http://www.idkfa.com/v3 idkfa: syndicated http://www.idkfa.com/v3/v_thread.php?thread_id=5929&msg_id=5930 I go back on forth on this one. Partly due to my professional bias, partly because many people get by just fine without it. Then again, a lot of people get by without being literate, but the degree to which that is culturally acceptable varies wildly. I separate computer literacy into three areas: automation, coding, and reuse. Being literate in automation means being literate enough with a machine (human or otherwise) to automate menial/repetitive tasks. For example, this is knowing about copy-paste, undo/redo, being able to use key commands to make a job faster (Ctrl-A rather than click+drag-for-years), or understating the concepts of "batching" or "macros" within a specific context. Automation concepts are much older than modern computing interfaces. I often find people who consider themselves computer illiterate but still maintain excellent process that lets them perform complex tasks quickly, repeatably, and with little error. However, the rigidity of automation also tends to damage people's psyches. They clutch to their coffee-stained, dog-eared process manuals, fearful of ever losing them. They will not deviate, and they will not seek a deeper understanding of a process in the event that it breaks. However, simply being "code literate" is not necessarily taking on that deeper understanding either. Knowing how to read code, while daunting at first, is not incredibly difficult. Computer languages are designed with small, concise syntaxes so that the humans writing them don't have to keep too much in their little heads at once. They "encode" an idea using symbols and numbers in a specific order. If you can parse math equations, you can get a sense of code's purpose, and generally read all but the most exotic computer languages. However, that does not make you able to understand the task being performed by the code, why it's being performed, and how the solution was arrived at. And more kaiden@idkfa.com (kaiden) Mercy General Mon, 27 Jan 2014 13:59:29 -0900 http://idkfa.com/v3/v_thread.php?thread_id=5929&msg_id=5930 http://www.idkfa.com/v3/v_thread.php?thread_id=5929&msg_id=5929 I know Josh wants everyone to code. Scrotor@idkfa.com (Scrotor) Mercy General Mon, 27 Jan 2014 11:47:22 -0900 http://idkfa.com/v3/v_thread.php?thread_id=5929&msg_id=5929