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Education

Code.org Boasts It's 'Served' an Hour of Code To 910+ Million Students (twitter.com) 19

theodp writes: The Hour of Code home page captured by the Internet Archive on Dec. 17th boasted that 835,581,513 students had been 'served' an Hour of Code. Three days later, however, the numbers had jumped to 910,905,104 served, presumably due to counter updates that were deferred during this year's event. "It has been a HUGE year -- and decade! -- for computer science education," tweeted tech-backed Code.org. All over the world, more than 910 MILLION students have started an #HourOfCode since we began this journey in 2013. Thank YOU for being part of this global movement....!"

The Hour of Code Leaderboards consistently suggest the city in the world with the greatest Hour of Code participation is tiny Boardman, OR (population 4,490), perhaps because of the Amazon data centers that an AWS Case Study notes power Code.org.

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Code.org Boasts It's 'Served' an Hour of Code To 910+ Million Students

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  • I used to want everyone to learn how to program, because it's so fun, and gives you power. Come enjoy the world I live in!

    But now so many people have become programmers just for the money, and it's really ruined the industry. You can see it all over the place: programmers who don't enjoy themselves. New management techniques have been developed without joy to keep these programmers on task, and they are inefficient because they don't enjoy it. At least the money good, small consolation.
    • by wilsong ( 322379 )
      Good money is a product of scarcity. The more people that learn to "code", the less attractive the money will become.
      • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
        Thats the why of unions, guilds, university. Really difficult exams, tests, limits.... a profession.
        If only a few % in every decade can pass... the people who do have the ability, IQ get a great wage.
        Setting exams so few can follow them up into the profession.
        Decades of never having to worry about an influx of low cost "tech" workers.
        The funny part is that "computer science education" spending results in no great gain for a nation.
        Want to become like the USA and set computer standards globally for dec
  • To put things in perspective, according to UNESCO estimates [unesco.org], there are about 50 million students enrolled in primary and secondary schools in the U.S., and about 1.35 billion worldwide.

  • Is this from whence all the low contrast "coders" come? The world can do without them.

  • Lots of nations tried "computer science education" for all. Lots of NGO, gov, philanthropists, charity efforts...
    Money that could have supported the best in every generation was used on computers and code for people who would never use/recall that "computer science education"...

    Want to really do "computer science education"?
    Take a math class, test the students for a few years.
    Find the students with the ability to learn, study and who can do the more complex work.
    Offer them some "computer science educa
    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      And fail. Friend of mine failed CS way back at University, but did well in Mathematics after that. Intelligence is not enough. Some specific talents are required in addition.

      • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
        Re "Some specific talents are required in addition."
        Thats what all the testing, exams are for.
        The ability to go back and try again.
        The funding to have the best of a generation computers for the top university students.
        To allow the private sector to invest, fail, try again and again, find more funding.
        Now that free market funding will be lost to a "computers" for all.
        The people with the skills to change a generation of computing ... get less...
        All the non academic people get to use a computer for hou
        • by gweihir ( 88907 )

          Well, agreed. But it is not "testing for mathematics", unless you do mathematics relevant for practical CS and you do it in an engineering way, not only a theoretical one. Some people good at CS can also be good at mathematics, but quite a few are not.

          What I definitely agree is that anybody good at this must not only be offered the best education available, but also a very good technical career path with excellent conditions. This whole "computer" thing is far, far to important to half-ass it, as is current

      • You can be highly intelligent and still do poorly in something you don't care at all about. There are a lot of jobs that require a high degree of intelligence or many of the same skills that make a good programmer, but I"d be awful at that job because I don't find any enjoyment in it or actively dislike some part of it.

        If you're doing software development there are a lot of soft skills that are highly important, but just learning programming has a pretty high degree of overlap with math in terms of the k
  • Impressive. Even more that they seem to be proud of their worse than useless actions.

  • McDonald has served Billions. Doesn't mean their food is gourmet.

    It's about Quality, not Quantity.

    This is a bullshit metric. How many:

    * Actually enjoyed it?
    * Passed? You know, actually demonstrated working knowledge of problem solving?
    * What percentage wants to continue with it?

    I guess those stats those aren't important when you have a degree mill. /s

    Reminds me of the Murphy's Computer Laws:

    Weinberg's Second Law
    If builders built buildings the ways programmers programmed programs the first woodpecker that co

  • Hosting their videos on youtube is not very smart. Youtube is blocked in most schools. You would think "code" experts could figure out how to host their own.
    • Yes but then theyâ(TM)d need to pay for servers dc space bandwith etc, uch easer to let youtube advertisers do that, allso youtub is a place people are used to getting content from, intead of a random site
  • Total 2020 world's children, 2020 both sexes, 660,000 (5-9 yrs), 640,000 (10-14 yrs), 610,000 (15-19 yrs) from https://population.un.org/wpp/... [un.org] or 1,910,000 ... We need either an Hour of Grammar or Hour of Statistics."Over 100M students have tried an Hour of Code" on https://hourofcode.com/us [hourofcode.com] , globally ( since 2013 ) is maybe believable, not the "910 MILLION students" in the Tweet.

    Or maybe the botnets have passed the singularity and are educating their offspring to mutate themselves.

  • Let's see the results, how many of those millions learned anything? How many of them were spaced out and paid no attention?
    • Could you repeat that I just got my Social Security check and I'm sooo buggered on sweet tokay I didn't catch what you said

So... did you ever wonder, do garbagemen take showers before they go to work?

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