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Wednesday, 16 May 2018

Science Literacy as the new literacy

I’ve been hearing on Internet a lot of exaggeration about coding these days. As they would call it “The New Literacy”. Should you go to College and learn coding or get an online diploma or something.
Let’s study success of someone called “Jawed Karim”.
YouTube in 2018
Those titles make you click them. How Smart of YouTube?!
Mr. Jawed Karim was an undergrad in University of Illinois. His reaction to the Google+ move was “why the fuck do i need a Google+ account to comment on a video?”. Read the whole story here:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jawed_Karim#Response_to_Google+_integration
So PHP, Java, C# and Ruby combined with some server side programming. Before tackling this problem, I would like to first pose the question…

Why Mathematics is similar to Coding or Is Mathematics similar to coding?

You remember Pascal and Fermat way of predicting things. Our Educational institutions have conditioned students to just solve problems by just Pascal and Fermat. Its good knowing these things but you cannot predict everything using just Pascal and Fermat Maths. Number 2 I believe one doesn’t need to have loads of knowledge about logic in order be proficient in mathematics. I certainly am not albeit I don’t know about others. So Let’s make this clear… HTML, CSS, PHP, Ruby(Which I haven’t even touched yet) are not programming languages. I think starting with Ruby or other new comers like this is a bad idea. The first language I ever touched was Basic, actually I immersed myself into more than one languages at once. If I’m having a difficulty in C, I’d borrow concepts from C# or Java or even… Mathematics. This sounds weird. I learnt Binary and Assembly(I wish I knew it more). Third and foremost I’ve certainly loathed facing Mathematics exams for year. That is not the case anymore. I think we should learn something enough that we know its limitations. So my friends.. The answer depends on your incentive. It doesn’t matter if you want to pass tests and get a degree. No one would ever ask this question on college.
What this all has to do with YouTube. Because YouTube not only uses HTML or other markup-type languages but it also uses algorithms(unknown) for handling bulk of videos uploaded to it and how it breaks down those videos among its servers and all the formatting and composition of videos. There’s a lot going on background. But the good news is…
Yes You should go to college if you want a job at Google. But let’s have a look at Statistics or simple common sense question, “Can everyone be a Programmer?” hell no! actually yes but it would be too cruel to impose that on everyone. If you go to college you’re gonna get professors who may not know more than you about programming and stuff. But I think the moment you join college, learn anything you can about math, coding, programming and build your own platforms before even someone asks you to. Well that’s certainly what Jawed Karim did. And then sell it to Google only to have bunch of bureaucracy driving force behind all-things-youtube. Again it comes down to question of diversifying methods. Learn Ruby and a new language comes out. Its a spiral. Unless you want to be an engineer… Just getting a grasp over basic coding ideas is not a bad idea. And what is wrong if you try to get others into learning “ABCs of coding”. Talent is more but people just cannot quite make use of their skills. I cannot stress the talent I’ve seen here in Pakistan. But they need leadership. And that’s not just true for Pakistan. I’ve seen many on Internet. So even if they get a College degree, it’s still not a “Hell, Yeah!” kind of endeavor. I really wish not only people start learning these things but also lead and solve interesting problems. Less is more.
I hope I got it roughly right in my too-little-to-matter article.

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