--> http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/12/opinion/rushkoff-write-code/index.html?hpt=hp_c2

Learn to code, get a job

by Douglas Rushkoff, Special to CNN

This week, New York's Mayor Michael Bloomberg tweeted his intent to learn computer code by the end of the year. He joined about 300,000 other people who have signed up at CodeYear to receive free interactive programming lessons each week from the Codecademy, a web-based tutorial. I am greatly relieved.

It's time Americans begin treating computer code the way we do the alphabet or arithmetic. Code is the stuff that makes computer programs work -- the list of commands that tells a word processor, a website, a video game, or an airplane navigation system what to do. That's all software is: lines of code, written by people.

We are socializing, working, consuming, and living in a world increasingly defined by programs. Learning to code is the best way to understand what all those programs do, or even to recognize that they are there in the first place.

Just a couple of years ago, I was getting blank stares or worse when I would suggest to colleagues and audiences that they learn code, or else. "Program or be programmed," became my mantra: If you are not a true user of digital technology, then you are likely being used by digital technology. My suggestion that people learn to program was meant more as a starting point in a bigger argument.

--> more at: http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/12/opinion/rushkoff-write-code/index.html?hpt=hp_c2


PS: il delizioso libretto di Ruskhoff, "Program or be Programmed", esce ora in edizione italiana per postmediabooks.it
(si, tradotto dal sottoscritto ;): http://postmediabooks.it/2012/67programma/rushkoff.htm