Episode 145: The Bigger Picture of Teaching Python

Sean Tibor: Hello and welcome to Teaching Python. This is episode 145. My name is Shawn Tyber. I'm a coder who teaches, and my. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Name is Kelly Schuster Paredes, and I'm a teacher who codes. And, like, that felt weird. Sean Tibor: Sorry, I know we haven't said it for a while. It's been a while since we've recorded. I'm kind of excited that we get a chance to do this. This is actually the first time that we're posting on Blue sky that we're recording, so we'll see if that gets us any additional live viewers, but hopefully more people will view it after the fact, see what happens. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Absolutely. I should. You just reminded me I should actually. I don't know. How do you retweet in Blue Sky? What is it called? Sean Tibor: Same way. As. As. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: No, but I mean, what is it called? Re. Sky. Sean Tibor: I. I don't know. I think. I think we should call it Skynet. I think they. They have all kinds of. There's all kinds of fun stuff going on. And honestly, it. It does feel a lot more like the early days of Twitter, you know, where it was a lot of people who just wanted to get online and play around with new social media, share what they're doing, share their opinions, and those opinions are focused on Python and technology and all the stuff that I love and not, you know, toxic media. You know, it's great. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: I know there's a lot of stuff going on. I'm getting new followers all the day, all the time, and I've been like, what is it, cs? I wanted to shout out somebody on Blue sky that I. I was following. I think it's like computer science educators or something. They've got a lot of good stuff going in there, and I'm excited because they've got a BET following, and I'm actually going to BET this year, so hopefully I can connect with some of those people. But it's been fun because I'm getting to meet different people than what I know or who I know. No air quotes there. Who I know on LinkedIn and Twitter. So it's kind of cool. I'm liking it. Sean Tibor: I'm having fun with it. I mean, I feel a little bit bad because I haven't been able to engage as much as I wanted to, but if I felt bad about everything I haven't been able to do the last few weeks or the last few months, you know, it'd be a pretty miserable experience. So I'm just trying to focus on what I can do and what I'm able to do and have fun with. So before we get any further, let's do wins of the week. It's been quite a few weeks since we recorded, so I guess you have a lot of options to choose from. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Oh, what? I'm just going to pick one and it's a surprise one. And I don't know if you've realized this, but it's our work anniversary. Sean Tibor: Six years, right? Kelly Schuster-Paredes: So LinkedIn says five, but I know that's wrong because I think we started it a year late. But, yeah, I think it's our, like, work anniversary for our Teaching Python podcast. Sean Tibor: Our company, we're very the media conglomerate of teaching Python. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: LinkedIn keeps reminding me. Are you hiring? I'm like, yes, work for free. Sean Tibor: Yeah, unpaid internships galore. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Whatever you want. Actually, that would be really fun. If there are any high school students or anyone that wants to practice their social media, I will give it up and let you learn as you go. Sean Tibor: Maybe I still have a thing about unpaid internships. I don't like them. I feel like. I feel like we should pay people for their time. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Yeah, because we're getting paid. Sean Tibor: That's volunteer work. That's different. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Oh. If anyone wants to volunteer, intern and learn as you go. I am taking volunteer resumes. Sean Tibor: I'm putting it out on. On Teaching Python on the blue sky that you are. You are now hiring. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Every time it comes up, I laugh. I'm just like, yes, I wish. Sean Tibor: Hold on. I'm putting out there. So Kelly Paredes just announced that she's hiring. That she's hiring. I. Unpaid intern. Got it. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Unpaid volunteer. Sean Tibor: All right. Got it. To do social media. I love it. Well, you know, honestly, the. That was one of the reasons why I was so excited to record, because I also noticed the date that every December is another anniversary for us, and it's six years now. According to the great podcast metrics guide that we have, we're now well over or well over 500,000 downloads. We're at about 584, I think. So over the years. Yeah. 584,000. Yeah. We're not. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: 584, sorry. Sean Tibor: 582. 597 as of this moment. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: There you go. It's a lot. It's insane. Are you tweeting that? Are you blue skying that? Sean Tibor: I don't know. I mean, I think I'm trying to figure out how to multitask, and I'm not doing well at it, so that's funny. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: So many things are going on and we decided, hey, let's have some fun tonight. We actually have someone that's been helping us out. Should we give a shout out to the person that's been helping us out actually getting our podcasts produced? Sean Tibor: Yeah. So Kamal Newman has been working with us now and helping us get our podcast episodes produced, which has been the big bottleneck on getting them published. So we've been doing the live streams, we've got the recordings, and then I am failing to get the post production done. And so, you know, Kelly and Kamal got together and said, hey, I think we have a better way of doing this. And that's really paying off in some really nice ways. Like, I'm very happy with how this has been working out. It's speeding things up and Kamal has been doing an amazing job of getting everything done. So I'm going to put a shout out and a link for Kamal if you want to get some podcast editing done of your own. Highly recommended. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Absolutely. It's definitely been a lot less stress for me not tweeting, texting Sean all the time, asking him when the next episode is going up. So Kamal keeps you organized. Sean Tibor: It really does help. So I'm going to go next and talk my one of the week. And it's a small one. There's a bunch of other stuff. I've done a lot of work, travel, done some cool stuff at work. It has been work, work, work a lot. So I'm going to do something that's not work. I found a really cool game called Vim Adventures. One of the things that I've been trying to learn is a command line or a terminal interface called vim, which is a text editor. And I know that there's probably a million people out there screaming into their car right now saying, of course we know vim, but I've never gotten the muscle memory for it. Right. It's all keyboard based. You're really not supposed to use the mouse at all. And the advantage is that if you're on your computer, you can use vim. If you're remoted into a remote server, you can use vim. And it makes it really powerful for editing. But I've been struggling to wrap my head around it and I've got like a cheat sheet printed out over here with all the keyboard key commands and everything. But Vim Adventures is a little game and I'll put the link in the chat here, but basically it reminds me a bit of some of the python coding games that we learned early on. But all of the navigation and Puzzles that you solve are all using Vim key bindings. So if you want to move your character to the left or right, you have to use the H, but the H key or the L key, you can learn how to navigate by word, next word, previous word, all of those things, all using the keyboard commands, and it progressively unlocks each command. So you might solve the first puzzle just by moving around, but you might have to try to jump to the next word because there's a boulder in the way. So you can't just move over one character at a time. You've got to jump over it with the W key to go to the next word. So it's. I've been really enjoying it. There's a small subscription fee. I think it's like 20 bucks for six months. And I immediately like, yeah, let me do that. Because it's been really fun to learn it. And I've already noticed that as I'm at work and Vim pops up, I'm already more comfortable and able to move around and use some of these new key bindings that I'm learning. So it's just that. What did Barbara Oakley say? You get what you practice, right? So I'm using this as my practice tool, and I'm already seeing the benefits. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: That's awesome. That kind of reminds me of. What was it called with the Twilio game, and we were doing that with. What was it called? The. The sword. You're gonna Google it real quick. And remember, we were playing it and we had the kids playing it. And what a great way to introduce Twilio gamification. Anything that gets you to learn when. When you're not, like, stressed about production, that's always a fun thing. Sean Tibor: It was Twilio Quest, and I'm not sure. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Yes, Twilio Quest. I'm not sure if that's still in production. Sean Tibor: I don't know. It's a good question. They might have retired it. Oh, they might have changed it. I think it might be called Terminal Quest now. So definitely some things to check out. But that's been my little win, and I've been coming back to it a couple times a week and playing through a few more levels. And it's cute and it's fun and I'm getting there. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: That's really cool. So can I give you a cheeky extra win that I think you'll enjoy? So you know everyone. I don't know if they know or remember, but we used to always introduce Circuit Python in 8th grade, and we would use the Circuit Playground boards. We got to the point where we were using the Blue Fruit and the Circuit Python made Easy. And I think last year was probably the last year I did Circuit Playground or Python. And kids were getting frustrated, a little bit frustrated because it's like hardware for me was hard. Hardware for some kids is hard. And so if you. It's not the code, the code's easy. It's, you know, flashing the board or whatever. But it was always a great lesson. So I had a. I think she's in 10th or 11th grade. Who hated, hated Circuit Playground. She comes to me, she's like, I'm so twirling her hair. So, Ms. Paredes, you know how, you know, I don't really. Didn't really love Python and everything, but we need your help. So we're working with social entrepreneurship and we want to design X. And I'm not going to say what it is. And I said, oh, well, that's really interesting. And we ordered Y. And I'm like, oh, that's really interesting. But if you remember in eighth grade, she's like, oh. And I was like, dawn, you don't need anything else. Proof of prototype right there. And so I pointed her back to the neopixels, the accelerometer, the sound, and I handed her a blue Fruit and I said, okay. And I told her five things. I was like, remember, go to moo. You need to save the file as code Py. You can go to Circuit Playground or Python made Easy. And I said a couple other things. And I said, okay, bye. Bye. Come back when you've researched. And literally, she came back in 45 minutes. And I thought to myself, wow, that was a lot easier when she's in 10th grade versus eighth. But it was a good feeling. And she was kind of laughing at me. And she's like, I'm sorry, I won't doubt you again. Sean Tibor: Well, isn't. Isn't that kind of amazing? Like, just. I mean, I think that was my favorite thing about teaching in that age group was just the amount of growth you could see over such a short period of time. For you and I, a couple of years is no, no big deal, right? Like, you know, school years come, school years go. But to see the amount of growth that a student can do from 8th grade to 10th grade is amazing, and it's powerful and. And it's one of the things that I definitely miss about not being in the classroom. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: 100. It's always those small things that as a teacher, you really need to get you through that last week before holiday season. Sean Tibor: So leading into our, our topic, I mean, I think this is very timely. Six years in stepping back and thinking about the big picture, you know, of teaching, of computer science education, our place in that world, I had a moment as I was dropping off my kids at the school where one of the middle school teachers was parking her car. And I noticed her car because she's got one of those Jeep Wranglers and it's tan. And so she put a Jurassic park wheel cover on it. And so I'm like, that's awesome, I love that. And you know, I was like, that's cool. Which teacher has the Jurassic park wheel cover? And she got out and she started walking in. I saw that she's, you know, carrying like a jug of orange juice for her students and all these things. And I had this moment, this pang of just, I miss that early morning time in the classroom when you're walking from your car to your classroom, when you go into the room and everything's dark and you flip the light switch on and it's cool and it's quiet and everything's about to start, but it just hasn't quite gotten there yet. And there's some magic in that moment. And, and when I thought about that and I thought about, you know, the journey that you and I have been on over the last six years, the places it's taken us, the people that it's introduced us to, the experiences we've had as teachers, as colleagues, as professionals within this community. You know, it really just gave me a moment to think back and realize, I mean, first, gratitude where that you get to be part of this, but secondly, that it's both bigger and more intimate and smaller than it sometimes feels on the day to day. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: For sure. I don't want to add anything to that. It was beautiful. I should. No, it's. Yeah, I'm not going to add to it. I'm going to ruin it. Go ahead, continue. Sean Tibor: So I was thinking about those big picture questions, right? What's happening? Where are we going? And we've talked at length about the role of AI in the classroom for educators. But I was looking at an article that came out recently about the shift in jobs. How many fewer jobs there are that are software developer, right, or software engineer. And I thought to myself, like, is that really a shift? Like, is that really like the change that we're seeing, is that, are we seeing the effect of gen AI where we don't need as many software engineers or software developers because we have coding Assistants and a lot of the boilerplate code that can be written easily and written well by computer science, by gen AI, is now being done that way or it's multiplying the impact of a single software engineer. So you don't need to have multiple. But then the article went on to say that a lot of what's happening though is that at the same time that we're seeing this software engineering, you know, and software developer role go down, some jobs are staying right up to the top. Database, you know, administrator, cybersecurity, things that have been around for a long time continue to remain strong. And then there's this huge growth and upswing in like machine learning. Engineer, data scientist, data engineer. A lot of the things that are fueling companies need for, you know, for data, for better quality to be able to feed the AI models that they're using, those things are on the uptick. And if you. And the article went on to say that, that is kind of where all of those skills are shifting to. Right? So the same people that five years ago would have been a software engineer are now becoming ML engineers and data engineers and applying the same principles and approaches to those other new areas. And I thought that was a really interesting shift, right? Maybe it's a relabeling, maybe it's deeper than that. But I thought a little bit about like the first thing that, you know, people outside of computer science are going to say is like, well, we don't need as much computer science education now because everything is going to gen AI. And look, the, the jobs are coming down right away. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Well, I was just like, while you're talking, I was thinking it was funny. We, we must always be in tune even when we're not on in the same classroom. But I was reading an article today from MIT Technology Review about what is AI? Everyone thinks they know what it is, but, but no one can agree, right? So for me, parallels with the computer science developer. You're in computer science, you're a developer. Back in the times when that was maybe not a lot of people really understood what a developer did or what a software engineer did. Maybe it was like we just said, oh, you're gonna, you're gonna use code to produce something for me, right? But now we know specifically that we need to focus this person on the cybersecurity side. We need to focus this person on the data science collection data. And it's not even data science. Data science, data analytics, data processing, data collection, that's even a role in itself. So you're right. In the fact that it is. It's like it shifted, but maybe it's shifting because we have a clear understanding, understanding of what it means to be a person who uses code to solve a problem. So even if you're not physically coding per se, for example, you don't code a lot of Python anymore, but you are using a computer in another language of some sort to make it solve problems, and now you're tagged as a senior cloud engineer. Is that correct? Something like that, Right? Close enough. So, like, like, how long ago, when was that role introduced? How long ago was that role a role and not no longer a developer. You didn't have the skills necessarily as a specific cloud engineer, but you had the skills to do that job. Does that make sense? Sean Tibor: And it's recent enough that I still have to explain to people, no, it's not that kind of cloud. I can't make things rain. Right. Like, yeah, it's still a new job title. So I'm going to call it. I'm going to put the stake in the ground here and say, we were right. We were right about this. Six years ago when you and I worked in the classroom and we started this podcast in that first year, we recognized that what we were teaching was not how to be a software engineer. The purpose of the computer science classroom is not to teach computer science, and it's not to teach how to code JavaScript apps or Python apps. That's not the point. The point is preparing students for the lives and jobs and careers that they're going to have in the future with those durable skills that they're going to use, regardless of whether they are a cybersecurity expert, a cloud engineer, a data engineer, whatever the label is. Right? They could be a lawyer who just thinks really well and logically about how data is structured and how they use that to inform their practice as a lawyer. Right? So I'm going to call it We Were Right. Like, and this is the first true, you know, like, really big acid test of it is that it's still right in the land in the time of generative AI. Right? It's still right with machine learning and data science and all these things that are happening. It's all of those fundamental skills of being able to apply computational thinking and problem solving and persistence and grit and determination and all of those things that we've been talking about for the last six years. It's all there in this, of the bigger picture of what is computer science, 100%. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: And we have to add these because it was Another article, and I don't have that on me. But reading comprehension and documentation, like Stephen Gruppetta was talking about documentation, he's been writing a lot about how to document better. But that whole concept of what we're teaching with code, even with the switch and like the shift now with AI. So Johnny Code uses AI, uses Flint uses a AI safe tool to produce code. Great. But Johnny can read it just as well as Sally and Sarah. But he can read it and understand it because we're teaching that reading comprehension of code and he'll be able to read it when it comes out as another language that comes out of the future. Cause even if it is, you know, just an AI text or whatever generated by AI and we're using it to solve problems, there's still that ability to say, okay, this is kind of gibberish to me, but I'm going to take the time to figure it out. And I know how to use those skills that you were just summarizing in order to, to do that problem. Sean Tibor: Yeah, and, and taking it a step further. And this is where I think the, the AI tools enhance what we're doing. Just this week I had a bit of code that I wrote 10 months ago. This falls squarely in the category of I don't remember what I was thinking 10 months ago or why I was doing this, but I know this is the right starting point for me to pick it back up again and finish the job. I'm working on this. And I got the part working of the code change that I wanted to the part that was actually important. I thought to myself, how am I going to document and explain this? Because I've got part of this that I wrote today and part of this that I wrote 10 months ago. And I'm under pressure to get this done. How am I going to get what I did 10 months ago documented just as well as what I did today? Right. So the craziest thing, I did not even know that this was possible. I told the git command to output the difference between the main branch of code, what was published and what was out there as of today, not 10 months ago, but today's code. And then here's my changes that I want to make to that code. It output a bunch of machine language diff, output this line, that, whatever. I took all of that, I put it into another page in my VS code and I told my Amazon Q developer, hey, this diff output is the difference between the main branch and my pr, my code change, write me the pull request summary and description of what's changed between these two. And I kid you not, it was amazing. It was really good. And it had all of this stuff that I had forgotten about, and every part of it, I could look back and say, yes, that is in the code. It's not hallucinating this. It's real stuff. And that, to me, was part of the power of this. If we can teach kids to use this as a way to accelerate their thinking and enhance their thinking and make their. Their quality of their work product better. And I say work product because in a. In a very academic, abstract sense, I'm not trying to make this all corporate, mercenary stuff. If whatever they're creating is better because they're using AI to enhance it and accelerate it, that's awesome. I get concerned, and I think everyone does, when we use it as a substitute for thinking. Right. Where we offload all of the thinking process to something else. This gave me the ability to look at this and say, yes, here's my code. Here's the description. Does it all match up? Oh, yes. I see how this all fits together. It helped me remember better. Yeah, that, to me, is awesome. And that's a skill that we can build on. We can give people those tools. But it still comes down to all those fundamentals that you were talking about with how do we help students ask good questions, think about how to solve problems, think about how they can break problems down into smaller parts. Even just thinking about how can I get the. The changes that happen in this, you know, all the list of changes, that was something that I wouldn't have known how to do two years ago. Right. But I learned that skill, you know, in this new job as a cloud engineer. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: 100%. I want to go into that, like, and I think this ties back to where you were coming with this whole shifting kind of terminology. And I want to go into this idea. There was a huge announcement on LinkedIn this morning, and it was like, CS4All is suspending operations. So CS4All was, like, founded in 2017. They've been working on trying to get K12 computer science education for every student and make that learning focused. And I've kind of been reading and following other places and. And looking at how funding has shifted. A lot of people aren't really, necessarily like, funding cs, but they're funding AI, which I don't know is like an oxymoron. Right. Because AI is developed by code and so cs. But it got me thinking. It got me thinking, like, where are we going? Right. Are we saying that that role of CS education is not about teaching code? Yes, I think and Sean and I have totally agreed it's not just about teaching the code. But again, is it, see, is coding going to go out the window? No, it's for me trying to explain it to a person that doesn't code when they go oh well I can just put it into AI and get the code. I'm like great, yes you can, but they can't do what you did. When you looked back at your, your GitHub and said yeah, I did it. That, yes, that I understand that, yes, that was important, yes, I needed that in my code. Here's the documentation and it highlights this important transition that I hope a lot of CS teachers will be on board and say, yes, I agree that whatever we're doing, however we're shifting, it's making a difference. And it has always been the same difference that computer science, whether it's Python, Java, C, whatever. It is that way of thinking. It is, it is that way of kind of connecting things. So when people were talking about oh well, CS for all is going out the window, maybe it is whatever, but maybe it's just saying now we're going to call it AI for All. Well, I don't know. Sean Tibor: I think it's a, it's a really interesting problem, right? It's a really interesting development in this space because CS4 all the important thing in that name is the for all part, the equity in computer science. And look at what Brianne Kaplan's doing in Chicago with code your dreams, right? It's about democratizing the knowledge, the practice, the joy of computer science to as many people as possible. Are we getting that with AI, right? You know, I was at an AWS conference in a few weeks ago and every single booth has AI on it. Your AI powered code companion, your AI powered this, your AI powered that. Everybody has AI, right? And in many cases it's a great use of AI. In a lot of other cases we're slapping AI on things to be able to get venture capital funding, to get customers to you know, wow under educated people about products and solutions and everything. I saw a few things that were really interesting uses of AI, but I'm seeing it be used a lot in the hype cycle of marketing and sales and funding and vc. And I'm really hopeful that this isn't really hopeful. I guess are really cautious or you know, I'm really concerned that we're starving our are well made, well run programs. I'm assuming that CS for all was well made and well run, but we're starving, you know, programs that are making a real difference in favor of the glamorous and exciting world of AI. Right. AI for all. I don't know how to solve that problem. Right. That's not something that I think is solved by any one person. I think it's something that, that evolves over time. I do think that the organizations like CS4All and Circles and others that may have fallen behind this curve, you know, I think it's worth doing some soul searching for any other similar organizations to say are we changing and evolving in a sustainable, smart way or are we going to get passed by with all of the AI hype curve and all of our funding will dry up. Right? Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Yeah. I mean, well that, that goes back to this and this again, referencing, referencing this article by MIT Tech Review. And just so you know, if you listen to the, the like podcast version of it, what is it called when you like play it? It's not called podcast, but it's like the, the listen to this article where they've written it out. It's like 72 minute long article. And so I'm just going to throw it out there. It's not a quick read. But AI has been a catch all for everyone. And even the people that work with AI all have different definitions that they're feeding. And I'm not saying they don't know, hopefully I'm assuming that they know what they're doing. But the definition that they're feeding the public is not necessarily the same definition for all companies. Right. And so now when we talk to anyone in the general public outside of the CS world and we say AI, what do they say? Yeah, no clue really that we're talking about recognizing faces, understanding speech, driving cars, answering questions, you know, all these other things, creating pictures, Sora, creating videos. No one really thinks of this as. And again, going back in shift of jobs as these separate entities that they were, what 20 years ago we had a person that worked in image machine machine learning or whatever. And I think you can't chuck away with CS education. You can't just go, oh, I'm going to throw that out the window now because we have AI, it's like saying I'm going to throw out teaching you English because we have AI. So I always laugh when someone says to me, oh well we're not going to need to learn how to code. Okay, well you might not need to sit in front of an editor and type P R I N T. Okay, I Get that. I'm not silly to admit that that might change, but you're going to have to understand a part of it, something that's going to be derivative, a derivative of the initial code that was used to make generative AI. Sean Tibor: And I don't want to like. So I think we need to be careful because we often spiral into AI and the impact on education. And I think that's a pretty big facet right now, what's going on. But I want to make sure we're keeping our eyes on the bigger picture also. For sure, I think about our role in this and where we started six years ago. I think I wrote my first line of Python code in May of 2018. I think about all of that, what that hello World started for me. Right. And what it started for you. And part of it was Python, part of it was having, you know, partnership together, exploring this world of education and Python together and teaching coding. But I think about the bigger picture of where we fit into all of this and what we can do. And you and I started off saying, let's do a podcast that is about teaching. And I think one of our original ideas, we'll do it about computer science education or teaching coding. And I said, let's do teaching Python. Let's lean into that language that we are both into and teachings every day. And what that has opened up for us is this amazing community, these relationships with all of the people within the Python community, other educators, pythonistas, coders, everybody from the Python Steering Council to the people that Jay Miller introduced us to from Africa that are doing amazing things, writing code in Africa. For me, I didn't realize that Print hello World was going to lead to meeting people all over the world that shared the same love and enthusiasm for teaching and for coding that I do. And when I step back and think about what that. What happened. Right. And how that happened, it's a pretty big moment. And I have never experienced anything quite like that in my life. My world has always been a little bit smaller, a little bit more narrowly defined. But Python has opened up a lot in my world and opened up a lot of friendships that I never would have gotten otherwise. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: 100%. I was actually. I was thinking about a conversation that happened only Tuesday. So Monday I was talking to the tech director. And this goes back to my coding experience seven years ago was next to zero. Right? We all know that. And we were having a conversation about API and leveraging Google scripts and leveraging communication and how we can kind of automate things. And my Tech director he was talking about. It was like, not post, was it Postman? Is that the one? Yeah. And how he has to parse, he has to parse these, this JSON and all this other stuff. And I laughed at him and I was like, seven years ago, I would have no clue. But for the past three years, because you, you've been gone for three years. For the past three years we've been teaching APIs and I can, I can parse and get through a JSON with like, you know, seven lines of code in Python. And I really don't understand why people I get like, you can use this product and it's easier and you can do a drop down menu. But why, right? I can show you this in Python and people and that I think that's what the beauty is. And that's kind of where you, you, you hold onto as dear as I do that we don't need a product. Yes, the product's great, we understand how that product works, but we don't necessarily need a product to solve our problems because you can use a beautiful language and a simple language where you can do it yourself and say you don't have the financial means to go pay a subscription fee. Here's, here's Python open source. And that's, that is the beauty of code. Besides, you know, the people, that's always the plus. But that's the beauty of code in itself is like you have this to solve the problems. Just like the kids who came to see me today about their product that they want to make for the entrepreneurship. They have that foundation that they got in eighth grade and they're like, hey, wait, I can code this and I could do this, this, me making an app and doing this, this proof of concept, that's something I can code. Who can say that as a 10th grader, they get an idea, but they know that it works. And that's pretty cool. And it's sanctu coding. Sean Tibor: Yeah. And I think it's interesting also I would say that for a long, long time, especially in the United States, education is the gateway to class mobility. Right. That when you become better educated, you have the ability to change your class and change your station in life and it opens up new possibilities for you. I think technology in many ways is similar. Right. And it's one field. Like there's probably someone who says biology did that for me, or engineering or English or you know, like any number of subjects can open up the world for people. You know, if they are passionate about it, they care about it, or even if they don't, if they're not passionate about it, if they care about it. But it's just like, I know how to do this, and the number of things that I can solve today is greater than the number of things that I can solve or do yesterday. Right? My world, my capabilities grow when I have these skills and the confidence and the. And I think about this a lot. You know, you and I talked, I think it was like early on, maybe even in the first year of the podcast, about the difference between confidence and competence. Right? People can have false confidence. You can't have false competence. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Right. Sean Tibor: Like, the competence is really just, you know, it's the ability to do something, the confidence to be able to do something based on actual past results that you've done that before. And I've thought about that a lot in my role, you know, especially as I'm, you know, trying to lead an organization and develop people. How do I build competence in my organization? Right? And I keep coming back to, it's the same way that you build competence in an eighth grader. You give them a place where they can build and try and learn and push their own boundaries and make mistakes and learn from them and then incorporate that learning into their next try and the next attempt, and they get more and more competent. And it stuck with me from, you know, four or five years ago that, you know, this bigger picture of what are we really trying to do? It's, you know, how do we build competence for people that they have skills that are empowering them, that what they can do today is more than what they could do yesterday? And to me, that's like the greatest privilege as a teacher is to have a front row seat for that. You know, whether you're teaching in a classroom or you're teaching online, you're teaching through a newsletter, you're teaching through an online course, or whatever it is you're doing. The privilege of seeing people grow and flourish is what makes teaching the most addictive profession. Right? Like, it's something you never want to give up because the rush of watching someone have that growth and have that aha moment and get. Get better now than they were just a few minutes ago. It's a rush. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Yeah, for sure. I just had a crazy thought, you know, and it ties into what you were saying and what I was talking about with another colleague. Again, that conversation about, why are you teaching Java, why are you teaching Python, why are you teaching JavaScript? So we have CS for all now. What if it was CS for any language because we focus it on that competence, that ability to think. Like, why does it have to be language specific now? Like, maybe that is that movement for CS for education. So now we have AI, right? We still have that problem solving and it goes back to everything we've always said over the years, like what is the tool that's needed to solve the problem? So maybe in this case it's JavaScript, maybe in this case it's Python, you know, for. Or that lovely language that I'm really trying to hack away. And my 10 year old teacher is such a meanie C. He's like, you're not doing your homework. And I'm like, it's the holidays, I've got grades due. But like, what if it was CS for any language? And like that is what the future for CS education became. You know, we don't say, okay, here's that, we say, oh look, what is that code that AI is producing? Oh, it's producing. It's saying that this language is the best for that, for that problem that you need to solve. Now how can you use that and how can you learn about this technique or this syntax or this whatever in order to solve the problem? That would be really cool. Can you imagine? Sean Tibor: Really interesting. I mean, you're going to get right in, right into that problem of breadth versus depth, right? Is it better to know a hundred languages reasonably well or is it better to know two really well? Right? Yeah, I think it'd be an interesting thing to try out and see what happens when you can use any language. Is it more confusing, is it less confusing? Do you see parallels and similar constructs? But I really also like the idea of being able to select the right tool for the job. It always makes me laugh. And medium articles are the worst at this, but it always makes me laugh when you see people comparing the programming languages and they're like, let me show you how fast Rust and C are. Okay, I can see where this is going. They stack, rank, all of them and they show like how Rust and C are neck and neck and they're super fast and Python is all the way down at the bottom. Look how slow Python is. And, and then I'm like, okay, but let's see what the actual exercise was, right? Like how did they determine what was the fastest? Right? It's always something like we did a. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Billion loops because that's an efficient way to solve. Sean Tibor: And I look at it, I'm like, you know, okay, so a billion loops, like we add, you know, what did you do? You Added one plus one a billion times. Is that something that comes up often in your problem space? Right. Is that something that you have to do a lot of. And there might be some places where that does happen a lot. There's a lot of places where you have to do a lot of, you know, binary math and you have to do it really quickly. Well, yeah, maybe, you know, Python's not the best choice for that. Right. But knowing when it is and when it isn't, that's the really interesting part. Right. That's the real question. Should I be using something like Rust or C for this, or should I be using Python? And, you know, I do that all the time. Like I write automation scripts for things to automate the infrastructure. Yeah. You know what? This thing can be in Python because I'm going to run it five times a day. It doesn't matter whether it takes 0.1 seconds or 10 seconds. Right. Not. There's no time requirement on it and I can write it in a tenth of the time. That makes Python a really good choice for this. But if I'm going to run this a million times and it does a lot of calculations or it's something that. Where there's going to be a lot of, you know, hard, hard memory management and things like that, maybe it is something where I want to use a multi, threaded, really fast language like Rust. Right. It's really interesting that we actually have that choice now because the barrier to be able to learn two languages that are very different in a lot of ways and very similar in others is probably a lot lower now than it was even five years ago. Right. Hey, I'm a Python person learning how to code in Rust. Can you explain to me how this concept works? ChatGPT It's a lot easier than it was five years ago. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Yep, 100%. And that's going to get easier as we continue to progress in developing those models. So let's just throw it out there. You know, generative AI is built on. Sean Tibor: Python, so not a lot of underlying C and Rust. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Yeah, whatever. I don't like ever to say that. Just kidding. Sean Tibor: For everybody under the tent. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Kelly, you know, I know, Sorry. We wouldn't be teaching Python if I said anything other. Sean Tibor: Fair enough. I mean, I do love to give my boss a little bit of shade for, you know, being a Java head, you know, but I will admit that there's use cases for Java also, you know. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Yeah, okay. That was part of the heated conversation, actually. I was trying to find this out, like, how many more jobs Are there for each type of developer? Like, is there a, is there a single, is there a single role as a developer? And this is totally off task, but this goes into learning. Is there a single role for a person? Like, I am only going to hire a Java developer, sure. Sean Tibor: All the time. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Okay. And then I'm only going to hire a person. Python developer. And what is difference of Java only developers and Python only developers? That would be an interesting actual statistic. And statistic. Statista. Statista. Statista, that website, I think it's called, Statista was saying it was like 60 million for Java and 50 million for Python. And I thought, well, that's pretty cool. I don't know how true that is, but it would be interesting to actually find out. Sean Tibor: And what's a lot of that is really the tech stack that you're trying to use, right? So what have you already invested in? What do you need to develop? And if you've got a million lines of Java code, you're not going to hire a Python developer to rewrite all of that. Right? You're going to hire another Java developer nine times out of ten. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Right. Sean Tibor: But it does it into an interesting territory which is, you know, really helping to, helping students and learners to understand what they really like and help them find their preferences. Right? Because maybe they really, really like Java. Maybe it just works for them and it really fits. And better still, they like the type of work that you do with Java, right? Like they like doing that kind of, you know, in many cases very enterprise heavy Java application development. Java backends Java for that stuff. They're like, this is awesome. This is my jam, right? There's nothing wrong with that, right? Like, in fact, that's, that's the best possible outcome. We've helped someone find their, their niche, right? And then I think the key, you know, what takes it from being a job to being a career is where does your growth occur? Is your growth within Java. Do you become the most amazing Java developer and know everything there is to know about, you know, all this space within Java that you are, are touching all the time? Or do you go for, you know, kind of other specialties, right? Like maybe you do learn some Python because it's valuable and, and complements what you're doing. That I think is what turns it into a career. Do you like managing other people? Are you a tech lead? Do you like writing documentation? Do you hate writing documentation? Where does that lead you, right? And what kind of career can you have? You know, like I like teaching people and so you know, I. A big of my style of leadership is teacher oriented. Right. Like, I, I still people all the time. Here's how this works. Or let me show you how this works. What. Why don't you do this thing and then come back to me with what you find and, and we'll throw it together. Because, you know, I found those things that I like doing in my career. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Yeah. I like telling people what to do. Sean Tibor: Director material. Right. Right there. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Just kidding. Oh, I'm thinking about right now. I have two more. Two with my sixth graders. And we had a little tiny circle, circle moment. I was sitting there thinking, and I actually got like a whole Sean Tyburn moment because there was a couple kids still talking. And I said, you know what? I'm going to. I'm not going to shout. Anyways, I sat down on the floor and there were a couple of people on their floor seating and all the. Talking to them really quietly. And a couple other kids came down and I said, you know what, Take a look around. And they're like. I said, see all that stuff on the board of knowledge? And now the board of knowledge is not just in the back of the room. It's like literally on every rideable surface in the classroom. And I was like, that used to only be, you know, a little bit with sixth grade, then seventh grade, eighth grade. I was like, everything on these walls is everything you learned in eight weeks. And I said, wow, what have you learned? And they're like, well, we learned to code. I was like, no, but what have you learned? And they were like, well, we know that it's the mindset, and if we have a negative mindset, we're not going to solve a problem. I was like, yes. And, you know, and that they would just started spewing out all these lovely sayings. And it is a testament to coding, right? It's not just the code. Again, going back to what you said, it's everything that happens when you learn how to code. The frustration, the agony. Everyone said this was going to be hard, but at the end when we started to learn how to do it, it wasn't so hard. And it's kind of wraps up everything that we've kind of talked about, right? It's, it's, it's of. Is CS education going? Even if CS for all is maybe, you know, changing or whatever? We don't really know the exact details. But is CS education going. No, not. Not teach it or think about it the way that you and I think about it. And I'm sure Hundreds of other people think about it the same way. But if you think of it as a gateway or as an entry point to, to learn about all these other skills that are so important to the future of any job, I don't think it's ever going to really go away. Sean Tibor: I think it be hard not to. To have this in the future. It's as I think about it. And I had this moment over the weekend, and you and I have talked about this a lot. Like, I've had a problem I was wrestling with for weeks or months now, right? And it was an important problem. It needs to get fixed, right? And I was just banging my head against the wall and the approach was just, just wasn't right. And I was trying to make a bad approach better and I couldn't get it any better, right? And I. I'm sure if I spent six more months on it, I probably could have gotten it better. But, you know, ultimately the outcome of what I was looking at was success and failure messages, right? And about 80% of the time it would succeed and 20% it would fail. And I was so frustrated. And, and this is familiar territory, right? Like, this goes with the territory of being in tech and coding, and it like, you know, you know, you're in that spot and it's familiar. And I found something online that was trying to do exactly what I was doing. It was officially supported by the vendor. It was a really elegant way of doing it, superior in every way. And it was 12 lines of code. I mean, 12 lines of code for me. Other people wrote a lot more code to make it work, but it was 12 lines of code for me. And I, I put it in and I tested it out. And like I said, this is important. So it's like a little bit of a risk. I had to mess with it and everything. I put it in, I ran it for the first time and it all went green, right? Everything went green. Like, no more red fail. Everything was green. It was successful. And I had that moment, that moment where I was like, holy, you know, like, yes, right, this happened. And I've been doing this a long time, right? Like, I've been writing code. I've been working in tech for a long time. If I can still have that moment and it feels that good after this long, right? Like, everyone should have moments like that in their lives, whether it's in computer science or elsewhere. That moment where you just go, yeah, I got it right. That's why I don't think computer science goes away, because it provides those Moments all over the place. Whether that's, yeah, I got it. Everything to turn green or, yeah, I got it because I got into that school that I wanted to go to and, you know, learning computer science helped me get there or I solved the problem. That's really personally important to me. Yeah, I got that. That's what I think computer science does. Right? That's what I think Python does really well. It shortens that distance from I'm in trouble and I haven't figured this out to everything just went green. And I say, yeah, that's awesome. Right? And so that's why I don't think CS is going away. It's going to have different names, it's going to change, it's going to evolve. And that's all a beautiful part of being in this, in the industry and in this whole, you know, space and education. But it's never going away, Right. Like, because that feeling is hardwired into our brains, right? There's. There's brain, like there's a huge dopamine hit, all of that, Right. But that's not going away because that feeling is too good. And that's where I think it's. You know, it's always funny to me when people talk about, you know, computer science and programming as being dispassionate or cold or rational or whatever. To me, it's incredibly emotional. Emotional, right. An emotional experience to write code. And in order to do it well, and in order to grow at it, you have to be super aware of who you are, where you are, and how you feel about it. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: 100%. I think I don't necessarily see it when we have those wins and those dopamine hits, and maybe we should have like a wall of dopamine hits from code. Sean Tibor: To be fair, I was sitting in my garage in front of my computer while I was writing this. So, yeah, nobody saw it, you know, wow. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Like, that was 58 minutes. And we were just like, hey, let's just catch up and really touch base on CS and all these updates. And that went by so fast. It kind of reminded me of our walks around the lake. So it was kind of like an anniversary episode in a way. Sean Tibor: Yeah. I mean, and honestly, I needed this. Like, it's. It's a long year, a lot of good stuff happening. But I think having this moment to kind of reflect and think about the bigger picture was. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Was really 100%. I agree. Well, I'm gonna post this, that article MIT. If you have an extra 72 minutes of your life, which listen I'm doing it in parts. I actually didn't finish the last 20 minutes of it. I write it, but I like to listen to it as well because it's great to kind of listen. And then I, I ponder. It's kind of like Sean talking to me. But if you want that, I'm going to post the, the link for that. I have a lot of news. Can I spew some? Sean Tibor: Yeah, go for it. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: If you're going to FETC. Dora Palfi and I, we are presenting at FETC. I'm super stoked about that. We're presenting on the 14th and we are presenting about YouCan code. Going into the idea that you don't have to be a coder. And, and, and it's like, Sean, you can be a little bit less geeky and turn geeky. Like me with a biology degree or, you know, no computer science degree. So we're going to do that presentation. I'm so excited. Dora has been doing so many good things for coding and helping educators get into code. And she's just a, like a big inspiration to me and to girls who code. So that's going to be fun. Innovation Institute is happening at pine crest. It's 11th annual. Innovation Institute. 11th annual. And then at the school nine years, so almost for all of the institutes. And I am presenting three times, possibly four, because I'm trying to get coerced by my, my new teaching to do another one with her. But so many things going on there. It's. It's really good. And we are talking about VR. What else? I had another one. Oh, my gosh, I can't believe I almost forgot it. Icon. Everyone's emailing us. Everyone's like, well, the announce the proposals went out for the regular or the regular conference. Yeah. It has not gone out for the summit. But we are asking everyone who is listening, everyone who knows a CS teacher or a possible coder or any type of educator, whether you're K12, college, or working in a role like Sean, where he's also a person who works as an educator sort of in his role with mentoring, mentoring, you know, and internships. That's huge. Huge. So anything like that. We will be posting things for proposals. But that's like after the new year, after the, the excitement of Pycon has, like, settled down. So that's still going to happen. And that's the Thursday. Right. Of Pycon. Sean Tibor: Yep. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: So we're hoping that that's still on track for us to go. I've kind of like put that into the water for my school to let them know. And I am going to bet. I'm going to bet. I'm going to bet. I'm going to bet. I'm going to bet in 2025 in the UK. I'm so excited. I've already reaching out to ASL American School of London and visiting ACS International School in Hillingdon. And then I'm hoping to meet up with anyone else who's around at BET to talk about coding and AI and education. Sean Tibor: Can you define BET for everyone? Because you keep saying I'm going to bet and we all think you're going to a casino or so. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: BET is the huge, huge conference. It's the EdTech event in London. It's in London. Excel. It is everything EdTech, so not necessarily CS. So we're talking about all your EdTech goodies and AI goodies and robots and all those fun things. Anything that has to do with education and software. And the school, our school that I'm at, we're really supporting making global connections and I love connecting with people globally, so. Oh, I have one more thing. Go ahead. Sean Tibor: Hold on. I was just gonna say I'm more than a bit jealous. That sounds amazing. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: It is a really great conference. I went to it 10 years ago prior to coming to the US and it is just a fun event. And when you're walking into bed, it's kind of like walking into Disney World and there's just like hundreds and hundreds of educators. I feel like the, you know, the schools send so many people to go because it's free. It's free for any educator in the. In the city more thing. So I have started a new community without Sean, but he's going to end up probably hanging out with me if he wants. But it's with the trc, which is the Technology Readiness Council. And it is a. It is a. I know, discord sort of, but with Google Workspace kind of ish. So if you're interested, you can always just reach out to me at Kelshu. No, not Kelshu, sorry, Kelly at. I forgot I have another one. Kellyechnology Readiness Council. And I'll put that into the show notes because that's a really long email. And if you want to join, it's open to tech directors, any CS educators, anyone in the international circuit. It's just getting started, but the idea is that we can have some like, monthly meetups to talk about anything dealing with CS and education. K12. Sean Tibor: Nice. Very nice. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: It's open if you want a certain direction I'm kind of opening it up out there. So lots of news. Sean Tibor: Very cool. Very cool. All right. Find time in the day. Can we add an extra hour? Is that possible? Can we get 25? Kelly Schuster-Paredes: I wish, I wish. Just read six hours to sleep to four, and we'll be fine. Sean Tibor: It's overrated. Oh, yeah. I want to wish you a very happy holidays and Happy New Year. You deserve it. I know that feeling very well of being on the last week before the holiday break. You know, I hope that you have the chance to recharge and relax, and I'm sure that we'll be in touch over the break, working on things like the education summit, but just wanted to, you know, wish you a very warm and healthy and happy holiday. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Yeah. So. And I'm really excited because Hanukkah starts on Christmas, right? Sean Tibor: Yep. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: So I feel like we're gonna do our big celebration, although yours will continue after mine, but I feel like we're kind of united in our. In our holiday celebrations. Christmas, I can say, oh, happy first day of Hanukkah. Sean Tibor: It is pretty nice. Like, we're synced up, and there are definitely some tech goodies wrapped up and ready to go for my family, so I'm very excited. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Oh, you forgot. We also, if you didn't check it out, the blog was released a couple of days ago. So our holiday gift guide, if you still still need some ideas, there's even a couple of free things I think that Sean put on there. So. So many things. Some, you know, information out there. Sean Tibor: I have to. I have to put Vim in there now. I'm gonna update the blog post. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Absolutely. Sean Tibor: All right, well, I think that's it for this week. That was a lot to cover. I guess we had a lot of. A lot of share, but I'm. I'm really glad we got through this. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Me, too. All right, excellent. Sean Tibor: We'll wrap up here, then. So for teaching Python, this is Sean. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: And this is Kelly signing off.