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Mark Zuckerberg And John Doerr Donate $1M To Expand The Hour Of Code Campaign
theodp writes Techcrunch reports that Mark Zuckerberg has donated $500K to expand the Hour of Code campaign, which aims to reach 100 million students this year with its learn-to-code tutorials, including its top-featured tutorial starring Zuckerberg (video). Techcrunch adds that Zuckerberg's donation will be matched by fellow tutorial team teacher Bill Gates (video), Microsoft, Reid Hoffman, Salesforce, Google, and others. Zuck and Gates appear to have a sizable captive audience — a Code.org District Partnership Model brochure on the code-or-no-HS-diploma-for-you Chicago Public Schools' website calls for partner districts to "hold a district-wide Hour of Code event each year" for three years.
it will be 2 hours now?
It isn't generous. He's trying to train more programmers so he doesn't have to pay them as much.
Supply and demand, etc.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
This is weirdly narcissistic. It's slightly less odd for a corporation like Google or Red Hat, although it falls into the category of corporate communications as shameless self-promotion. For Zuckerberg and Gates, it's very much an exercise in egomania. Firstly, they are not primarily known as actual code savants. They made their mark and fortune as managers/businessmen, not because of their raw technical savvy. Other people did the heavy technical lifting. So having them get up and wave the "code is the key" flag is factually misleading.
Secondly, having these people encourage a coding career is flat out hypocrisy. They have both been active advocates of unlimited 1H-B visa programs and have personally been responsible for shipping jobs out of the US. Zuckerberg in particular is outspoken about his anti-US worker sentiment. So now he want to train even more people to be out of a job in the US. I guess money can buy a cover up of anything.
Why is Snark Required?