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Microsoft Co-opts Ice Bucket Challenge Idea To Promote Coding In Latin America
theodp writes: Microsoft is aiming to offer free programming courses to over a million young Latin Americans through its Yo Puedo Programar and Eu Posso Programar initiatives ("I Can Program"). People between the ages of 12 and 25 will be able to sign up for the free online courses "One Hour Coding" and "Learning to Program," which will be offered in conjunction with Colombia's Coding Week (Oct. 6-10). The online courses will also be available in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru and Puerto Rico. "One Hour Coding" (aka Hour of Code in the U.S.) is a short introductory course in which participants will learn how the technology works and how to create applications, and it offers "a playful immersion in the computer sciences," Microsoft said in a statement. In the virtual, 12-session "Learning to Program" course, students will discover that "technical complexity in application development tools is a myth and that everyone can do it," the statement added. Taking a page from the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge its execs embraced, Microsoft is encouraging students to complete the Hour of Code and challenge four other friends to do the same (Google Translate).
Nope, no programming jobs for American programmers. America is only for MBAs and bureaucrats. Programmers are elsewhere. Americans who don't want to be team players in the farcical football game that is the American "workplace" must necessarily be homeless and destitute, because there are no real jobs in America, none at all. Real work is done in the Overseas, not in America, because America is the land of the worthless.
This makes absolutely no sense.
This is Microsoft to offer free online courses in latin America.
Not, you have to take this programming course or dump water on yourself or something.
i'm super torn on this. I love that people are getting access to education that they don't usually get, but at the same time I feel that's just so later they can go 'Well, America doesn't have the skills we need, so we need cheap visa workers to work in this field.'
It is more like a chain letter, but in reverse.
It should be: "Get 4 other people to sign up OR Microsoft will teach you how to code"
...
> Erh... no. The supply side never created jobs. Never has, never will. A job is created if, and only if, there is someone willing and able to pay for the goods and/or services that job creates.
Yeah I remember back in 1980 we were all going into the stores trying to buy ipads and 3D printers. After we consumers did the R&Dand speced out exactly what kind of iPad we wanted to buy, Apple ordered some from China and started selling them.
Wait, maybe I'm remembering wrong. Maybe a bunch of companies hired a bunch of engineers, programmers, and product designers to come up with a variety of different computing devices, hoping that they'd come up with something people wanted to buy. Maybe people did not buy the first few tablet models, so for the first 15 years those companies were losing money trying. Maybe Maybe eventually one company, Apple, developed a version people would buy.
I don't remember for sure, which of those two scenarios actually happened?