LowResMBR

Malta Business Review
INTERVIEW OF THE MONTH
HELLO
CODING
When Did You
Get So Cool?
“
We specifically write our content
using language that even young
children can understand.
Derek Lo
”
By Zita Petrahai
MBR: Why were 600,000 high-paying tech
jobs unfilled in 2015 in the United States
alone, or is the better question: Is technology
developing faster than humans can learn to
handle it?
DL: According to the White House, by 2018,
51 percent of STEM jobs will be in computer
science-related fields. However, the number
of tech employees has not increased along
with the number of jobs available. Why?
The answer is simple: lack of relevant
education. The White House maintains that
just one quarter of K-12 schools offer highquality
computer science with programming
and coding. In addition, in 2016, the PEW
Research Center reported that only 17% of
adults believed they were “digitally ready.”
When we look at diversity, things only get
worse. In 2015, 22 percent of students taking
the AP Computer Science exam were girls
while 13 percent were African-American or
Latino. These statistics are not U.S. specific; in
2015, Australia reported that only 28 percent
of ICT jobs were held by women. Coding
has always been regarded as a mysterious
field, something Derek Lo, co-founder of
the new application “Py”, wants to change.
Launched in 2016, the application offers
interactive courses on everything from
Python to iOS development. The “unique
value proposition,” as Lo puts it, has been
a revolutionary success. The fun-oriented
application has so far resulted in over 100,000
downloads on both iTunes and Google Play.
Most parents frown when kids use their
phones at the dinner table, but what if the
kids were learning to code over Sunday roast?
“Ok, so maybe not the Sunday roast, but
seriously, could a more accessible and fun
coding application make all the difference?”
MBR Publications, in-conjunction with the
Global Search for Education is excited to
welcome one of Py’s founders, Derek Lo, to
discuss how Py’s revolutionary approach is
literally making coding cool.
Coding can provide people
with the awesome ability of
being able to create tangible
things like websites and apps.
It also instills less tangible
things like a greater aptitude
for systematic thinking and
logical decision making.
MBR: People say education today is often
treated as a business and that individual
students’ needs have not been prioritized
enough. As the number of qualified
applicants increases, can individualized
learning tools, such as Py, help today’s
generations remain competent in our
globalized world, even with “broken”
education systems?
DL: Yes. As college acceptance rates decline,
more people will need alternatives for
learning career-essential skills, and we believe
Py will be a big part of that. Using machine
learning algorithms, we are able to adapt
the user experience based on prior skill and
behavior within the app, creating a tailored
curriculum. Having a personal tutor in your
pocket that knows how you learn and what
you should be learning is powerful and why
we are investing in personalization.
MBR: Py provides its users with a simple
and easy platform while many other coding
applications (e.g. Solo Learn) have opted
for more traditional and serious lesson
plans. Does making learning applications
appear more serious fuel the conception
that coding is a hard and scary thing to
learn? Are we over-complicating the field
of coding and making it seem inaccessible
for people or should students really be this
wary of programming?
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