Republicans, Democrats Finally Find Common Ground — On Coding

May 21, 2018 Barack Obama, Code.org, coding, education, Eric Cantor, U.S., US & World

In an increasingly divisive U.S. political climate, there’s at least one cause that has found support on both sides of the aisle — computer science education.

President Barack Obama, a Democrat, and Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor both stressed the importance of learning to to code, or write computer programs, in videos uploaded Sunday to YouTube by Code.org, a non-profit advocacy group. The joint call to action comes at the start of Computer Science Education Week, which began Monday.

“If we want America to stay on the cutting edge, we need young Americans like you to master the tools and technology that will change how we do just about everything,” Obama says in a short video. “Don’t just buy a new video game, make one. Don’t just download the latest app, help design it. Don’t just play on your phone, program it.”

Cantor, who often plays the role of political adversary to Obama, backed the President’s sentiment.

“America is the land of opportunity. We have so much before us — so many challenges to overcome and problems to solve,” Cantor says. “Coding is the necessary tool of this century to best do that.”

Cantor goes on to say that learning to code is as important as learning language and math: “It is the only way for you to prepare for the future.”

Additionally, 2012 Republican presidential candidate and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich appears in a Code.org video promoting the Hour of Code campaign as “a great, free, voluntary opportunity” to “make sure that every American understands a lot more about computing.”

In October, Code.org announced its “Hour of Code” campaign, which aimed to “demystify computer science” for 10 million grade school students by exposing them to introductory concepts for at least an hour during Computer Science Education Week. Hadi Partovi, co-founder and CEO of Code.org, told Mashable in an email that some 35,000 teachers and 5 million students from around the world signed up to participate.

“Today is when 5 million students begin learning to code, with support from athletes, celebrities, politicians, world leaders and all the top websites of the world,” Partovi wrote.

In addition to the political attention, Code.org has garnered support from celebrities and tech industry leaders. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Miami Heat player Chris Bosh, actor Ashton Kutcher and pop singers Shakira and Will.I.Am are among the prominent figures who have appeared in Code.org videos endorsing computer science education.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan explains the significance of Computer Science Education Week in another video uploaded to Code.org’s YouTube page on Sunday. The initiative is timed to correspond with the birthdate of computing pioneer Grace Murray Hopper (subject of Monday’s Google Doodle), who was born on Dec. 9, 1906, and died in 1992.

Image: U.S. Navy

Hopper earned a Ph.D. in Mathematics from Yale University and served in the U.S. Navy, helping to develop the earliest computers and design programming languages. After joining the Naval Reserves in 1943, Hopper eventually reached the rank of Rear Admiral in 1985.

Duncan also discusses why he believes computer science education is important for U.S. students.

“Our children will need computer science so that they can learn how to use that knowledge in problem solving,” Duncan says. “They will need to be able to code and they will need some understanding of algorithms, software engineering, big data, cyber security and the limits of what computers can do.”

Economics appears to be the driving force behind politicians’ unified support of computer programming education. A Code.org report suggests the demand for computer science employees in the U.S. could exceed the number of students who take up the subject by 1 million by 2020.

Image: Jose Cabezas/AFP/Getty Images

BONUS: Learn to Code for Free With These 10 Online Resources

Learn to Code for Free With These 10 Online Resources

1. Code/Racer

Made by the team at Treehouse, Code/Racer is an online racing game that forces you to learn to code quickly to get ahead on the race track. Beyond this racing game, Treehouse boasts more than 650 instructional videos; as you complete courses, earn badges for your accomplishments.

Screenshot courtesy of Code/Racer
2. MIT OpenCourseWare

MIT has opened all of its course content to web audiences, so anyone, anywhere can learn from one of the top American research institutions. Think about it: An MIT education without the student loans or cut-throat application? Not too shabby.

Screenshot courtesy of MIT OpenCourseWare
3. Udacity

Udacity believes today’s higher education system is broken. Education is no longer something that happens once in a lifetime, but rather is a lifelong experience. That’s why it has ported loads of computer science, math and physics courses online.

Screenshot courtesy of Udacity
4. Mozilla Developer Network

The Mozilla Developer Network is a resource-rich collection of documents about web development, made for anyone, from expert programmers to students just starting out. MDN is a wiki, meaning anyone can edit its pages with corrections and updates.

Screenshot courtesy of Mozilla Developer Network
5. The CodePlayer

On The CodePlayer, watch interactive presentations that explain how people built things from scratch. Once you become a coding pro, you can add your own presentations to teach others what you know.

Screenshot courtesy of The CodePlayer
6. Coursera

Online education giant Coursera brings courses from dozens of top universities online, and lets anyone take them for free. Coursera classes are now available in five languages, English, Spanish, French, Italian and Chinese, and are taught by professors from 62 universities.

Screenshot courtesy of Coursera
7. Codeacademy

Unlike some of these other online education platforms, Codeacademy focuses solely on teaching coding. You can choose from courses grouped into eight tracks: APIs, Ruby, Python, JavaScript, jQuery, PHP, web fundamentals, or combine languages into projects.

Screenshot courtesy of Codeacademy
8. Khan Academy

Khan Academy brings millions of students from around the world together to learn all sorts of digital skills, from coding to calculus to computer science theory. This means you can become an expert coder and an expert mathematician in the same place.

Screenshot courtesy of KhanAcademy
9. Learn Python the Hard Way

Learn Python the Hard Way offers free PDFs, though, if you want to take the video version of the course, you’ll need to fork up $29.

What does learning the “Hard Way” mean? The number-one rule is that you can’t copy-paste; you must type out each of the lessons in order to teach your hands the language.

Screenshot courtesy of Learn Python the Hard Way
10. HTML5 Rocks

HTML5 Rocks is a one-stop guide to learning HTML5, written by tons of contributors who work for Google, Adobe and a bunch of other places. As an HTML5 Rocks student, you’ll learn from slides, presentations and videos.

Screenshot courtesy of HTML5 Rocks