...and master of none

The other day I was working on a little demonstration of using OWIN to serve local files, use dependency injection, and server Web API in a modern SPA (Single Page Application). Almost as an afterthought, I decided to use KnockoutJS and jQuery from a minimal HTML page. This was overheard by colleagues, and a firestorm erupted... "You should have used AngularJS instead; It would take less lines of code." So I pulled down AngularJS and changed my demo to placate the angry threats wishes of the religious zealots thoughtful developers at my desk. For the record, this is the code I wrote using KnockoutJS and jQuery: and here is the AngularJS version: Trying to provide equally readable formatting, the Knockout solution takes one less line of code even though you are loading two JavaScript libraries. The only fair way to count lines is to count semicolons. Both have three. That's a tie. What about the size of the libraries being loaded. Well, Angular includes...

...but everyone should learn to code. I have friends who are pharmacists, lawyers, police, firemen, military, mechanics, and musicians who also write code to help them out in their jobs. Software is a tool, a versatile and powerful tool, that can be applied to any occupation or industry. Learning to code is a 21st century skill that should be required in every middle school and high school in the country. I'm not alone in this belief. There are lots and lots and lots of organizations dedicated to helping people learn to code. Even the Prime Minister of Singapore posted a Sudoku Solver that he wrote while an electrical engineering student as encouragement and an example to the world that we need more people who can code. I think that code may have been more approachable when I was learning. The video games we had were blocky and you could understand how they could worked with a minimal amount of instruction or none at all; how many versions of breakout and lunar lander mu...