Sami Tikkanen Explains What Happened to Computer Science Education in Finland and Elsewhere
Related: A farewell to Finland, an occupied territory
"Sompi" (the nickname of Sami Tikkanen) is developing a lot of decent software and does mechanics. He made his own operating system, IRC software, etc.
Yesterday he shared with us some thoughts about what happened in his country while acknowledging the problem isn't limited to one single country:
I read the article "New Junior Developers Can't Actually Code" by Namanyay and felt that I also need to write something about the subject.Background: I am a self-taught computer user from Finland, born in 1993. I have owned a computer since I was nine years old. I started using Linux in 2005 and have always been interested in maintaining my own server. I have learned how to do that, by doing it. I have also taught myself how to code in various programming languages, including C, Assembly, PHP, JavaScript and BASIC (not in any particular order). I have written my own operating system for IBM PC compatible computers.
Almost no-one from my generation can use computers as good as I do, but they at least understand the basics. They are able to install programs, and they are (or at least used to be) able to understand the basic concept of server-client- communication. They know and understand the concept of files and directories. They easily understand the concept of a command line interface and learn few commands quickly. And why wouldn't they? All of that is stuff that a human with a normal level of intelligence should be able to do.
The same things cannot be said about the so-called "generation Z". They cannot use computers. Most of them literally don't understand the basic concepts - and this is also true for those who study computer sciences. They don't even have the very basic knowledge that would be required to actually understand the more advanced concepts of computers. MOST OF THEM DON'T EVEN HAVE A COMPUTER. Often they get a personal computer from their school, and that's usually the first computer that they have ever had in their possession.
Based on what I understand, there are usually two ways how the students return the programming assignments: They either write the piece of code and send it to the teacher, who then compiles it and sees that it runs properly, or the student uses PuTTy or some other SSH client to connect to a remote computer, compiles their code there and runs it. The "school laptop" has all necessary programs for that pre-installed. The student does not know that they are remotely using a computer that runs some kind of *nix operating system, nor do they know that they are using the SSH protocol to do that. They don't understand any of that stuff - they are just "using PuTTy" to do some things.
The "school laptop" is usually very restricted in what it can do. The Gen Z student does not have root privileges to it, and they cannot install programs to it. They are not allowed to run any other programs than the pre-installed ones on it, which also means that they cannot run and test their own code locally. They cannot install a virtualization software and create virtual machines to try different operating systems or any low-level stuff - they don't even know what a virtual machine is. They cannot even grasp the concept of it, as they are also unable to do with stuff like command lines and filesystems.
The thing that strikes me the most is their complete lack of interest towards any of this stuff, and also technological things in general. In addition to the fact that they don't know anything about computers, they are also not interested to learn. Somehow it does not bother them at all that they lack crucial information to even understand what they are doing. They just want a programming job and are everything else is indifferent to them. Actually knowing something about the workings of some technical device is considered a "boomer thing".
Becoming a good programmer is impossible without knowing the basics and also advanced concepts of computing. In universities the bar has already been set very low to make sure that enough students pass the courses. It is now possible to get a computer engineering degree without being able to install an operating system, or even knowing what an operating system is, so of course they don't know how to code.
The students alone are not to blame. There are also flaws in the teaching system. In Finland we have this thing called "digital skills teaching" in all levels of education. The teaching is done so that the student doesn't actually learn the concepts or anything that would be useful in general - instead it mainly focuses on using a specific computer program. For example, when studying spreadsheets, the curriculum is very carefully structured so that every learned thing only applies to the newest version of Microsoft Excel, and not to spreadsheet programs in general. The computers in the class didn't even have the Scroll Lock button, which is one of the most important buttons for navigating efficiently in a spreadsheet table. Naturally word processing in schools also isn't about actually learning word processing - instead they only teach how to use the newest version of Microsoft Word. And the same problem exists with profession-specific programs too in the upper levels of education.
The computers have also changed. In the past the computer used to do everything that the user put it to do. In that sense an IBM PC is not really that much different from those archaic computers that ran programs from a punched tape. Instead of a punched tape you now had a boot sector. The only thing that changed was the media that is used to pass instructions to the computer - the computer still did everything that the user wanted it to do. But that's not the case anymore. Most new computers have all kinds of boot restrictions and other DRM stuff and cannot be used to try-and-learn low-level stuff anymore.
We wrote about this issue many times before. The 'broligarchs', a collective which typically created anything of their own, do not want the general population to possess skills that let it be anything other than passive consumers. β
"In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is in for one hell of a hard time"