I've admitted many times in this column that I actually enjoy programming, and mostly do it for fun. In fact I far prefer programming to playing games. Given my other interests, people are often surprised that I don't enjoy chess, but the truth is that the sort of problems it creates don't interest me: I simply can't be bothered to hurt my brain thinking seven moves ahead when all that's at stake is beating the other guy. I did enjoy playing with Meccano as a kid, and did make that travelling gantry crane. I can even imagine the sort of satisfaction that might arise from building Chartres Cathedral out of Lego, though having children myself rendered me phobic about the sound of spilling Lego bricks (and the pain of stepping on one in bare feet). But programming is the ultimate construction game, where your opponent is neither person nor computer but the complexity of reality itself.
Object-oriented programming is especially rewarding that way. You can simulate anything you can imagine, describe its properties and its behaviours, then - by typing a single line of code - create a thousand (or a million) copies of it and set them all working. Then call that whole system an object and create a hundred copies of that. It's all stuff you can't do in the heavy, inertial, expensive world of matter: making plastic bits and pieces by 3D printing may be practical, even useful, but it lacks this Creator of Worlds buzz.
Since I'm so besotted by programming as recreation, I must surely be very excited by our government's "Year of Code" initiative, which aims to teach all our children how to write programs - or about "coding" as the current irritating locution would have it? Actually, no I'm not. I'm perfectly well aware that my taste for programming as recreation is pretty unusual, very far from universal, perhaps even eccentric, a bit like Base Jumping or worm farming. The idea that every child in the country is going to develop a such taste is ludicrous, and that rules out coding for pleasure as a rationale. It will most likely prove as unpleasant as maths to a lot of kids, and put them off for life.
But what about "coding" as job skill, as vital life equipment for gaining employment in our new digital era? Well there's certainly a need for a lot of programmers, and the job does pay well above average. However you can say much the same about plumbers, electricians and motor mechanics, and no-one is suggesting that all children should be taught those skills. The aim is to train school teachers to teach coding, but it makes no more sense for every child to learn programming than it does to wire up a ring-main or install a cistern. Someone who decides to pursue programming as a profession needs solid tuition in maths and perhaps physics, plus the most basic principles of programming like iteration and conditionality which ought to be part of the maths curriculum anyway. Actual programming in real languages is for tertiary education, not for the age of five as the Year of Code seeks.
The whole affair reeks of the kind of gimmicky policy a bunch of arts and humanities graduates, clueless about technology, might think up after getting an iPad for Christmas and being bowled over by the wonderful new world of digital communications. Their kids probably already know more about "coding" than they do via self-tuition. However there are those who detect a more sinister odour in the air. For example Andrew Orlowski, curmudgeon-in-chief at The Register, has pointed out a network of training companies and consultants who stand to make big bucks out of the Year of Code, in much the same way firms did during the Y2K panic: they include venture capital company Index Ventures, which has Year of Code's chairman Rohan Silva as its "Entrepreneur in Residence", and US training company Codecademy. Organisations that are already reaching children who are actually interested in programming, like the Raspberry Pi foundation, appear to be sidelined and cold-shouldered by the hype merchants: the foundation's development director Clive Beale has claimed that "The word 'coding' has been hijacked and abused by politicians and media who don't understand stuff”.
Personally I'd love to believe all children could be taught to gain as much pleasure from programming as I do, but it's unlikely. Like singing, dancing, drawing, playing football, some can do it and like it, others can't and won't, and the notion that everyone has to be able do it for the sake of the national economy has unpleasantly Maoist undertones, with backyard code foundries instead of steelworks.
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