Yesterday, I linked to an essay in Time that talked about a guy who was prepared to teach the homeless to code. It crystalized a few thoughts that have been going through my head. Simply put: teaching people to code is solving the wrong problem. We need more than just programmers in the world. Yet, learning to program is flogged constantly as a panacea for anything from homelessness to mere job dissatisfaction. Even NYC mayor and billionaire Michael Bloomberg is learning programming, or so he claims. Now’s the time for all of us to get on the boat.

Why is programming so popular? Look at all the overnight success stories surrounding the startup culture. Some clever guy learns to program in his spare time, creates an online service or iOS app, and gets bought out by Google, Facebook, or Yahoo! and makes multiple millions. A kid just out of college or even out of high school, takes a programming job with a small company based purely on his GitHub contributions, and makes millions when that company gets bought out. Or, someone’s iOS app becomes an overnight success, making millions of dollars a year. Of course you should learn to code—you can get rich! Sure, if you’re lucky enough or get hired by the right company at the right time.

Of course, as technology infiltrates more of our lives, we’ll need more programmers to build, and to maintain, the apps and services we use. For every high-profile six-figure job writing code for a would-be world-changing startup company, there’s plenty of thankless programming jobs keeping financial software up to date with the latest laws, or equally essential, but banal programming tasks. Of course, those typically pay well enough, but they lack the glamor of creating a web or iOS app. Make no mistake: there is a skill shortage in the United States when it comes to engineers and programmers—well, maybe. There’s plenty of skilled programmers that companies can bring in with the H1-B program, or increasingly outsource, and for far less cost.

More importantly, taking an online class can teach you a programming language, but that’s not the same as knowing how to use it. The best programmers are those who aren’t just in it for a paycheck, but also actively enjoy writing code and solving problems. They have experience, and they have expertise that comes from spending more time than a weekend doing exercises from an online tutorial. If you’re hiring a developer, would you take the homeless guy who learned how to write code six months ago, and has barely any experience, or will you take the five-year technology veteran who not only knows the language your product uses, but several others, and has a few open source apps of her own out there. I know who I’d hire.

None of this is to say programming isn’t a skill worth learning. There’s plenty of other equally useful skills people will need. Programmers are often great at making things that work, but making something useful for the normal people requires design skills. It requires someone who can write intelligible documentation. Running a company requires people management skills, money management skills, and the ability to press the flesh and connect with people to give you seed capital and the like. It’s not as easy as “write code, make money” which seems to be the pitch I’m hearing. It’s a myopic worldview that puts value only on people who know how to write code, and smells of snake oil to boot.

McConlogue described his plan on Medium in two parts. In the first post, McConlogue explained that he would offer a choice to the “unjustly homeless” man he passed daily. “Without disrespecting him,” McConlogue would give the man either $100 in cash, or supplies and tutoring so that he might learn how to code for the web.

— Jack Dickey – “The Internet Cannot Save You”

The idea that taking a homeless person and teaching them to code as if that alone will bring them into the echelon of the Middle Class/Creative Class is misguided on so many levels. It’s a textbook example of a technology-focused culture that has its priorities in the wrong place. Not everyone should learn to code, and the world needs more than just programmers. There’s more pressing problems facing the world that a web-based startup, or Internet connectivity simply can not solve, and homelessness is one of them.

The quote at the end of the article should drive the point home, but I don’t think the target audience will get it.

I’ve been checking out a couple of new-ish services that focus around connecting people and fostering conversation online. Of these services, my favorite is Climbing Fish which focuses on connecting “social actualizers” [1] face-to-face in meatspace. Through them, I had a nice conversation with Christopher Smothers, the creator of a similar service Positive Space. Positive Space lacks the offline component, but aims to foster conversation. Of the services I’ve tried, not all of them are great, but they do have me thinking about the role technology can play in fostering conversation.

What unites services like Positive Space and Branch is that they seek to overcome the limits of services like Twitter for sustained one-on-one conversation. Branch piggybacks on Twitter, and seems to only work well if you have a large number of active Twitter followers. I posted a Branch months ago, and got no response, despite asking my follower base. Meanwhile Positive Space relies a little more on serendipity it seems. It was over a month before I got a reply to my first post, but finding posts to reply to is easy(-ish). Climbing Fish, on the other hand, is an email intermediary, connecting its users and putting the onus of the offline step on them.

I suppose the advantage of the online-based services is that they offer sustained one-on-one conversation that goes beyond the limitations of Twitter. Your comments aren’t going to get lost in a popular user’s stream of @-replies, and you don’t have to worry about jump-ons from people you don’t know. The problem for me is that I get my engaged conversation fix on App.Net using @-replies. The 256 character limit on ADN makes conversation easier [2] and I don’t find conversational jump-ons to be a problem. In fact, jump-ons are a feature of ADN, as the community is both small and active enough that jump-ons are a great way to discover new people to follow, and jumping on to a conversation is a great way to get involved.

One shouldn’t just dismiss a service or app as useless. There’s a use case for almost anything out there. I’m just struggling to see the value of online conversation services with the obvious competition of ADN. Positive Space has a decent discovery mechanism, but after poking through a few “Spaces” I found precious little worth talking about. Climbing Fish attempts to play algorithmic matchmaker, and I already mentioned the problem with Branch. For someone who doesn’t want to take the plunge of joining another social stream, or wants to leverage an existing follower base, Branch and Positive Space may work. For me? They’re just services I signed up for and forget about. Which is disappointing, as there’s clearly potential to be tapped.

Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death was the final official release by The Dead Kennedys, [1] collecting various loose tracks, B-sides, and live cuts. A fitting title for what is, arguably a cash-grab compilation album, albeit an essential one. The Dead Kennedys were always critical of mindless consumerism. “Give me convenience or give me death” is also a line of thought that also seems to pervade our relationship with technology and how we consume it.

Case in point: the price of apps. It’s no secret the app store model has caused the price of software to drop overall. If a developer wants to make money on mobile platforms, they can write for iOS where users are more likely to pay for apps—but that’s no no guarantee they’ll make anything when there’s so many free apps. Vesper may be a beautiful, well-designed app with high profile names behind it, but Evernote does more for free, and it’s hard to compete with that. [2] Either way, it’s hard to make money selling mobile apps unless you get critical mass—and with nearly a million apps in the store, and more added daily, it’s hard to get noticed. [3]

So developers are doubly screwed. An audience that leans towards free options, and a store where it’s almost impossible to get discovered means that most of the people getting rich are the ones selling how-to guides on making whatever type of app is trending on Apple’s App Store at the moment. We saw the same thing happen during the blogging boom where people thought they could get rich by posting banal crap and covering it with Google Ads. [4] We can’t have it both ways, and the market now is leaning towards convenience for app “buyers” rather than developers. No skin off Apple’s back—or any other hardware manufacturer—a huge app store is just another feature they can use to sell the hardware.

All of this makes the backlash over freemium apps and in-app purchases very interesting. There’s no shortage of ethical issues around games implementing freemium models, but freemium works on the App Store model—if you’re lucky enough to get noticed. John Moltz’s “very mild defense” of freemium apps and games makes the point better than I could. Moltz singles out Jetpack Joyride is his piece, which made me smile as I dropped $1.99 on the “Double Coins” upgrade, though Jetpack Joyride was easily a game I’d have been satisfied to pay $4.99 for with no in-app purchases. These apps are worth something, and if we’re paying what we think they’re worth, how is that bad? It’s certainly convenient.

But, it isn’t just software where convenience trumps value. How much did you pay for your smartphone? In the US, at least, many people get subsidized phones at a deep discount, or even for free, up front. We “know” we’re paying off the price of the phone—and then some—over the two years of the contract, but few of us are able to drop $649 all at once on an unlocked iPhone 5. Even the sort of cheap Android phone that you can find for free (with contract) in a cereal box costs $139.99 at Best Buy. It’s more convenient for us, and for the carriers, to have the impression of these devices as cheap so that we can buy expensive plans and sign nearly iron-clad contracts. The alternative? Pay more, and be inconvenienced.

I have no solutions to offer. Things are in upheaval, and it’s hard to judge how big the waves really are from our vantage point. All I know is that it was not always like this, and it will not always be like this. That, and if you’re a developer, it probably couldn’t hurt to keep your day job until you make an app that does well. If you’re coming from the consumer side, just keep in mind that these awesome apps and great games are made by real people who need to feed their families. They’re worth something, even if they have a big “FREE” next to them in the store.

Recently, I uninstalled Twitter from my iPhone and iPad. And Facebook. And my App.net client. And the few games I had installed on my phone, too. I’m not going as far as that guy who turned his iPhone into a dumbphone, but I understand his reasoning. With less things on my phone for me to pull out and check when the urge strikes me, I have more mental resources to focus on whatever the task is at hand. That’s what these things are for, which is why I also installed an app on my work and home Macs to block access to time-sink social networking sites when I really need to get down to work.

There’s an attraction to prosthetic distraction. I’m not going to talk about dopamine and neuroscience here. That’s far out of my area of expertise. For me, it’s just about knowing where my time is going. The more time I spend at my work computer with my phone in my hand instead of putting my fingers on the keys, the less I’m getting done. It’s math. When I had a mindless job that required me to sit and do repetitive tasks that a robot or shell script could do, I didn’t have to feel guilty about checking Facebook every half-hour. Now that I’m a knowledge worker, that kind of behavior isn’t as easy to justify.

There’s always a use case behind some of the prosthetic distractions we have on our person. After all, Facebook is the only way I can really keep in touch with some of my friends—they’re not going to switch to Path or whatever form of communication I prefer. I just question the need to always have it available. When there’s dead space in my life to fill, that’s a fine time to check in on Facebook, but that’s not when I should be working. [1] Anything that gives me the incentive to keep my phone in my pocket, my iPad in my bag, and my fingers making the clackity noise as I work is a net good.

Why do we choose distractions? They’re easier. It’s the path of least resistance when we face something harder for us. That’s the appeal. I’m certain some of us have the ability to resist the siren call of finding out what amusing bon mot that @BastardKeith tweeted out in the last hour. [2] Just like the big advice in productivity circles is to not check your email in the morning (something I’m guilty of doing), and scheduling times to get caught up, we should consider that approach to our social networks and other prosthetic distraction.

After all, we can only focus and be productive for so long at a time. After a half-hour or hour of legit work, checking in on Twitter and App.Net is the palate cleansing sherbet that prepares us for the next course of actual work. Keeping it off my phone and running Anti-Social is just my method for ensuring I don’t take the easy way out. It helps that I can update all these services without having to view my timelines, though, thanks to Drafts. Decide for yourself if your prosthetic distractions are more distracting than they should be. Then find a way to fix it.