This snippet comes from a Guardian interview with Tim Cook:
Cook said: “I think if you had to make a choice, it’s more important to learn coding than a foreign language. I know people who disagree with me on that. But coding is a global language; it’s the way you can converse with 7 billion people.”
From Kirk McElhearn’s response:
I agree with Mr. Cook that coding teaches people logic and many other skills, but suggesting that it allows you to converse with 7 billion people is Trumpian foolishness. (If you follow Mr. Cook on Twitter, you’ll notice that he occasionally posts tweets in languages other than English. His minions clearly give him the texts, but it’s surprising that he doesn’t post code to converse with his Twitter followers.)
At a strictly surface level, I think Kirk has a point. Clearly, programming languages are not intended as conversing languages. You’d never chat with someone in Swift.
But digging in a bit, I took a different meaning from Tim’s comment. Programming languages are a common currency, a common language shared by many different cultures.
That said, is it more important to learn coding than a foreign language?
Food for thought.
A very self-interested quote by Mr. Cook: the more people who know how to code, the cheaper it is for Apple to hire them. Apple just doesn’t care about the supply of multilingual people.
The real value in learning to code is in being able to more readily manipulate data and operate in the information economy. I think that is far more valuable than a second language for most people.
First of all, let’s dispense with the hyperbole. You owe Cook an apology for comparing him to Trump. If Trump had said something along these lines, it would have been, “who needs to speak to anyone but Americans?” Or, “If you learn to code, you can communicate with earthworms on Neptune.”
Though cook’s exaggeration is obvious, it’s not about self interest. You learn German, you can communicate with a country or two. Even if you learn Chinese (which one? Mandarin or the other one?) you can only serve the needs of potentially quite a bit less than a quarter of the population. If you learn to code, then you can hire someone to localize the app for all languages, and serve the greatest good.
But yeah, it was hyperbole. What was the context of his statement?
It was needlessly binary and hyperbolic. But then so is the current obsessive focus on STEM over the humanities in schools.
An alien could land here, pick up some sort of digital device, open it and use an app that doesn’t rely on language to communicate and, most likely, understand and use it. Coding allows that.
And yet even humans have trouble using iTunes…
And what you describe isn’t coding; it’s design.
The app requires coding. Plus iTunes is not all apps.
You haven’t read the article (but why would you?). It’s not about localizing apps, but about the cognitive benefits one derives from learning languages.
And a toaster requires engineering. So what’s the point? User interfaces aren’t coding, they are design. Users don’t see code; they don’t interact with it. They interact with elements that interact with code.
The point is coding is something that can be used, as a tool, to communicate to almost anyone.
There was once a push for a universal language, so seeing things in this light is just about communicating with anyone. One could say learn to speak english if you want to be an airline pilot. I love languages and learning them, as I like the differences in culture. Does not have to be an either or. Nor should it be.
STEM and humanities. Left-hemisphere, right-hemisphere. A good mind needs both to develop and function properly.
Trumping my various thoughts about the article itself is the appealing notion that “trumpian” will at some point become a broadly accepted synonym for foolishness, recklessness and general idiocy.
No argument about what’s needed. But humanities are being sidelined in favor of more notionally “practical” subjects.
Almost. The ability to code is a terrific skill that I was unable to master, way back before personal computers became ubiquitous. Glad it only took me three years of college to figure that out. 😉
That my other work there took me in the direction of graphic (and eventually UI) design is a happy accident. And I’d likely have made more progress learning another human language.
There are some that can learn to code but can’t learn foreign languages. They should probably be allowed to do so.
Coding is certainly not a common language, however. The idea is preposterous. A method name will be a verb, and if you’re an English speaker it’ll be an English verb. If you speak French, it’ll be a French verb.
I don’t think that’s a realistic concern. A friend’s child attends kindergarten in a forest. Yes, a fucking forest. 🙂 And I don’t mean just a few days, either, it’s a year round thing. When it rains hard enough, they sometimes work under shelters. When it’s cold, they wear thicker clothes. They do art with what they find there, but they also find out about the things they find.
Nobody’s throwing out the humanities, and nobody’s throwing out other experiences.
The thing is though, they’d be no UI without the code at the base of it all. I understand Tim’s point. To some degree I agree with it, in some ways I don’t. But I do get what he is saying.
As Kirk said “They interact with elements that interact with code.” Remove that last word and you have nothing.
Are you describing an American public school? Even if you are, I believe it’s easy to find outliers.
By the same logic, everyone should learn carpentry or mechanical engineering.
It’s not really the same as a way to communicate though, as in the importance and scale of it though.
Or maybe just an English verb regardless. In every computer language I’m aware of, the keywords and libraries are in English (sometimes abbreviated, but still obviously derived from English).
I think it would be quite difficult to become a programmer without at a decent written understanding of the English.
How come? An engineer needs do create blueprints. The difference is physical versus digital.
A lot of languages are English only, but there are a number of languages that are some other language only and there are some languages that have been localized.
Such as?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-English-based_programming_languages
It’s largely a thing of the past though as the utility is minimal (outside nationalistic countries like China, Russia, North Korea, etc.).
I think learning at least basic coding might give a person a better feel for what’s going on in the computer and subsequently make it easier for them to use other software. I see people around me who have no idea how computers work being horribly inefficient in their job as a result.
As far as communication goes, I’d argue that learning to read music and play an instrument would serve you much better. You could take ten people who speak ten different languages, put a copy of a Bach Brandenburg Concerto in front of them and they could play it together.
“More important” is an empty question.
“More important” for whom, to what end is the real version.
Learning a human language and learning to write software are nearly only similar in that they’re called “languages”, in my experience (as someone who learned mediocre German via schooling, and is a professional software developer).
We can’t come close to answering the questions until we frame them correctly.
Just a science-y note: the whole “hemispheres” thing doesn’t really stand up to How Brains Really Work.
How do you imagine an app communicating without “language”?
(“Coding” certainly doesn’t – you need to know the language of the code to understand it!
And equally, from posts below, if the UI is letting you express or understand concepts, we’re talking visual depiction, which is fair.
Though likewise that hardly needs a digital device, mere paper or a chalkboard would do – “an app to facilitate visual communication of ideas” begins to sound like the app isn’t doing a whole lot … or we’re handwaving AI-level “translate to and from visual communication” as “code”.)
But would they be “communicating” anything?
Seems like they aren’t.
I don’t count it as a modern day language, but this was true of HyperCard’s HyperTalk… at least at some points. You could open a stack’s script and see system identifiers and control structures in whatever language the OS was using, but your identifiers would be in whatever you typed them in.
You’d think, but on previous projects with multi-lingual contributors I’d regularly see programmers who speak other languages writing comments, identifiers and everything else they could in their own language and calling library functions in English.
There is no right brain-left brain. That was faux pop psychology in the 70s. I learned that nonsense in social work school back then, along with a lot of other bunk such as Rolfing, dropping acid expanding the mind (Steve Jobs loved both), etc.
I wasn’t talking about localizing apps specifically. My point was saying Tim Cook was choosing coding over language. He specifically says his point was about reaching people though one’s efforts being more efficient. One might expect such a response form one of the world’s leading experts in just-in-time manufacturing. I probably didn’t make my point as clear as I would, and got off topic a bit. But localization was me addressing where I thought he was going in terms of how much of humanity might one be able to influence.
I guess I also found it strange that someone writing an article about cognitive benefits of learning a language would even present him that specific binary choice.
Vi havas vere bonan punkton. (That is esperanto.)
Throw in a dotard and you have a winner!
I shoulda just said this! Thank you.
Thanks for the list. Some interesting (if obscure) examples.
I am disturbed by Mr. Cook’s view that one has to choose between a second language or coding.
I learned 4 languages when I was young, and that did not stop me from learning 5 or 6 programming languages.
That’s not his view though… He said if one had to choose. Many schools require several years of foreign language classes, but few require any computer classes and many don’t even offer coding classes. Tim was commenting on educational priorities.
Cook once again proves he’s a clueless sycophants to his buddy Trump.
there is no benefit to learning code, unless you want to be a coder.
In 20 years,we won’t know the language or syntax of the tools we use to build apps.
I do like toast though.
That scarcely matters. In fact, I’d strongly encourage people to learn three programming languages well instead of one to perfection.
The hard part of coding isn’t the syntax of a language, it’s the portable concepts that apply to almost every language. You’ll absolutely learn those in almost any language you pick up, but you won’t really understand what they are until you can compare a few languages.
That’s not to say I think everyone needs to learn programming. It would be nice if everyone learned enough about computers to stop thinking of them as mystical objects, though.
It’s alright. Better with jam.
I think everyone should dip their toes in a lot of things. 🙂
It’s no different than a physicist unable to speak Greek, they are just symbols that have specific functions and do things.
I agree. But I still want a carpenter building my cabinets. I say this as someone who knows* how to code. Coding is a valuable skill, but so it being able to read a balance sheet.
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At this point in my life (mid-40s), I’ll learn another programming language if I need to. However, my energy goes to learning foreign languages because the experience of conversing with someone in their language (that’s not yours) is so incredibly enriching.
Maybe for keywords, which most languages don’t have that many of. But definitely not for libraries. Knowing English is a huge advantage when it comes to figuring. Especially in Cocoa, with its lengthy and descriptive names.
Must make for an interesting mix!
Half of it is going to be “english” no matter what. If you subtype anything from the platform SDK (or the vast majority of third party libraries), you’re going to have a bunch of English methods. Many languages have English conventions (e.g. Java getter/setter) that you can’t really get away from.
Tim Cook is the one who presented that binary choice in his interview. He said, IRRC, “If I had to choose…”