or writing, people term this as a societal failure. Coding on the other hand is also important, and hence it has become an essential skill in several successful scale-ups as computer programmers capitalize on the smooth streaming of information, thus solving numerous issues (Rowinski 5). Due to its growing role in introducing new economically viable enterprises, the society should promote code literacy throughout the culture, and should advocate for it to be taught in schools in learning basic skills, for example, reading, writing, and computation.
Coding has influenced various industries including the music industry where a music producer, Ebony Oshunrinde, is coding fresh beats (Rowinski 6). Coding has heightened the demand for data mining proficiencies as organizations and governments are trying to make sense of assembled data in quest of fresh insights. Coding has already altered the landscape of numerous fields and entrepreneurship is the most noticeable with hackathons happening almost weekly all over the globe, presenting fun social coding occasions available to all types of people.
Therefore, it is time to place coding firmly on legislators’ list of items. The majority of public schools structures date back to a moment when the level of the coding incident was beyond belief. Since coding is emerging as a central skill laid down for entrepreneurs, a rising volume of jobless youth all over the globe are already motivated by the massive demand for workers and good earnings that are offered for coding jobs. Large firms and organizations have made investments in code literacy programs. Google, for instance, has recently pronounced a partnership venture with Code academy, a rapid growing project instigated in 2011 to provide free online coding tutorials (Rowinski 7).
With regard to the past and ethnographic literacy studies, once people are literate, their literacy can be utilized in any way they want (Coleman 16). They may possibly be marked by the principles and values with which they acquired the knowledge of reading and writing. However, majority of these people may not go anywhere with the skills gained regarding coding and some will make Facebook apps or other amusement sites. Nonetheless, some will discover more about coding and reflect on what it means that the information system is built on codes. They may possibly reflect more on issues concerning intellectual property and policies relating to digital rights. They may also come up with ways in which the software could be used to enhance public infrastructure, just as what Code for America promotes (Coleman 18).
Various institutions, for example, schools, hospitals, scientific labs, and any other social or cultural structure of contemporary society functions on software (manovich 10). Therefore, technology class should not be viewed as specialized, but it should be seen as another necessary class together with others, such as Spanish or Math classes. The main idea behind integrating coding in schools’ syllabuses is not to produce a generation of computer programmers. The main reason is the fact that coding is a gateway to wider learning, and a channel to assist individuals realize their dreams using technology. People should stop thinking of coding as a field of only the smart geeks, and start seeing it as an ordinary language that will help them test ideas and hence improving their lives. To encourage more people to join computer science lessons, schools should reconsider what can fulfill a language prerequisite, and consider using coding as a language.
However, despite the several advantages that coding may bring forth, both the basic argument and approach are fault. The idea of describing coding as the new literacy takes a narrow description of what literacy actually means. Terming coding as the new literacy means that wielding a pen and a paper is the old literacy. Just like writing, coding is also a mechanical act, and what have been done is just improving the medium in which the coded information is stored (Coleman 20).
Reading and writing presented people with external and distributable storage. Coding on the other hand presents an external and transferrable computation. It enables people to offload the thinking they have to do to complete some process. To accomplish this, people need to be shown how to feed instruction to the computer, although that is teaching people the way to place words on the page. People need the skill that will enable them to reflect on how things are being computed. Through this, they will not only be recording their thoughts, but also the models of the world that enable them have the thoughts. Coding involves breaking people’s systems down into actions that are understood by the computer, which represents a primary disconnect in intent (Coleman 21). In coding, most programs do not indicate how things are spread across cores or the way objects ought to be outlined in memory. Coding should not be viewed as the new literacy since the computer revolution has not yet occurred and teaching students coding as a subject will probably not make it happen. To attain the potential of computers, people need to concentrate on the basic skills that will allow them to exploit external computation.
Works Cited
Coleman, Gabriella E. Coding freedom: The ethics and aesthetics of hacking. Princeton University Press, 2013.
Manovich, Lev. “Cultural software”. From new introduction to Software Takes Command manuscript, 2011.
Rowinski Dan. “Computer Programming for All: A New Standard of Literacy.”(2012)