The 2013 documentary “What most schools don’t teach” highlights the importance of programming, highlighting why the ability to code is essential in many fields and the potential it has to create innovation. It emphasizes the importance of education and the ability to turn ideas into reality.
On February 26, 2013, a documentary was released that was fully sponsored by Silicon Valley’s biggest companies and starred Silicon Valley stars. It was titled “What most schools don’t teach.”
“Great ideas can only see the light of day if you can code a little bit. You don’t have to be an engineer. Whether you want to be a doctor, a lawyer, an architect, a farmer, or even a rock singer, it’s time to understand coding.”
These are the words of filmmaker Hardy Batovi, who enlisted Silicon Valley stars, professional basketball players, and even a singer to make this documentary about the importance of programming. This message isn’t just a catchphrase; it’s actually having a powerful impact on educators and policymakers around the world. Since the documentary’s release, countries have rediscovered the importance of coding education, spurring curriculum overhauls.
The importance of programming is gaining traction around the world. In the U.S., the programming education campaign promotes one hour of coding per week starting in kindergarten, and in the U.K., programming is as important as math and science in K-12 schools. In Israel, a country known for its talent development, high school students are taught at a Korean university level. South Korea began teaching programming to incoming middle school students in 2015, a trend that is becoming more than just a part of education; it’s seen as an essential skill to survive in the future. In the modern world, where digital transformation is accelerating, coding is becoming more than just a professional skill, but a tool for problem solving and creative thinking.
But what is programming, and why is everyone stressing its importance? To know, we need to understand computers and programs. A computer can be analogized to a very fast calculator. The speed of a computer is unimaginable. A PC can do 100 million calculations per second, a supercomputer can do about a quadrillion calculations per second. But these computers have a fatal flaw: they can only do simple things. They can’t do anything other than arithmetic and solving inequalities. They can’t do virtually anything by themselves. They can’t send a rocket to the moon, they can’t even tell which numbers are even or odd. How do you launch rockets and predict the weather with such a “dumb” computer? The key to solving this problem is what we call programming. In other words, the process of telling a computer what you want it to do is programming, and the files you create to make it run are called programs.
In the modern world, computers are much more than just calculators. The information they process in our daily lives is incredibly complex and vast. For example, the way we communicate with the world in real time through smartphone apps and the way self-driving cars navigate the roads and get to their destinations safely is all done by programming. Most of the technology we use every day is a collection of algorithms created to solve these complex problems, so understanding programming is the first step to understanding the power behind the technology we use and, in turn, creating new innovations.
When programming, the most important thing is the procedure for solving a problem, which is called an algorithm. An example of an algorithm is sorting numbers in order of size. Look around you and you’ll find many examples, from putting 50 books on a bookshelf in numerical order to listing over 600,000 high school seniors in order of their scores. Most of the problems we encounter in everyday life are easy to sort because the numbers are small in number and size. But solving them on a computer requires a different perspective. Imagine 50 books on a bookshelf, arranged randomly. The number of possible arrangements of the books is greater than the number of all the stars in the universe. We need to design an algorithm that works well for all of these cases.
For this reason, the algorithms we use in programming have a number of conditions. First, if there are logical inconsistencies, it’s not a perfect algorithm. Second, if there are operations that the computer can’t perform, it won’t work. The computer can’t just say, “Find the book with the largest number out of 50 books,” and do it right away; it has to break it down into several steps, such as
“Set the first book as the ‘largest numbered book’“ → ‘Compare the numbers of the second book and the ’largest numbered book‘, and reset the larger one as the ’largest numbered book’” → “Repeat the previous process with the third book” → ……. → “Repeat the process with the 50th book”
After doing all of this, the book set as the “largest numbered book” will have the largest number out of the 50 books. The above algorithm can be run on a computer because it only uses comparisons and substitutions, and we can use mathematical induction to prove that the algorithm is not logically inconsistent. But what happens if we don’t compare the last book? If the book with the largest number is at the end, the result will not be the last book, and the logic of the algorithm will be violated. Therefore, a perfect algorithm should be clear and without contradictions in the logical development of each step.
Computers have helped us a lot in our lives. However, not many people use their extremely fast computational speed to their advantage. Very few people have the slightest idea of the boundaries of what they can and cannot do, which is why so many great ideas that could be implemented are lost to the world. Ideas are not powerful on their own. Without the technical ability to turn them into reality, even the most brilliant ideas can fade away without ever seeing the light of day. So learning to program isn’t just about picking up a skill, it’s about gaining the essential tools to shape and realize our imaginations.
By learning to program, great ideas will be able to see the light of day instead of ending up in the trash, and in doing so, we will be able to create a better world, which in turn will drive the society we live in forward. This is why programming education is so important for the generations that will lead us into the future: to empower them to find their own problems, and to give them the ability to solve them, which is perhaps the ultimate goal of education.
