White House Touts Obama's 1-Liner as 2014 Tech Highlight

theodp (442580) writes That President Obama became the first President to write a line of code (as a top Microsoft lobbyist looked on) is #1 on the White House's Top 9 science and technology highlights from 2014. To kick off this year's Hour of Code, the President 'learned to code' by moving a Disney Princess Elsa character 100 pixels on a screen, first by dragging-and-dropping Blockly puzzle pieces and then by coding 1 line of JavaScript. Interestingly, Bill Clinton might have been The First President To Write Code had Microsoft seen fit to use its patented, circa-1995 Graphical Programming System and Method for Enabling a Person to Learn Text-Based Programming — which describes how kids as young as 8-12 years of age can be taught to program by progressing from creating a program using graphical objects to doing so using text-based programming — to teach President Clinton to code some 20 years ago!

Comments

Summary is misleading

[bondsbw]

This is not a Top 9 science and technology highlights from 2014, as curated by the White House. This is a Top 9 science and technology highlights that happened at the White House.

Big difference.

Hello World!

[Irate Engineer]

That would be such an appropriate first line of code for the POTUS, in so many ways.

Re:Hello World!

[gweihir]

Naaaa, too difficult.

Re:Let's not us forget...

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama would be no where if Al Goare didn't invent the Internet first!

Hello. I am Albert Goare. Why are you saying I invented the internet?

Retail griefing circa 1984

[greg1104]

Back in the day, this used to be a popular first programming exercise:

10 PRINT "RADIO SHACK SUCKS!!!"
20 GOTO 10
RUN

I wonder if we could get more kids to code if there was still a simple programming language that sped up trolling for lulz at the mall?

Re:Retail griefing circa 1984

[TeknoHog]

Kind of

puts "the run in RUN"

dontcha think?

Re:Retail griefing circa 1984

[Anonymous Coward]

We used to do that in sunny England, circa the 80s. Favourite machine BBC or Acorn Electron as with a couple of lines of basic you could also disable the Escape key and Break. Result: Computer shop guy horrified as he tries to stop a multicoloured 'fuck off!!!!' scrolling up the screen.

Re: Retail griefing circa 1984

[Anonymous Coward]

That's just basic!

Re:Retail griefing circa 1984

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice. When Worst Buy first came out--or maybe I'm just thinking about Circuit Sucky--this was back in the '90s when Win95 came out, autoexec.bat was still executed on boot (DOS holdover, I guess), and I'd go by every computer in the store in Savannah and have it execute some batch file named "gold.bat" which, of course, pointed to itself. Hit the reset button, and the rest is lulz.

Re:Retail griefing circa 1984

[ultranova]

main = putStrLn "RADIO SHACK SUCKS!!!" >> main

Re:Retail griefing circa 1984

[Solandri]

10 PRINT "RADIO SHACK SUCKS!!!"
20 GOTO 10
RUN

That was too obvious, and the store employee would kill the program them moment they saw it.

10 PRINT ">";
20 INPUT A$
30 PRINT "ERROR: RADIO SHACK COMPUTER DETECTED"
40 PRINT "OPERATING SYSTEM DISABLED"
50 GOTO 10

That would leave them scratching their heads trying to figure out what was wrong, as it looks just like the normal command prompt but produces the same "error" message after every command typed.

Did he..

[x0ra]

.. actually write a real line of code, or did he just moved some widgets around a pushed a button ?

Re:Did he..

[marcello_dl]

> .. actually write a real line of code, or did he just moved some widgets around a pushed a button ?

Does this seem to you the right place to start a real programming language vs. visual basic flamewar?

Re:Did he..

[Frosty Piss]

.. actually write a real line of code, or did he just moved some widgets around a pushed a button ?

I'm sure there will be many jokes, but it's irrelevent. He's *not* a coder, and neither in my auto mechanic or doctor.

Re:Did he..

[Anonymous Coward]

If here isn't, where is?

Re:Did he..

[MacTO]

It's a symbolic gesture. I doubt that many people expect the president to learn programming while in office. They have many other affairs to take care of.

Re:Did he..

[Otome]

He did the widget-moving, but he also really wrote a real line of JavaScript.

Re:Did he..

[jd2112]

It's a symbolic gesture. I doubt that many people expect the president to learn programming while in office. They have many other affairs to take care of.

You must be thinking of Bill Clinton...

Re:Did he..

[Deep Esophagus]

That's my whole problem with the "hour of code": It's a symbolic gesture. At no point do the students ever actually write code; they just drag command blocks into place, all the while being told what to drag and where to place it. Even if they use the "View code" button, they only see the LOGO-like commands without any of the program structure around it. When my daughter was 10, she was writing graphic games of her own design in QuickBASIC. Kids are capable of so much more than this walled garden assumes.

I wouldn't object so much if this exercise were just the introductory step ("Now that you've seen how the command blocks create actual programming instructions, let's learn about conditional branching!")

Turtle art

[bergerjs]

Clinton could have used LOGO's turtle to draw the first presidential digital dick pic

Re:Turtle art

[greg1104]

He could have worked with Dick Pick and written it in Microdata's S-BASIC.

Re:Turtle art

[BForrester]

Clinton could have used LOGO's turtle to draw the first presidential digital dick pic

I'd think that a LOGO rendition of President Nixon would actually be pretty impressive.

Re:So this just proves..

[x0ra]

Don't get too hard on them, after all it's aimed at +8 years old children. It's kinda reassuring that at least someone at the WH who could run through it.

Did I read this right?

[Hognoxious]

Something happened for the first time. But if it had happened before, then that would have been the first time and this wouldn't. But it didn't, so this is, not that.

There's not much gets past theodp, is there?

well, they need to Tout something

[turkeydance]

that wasn't a total loss.

Give him ANOTHER Nobel Prize for that

[Anonymous Coward]

At least this time he would have actually DONE something.

White House Hosts Next Generation' Young and Rich

[theodp]

#10? White House Hosts Next Generation' Young and Rich: "The daylong conference was organized by Thomas Kalil, a deputy director for technology and innovation in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, with the help of Nexus, a youth organization based in Washington that seeks to "catalyze" the next generation of billionaire philanthropists and other stakeholders.."

Programming Experience Could Be Good

[Irate Engineer]

Showing people in government how to program is probably not a bad idea. Maybe they can sort out the spaghetti coded laws that we have and actually get things to run correctly.

Nah, they'll just say "It's not a bug, it's a FEATURE!".

Re:Programming Experience Could Be Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually wouldn't it be nice if more people in government already had some idea of how coding works? I mean home computers have been around for 30+years and most Congress-types went to the finest schools in the land, so why the hell didn't they take a few simple courses. Being ignorant of the main technology of the past few decades doesn't endear me to politicians.

Re:Programming Experience Could Be Good

[__aaltlg1547]

Plenty of them did. You just don't hear about it because it's NOT NEWS.

OMG, who cares?

[Pope Hagbard]

Just because it's a slow news day, it doesn't follow that you have to post any old non-news just to keep the clicks going. Is there nothing interesting going on in science, technology, space, or other nerdy topics?

Re:OMG, who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because it's a slow news day, it doesn't follow that you have to post any old non-news just to keep the clicks going.

Yes it does. Of course it does. Clicks make money. Articles, even bad ones, make clicks (like yours and mine to this very article). The irony is that your post clearly intends to punish them for posting a dumb article, but by making your post you rewarded them for precisely that.

Re:OMG, who cares?

[Pope Hagbard]

Joke's on them: I'm running Privacy Badger, which as a side effect blocks their ads - doubleclick.net and scorecardresearch.com are blocked.

Re:OMG, who cares?

[drinkypoo]

Just because it's a slow news day, it doesn't follow that you have to post any old non-news just to keep the clicks going.

It worked on you. Mission accomplished!

Woohoo flame war!

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's my contribution:

I have worked with both C# and VB.Net for about a decade now. I have a long list of happy clients, too. The only time I ever used a visual designer for anything was when laying out a report using RDL.

I know enough about both to know that they are equivalent. Any problem you can solve in one you can solve in the other. And performance is equivalent too. The bias against VB.Net is just a holdover from how things used to be, before .net.

Those who disagree are just ignorant of the facts.

Strawman Scare Quotes

[Anonymous Coward]

Before I need a president who can code, I need a Slashdot editor who understands that quotation marks around a questionable phrase that was neither stated nor implied in any of the linked articles does not belong in a fucking summary.

[captcha: facets]

Uh, no

[jason777]

Uh, no he didnt write a line of code. The line he wrote was:
moveForward(100);
and I'm sure someone told him what the function was called to move forward. Thats not really writing a line of code.

Re:Uh, no

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually yeah, that is writing a line of code. It's calling a function, it's one line and incredibly simple, but so is this:

print("Fuck you.")

Python3 no less. Are you actually brainless enough to argue that because someone else taught him how to do it, it's not coding? That's a level of narcissism that's rare even for low ID lusers on Slashdot. I'm guessing if you program at all, you do so because you either were taught to do so or read tutorials written by someone else...yet according to your own rules, that would mean you're not a programmer at all.

10 print "You, jason777, are a self-important twit."
20 goto 10

Re: Uh, no

[Anonymous Coward]

he wrote a line of code one time. he was told exactly what to write. he wrote the line of code but he isn't programming. he is just following instructions. anyone can do what he did.

Great. Now replace him with an Indian.

[Anonymous Coward]

Bobby Jindal would do nicely.

Re:So this just proves..

[msauve]

" it's aimed at +8 years old children. "

So, Congress? I assume you're referring to mental, not physical, age.

Vice-President already been done Re:Turtle art

[Anonymous Coward]

For years, every picture of Cheney was a Vice Presidential Dick Pic.

It's the thought that counts

[iamacat]

We don't need our presidents to know how to code, or to be scientists. We do need them to appreciate that coding and science are important, listen to the experts and encourage general public to do the same. I'll take one line of Javascript over "I am not a scientist" excuses right away.

Re:It's the thought that counts

[Anonymous Coward]

This. My PHB doesn't bother me because I know that his role is not to be technical!

Congress already attained +8 year old mentality?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seeing the temper tantrum them D.C. critters throw every so often I would guess that their average cerebral capacity be at the toddler level, lower than 4 year of age

You mean first POTUS to program while in office?

[RevWaldo]

I'm sure some fundamental CS work came up in college for our recent presidents in the past fifty years. Nuclear engineer Jimmy Carter and MBA George W Bush in particular come to mind.

.

Same level as his understanding of Constitution

[Anonymous Coward]

A dog could write THAT first line of code...

The carry through is the hard part.

BTW for obama to have been president of the Harvard Law Review what important paper did he present to have him qualify? Besides his color and that university wanting to be in on a 'we got one too' fad ?

Prez Carter

[Anonymous Coward]

Carter is an engineer if not mistaken. So I'll be surprised if he doesn't know a thing or two about computers.

Re:So this just proves..

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn, does it feel good to be a gangsta?

that's wonderful!

[night_flyer]

now he can fix healthcare.gov

Re:You mean first POTUS to program while in office

[__aaltlg1547]

Carter graduated from the Naval Academy in 1946. Clinton studied politics and law in the 60's and early 70's. There wasn't much chance back then to program in those programs. However, Clinton had a reputation of being always curious about details and it wouldn't be at all surprising if he asked somebody to show him how to make a computer do what he wanted it to do at some point, maybe to help Chelsea with her schoolwork.

Hopefully the last "me, me. me, me" President

[MooseMiester]

To think back at the vitriolic hate that was thrown at Dubya.... He was a stupid buffoon, an ignorant hayseed, a country cowboy... And then we got "The smartest man ever elected to the office" and he turned into an even bigger buffoon with his incessant need to be in the press, on TV, his picture plastered everywhere, all the time, for no reason other than to highlight HIM and his latest action, no matter how trivial.

Surely the next Zaphod Beeblebrox we elect won't go on Oprah, or the Tonight Show, or make a story out of every little thing he does, no matter how stupid it is... He or She will act... well... Presidential. It's no wonder the world is laughing at us and ignoring us these days. How can you take this guy seriously? Clearly he walks around all day thinking Me, Me, Me, Me, Me, Look at me, Me, Me, Me, Me, Me... It's embarrassing.

Re: Hopefully the last "me, me. me, me" President

[Anonymous Coward]

LOLOLOL you are delusional. every president does this.

you remember when bush stood in front of troops and the press and said mission accomplished? yea mission wasn't accomplished. that was just bush showing his ass thinking he did something.

they are all the same. soon as we realize this, the better.

Re:Let's not us forget...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello,

I am the real Albert Goare, and I really did invent the Internet. And my patent on it is pending.

So, I own it. Please start sending your license fee payments to me, in form of money orders to the PO Box I will shortly be posting here.

I'm not greedy, I only require one dollar from everyone who has ever used the Internet, and I will be happy to send you a ten year license for your continued use of the Internet.

Thank you,

Albert Goare, Ph.D., Litt.D., GBE, VC, DSO, MC

What

[brunnegd]

BFD

MMMKKK

[Anonymous Coward]

Estonian president Mr. Ilves has supposedly worked as a programmer in the past, before becoming president...