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?
Yeah, 1,000,000,000 lines of code. And it takes 9 women just 1 month to create 1 baby.
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.
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
I agree that Visual Basic .NET is a lot less "learnable" (for lack of a better word) than old-school Visual Basic.
But what feature do you think the Express version of Visual Studio lacks for this use? (Ignoring for a moment that students generally can get a full version of VS for very cheap or free through their school.) Why the all-caps on the word "FULL"?
Hell, from my experience, most actual dev shops don't even use the FULL ("Ultimate") version of Visual Studio, the standard edition is fine for 99.9% of use-cases.
Comment of the year
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.
Why "full" copies of Visual Studio? What does the Express editions lack that kids would need? They have access to the full capabilities of the .Net framework, a full C/C++ environment and more - the Express editions really lack the surrounding IDE features that would be lost that early on in the developer learning curve, stuff like profiling etc.
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.
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.
"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.
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
Kids have no interest.
Kids want to grow up to be a movie star, or a pop star, or a $sports star. That is what the culture in America idolizes, those who don't fall into this modicum are rejected as "geeks", "nerds", "freaks" , etc.
All you really have to do to get a good idea of this is to watch American television. Even our news consists mostly of the lives of those who are considered celebrities. Hell this morning there was a report that one of our state level representatives is getting married, nothing about policy, nothing about what she does, her stance on things, just that she is getting married to some lawyer. This is what we consider to be news..... It is only going to get worse, we praise the dumb, lift the idiotic, and work those with intelligence to death.
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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?