Teaching and Learning Computer Programming by Mayer - Assignment Example

The paper "Teaching and Learning Computer Programming by Mayer" is a delightful example of an article on information technology. One of the interesting things about this article is the development of the R package. R statistical tool was initially used to perform various different tasks. Nie Revolution, later on, developed the R tool by making it more user-friendly. The development of the R tool is already remarkable since companies such as Bank of America and Pfizer have already embraced it. I have learned the role statistical packages like R play in citizen’s participation in politics and governance.

The R package aims to help the common citizen analyze the government’s and organizations decisions to prevent manipulations.  This article describes the benefits that SAS employees enjoy. The company offers various recreational benefits at an affordable price, unparalleled in other companies. Dr. Goodnight, the company CEO, has incorporated this magnificent corporate culture in order to motivate his employees and improve their productivity. It is interesting to note the company’s flexible and friendly working environment.

The company offers free basic healthcare services for its employees. It is interesting to learn how SAS provides, probably the best workplace environment in the country, to achieve its objectives (Mayer 198). This article highlights the increased competition that SAS is facing from companies such as Oracle and I.B.M. Mayer (267) elaborates that the increased competition and the rapidly changing market puts SAS’s pampered employee culture at risk. I have learned that SAS developed from the department of agricultural statistics of North Carolina University.

SAS spends billions of dollars in research in order to maintain its status as the pioneer of innovation in the industry. The company aims at creating a new product that will enable professionals to file their documents to offset increased competition from IBM. It is interesting to learn the efforts put in place by different governments throughout the world to encourage computer programming. Tech enthusiasts and some educators argue that coding has become crucial in modern life making it necessary to introduce it in the school curriculum.

Introducing students to coding at an early age enhances the technological competitiveness of a country and enhances creativity. I have learned that Estonia is one of the technology-savvy countries in the world. It is also fascinating to learn about the increase in enrollments in computer science in the US. This article elaborates the importance and relationship of programming to other disciplines such as literature, arithmetic, and chemistry. Computer science professors argue that computational thinking skills are required in other disciplines as well.

However, the clamor of teaching computational thinking to non-major students is vague. It is interesting to note that there are disagreements on the content to teach the non-major students. It is important to develop elementary computational thinking courses for students not majoring in computer science. This article elaborates the changing enrollment rates of women in computer science and engineering courses. However, things are changing as the number of women in these courses increase (Mayer 278).

It is intriguing to examine the reasons behind the increase in women enrollments in computer science. There are programs by companies like Google to train teachers and students. These programs recruit and mentor female students. It is good to learn that some universities have changed their courses to become problem-solving tools but not the stereotyped difficult and boring programming courses. This article teaches us about the importance of programming skills even without a college education.

What interests me is the fact that there is a high demand for computer programmers that college trained programmers cannot meet (Mayer 178). The fact that programming skills are not solely for job seeking, but also necessary life skills is fascinating. I have learned that programming skills are applicable to various disciplines. One does not need an expensive tuition fee to learn programming skills.