Daily Titan – Gerard Avelino
“Foreign languages and computer languages are two completely different concepts, but lawmakers across the country have begun proposing that high school students be allowed to fill their foreign language requirement with coding classes…The rationale behind these proposals is rooted in the rapidly changing world of information technology. Jobs in programming and various information technology fields continue to be in high demand…The choice, however, between computer languages and natural languages draws from a false equivalence: the way humans communicate with computers is not the same way that they communicate with each other…For computers, language is — quite literally — mathematics: rules and symbols that manipulate numbers to achieve an intended result. For humans, language is used to communicate ideas and express thought.”(more)