A case against mission-critical applications of machine learning

Abstract

Never Too Late to Share Computational Thinking I commend Judy Robertson’s wonderful blog post “What Children Want to Know About Computers” (Oct. 19, 2018) for illustrating the challenges children face understanding computers, and for the challenges CS educators face helping them. It reminded me of a moment in 2018 when I was explaining programming to my daughter, a recent college graduate who majored in the humanities and was never very interested in computers. She asked, “How does the computer actually work? How does it add two numbers?” It turned out to be the perfect opportunity to whip out my copy of Digital Equipment Corporation’s 1981 VAX Architecture Handbook. She found the details of the instruction sets, opcodes, registers, and memory fascinating and helped her begin to understand what computers and programs actually do behind the scenes. She has since been studying computers and software development online, as she considers a career in technology. As Robertson said, we can do a much better job teaching our children how computers work. I think it is important to add that young adults— everyone, really—can benefit from a greater understanding of computers and computational thinking. Geoffrey A. Lowney, Issaquah, WA, USA