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Gates On Future of CS Education
lilrowdy18 writes "In an interesting article from Eweek, Microsoft chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates talks about how the lack of spending in research and development is 'kind of a crime'. He also talks about future problems that are facing the computer industry including outsourcing and the speed of upcoming processors." From the article: "Microsoft taps both native-born talent and foreign talent, but Gates said he is frustrated that more U.S. students are not going into computer science. 'The fastest growing major is physical education,' he said. 'The Chinese are going to wake up and say we missed this opportunity,' he joked."
when every other news article talks about jobs being outsourced and the layoffs that are happening all over the place, most recently at HP.
Maybe that's because Microsoft has demonstrated that a technology company doesn't have to engage in any original work at all in order to be wildly successful, at least in the current US legal climate...
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
...how the same corporations that complain taxes are too high also whine about the government not spending taxes to help their industry.
One correction, Mr. Gates.
It is we in North America who are asleep, and who will one day wake up and have to admit that we missed the opportunity.
The Chinese are wide awake.
Sounds like an excuse for outsourcing. It has been my experience that more people (in the US) go into CS than can obtain a career in CS. I think it is incorrect that we are missing the boat. The boat has already sailed for cheaper employment waters.
if he's complaining about the lack of CS students, then perhaps he should pay graduates more, stop outsourcing to India and relying on H1b visas... then people might just believe there's a future in CS... he and several others like him are the root cause of the problem...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Why get a degree in a field that already has an oversupply of workers, and in addition is continuing to outsource even more of those jobs that are left?
American high schoolers might be stupid, but they're not that stupid.
Is because we believe/afraid that we wont have a job when we get out of college due to all the out sourcing going on in IT. People don't want to spend all their money on a great education, to not have chance at a job when they graduate. So they look into other majors, while possibly doing some code on the side. Simple as that.
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Wasn't giving software to someone for free supposed to be anti-American or something?
Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it!
Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.
Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.
Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.
Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.
Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.
Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.
Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.
Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.
Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.
Gee, this is like the pot calling the kettle black, how many jobs as Mr. Gates company outsourced I wonder?
The guy is just playing the governments of the world off one another to benefit his own company. Not really news.
Let's see, 2 million copies of a limited highly proprietary language which is a developmental dead end (remember .NET will not be the basis for Longhorn). All those VB script kiddies will most certianly ease the skill shortage in basic CS research.
The donation just happens to lock the users into the donor's OS and development system. What a surprise!
In the same spirit I donate an infinite number of copies of Python, an infinite number of copies of PERL, an infinite number of copies of GCC and an infinite number of copies of Linux for anybody to download!
from a dropout?
If it's not Consolidated Lint, It's just fuzz!
From TFA:
Microsoft taps both native-born talent and foreign talent, but Gates said he is frustrated that more U.S. students are not going into computer science.
This is the same Bill Gates that wants to completely eliminate H-1B quotas (that is, allow an unlimited number of foreign software developers in). This is the same Bill Gates that is constructing a huge, sprawling Microsoft Campus in India.
You want more students going into Computer Science, Bill? Then quit telling American students, through your actions, that there won't be any software development jobs left for them in America by the time they graduate!
He's just another F'ing "I want cheap labor at the expense of American workers" prick. Excuse my French.
With the current unemployment rate in CS, the US can limp along for a few years with zero new admissions to CS schools...
Oh well, what the hell...
is because kids nowadays are taught that wishing makes it so, that you can never be 100% right about anything, that there's no way to really know reality, that nobody has any control over anything, and that public opinion is more important than facts.
Faced with this, why NOT go into some soft social science, where you can graduate, and go work for some policy making body, who can govern the skeleton of America's scientific establishment
? Take the short-cut!
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
The next time someone calls Gates a technical genius, remember this quote.
Who gets paid millions of dollars to play games?
Athletes and coaches
Who gets put on the covers of countless magazines?
Athletes and coaches
Who gets multimillion dollar contract buy-outs when they fail to perform?
Athletes and coaches
Who gets invited on Leno and Letterman?
Athletes and coaches
Who gets multimillion dollar endorsement deals?
Athletes and coaches
Who gets put on posters and tacked to the walls of thousands of teenagers?
Athletes and coaches
Who gets worshipped and forgiven for all sins for being successful?
Athletes and coaches
Who gets teased mercilessly throughout their school years?
Science geeks and nerds
Who gets fired to raise stock prices even after successful work?
Science geeks and nerds
Who gets taunted and degraded by society at large?
Science geeks and nerds
Who gets underpaid for long hours and little security?
Science geeks and nerds
Who gets to spend 4-8 years in school in a difficult, demanding major with perceived diminishing job opportunities?
Science geeks and nerds
The perception is that you have to be born with certain talents and abilities to become a great athlete, but you can be trained to be a coach (even a mediocre one) and at least be in that field, so something fun, and bask in the reflected glory of the truly talented. Plus, we're not outsourcing football yet.
Yeah, I can't imagine why so many people are choosing PE over CS.
Free? Free? You think he donated it "for free"? Hardly. He donated something that "cost" $500 million or more, and thus saved him lots on Microsoft Corporate taxes.
The cake is a pie
1) Four years of one of the most time intensive majors in colleges
I actually thought my CS classes were the easy ones. It was that damn Lit class that gave me hell.
2) Going through Microsoft's dehumanizing interview process
There are (e-gahds!) other companies to work for you know. You don't HAVE to be evil.
3) Getting free soda in exchange for 80 hour work weeks at minimum wage I don't get free soda, and I only put in 5 hours of overtime a week to run nightly processes. I get paid a good deal more then minimum wage.
4) Getting fired at age 28 for being too old
I'm only 26, so I can't say for sure, but my Boss (a former mainframe coder) is in his 50s, my team lead is in his late 30s and another developer on the team is in his mid 40s.
Just wanted to shed some light on the ACTUAL life.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Giving schools an incentive to teach VB rather than C/C++, Python, or even ****ing Java. Great, that will really improve the state of CS education. :-(
Wow, you *really* missed the point of those algorithms courses, didn't you?
One of the causes of this is simple -- to earn a CS degree, to be eligible for CS-related jobs, and to qualify yourself to be recognized as a professional CS individual, you have to teach yourself more than what you are taught. Almost every other discipline you can take at school teaches you what you need to know, but CS does not.
Want to become an accountant? We'll show you how.
Want to become a doctor? We'll show you how.
Want to become a computer scientist? We'll show you fundamental principles of CS, examine the primitive roots of CS and (formerly) popular programming languages, but the rest is up to you!
Two years into my CS degree, I came to the conclusion that I needed to teach myself to be useful post-University. I've done just that. Now I preach to my friends that they should be spending more time researching and learning the things they really need to know (new technologies, new programming languages) that will qualify them for jobs when they get out, rather than dedicate all their time to their to outdated cirriculms (and some professors).
Improve and update the typical CS cirriculum, and I'm sure more individuals will be attracted to the programs, knowing that, with confidence, they will be qualified after they are handed their degree.
For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.
Gates says "The fastest growing major is physical education" but we all know that it isn't CS majors jumping ship to do jumping jacks.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
I hate doing "me too" posts, but this is exactly what I went through. I graduated during the worst time when the unemployment level was sky high. So did my friends in non-tech majors. Although I love what I do for living, it becomes obvious that the market is somewhere else right now. Not a biggie, let's create a new bubble and retire rich :)
Sure there are a lot of people majoring in physical education, it is a required course in a lot of high schools. Computer programming is rarely a required course in high school. Perhaps it should be. If it were, it might spark a lot of interest and talent developement in a lot of people before they even go to college and think about choosing a major.
The big problem with teaching computer science in high school (or a lot of other things) is that teachers make a lot less money than computer programmers. Most people who are qualified enough to teach computer science would find they can make a whole lot more money doing something other than teaching.
So until you can pay for good CS high school teachers, you aren't going to find a lot of people entering college with an interest in CS. Especially if all their computer experiences have been with a dumb Windows computer.
I learned computer programming when I was young, toying around with BASIC that came with the operating system. It was a neat toy back then. The few commands and ease of the language was perfect for a beginner, and at a time when games and applications were also simple. You could aspire to write a game that's comparable to the games you played every day.
Today, there is no software compiler bundled with MS operating systems. Sure, you can run VB script. But the difficulty of actually doing something interesting on a novice level is discouraging. Having a free-use IDE (in whatever language) where simple drawing and user interaction is accomplishable at a novice level would boost interest a great deal, where currently the only viable solution to begin learning is to pirate an IDE and fiddle. Software and books on the subjects of computer programming have become so costly that no novice, whether ignorant or keenly aware of potential, can afford to purchase them.
Microsoft's fierce opposition to open-source software is another stumbling block. Open-source software was one of the greatest learning tools for me.
Many third-world countries don't enforce copyright protection. You can buy pirated copies of just about any major piece of software at very low costs. Foriegners have the upper-hand on the middle class and lower class in the US when it comes to affording an education in CS.
Computer programming today is comparable to rocket science yesterday, but you can't acquire a model rocket for less than $500.
Go check out a copy of The Peter Principle (copyright 1969 -- pick up a used copy from Amazon) to confirm that the current decrepit state of our managerial skilz is nothing new.
When the nation's leaders stop rewarding managerial ineptitude and punishing technical workers, we might have a chance of turning this around. You can count on other nations (China, anyone?) not making this particular blunder.
If it offers hope to anyone, in today's WSJ (subscription required) there is a piece advocating outsourcing of our outrageously overpaid top management to bring excessive top management compensation under control. It's the 7th most-emailed article today. But it will take a long time after such practices begin (assuming they ever begin) before they filter down through the corporate structure and clueless incompetence is no longer rewarded.
We're not talking about VB, we're talking about VB.net. The difference is almost incomprehensibly huge. VB.net doesn't cause brain damage or anything. It's essentially C# with a different facade.
About it being very difficult to repair the brain of a coder exposed to any form of BASIC, do you have any actual evidence or studies on that? Because I really don't believe it's true.
Le français vous intéresse?
Maybe I'll take the cbest and teach CS.
Be careful. I know people who have tried to become teachers. The kids will try to kill you, and you will have almost no way to discipline them. It takes a special kind of person to teach in the US public schools today, more of a prison guard than a professor.
>Now Gates and others bitch about how few people are going into CS
Some simple suggestions for those companies:
1. Hire people in the USA
2. Don't import 3rd world wage workers into the USA and expect the same quality you get from USA workers
3. Don't offshore thousands of jobs to the 3rd world and expect USA workers to enter the IT labor force or remain in the IT labor force
4. Don't make 'we value our employees' statements and then shift work offshore since the two actions are a contradiction.
The 2 points I always make about these sorts of articles are:
1) Good riddance. I hope this shakes out some of the riff-raff that jumped on the band wagon in the late 90's, the "I've got l337 VB skillz u owe me 72k/yr." crowd. Only people who are serious about their profession and passionate about it need apply.
2) The entire focus of technology is automation. If you need a huge army of programmers and IT people to support your software, your software is crap. billg does not seem to get this. His is attacking a cost center, like most managers, by looking for a cheap source of commodity resources (code monkeys, sysapes). Rather than building a product which requires minimal support. I twigged on this in the 90's when M$ announced that they wanted to produce 100k newly minted MC*E's. Rather than improve the software, reduce the cost of supporting it.
This is a harsh opinion, I know.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
You could argue Columine was the beginning of that...
Up against the wall, motherfucking football player!
>Replace "band" with "science major" and "football"
;-)
>with "business major" or "PE major" and nearly
>everything still holds at different levels.
>American society not only holds thinkers and
>researchers and scientists and engineers in less
>admiration than celebrities and athletes and
>managers, but it increasingly seems to be actively
>punishing people in those fields.
Yep.
> Me, bitter? Nah!
I'm right there with you (although our band sucked as bad as out football team). But I think you are really onto something. The values of American societry run completely counter to those required to compete in the 21st century. We don't elect intelligent people who propose large complicated solutions.... we elect a guy we would be comfortable 'having a beer with'.
And this is the same reason that no matter what politician does what our education system will continue its downward spiral. Because at our heart America doesn't give a rat's ass about education. Technology is 'for those wierdo's who never get laid'; sadly we even echo this non-stop in these forums (although it is complete and total crap). Somehow it passes for humour when the upshot is that we American's are screwing [no pun intended] ourselves.
Using "Common Sense" is being either to arrogant or to ignorant to ask people who know more about something than you.
As if the US is much different? Have you seen the debt figures recently? (Closing on $8,000,000,000,000, more than $25,000 per citizen.)
The average American has better than $8000 in credit card debt alone. I don't think that there should be a required company pension, but I don't trust the average American to actually save enough money for next week, much less post retirement. I'd rather not go back to the day when everyone worked until the day the died either though.
Be glad life is unfair, otherwise we'd deserve all this.
Noone cares about whether he's taking with him the tens of hours of coaching with GCC. All the time he spent doing Graph theory with free software. Hours with a program like Haskell. GCC. cpp. All the so-called fucking IP that he's taken from free/oss to Microsoft
So what? The Open Source community accepts copyright (and relies on it with the GPL) but believes that ideas should be free. And free also means that you can keep using your skills in a proprietary environment.
So there is nothing wrong with someone from the Open Source crowd taking a job at Microsoft.
C - the footgun of programming languages