Heroku has long been investing in making programming education available to more people just by providing their free tier. Continuing and expanding their support for engineers contributing to educational programs is smart for Heroku, just as is investing in open source software. Both endeavors benefit Heroku's marketing, recruitment, and employee satisfaction.
And, just like contributing to open source, helping with educational programs has hardly any barrier-to-entry, and is something pretty much any tech company can get into. At the very least, encouraging engineers to participate in programs like Rails Girls is something every company should do. It's just smart.
> We're developers. We make. You buy. That's how it's worked for ages and ages and ages now.
I don't know about you, but I actually like the idea of reducing the knowledge gap between users and developers.
Computers are so important in the modern world that I think it makes sense to require all educated people to know something about programming, just as education includes some knowledge of mathematics and science.
Maybe you wouldn't get so flustered if you just mentally append " who want it" to the end of phrases like "Programming literacy for all". I mean, is it really so bad to make it as easy and accessible as possible for someone who thinks they might want to get into writing software but doesn't know where to start?
Sites like jsfidle.net and codebin.org are the perfect solution for education, except there isn't a lot of reason they need to be run remotely. It would be great if they offered a local version, but somehow I think that's not going to happen.
[+] [-] gkop|13 years ago|reply
And, just like contributing to open source, helping with educational programs has hardly any barrier-to-entry, and is something pretty much any tech company can get into. At the very least, encouraging engineers to participate in programs like Rails Girls is something every company should do. It's just smart.
[+] [-] SilasX|13 years ago|reply
Half the benefit of their UT on Rails course was probably in getting Heroku pushes to actually work.
[+] [-] kunai|13 years ago|reply
We're developers. We make. You buy. That's how it's worked for ages and ages and ages now.
You don't need to learn how to code to be computer literate.
[+] [-] mwcampbell|13 years ago|reply
I don't know about you, but I actually like the idea of reducing the knowledge gap between users and developers.
Computers are so important in the modern world that I think it makes sense to require all educated people to know something about programming, just as education includes some knowledge of mathematics and science.
[+] [-] CodeCube|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kevinSuttle|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NewAccnt|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saraid216|13 years ago|reply