作者：吴恩达

译自：Quora

嗯，教她写代码吧。更重要的是，培养她持续学习的能力。

Yes, do teach her to code. More importantly, cultivate in her the ability to keep learning.

在计算机科学的世界里，我们所有人每个大概5年，需要跳跃到新的科技和思维范式（互联网->云->移动->人工智能/机器学习），因为新科技按照这个步调被发明出来，而我们以前做的事情就被废弃了。所以，计算机科学领域的人总是在学习新的东西。

In the CS world, all of us are used to needing to jump every ~5 years onto new technologies and paradigms of thinking (internet->cloud->mobile->AI/machine learning), because new technologies get invented at that pace that obsolete parts of what we were previously doing. So CS people are used to learning new things all the time.

目前在计算机科学领域发生的改变，会影响到几乎所有的行业。所以现在不仅仅是计算机科学的世界每隔几年就会变一次。现在每个人都需要改变。所以说，持续学习的能力才是你应该教会你女儿的最重要的职业技能。

The thing that’s now changed is that CS has infected pretty much every other industry. So now it’s not just the CS world that has to change every few years. It’s that everyone now needs to change. That’s why being able to keep learning will be the most important career skill you can teach your daughter.

我还认为几乎每个人都需要学会编程。很久以前，我们曾怀疑是不是每个人都需要学会读写。也许我们只需要几个有智慧的和尚帮我们读经，大多数人不需要读写？哦或者，我们只需要少数人写一些畅销书，其他人不需要会书写？我们发现读写能力上升后，人与人的交流变得更好：不仅仅是少数人写畅销书，我们也可以给仅仅一个读者写email，这也是很有价值的。

I also think (almost) everyone should learn to code. Once upon a time, we wondered if everyone needed to be able to read/write. Perhaps we could just have a few literate monks recite text to us, and most of humanity did not need to read/write? Or perhaps we just needed a small number of people to write best-selling books, and no one else needed to be able to write? What we found was that with rising literacy, human-to-human communications became much better: Rather than only having a small group write best sellers, we can also have emails written just for an audience of one, and this too is valuable.

现在我们在一个时代只有少数人会写代码，大多数代码是写给大众的。但是如果每个人都可以写代码，也许街角的夫妻店，可以写几行代码，为周末的促销定制一下广告屏幕的显示；或者老公可以写一个简单的app，用户只有老婆一人，就像现在他写email给老婆，读者也只有她老婆一人。

Today we’re in an era where so few people can code that at lot code is written for mass audiences. But if everyone can code, perhaps the mom-and-pop owner of a corner store can write a few lines of code to customize their LCD display for this week’s promotional sale; or perhaps a husband can write a simple app whose only audience will be his wife, much like he might today send an email whose only audience is his wife.

广泛的读写能力改变了人与人的沟通方式。现在人机沟通变得非常重要，在可见的未来，编程能力是深度人际沟通的基础。所以我不认为世界上只需要几百万程序员；我认为几乎每个人都需要学会写代码，就像现在每个人都会读写一样。

Widespread literacy has transformed human-to-human communication. Now, human-to-machine communication is becoming really important as well, and the ability to code will be the basis for the deepest human-to-machine communication for the forseeable future. So I don’t agree with those who think the world needs only a few million programmers; I think almost everyone should learn to code in the same way that almost everyone should learn to read/write.