Learning To Code and Losing My Mind (Reprise)
Note to Self
WNYC Studios
4.7 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 20 August 2014
⏱️ 13 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Coding is not for everybody. We admit it. But we should all take at least a peek under the hood of the computers and devices that power our lives. It's empowering.
Starting at a screen full of cryptic code is daunting, confusing, and might just well up some latent math anxiety. That's how New Tech City host Manoush Zomorodi felt, which is exactly why she decided to dive in head first. She signed up for a one-day computer programming intensive. This episode chronicle's how it went.
In short: It began a jumble of doubt and worry with baggage from high school math holding her back. "I am going to have to commit an act of coding to bring my anxiety level down a notch," she decided by late morning during the theory portion of the day. Yet within hours, Manoush had made a mostly functioning web app for her kids. "The mere act of making it myself made it less scary," she concludes.
Along the way she gains a greater reverence for the language of our machines and for the people fluent in them. Manoush wrote about this wild ride in more detail here, when a previous version of this show first aired.
Also in this episode:-
Keith Devlin, author of "Introduction to Mathematical Thinking" and many other books, describes the kind of thinker that tech firms are desperately looking for. The new tech economy needs mathematicians, but he says, of the kind of math that is not so much about numbers, as problem solving and pattern recognition. These skills can be learned!
If you liked this story, please click here to subscribe to our podcast on iTunes / RSS to find our other episodes. We're on Twitter too: @NewTechCity
Now watch Manoush learn to code, despite her 10th grade math teacher!(This episode is a longer version, with additional information, of our show that aired on January 8.)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, friend. This is an episode of Note to Self, but from when we used to be called New Text City. |
| 0:06.6 | Same good content. Just the old name. Enjoy. |
| 0:12.9 | Summer is winding down. Your beach days are numbered. And maybe you're thinking, |
| 0:17.6 | hmm, what are some new skills I could use as I go back to school or back to work? |
| 0:23.2 | Everyone is talking about learning to code. Maybe I should too. |
| 0:28.0 | Yeah, well, that's what I thought anyway. This is New Text City. I'm your host, |
| 0:32.6 | Manuch Summerodi. And earlier this year, I decided to confront my fear of coding. |
| 0:38.7 | Let's just say there's a reason I majored in English. |
| 0:45.2 | I signed up for a one-day intensive class offered by a British company called DECODED. |
| 0:50.8 | It just opened up recently here in New York. |
| 0:53.7 | I've warm welcome to everyone to Coden a day, New York. |
| 0:56.7 | Very exciting day. |
| 0:57.4 | Picture a bright airy loft in Midtown with a healthy organic buffet set up next to a long table, |
| 1:03.9 | fully charged MacBook Airs placed carefully at every seat. |
| 1:07.8 | My name is Ali. This is John. We should be guiding you on the path to digital enlightenment today. |
| 1:12.1 | Ali Blackwell and John Ridpath swore we would learn by doing. They promised we would make our own app |
| 1:18.6 | up in one day and that we would understand a little bit more about this new relationship |
| 1:23.3 | being forged between humans and machines. |
| 1:25.6 | Computers are super fast but fundamentally stupid. But together we can change the world. |
| 1:31.1 | And if the computers are learning how we think, then we've got to understand how they think. |
| 1:34.6 | Each student had paid or convinced their company to pay about $1,500 for this nine-hour course. |
| 1:42.0 | Yeah, not cheap. There was the founder of a travel startup and MTA marketing executive. |
... |
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