You should learn to program: Christian Genco at TEDxUTA
Christian Jenco argues that learning to program is essential because modern life, like historical labor, is increasingly comprised of automatable data manipulation tasks. He shows that computer science fundamentally extends human capability, allowing individuals to automate tedious work and solve problems that previously seemed impossible. The key message is a call to action to learn programming now, because this fundamental skill is the ultimate tool for unlocking personal productivity and societal innovation.
## Speakers & Context
- **Christian Jenco** — President Scholar at the Lyall School of Engineering at SMU; passionate advocate for computer programming.
## Theses & Positions
- Most jobs, even those not obviously technical (e.g., painting, art, teaching), are eventually reduced to forms of data manipulation.
- Computer science is a fundamental tool that extends what the mind is capable of doing, similar to the advent of reading, writing, and pen and paper.
- Society needs to embrace these new computational tools to solve modern problems, rather than reverting to inefficient analog methods.
- Learning to program teaches invaluable "tools of thought," such as breaking large problems into tiny, incremental pieces or iterating quickly to get working versions.
- Computers are advancing faster than humans, evidenced by Watson beating Jeopardy contestants and machines now beating humans at Rock, Paper, Scissors.
- Laziness, when coupled with computational thinking, leads to efficiency (Henry Ford quote: *if you have a difficult task to do give it to a lazy man and he will find an easier way to do it*).
## Concepts & Definitions
- **Data manipulation:** The core process underlying many modern and historical tasks that can be automated via code.
- **Programming:** A skill presented as the fundamental mechanism for optimizing tasks, from data verification to web development.
- **Process of iterating:** The ability to quickly create working versions of a solution and refine them, rather than being afraid to start over.
- **Social coding/Open Source:** The practice of having people globally collaborate on a project without geographical separation.
- **Mors law:** The law stating that the average processing power of a computer doubles every two years.
## Mechanisms & Processes
- **Automation Example:** A Reddit user, csnl, wrote a computer script to perform manual data verification and validation on an Excel table, completing over a thousand records with 99.7% accuracy in 5 minutes, replacing a department of people.
- **Historical Analogies:**
- Directing traffic via human personnel (compared to signals).
- Hand-delivering printed daily news sheets.
- Storing analog movies on tape with late fees.
- Textbook reliance (non-searchable).
- Classroom settings (replaced by YouTube/Khan Academy).
- **Computational Power Comparison:** The speaker compares the processing power of a modern smartphone to the Apollo guidance computer, noting the smartphone could calculate for one million Apollo 11s simultaneously.
- **Motorization Principle:** The shift from one central power source (steam engine) to decentralized, individual electric motors that can be individually turned on and off.
- **Modern Application:** A computer scientist can use a website to stream video (solving the rude video store/late fee problem) or create a linked database (solving the non-searchable textbook problem).
## Timeline & Sequence
- **1400s:** Analogy drawn to the shift in literacy, where only the clergy had access to reading.
- **1961:** NASA scientists engineered the Apollo guidance computer due to calculation requirements for the Moon mission.
- **Pre-1961:** Necessity for complex calculations on the Apollo mission necessitated advanced computing hardware.
- **Recent Past (Current):** Evidence includes the 2011 Watson beating Jeopardy champions, and the current ubiquity of smartphone power.
- **Future Projection:** Ray Kurzweil estimates by 2025 that a computer with human brain processing power can be bought for $1,000.
## Named Entities
- **Lyall School of Engineering at SMU** — Institution where the speaker is a scholar.
- **Reddit** — Platform where the initial anecdote was posted.
- **csnl** — Reddit username of the user who automated his job.
- **Henry Ford** — Figure quoted regarding finding easier ways to complete difficult tasks.
- **Watson** — The computer that beat every human at Jeopardy in 2011.
- **Ray Kurzweil** — Futurist who made processing power predictions.
## Numbers & Data
- **Apollo guidance computer** — Engineered for the Moon mission.
- **1,000 records** — Number processed by the script in 5 minutes.
- **99.7% accuracy** — Accuracy achieved by the script.
- **6 to 10 records a day** — Output rate of the department before automation.
- **$25** — Price of the Raspberry Pi computer when it started shipping in the US.
- **10 seconds / 5 minutes** — Time comparison for manual vs. automated task completion.
- **100 million times** — Number of times a computer can process data once coded.
## Examples & Cases
- **The Manual Job:** Performing manual data verification and validation on a "gigantic Excel table."
- **The Automation:** A script completing the manual job in 5 minutes.
- **Historical Inefficiencies:** Requiring people to stand at intersections to direct traffic; printing and hand-delivering news; analog movie stores.
- **Educational Analogy:** Comparing classrooms to YouTube or Khan Academy due to the ability to fast-forward or rewind.
- **Technology Analogy:** The shift from a central steam engine to decentralized electric motors, enabling greater innovation.
- **Modern Problem Solving:** Using a website to stream videos instead of dealing with physical, late-fee-laden video stores.
- **The Raspberry Pi:** A credit-card-sized computer sold in the US for $25.
## Tools, Tech & Products
- **Computer Script/Code:** The mechanism used by csnl to automate verification.
- **Excel table:** The initial medium for the data to be manipulated.
- **Smartphone:** High-powered device used as an analogy for modern computing power.
- **Apollo guidance computer:** Advanced computer engineered by NASA in 1961.
- **Raspberry Pi:** Credit-card sized computer sold in the US for $25.
- **Website:** A tool suggested for solving problems like video access or information management.
## References Cited
- **Henry Ford:** Cited for the quote on laziness finding easier ways.
## Trade-offs & Alternatives
- **Manual work vs. Automation:** Manual data work (6-10 records/day) vs. Scripted work (1000+ records/5 min).
- **Physical media vs. Digital:** Physical textbooks/records vs. searchable, linked digital content.
- **Centralized vs. Distributed Power:** One steam engine vs. numerous decentralized electric motors.
- **Human Effort vs. Computational Power:** Human brain power vs. the processing power of a smartphone.
## Counterarguments & Caveats
- It is currently possible to hire people to do programming, mirroring historical arguments against reading literacy.
- The initial learning process of coding can feel like a "total waste of time" when compared to immediate manual output.
## Methodology
- **Computational Thinking Process:** The method of breaking down large, overwhelming problems into small, manageable, discrete steps that a computer can process.
- **Systematic Problem Identification:** Identifying inefficient societal practices that can be modeled digitally (e.g., file management, information retrieval).
- **Iteration:** The core programming concept of constantly testing and tweaking solutions to move toward a functional product.
## Conclusions & Recommendations
- Learn to program because it fundamentally rewires your approach to problem-solving.
- Use the newfound skills to "bring back these tools" to your current field of work.
- Start by Googling for resources; a specific recommendation is *Google learn to code*.
- For further help, visit the website *christianjco.com*.
## Implications & Consequences
- **Economic Disruption:** The job market will continue to trend toward algorithmic execution, making manual data entry obsolete.
- **Cognitive Shift:** Programming forces a systemic approach to thought, fundamentally changing how one approaches complexity.
- **Creative Capacity:** Mastering programming grants the power to build solutions for problems that do not yet exist.
## Verbatim Moments
- *"Reddit my friends call me a scumbag because I automate my work when I was hired to do it manually"*
- *"The script that he wrote completed over a thousand records with 99.7% accuracy in 5 minutes"*
- *"if your job doesn't already look like this it probably will soon"*
- *"I would like to travel back in time to the Year 1961"*
- *"This guy in the back your smartphone in your pocket right now has the computing power to do the calculations for 1 million Apollo 11s simultan iously"*
- *"I should learn to program"*
- *"Reading and writing and and math are these basic fundamental tools that extend what your mind would otherwise be capable of doing"*
- *"Henry Ford once said if you have a difficult task to do give it to a lazy man and he will find an easier way to do it"*
- *"I'd like to end right now with a quote by someone that totally would have been a programmer if computers had existed when he was alive"*