Lots of valid points here. And I agree with you on...some of them. Others, not so much.

This is either you associating with the wrong 'professional programmers' or you running into folks graduating from non-ACM accredited schools, or you mistaking information systems or information technology for computer science.

It actually has more to do with the sheer numbers of kids that play Minecraft. I totaled the statistics for one of the servers I manage...3176 unique players in a month of uptime. Obviously, not all of them are going to be super interested in the programming/logic side of Minecraft, but there's very few days where I don't have at least one or two people discussing relatively in-depth programming questions via ingame chat.

I see a LOT of inspiration and ambition, and a LOT of latent talent, and they will 'get there'.. but they're not there yet as far as *professional* code goes.

Oh, obviously. What Minecraft does is give kids an easily accessible programming interface with immediate, "real world" applications. It fosters that interest, the inspiration, and gives it an outlet while it matures. Minecraft offers a complexity level for any level of programmer.

At my level, I'd be using a central server to manage resource gathering with state-saving, set up just-in-time resource delivery to crafting systems, or create a centrally managed RFID identification network. At the entry level, someone else can dig a hole or place blocks. And everywhere in between, from setting up sorting systems to automating base defences...underneath it all, it's providing a constructive outlet for an interest that might someday become a career in computer programming.

My point: a lot of self-taught programmers, unless they've had formal education in another technical field, are going to have holes upon holes in their background, and no amount of Mindcraft API bs is going to rectify that.

I agree with your premise here, that enthusiasm and self-teaching needs to be complemented by structured learning of the stuff that the learner doesn't know they need to know. Personally, I think the structure of "formal education" has shifted dramatically since you were in school, and resources like Codecademy, Udacity, Coursera, and Khan Academy are allowing kids to self-learn in ways that rivals, if not exceeds the traditional classroom-based formal education, but that's a completely different conversation.

As a sidenote, the bit about "Mindcraft API bs" is just...unnecessary. Most tools have their place. Minecraft is a very effective tool at fostering inspiration and talent into learning and understanding. Few ten year olds care about datatypes, objects, or the concept of a client/server architecture, but if you put those things into the context of making a mod for Minecraft, a solid percentage of them now care *a lot*. In my mind...that's a good thing.

Every 'real' software engineer I've run into has s switch in their thinking a couple years in at which point decision logic is not even second nature, but subconscious. You act like it's a skill, at the mature engineering level it's part of the autonomic nervous system of a computer scientist who writes software for a living.

That "subconcious level" understanding of programming has to start somewhere. By definition, a skill is the ability to do something well. To do something well, you have to start out by doing something poorly.

Obviously, someone in highschool encountering decision logic for the first time and going nuts with it in a virtual world isn't going to be working on the same level as a professional with years of experience under their belt. But given two applicants for an entry level position, one of whom has a degree, and the other has a degree and six or so years of "hobby programming" under their belt...guess which one I'm going to hire?

It's not you personally per se, but coders of your generation...

No. This isn't a question of generation. "My generation" is no more a single cohesive entity than "your generation" is. And just like your generation, each of us are individuals with different skills, weaknesses, and assumptions, just like you.

The kids who get interested in computer science, they start running into limits in their knowledge...like needing to store and fetch data. This prompts a search for ways of doing data management...which brings them to the concept of data structures. Giving kids a framework to explore the extent and limits of their knowledge (eg Minecraft modding) is a far better solution than brushing them off with "go write a real application". Responding to curiosity with a an intellectual put-down (instead of explaining *why* a concept is important) is precisely the reason many kids today think computer science is dry and boring.


Point of order, I was building application servers and prototyping electronics back before the Internet and cell phones were a thing. I just didn't jump into programming until the late '90s.


tl;dr: Encourage talent and inquisitiveness with knowledge and level-appropriate tools, don't stifle it with rhetoric.

Nah, there's nothing unironic about my inability to grow facial hair.

I've actually met a decent number of programmers/sysadmins/etc who also have interests in stuff that isn't conventionally associated with technology. Random example, my dad is a software engineer turned university professor, and he keeps bees.

Have to disagree with you here, as both a blacksmith and "one of today's kids".

Anvils are typically purchased, because "blacksmith" doesn't equate to "foundry".
Many kids today are just as, if not *more*, motivated to ask questions than the "older generation". This includes asking "how can I do something my IDE doesn't support".

Extra info on the blacksmith bit: most blacksmith shops are designed around the idea of forging metals, not smelting them. This is part of why a blacksmith's anvil was and is one of their most prized possessions...it used to be nearly irreplaceable. Current technology has made cheap anvils fairly available, but you can't just buy a 300 pound anvil at your local Home Depot.
The process of creating an anvil is one of the few things that you can't do with traditional blacksmith tools. If you have an anvil and a single hammer, all of your other tools can be made from bits of metal or bar/rod stock. Punches, tongs, other hammers...even the forge itself can be made by hand. But the anvil has to be a solid piece of metal, and the only way to do that is with a shop designed specifically for anvil making, or with modern metal casting equipment.

Moving on from the anvil bit to the "kids these days, gerrof mah lawn" bit...I would hazard that the typical distribution of interests has migrated outward in the bell curve. Technology today makes it easy for an unmotivated child to spend the majority of their day immersed in facebook/instagram/pinterest/twitter/etc. But it also makes it much easier for a motivated child to find knowledge.
An example from my personal experiences: I ran Minecraft servers for about 3 years, and had one of the more successful modded servers online in early to mid 2014. A lot of the players were in the 8-18 years old range. And quite a lot of them were interested in figuring out and using interesting game mechanics to their advantage. We're talking about kids in their early teens learning digital logic so that they can build a piston based elevator with floor selection buttons. I know more teenagers who have a solid grasp of programming decision logic because of ComputerCraft than I do professional programmers who learned via a 4 year computer science school.

Obviously, it's just my own personal experience. But I was one of the kids who started out with an IDE scratching out HTML, and now I'm a linux system administrator with four or so languages under my belt.

[citation needed]

Sounds reasonable, you'll most likely be getting a raise out of this.

[citation needed]

Basically came here to say exactly this. Anyone who tries to tell you different is either relating secondhand info (Pinterest/Tumblr/Facebook/etc said it was easy so it must be true!) or is trying to sell you something.

Raising your own food, in quantities sufficient to feed a family (assuming 4 or more people here) is *HARD* and takes quantities of time on a daily and weekly basis. As a software developer with a full time career job who also contributes to open source projects in my free time and does contract work on the side, my time tends to be in high demand.

I have all the necessary skills...16 years growing up on the farm gave me a wide range of crop management and animal husbandry skills. But I choose not to, due to the time commitment and the degree to which it ties you down (eg, plants need daily watering/weeding, animals need fed morning and night, etc).

Right there with ya. I'm a software developer and system administrator...It'd probably take me a month or so to read up on malware techniques and come up with a delivery mechanism and a way to do distributed CNC via RSA or PGP key.

Still on this side of the fence. But I'm watching the other side carefully.

I wish I had mod points. This, right here, is why other 1st world residents look at 'MURIKA and shake their heads, and resolve never to live here.

(obviously, we're still better than places that are openly corrupt and allow the crime cartels to run entire cities...but replace "crime cartel" with "large above-the-law corporation" and it's starting to look uncomfortably similar...)

Yeah, I pulled up the comments expecting a string of "That's no moon!" and "Now we know where the Sun Crusher is doing practice runs".

If you're using apt, you can just grab a list of manually installed packages.

A quick google search returns multiple ways to do this. It took me all of 20 seconds to find a one-liner that spit out a full list.

pics or it didn't happen.

Or better yet, use Minecraft to teach them the basics of logic and programming.

A modpack with ComputerCraft, RedLogic, and possibly a couple of "just for fun" mods like Thermal Expansion or RailCraft would be a solid starting point...if you want to put together something more complex, contact me on IRC (esper.net, #minechem channel) or via Twitter and I'd be more than happy to help you out.

Disclosure: I develop the Minechem mod, and help maintain a couple of different modpacks.