Making Programming Look Cool?

In today’s high-tech age, people of all types and ages use technology that has been made so user friendly that they rarely stop to think what it takes to bring that technology to life. When it comes to young people, this lack of technological thinking has seemingly led to less interest in many important technology fields. That is something that Hadi and Ali Partovi have decided to attempt to change, as reported in a recent New York Times article.

Back in the not too distant past, when computers and technology were a bit more clunky, people tended to think more about the technology behind it. “Operating PCs in the early days meant learning arcane DOS commands, which helped get people…interested in programming.” With better technology, those interests in programming are waning, and increasing that interest is what the Partovi brothers are seeking to do with their new Code.org company and video. Hadi says “Living in the tech industry, it’s very clear to me their No. 1 problem is the shortage of engineers. There’s no end to what’s going to be touched by software.”

With less young people thinking of programming, and with programmers often thought of as “uncool," this field and other related tech fields have been seeing a decrease in interest, while there has been a continual growing need. This new venture is seeking to return the coolness factor to the tech field, through informational films and other enlightening methods in an effort to fix the “alarming mismatch between the relatively small number of Americans being trained in computer science and the employment opportunities that await them.” The article states:

There are several statistics that tell that story: the number of United States students receiving bachelor’s degrees in computer science, and the percentage of high school students earning credits in the field, are both on the decline — even though there will be 150,000 computing-job openings every year for the next seven years, by one estimate. Microsoft has gone so far as to send its engineers into high schools to help teach computer science.

One of the toughest aspects they mention is the lack of qualified teachers. For those who have the programming skills, it is hard for them, especially in this economy, to justify being a teacher when they can get a much higher salary working in the field itself.

While films like “The Social Network” about Facebook “have not helped dispel the image of the typical coder as a freakish, white boy genius stuck in a basement,” Hadi and Ali hope they can alter that perception, and draw more interest to the ever-growing technology career field.

Image courtesy of Freedigitalphotos.net