Talk:Learn to Code

The article seems biased in that it omits the origin of the term.
The origin of the term came from a Joe Biden rally speech given in Derry, NH, where Joe Biden reportedly said "Anybody who can go down 3,000 feet in a mine can sure as hell learn to program as well… Anybody who can throw coal into a furnace can learn how to program, for God’s sake!" This, in response to the thousands of coal miners who faced job loss under Joe Biden's plan.

The term then became a pejorative used by the Right, who were inflamed by the idea that coal miners could simply "learn to code", against journalists who then either lost their jobs or were in fear of losing their jobs.

There are numerous contemporary accounts of this speech, including Newsweek and on Mining.com.

That the article obfuscates the term by using the phrase "The origins of the phrase have been attributed to a man teaching web development to coal miners" when there is direct, contemporary links to the actual origin strikes me as unnecessarily biased. William Woody (talk) 00:00, 16 July 2023 (UTC)


 * Above user decided to chime in on this topic after 3 years of inactivity, less than a day after Gamergate veteran Carl Benjamin tweeted about it and made these exact same talking points. Of course it would be much more helpful if he could provide reliable third party sources which explicitly state that Learn to Code was indeed just regular working class people echoing Biden's words to take out their frustration on some elitist journalists, as opposed to one of the far right's many attacks on the free press, which is how every single reliable third party source characterizes it. 46.97.170.32 (talk) 09:18, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
 * @46.97.170.32 YWNBAW 109.118.36.139 (talk) 07:59, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

Origin
Is MMFA origin story for "Learn to Code" the definitive explanation for this? We do have other Reliable Sources which would seem to offer an alternative:


 * Forbes: During a campaign rally back in 2019, then-Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden spoke to a crowd in a coal mining town. Advocating a green agenda, the audience was understandably unhappy. To console the coal miners, Biden offered some career advice: “Learn to code.”


 * Newsweek: During a campaign event on Monday, Joe Biden suggested coal miners could simply learn to code to transition to "jobs of the future."


 * The Hill: During a rally yesterday, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden spoke to a crowd in Derry, N.H., a town that many miners call home. He acknowledged the economic setbacks and job insecurity that coal miners face these days, and gave them some advice: learn to code.

Given this, I dont see how the article can say "The origins of the phrase have been attributed to a man teaching web development to coal miners." and leave it at that. DarrellWinkler (talk) 22:25, 25 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Do these sources identify this as the origin of the term? Generalrelative (talk) 22:32, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @DarrellWinkler, Forbes ("senior contributor") is not a reliable source; see WP:FORBES. Newsweek (post-2013) is not generally reliable. However, the point is that the article is about "a conservative online campaign that primarily targeted journalists". Sources actually discussing that campaign are more relevant. Nobody would dispute Biden used those words. But none of the sources that you're citing above are about the topic of the article. Schazjmd   (talk)  22:35, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

It is well-documented that the universal imperative to "learn to code" existed as a straight PR effort before it became a harassment campaign. It had endorsements from politicians of both parties, and was promoted both critically and credulously by the press.
 * Wired 2015: "It’s hard to read a blog or news site these days without stumbling across an article about why everyone should learn to code."
 * GeekWire 2013: "If there has been one rallying cry for the tech establishment this year, it’s that everyone who can should learn to code."
 * Douglas Rushkoff for CNN 2012: titled "Learn to code, get a job"
 * The Verge 2012: noting Jeff Atwood's pushback against Michael Bloomberg's frivolous endorsement, and Rushkoff as one of the cheerleaders.
 * Audrey Watters in 2017 reported the funding of code.org, one of the leading promoters, showing that it was overwhelmingly funded by Facebook and its personnel, with significant further support from Google, Microsoft and Infosys.

The record is cold before 2012, which happens to be around the time that Codeacademy was founded. It's dishonest and against NPOV to treat MediaMatters' narrative as authoritative and ignore this backstory of a heavily funded but clumsy corporate PR campaign. MM has been duly determined as a "partisan advocacy group" and "marginally reliable source." 2601:642:4600:D3B0:2574:6260:2BE9:2028 (talk) 00:10, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

After rewriting the article I have removed the post-1992 American politics "contentious topics" notice. The article was contentious insofar as it excluded facts in favor of a partisan take. 2601:642:4600:D3B0:5BE:E958:8A02:D36F (talk) 16:04, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

The sources for this being a "harassment campaign" are poor
Both the NBC and New Republic articles have no screenshots or archived links to the posts in question. I don't necessarily doubt 4chan would send death threats to journalists, but what I'm seeing is unconvincing at best, and probably a conflict of interest to write about it as harassment. Doombruddah (talk) 16:24, 19 April 2024 (UTC)


 * The cited sources identify multiple laid-off journalists who received the harassment. The Ringer source links to Talia Lavin's screenshots from 4chan that show posters inciting it (e.g. one refers to "making them an hero" which is 4chan slang for driving to suicide). I don't think it's reasonable to require that corroboration of attacks against journalists should only come from non-journalists. 2601:642:4600:D3B0:74D2:C6B9:6932:6315 (talk) 18:59, 19 April 2024 (UTC)