theodp writes “In a widely-read WSJ Op-Ed, English major Kirk McDonald, president of online ad optimization service PubMatic, informed college grads that he considers them unemployable unless they can claim familiarity with at least two programming languages. ‘Teach yourself just enough of the grammar and the logic of computer languages to be able to see the big picture,’ McDonald advises. ‘Get acquainted with APIs. Dabble in a bit of Python. For most employers, that would be more than enough.’ Over at Typical Programmer, Greg Jorgensen is not impressed. ‘I have some complaints about this “everyone must code” movement,’ Jorgensen writes, ‘and Mr. McDonald’s article gives me a starting point because he touched on so many of them.’”
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Since we have nothing much to go on other than a static landing page for Twitter #music, some folks didfurther inspection within the CSS on the login page, and certain features and integrations became apparent. We’ve reached out to Twitter to confirm what we’ve seen, and we’ll update our story once we hear back. Until then, here’s what can be taken from the styling code itself, picked up on by desginer Youssef Sarhan: – Both web interface and separate downloadable app – Pull in Tracks from iTunes, Spotify, Soundcloud and Rdio – YouTube and Vevo integration – We Are Hunted’s charts feature – Turn playing tracks on/off – Track purchasing – Tweet a track .iconmusic-spotify-connect-btn{background-position:-4431px -0px;height:32px;width:179px} .iconmusic-player-source-rdio{background-position:-2801px -0px;height:19px;width:30px} .iconmusic-player-source-itunes{background-position:-2751px -0px;height:19px;width:30px} .iconmusic-player-source-soundcloud{background-position:- 2851px -0px;height:14px;width:92px} .iconmusic-player-source-vevo{background-position:-2963px -0px;height:9px;width:53px} .youtube-vid player{position:absolute;padding:10px;height:200px} While this is in no way a finalized “feature set” for the Twitter #Music app, it is more information than we had before and confirmation of what we’ve seen others testing out on Twitter, which are basically embedded music players in Twitter Cards. And of course, since this is a Twitter-owned page, so the code speaks for itself. Here’s a look at what the player will look like, again referenced in the CSS for the page: Here’s that on/off switch for playing tracks: These are some random graphical elements that point to what services will be included as well: In addition to all of this, it looks like Twitter will be bringing in bios of musicians, perhaps from their Twitter profiles. All of this integration makes complete sense and perhaps the selling of music will be controlled by the artist themselves. If you’re listening to a track that someone shared from Spotify and want to purchase it immediately, it doesn’t matter which service Twitter hooks into, there’s a good chance that you’re going to follow through with your purchase. This could mean big bucks for Twitter as it marches towards going public, perhaps as early as next year. This all gives us more of a sense of what the #Music service itself might look like, even though we have no screenshots to prove it. Much in the way that Twitter set up “hashtag pages” for brands such as NASCAR, Twitter is taking all of the data that it’s currently collecting and just showing it off in a different, more consumable way. If #Music becomes a full-featured service that artists can use to sell
Hiring good developers is one helluva process. 
Code.org, the new non-profit aimed at encouraging computer science education launched last month by entrepreneur and investor brothers Ali and Hadi Partovi, has assembled an all-star group of the world’s most well-known and successful folks with programming skills to talk about how learning to code has changed their lives — and isn’t quite as hard as people might think. As you can see in the five minute embedded above, the short film (nine minutes in its full length version) which was directed by Lesley Chilcott, known as the producer of Waiting for Superman and An Inconvenient Truth, is a who’s who featuring Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Jack Dorsey, Drew Houston, Tony Hsieh, Miami Heat player Chris Bosh (he studied programming in college), and many more. It’s a very human look at what can certainly seem to many as a dry or intimidating subject, and it’s really a pleasure to watch. The watchability is key, Hadi Partovi told me in a phone call this past week, because the purpose of the film is to appeal to the mainstream and particularly young people. It’s an important grassroots start on a very big problem. Partovi said that Code.org sees the first step here as simply raising awareness. “Enrollment rates in programming classes are low, but what is worse is that schools aren’t even teaching it, even though this is the fastest growing segment of jobs in the country,” Partovi said, adding that nine out of ten U.S. schools don’t offer computer programming classes at all — and those that do often treat it as an elective that doesn’t count toward graduation, the same as, say woodworking. Indeed, he pointed to figures (which are represented in the accompanying graphic and more on the Code.org site) that show the massive gap between the number of available programming jobs and the people graduating from American schools with the skills to actually do them — a hiring problem of which most people in the tech industry are painfully aware. And filling in that gap of 1 million jobs could add as much as $ 500 billion to the U.S. economy — a fiscal cliff-sized number. Partovi put it like this: “It’s a big issue for our country. We’re trying to use immigration reform to help solve the problem, and that’s important, but the long-term fix really is that we should teach more people these skills.” So what can
At the invite-only DLD (Digital – Life – Design) conference in Munich today, Codecademy’s co-founder and CEO Zachary Sims talked about the history of the service, the way people are using it today and how he sees the company’s role to be in the quickly growing online education space.
The Raspberry Pi Foundation is on a mission to get more kids to learn to code — and what better way to get children excited about the power of programming than by involving virtual block-builder game Minecraft? The Foundation is aiming to release a free version of Minecraft: Pi Edition by the end of the year which will allow kids to use text commands to control the world.
Ruh-roh. While we were happy to discover 
It’s not quite as cool as working next to other startups 
Comments On Code Comments?
theodp writes “It seems like comments are on programmers’ minds these days. The problem with comments, as Zachary Voase sees it, is that our editors display comments in such a way as to be ignored by the programmer. And over at Scripting News, Dave Winer shares some comments on comments, noting how outlining features allow programmers to see and hide comments as desired. ‘The important thing is that with elision (expand/collapse),’ explains Winer, ‘comments don’t take up visual space so there’s no penalty for fully explaining the work. Without this ability there’s an impossible tradeoff between comments and the clarity of comment-free code.’ Winer also makes the case for providing links in his code to external ‘worknotes.’ So, what are your thoughts on useful commenting practices or features, either implemented or on your wishlist?”
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