Because the Register article doesn't make it clear whether Pope Francis himself or a representative of the Vatican gave an endorsement, I started looking up information in other sources.

But in practically every article I could find that mentioned Miron Mironiuk and "Code With Pope," the information about the papal endorsement came from Mironiuk.

For example, this article from the BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-67209806

I could not find any articles that directly quote a Vatican source, or the pope himself, as endorsing this project.

So until I can find some kind of credible source beyond Mironiuk's say-so, I am going to assume that he got some sort of recognition or general note of encouragement from someone in the Vatican. But it's doubtful that Pope Francis himself is partnering with this one app developer.

If course even if he did say that it doesn't touch on morals or dogma so it's just a guy voicing his personal opinion. It would just be weird for him to voice it using his religious platform.

That said it is likely that some group in the Vatican has started a teach kids to code program under their charity wing. As to how effective such programs are - I'm skeptical. There are already lots of great python resources online - is this going to be geared towards Catholic kids and parents to help that niche get interested in code?

I find that hard to accept. He is the Pope. It's like thinking a country's president saying something that isn't directly political is just voicing his opinion as a private citizen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8mdHO2_Zo8

Although I suppose the law degree and Rhodes scholarship add a little weight.

The main point here, though, is we are able to seperate his personal opinions from his role as Prime Minister just as I would hope that many Catholics would be able to seperate the opinions of the Pope on Python (if in fact there were any, given that this entire story seems to lack a direct primary Pontiff quote) from the Pope's official statments re: Catholicism and the wider Christian beliefs.

I suspect however that perhaps devout members of a religious flock that regard a person as a direct agent of God on earth might be less discerning about that person's opinions than the citizens of a democratic country are about the opinions of their temporay prime political representative particulalry as a good number of those citizens might not even support that representative.

TLDR: democratic citizens are likely more critical of their ephemeral leaders than religuos flocks are about their designated "voice of the lord".

The extent to which Catholics would give extra weight to the Pope's opinions outside his official role varies wildly. Much the same is true of any leader: e.g. the weight given to the opinions of a president of a democratic country by their supporters and opponents. The last president of the US is a particularly good example of this :)

Also, any authority is only valid in an offical role.What we are discussing here is out of scope for that.

Joke (maybe?).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_(programming_language)#...

Likewise, any decisions made by a Canadian federal or provincial department are, by law, made by the responsible minister. In (obvious) reality, this is would be a decision made a lower level employee that has delegated signing authority to make it work within the framework of the law.

https://www.sqlite.org/codeofethics.html

I'm not much of one for Christian theology, but there is a lot of wisdom in the document. I especially like rules 14 through 19, I think those principles are found across faiths and creeds, and worthy of aspiration.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TempleOS

    import behavior
    from afterlife import Heaven, Hell, Limbo

    try:
        behavior.good()
        return Heaven()
    except behavior.MoralsError as sin:
        return Hell(sin)
    else:
        return Limbo()

(Bonus context for anyone surprised that it is valid code — Python actually allows you to use “else” in more places than you’d expect - `for ... else` is my favourite (do a for loop over a list of things, `break` if you find the thing that you’re looking for, and then the `else` branch will be taken if you don’t find what you’re looking for. Much cleaner than keeping track of a separate i_found_the_thing bool IMO))

Corrected code.

  from behaviour import repentance
  from afterlife import Heaven, Hell, Limbo

  if person.is_baptised:
     if (person.state == repentance):
        return Heaven
     else:
       return Hell  # FIXME define Hell
  else:
    # TODO I think we need something with Limbo here
    return None

An improvement might look like this:

    def judgement(soul):
        in_grace = soul.state.is_graceful() 
        good_works = len(soul.works)
        if in_grace: return 1 # Heaven
        if good_works > MORAL_MINIMUM: return 0 # Limbo
        return -1 # Welp.
        

I actually work parttime at a startup where we're trying to use web3 to establish permanent, digital identities that you can use in the afterlife to bargain with demons. The idea is, you can use an NFT (who says web3 is dead!) to correlate the atoms in the immortal eternal one-soul with their constituent souls on earth, so you can identify your friends in Heaven (or Hell). Eventually, we hope to even link people on earth to people on heaven, via our Rust-based AngelLink blockchain. A sort of "tower to the heavens" so to speak.

If anyone else on HN is interested in this space, feel free to email me (darigo.maxwell at gmail dot com). Always looking to make new friends who love God and have a passion for big data and the thirst for God's presence.

(also, yes, of course you'll need UB for Purgatory, etc.)

i.e. the pope endorsed a programme to teach coding in Python for kids.

Remember when priests and teachers condemmned the group and Life of Brian back in the day?

Also, the ordering of links is sus today.

64. A holistic approach to computing and sustainability inspired from permaculture (xxiivv.com)

65. Pope tempted by Python. Signs off on coding scheme for kids (theregister.com)

Pope Francis encourages more children to code, especially in Catholic countries - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38012207 - Oct 2023 (50 comments)