Slashdot Mirror
Should Microsoft Give Kids Programmable Versions of Office?
theodp (442580) writes "Over at Microsoft on the Issues, Microsoft continues to lament the computer programming skills gap of American kids, while simultaneously lobbying for more H-1B visas to fill that gap. Saying that states must do more to 'help students gain critical 21st century skills,' Microsoft credits itself and partner Code.org for getting 30,606,732 students to experience coding through the Hour of Code, claiming that K-12 kids have 'written 1,332,784,839 lines of code' (i.e., dragged-and-dropped puzzle pieces), So, if it's concerned about helping students gain programming skills, shouldn't Microsoft be donating fully-functional desktop versions of MS-Office to schools, which would allow kids to use Visual Basic for Applications (VBA)? While Microsoft's pledge to give 12 million copies of its Office software to schools was heralded by the White House and the press, a review of the 'fine print' at Microsoft suggests it's actually the online VBA-free version of Office 365 Education that the kids will be getting, unless their schools qualify for the Student Advantage program by purchasing Office for the faculty and staff. Since Microsoft supported President Obama's call for kids to 'Don't Just Play on Your Phone, Program It', shouldn't it give kids the chance to program MS-Office, too?"
... and that makes more sense than something like Python?
Giving the stuff away is a way to groom the next up-and-coming generation into drinking your Kool-Aid. If they don't do this - they have only themselves to blame when the next generation grows up to be FOSS zellots...
How about we send Microsoft some books on how to design a user interface?
It's a manufactured crisis. They want cheaper programmer wages by introducing more kids that can program to the labor workforce. The labor market already reflects the lucrative nature of the service economy (it isn't).
Yeah, 1,000,000,000 lines of code. And it takes 9 women just 1 month to create 1 baby.
You should have included a link to something in your summary...
Kids should be given FULL copies of Visual Studio. and a decent set of books that explain to kids how to use it and write software.
Many kids started with a home computer that did nothing but drop you into a basic interpreter prompt and they ramped up fast on their own.
Sadly Visual Basic is just C# lite so it has as steep of a learning curve as C# and C++ does directly. so there is nothing that a kid can get right into fast.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Will Microsoft even be relevant in the future? They seem to have stagnated on innovation and are late coming to the latest and greatest technology party. Google and Facebook have relegated Microsoft to a lesser innovator.
Get 'em young, get em forever - nothing original here.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
There are a lot of articles about what Microsoft "Should" be doing recently. IMO Microsoft is already going above and beyond when it comes to providing students free developer tools: https://www.dreamspark.com/
...why do people have the ridiculous assumptions that..
1. coding is "fun" and it's something kids/adults would just love spending time doing "if we just exposed them to it"
and
2, that kids/adults want to spend their lives in semi-constant frustration of having to get these damn computers working and to learn and relearn skills every 4 years?
my 12yo daughter encapsulated it perfectly a few months ago..
"dad...you seem really smart...why in the world did you decide to be a programmer and sit behind a computer 10 hours a day instead of doing something cool?"
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
and HOOOORAY open source and slashdot type stuff!!!
Should Microsoft be forced to support XP? Should Microsoft give kids Office? Should Microsoft start making hybrid cars out of farm waste?
Maybe a better question should be: does any decision-maker at Microsoft give a tenth of a fuck about what any Slashdot poster has to say? I'm wagering the answer to that one is: no.
Comment of the year
We should be very conservative with our H-1B Visas. Every one of these visas issued amounts to one less job for a US citizen, and usually a good paying job, at that. If there are not enough citizens with the needed skills, then companies themselves can hire-to-train. It is called hiring "entry-level".
Learning kids to program using VBA is like learning to cycle using a pogo-stick.
--- Reality doesn't care about your opinions, it happens anyway and if you are in the way you'll get squished.
Let us see, do we have the four freedoms? 1. The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0). No, only the purposes designated by the Microsoft EULA. When you buy a laptop, even if you disagree with a EULA, the manufacturer (like HP) will not even permit you to refund the OS. 2) The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this. The Micorosft EULA specifically prohibits this. 3) The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2). Once again, the Microsoft EULA specifically prohibits this. 4) The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this. This again, violates the Microsoft EULA. Micorsoft is not interested in a a better world, rather it is interested in their share value and market dominance. Better to have the kids work on Libreoffice.
"SO we bide our time, waiting for a purer kick to bloom and the future is still bleak, uncertain and beautiful" -GSYBE
Have you ever spent time writing VBA code?
Did you enjoy it?
If we want more people to take up coding, making them do VBA code is a great way to scare everyone away from ever programming again.
...based on what they DO rather than on what they SAY. They used to supply a simple basic interpreter with every copy of MS-DOS that cost nothing and was simple to use. That is long gone and nothing has ever taken its place. If kids want to code now, the options are expensive, complicated, and are not included in the price of 'Windows.' Moreover, Microsoft distributes sophisticated video games that suck up the time and creative energy of the very kids that would otherwise be likely to code in the first place. One might think that Microsoft would encourage high schools to offer coding curricula by distributing tools to high schools for free/low cost and providing training and guidance for teachers. Instead, Microsoft distributes Office for low cost and we are talking in TFA about what Office can do as a development tool. One has to conclude, based on its actions, that the very last thing Microsoft wants is for a lot of bright american kids to be actually writing powerful creative code for Windows.
Tabs vs. spaces is already solved. In IDLE, the smart Python editor that comes bundled with Python for Windows, pressing the Tab key inserts four spaces.
1. coding is "fun" and it's something kids/adults would just love spending time doing "if we just exposed them to it"
It can be fun. It can also be soul-breakingly boring. Describes most jobs I know. I'm both an engineer and an accountant. There are aspects of both jobs that are super cool and fun and there are others that I'd rather poke myself in the eye with a fork than do more of it. What makes a job interesting is A) the problem you are working on to solve and B) the people you are doing it with. You need an interesting and relevant problem and you need to work on it with competent people you enjoy working with. What works well for me might bore the crap out of you and that's ok.
2, that kids/adults want to spend their lives in semi-constant frustration of having to get these damn computers working and to learn and relearn skills every 4 years?
Computers are never going to become a smaller part of our lives. One can spend one's life in frustration or get on board and learn about them and they become significantly less frustrating. Not to mention lucrative. I spent a lot of my life learning to use computers well and I am both more productive and less frustrated than a lot of my colleagues as a result. I'm not a programmer but most of the jobs I've gotten have been thanks to my computer skills. Basic principles don't change much so learn those and then you are simply filling in some details here and there.
"dad...you seem really smart...why in the world did you decide to be a programmer and sit behind a computer 10 hours a day instead of doing something cool?"
No disrespect to your daughter but there are a lot of very interesting and fun things that don't seem "cool" to a twelve year old. There are a lot of things you can do as a programmer that are borderline magic and I have huge respect for people who can do it well. Furthermore there are a lot of jobs that aren't "cool" but are immensely satisfying. If you spend your life pursuing what other people think is cool instead of what you think is cool then you're probably going to lead a very frustrating existence.
If we want kids better prepared, with the skills that MS claims are lacking, maybe we should spend less money on sports and more money in the classroom?
That exists. I'm not sure programmable office is entirely necessary when they're giving that away.
For those who seek perfection there can be no rest on this side of the grave.
MIT has been debating to add a computer science requirement for over 30 years. Interesting Idaho schools has beaten them. MIT came pretty close a few years ago proposing to replace the 2nd required physics course with an engineering choice, one which could be computer science.
The arguments AGAINST this new requirment include that (1) MIT already specifies 7(*) of the 16 year long courses the average undergraduate takes. Another would start to eat in the requirments of intensive majors like engineering. (2) Most MIT stiudents know some computer programming before they enter MIT, although it is not of software engineering quality.
(*) Year of calculus, year of physics, year of chemistry/biology, four years of humanities. Even if you are a music major.
Office is a avery intricate application. Many mobile apps ae more self-contained. Plus a gaming type app might capture more attention of teens than a dull business application.
Plus a restriction-free copy of Visual Studio, to boot
Restriction-free including a lack of restrictions against running it on a non-Windows operating system or even an older Genuine Windows operating system? For one thing, nothing on the page you linked even runs on Windows Vista, which is still in extended support. For another, the version targeting Windows Phone runs only on Windows 8.
Your FUD is decades out-of-date
I think the point is that Visual Studio encourages programmers to code to APIs available only on Windows. Pretty much every time I've tried to load a .NET application in Mono, the application has stopped with an error that a particular system library is unavailable.
Unless you were a roadie for Beyonce or Bieber she'd probably say the same about any job you did whether you were a top surgeon or an airline pilot.
Perhaps a better question is "If Microsoft fails to do so, what's stopping someone from taking advantage of this failure and bringing about the era of a freely licensed operating system on desktop computers?"
VBA is kind of like Python, albeit with a raging tequila hangover.
There are lots of free programming languages and tools out there that I think would be a lot more interesting to kids. If Microsoft wants more programming/engineering kids coming out of schools why don't they donate a bunch of Raspberry Pis, BeagleBones, Arduinos, or Lego Mindstorms?
VBA has got to be one of the least engaging programming tools out there. I'm not saying there's anything in particular wrong with it and it can be very useful to businesses but it's hardly going to inspire any kid who might be so inclined to get into programming.
Every one of these visas issued amounts to one less job for a US citizen
Not necessarily, for two reasons. First, expats in the US on a work visa will be buying goods and services with the money that they earn in the US and paying US and state income tax, state and local sales tax, and local property tax with the money that they earn in the US. US residents benefit from these expats' demand for goods produced by US residents, and governments benefit from their tax dollars. Second, if the US grants a Canadian citizen one work visa, and Canada grants one US citizen a work visa, no net US citizens lose jobs. And once the regulatory environment becomes zero-sum in such a manner, citizens of both countries gain the ability to seek out the most efficient employment, which benefits both countries.
How many of those '1,332,784,839 lines of code' were written in Python on a Raspberry Pi? Both of which are things Microsoft would really rather not support (like the Baptists do not like to support having sex while standing up, because it might lead to dancing).
"Cock Up Your Beaver" does not mean what you think. This sig is intended to clog filters and annoy do-gooders
"Over at Microsoft on the Issues, Microsoft continues to lament the gap between computer programming skills and a willingness to work on the cheap of American kids, while simultaneously lobbying for more H-1B visas to fill that gap."
It's far cheaper to rent an H1B programmer who you can dump easily once their skills are outdated than to hire someone , train them to keep skills current, and pay based on demand for those skills.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Until you get to high school, where the geeks in a particular class gain reputation by programming Texas Instruments graphing calculators to help with certain problems in math class and chemistry class and sharing those programs with classmates. That's essentially "forms", but it teaches about automating repetitive problems with a simple program.
TDF should be pushing their scriptable LibreOffice, and point out the benefits of not having to purchase it either now or in the future, the freedom of open formats, and also the benefits from a "smart kids" point of view to giving them an open-sourced office suite they can tinker with.
If companies see value in using Microsoft's full suite and stack, more power to them both. In the mean time, from an educational, budget and general open formats point of view, LibreOffice is the way to go.
Heck, if it's about kids' programming skills, and if the kids think they can improve the scriptability of the application itself, they could even submit their own patches and features to LO. Not so with MSO.
-- "Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability." --Dijkstra
No. Don't torture them. On day 1 of class the teacher explains it, perhaps like this:
"Programming languages are keys that open doors in the computer. Some open more doors than others. Some open them in a different way. Some computers come with keys and some don't. There are a lot of choices on how to solve this problem. The way I've chosen is.... (teachers tells them what, perhaps even why.)".
See. No big problem, really. The students learn that a language may or may not come with the system, and that you can chose languages. The concept of components is important in software, and they learn it right up front.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Companies want instant gratification and lobby for it. Training that fits a certain tool stack takes too long for their little twiddling Thurston Howell fingers. They don't care if the US is flooded with unemployed techies who don't happen match the company profile of the day, that's not their problem. They just want greenbacks and yachts. A shrinking middle class is somebody ELSE'S problem.
I want special peanut butter; I don't care if it's uneconomical for the store to carry the brand me, myself, and I want: that's THEIR problem. I want what I want, when I want it; the store's own situation and balance sheet be damned. Me me me!
Table-ized A.I.
Teaching kids programming is a total and complete waste of money.
Those who are interested will learn by themselves. Those who aren't, won't even if you make it mandatory. But the unintended consequences are what's going to get you: Everyone will think that programming is easy because it's something the kids learn.
School should teach basic skills that can then be applied to programming, but also to a long list of other skills. Teach critical thinking, logic, math. Teach people how to learn, not what. Teach them reading comprehension so they can study on their own. Teach them trial-and-error and that failure is an option because it teaches you what you did wrong.
Most of all, don't solve a shortage of programmers by creating a million bad and counterproductive ones. You don't solve a shortage of doctors by giving random people scalpels and a license to cut open bellies, do you?
Good programmers are a lot more difficult to find than any programmer. I'd rather hire one good guy then five students for the same price.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
No! Nobody in their right mind should be "programming" in VBA. Especially not kids. Who the hell wrote this article!?
"It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that have had prior exposure to Basic; as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration".
- Edsger Dijkstra
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
all the articles would be lamenting how MS gave the kiddies the tools to hack. Maybe all these authors can get off their asses and instead of commenting how bad MS/Apple/Google/Samsung/Etc. are maybe they could do something of value to the effort themselves. Oh, that's right - it's much easier to write and point fingers.
9/10 times, these days when a student wants to discover something they consult the internet first.
Then how does the student even know that it exists? When Windows starts, it normally presents a list of all installed programs, which is short enough to look through completely in one sitting. There's no central list of all programs available through the Internet, unless you count Windows Store, and even then, the list is too long to browse.
Drug dealers give out samples of their products, only enough to get you addicted, so you keep coming back to them. Microsoft apparently isn't any better than a drug dealer when it comes to their own profit margins. They are sort of hypocritical though. They will only show you the programming interface when you actually BUY the product. This is as it seems on the surface, a way to get cheap labor and nothing more. Why pay American programmers six figures then you can get the job done in a third world country for one quarter of those wages.
It's way more hackable than MS office, the kids aren't only learning how to work for one company, and they can learn to actually make their own choices. Who cares if it's actually BETTER than MSOffice or not, it's not exactly BAD software. The one thing that really can be said which stands out as superior to MSOffice is that LibreOffice is free for the kids (and parents, and teachers) to use and hack.
If you're a parent, and your're tech savvy, and you're NOT involved in your children's school's tech, then sure.. expect Microsoft will try to buy your children's futures and never expose them to the idea that they can learn their own way, with whatever tool they want.
It is now, and has always been Microsoft's way or the highway. If, in the spirit of any opensource project, you yourself don't get involved in your own kids' school, and what they use and what they can teach with, sure.. Microsoft will gladly teach your children their way only, and America will -continue- to lag behind the rest of the world technically.
Nobody gets paid to post articles about that though, Everybody's-Own-Good Corp. doesn't exist to fund this message. So alas, another comment explaining the obvious fault with this whole /. article goes unconsidered.
US$0.02++
US$0.02++
No, they should give kids copies of Libre Office since that's the future. $450 per copy of Office 2013 Pro with like 80% negative reviews? Goooo fuck yourself, Microsoft. It's not my fault you're not making any money on the Xbox One or Windows 8 or Tablets.
Part of the issue is getting users to look for a programming app in the first place. If a user sees that a programming app is already installed, he or she may try it one day while bored for poops and giggles. Otherwise, the user will have to know in advance that he wants to "do programming".
I think that's a problem with any system. For example, if you write something for Mac OS's Carbon, it still takes a bit of effort to port that to anything else (unless you have some standard middleware library.)
The problem here is that Microsoft does nothing to encourage use of "some standard middleware library". For example, Microsoft did the bare minimum to support POSIX to meet the letter of government requirements (FIPS 151-2). It initially didn't even include networking; it never did gain an X11 server. And neither the POSIX subsystem in NT 3 and 4 nor the SFU/SUA that replaced it was ever included with home editions of Windows.
... stay away from kids. no need to spoil them so soon. they'll spoil themselves when looking for their first "qualified" job.
fucking outlook has already accomplished that majority of users can't even send/read email the way it's supposed to, just because they have no notion whatsoever of what email is. and i'm sick already of receiving docs from even academics with no notion whatsoever of elementary document layout and information exchange.
methinks it was jobs who said once: give users powerful tools and they will do marvellous things. may well be. give'm office and unleash the real moron they have inside, in full color.
Agreed. People end up using things such as VBA because they spend a lot of time using MS Office and want to automate part of it, they don't do it for fun. If people want to get kids excited about programming then Excel will not help.
As you say stuff like Python/Ruby will as they're nice languages and web development is something people can have fun with, and I'd also throw in stuff like mobile development which seems to still be viewed with interest, Javascript which is an oddly odd language but allows a lot of cool web things, and nowadays freely available game engines.
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Here's the programming manual for FIRST robotics competitions. This is not dumbed down.
Do you really expect any company to donate 'rival' equipment to schools? What I would really rather see MS do is to not cancel development of things such as XNA Game Studio, or at to give more support to other freely-available game engines. Game development is something that kids do enjoy. Make it easy for them to quickly and easily write games using proper programming languages, run them on their own devices, and share them with friends, and you stand a chance of actually getting a programmer out of the other side.
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I've no problem with that from a strategic standpoint. I just think free VBA is like free broccoli. Potentially valuable but not at all enticing to most kids.
That's a generic MS TOS. There are no "submissions" involved with Dreamspark, so MS doesn't own or have any idea about what you create with the software you download.
If a teacher isn't aware of a tool if not for the fact it's installed by default, that probably also means said teacher does not know how to use said tool, or have any real business teaching anything related to it.
Since when did programming become so critical a skill for children?
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Visual Studio Express is Microsoft's zero-cash programming environment. Why do you want a high-cost office suite with a lousy macro engine to be discounted to free when they already offer their actual development suite pro bono. It's upgradeable to more complete Visual Studio versions later. This will encourage Microsoft-centric code, but that can be avoided and it's less specific of a tie-in than VBA. C#, C, C++, and more are included.
If you don't want to be tied to Microsoft-specific tools even on Windows there are other options. Those include other office suites and other actual development tools.
LibreOffice/OpenOffice have OOBasic and can be scripted with Python and Java if you really want. These things are zero-cash and open source.
You can use Lazarus and FreePascal (Wikipedia article about FreePascal) or Eclipse and Java/C/C++ if you'd rather. Or you could use Eric and Python. Or Padre and Strawberry Perl, complete with MinGW. Some of the IDEs are more or less general and language agnostic, while others are mainly narrowly targeted.
Don't forget MsysGit (git for Windows) if you're not using Cygwin and haven't already chosen a version control system.
Really, you could be teaching with a good programmer's editor rather than specifically with IDEs too. vim, Emacs, jEdit, Gedit, and others are applicable. Some of them are powerful enough to make that line between editors and IDEs very fuzzy.
What, exactly, would a free copy of Word get you that isn't already available?
I can write code that will write 1,000,000,000 lines of code easy peasy.
It might just say "Hello World" a billion times without using a single loop, but it is probably about as useful.
VBA? Office? Two words: core wars. http://www.corewars.org/inform..., Kids are tenacious, curious, and smart. With an hour of instruction the apt will learn more about programming in an afternoon than they will in a month screwing around with Windows.
A passion for apathy.