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K-12 CS Efforts Earn Microsoft CEO Ringside Seat For State of the Union Address
theodp writes: When President Obama delivers his final State of the Union address on Tuesday, the White House reports that the inspiring individuals seated with the First Lady will include Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. "Microsoft has been a leader in expanding access to computer science in K-12 classrooms," explains the White House, perhaps unaware that the company reportedly struck a deal to kill BASIC on Macs in 1985 and stopped including BASIC on PCs after Windows 95. Ironically, Microsoft now laments that girls began to stop seeing themselves as coders after 1984, which gave rise to the need for today's Microsoft-led national K-12 CS intervention. "Girls don't see other girls programming," Microsoft explained in 2013, "so they just don't know that it's available to them." So, is there such a thing as corporate Munchausen syndrome by proxy?
However, due to *strike*risking costs of attendance*/strike* *strike*the need for executive bonuses to rise*/strike* an inadequate domestic workforce, Microsoft will be filling the seat with three H1-B visa employees.
Let this be known that nasty little boys regardless of their skin color will be unable to pursue any such training. Because that's progress! /sarc
Lobbying can buy your front row seats.
I can't believe you're bitching about BASIC going away. Get a life.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
C# is a much better language than the ones we've seen developed by open source projects.
The interesting thing about C# is that it's simple enough for beginners to use and understand with ease, yet it's still powerful enough to use when developing large-scale software systems.
We can't say that about Perl. Perl is an absolute misery for beginners, and it commonly results in indecipherable messes even when used by professionals for small scripts.
We can't say that about PHP. PHP can be used by beginners, but they'll create disasters, just as professionals do.
We can't say that about Ruby. Ruby attracts unsuspecting beginners through hype, and then allows professionals to develop extraordinarily slow software systems.
We can't say that about Tcl. Tcl is dead.
We can't say that about Lua. Beginners can pick it up, but the most professionals ever bother doing with it is embedding it within larger C++ apps.
Python is maybe the only good open source language for beginners and professionals, but that's only because it's similar to C# in many ways. The syntax is different, but the semantics are quite close. Like C#, Python can be used by beginners to learn programming, and it can be used by professionals to develop large production-grade systems.
So before we go and criticize Microsoft for not helping teach programming to the next generation, we should remember that they've actually created the programming language that's not just the best for beginners, but also the best for professionals, too. C# is a full-spectrum language, which makes it extremely powerful.
If I had to teach programming to a student, I wouldn't start with any of these so-called teaching languages. I would probably go right to C then Java.
Please don't invoke stupidity here. The comparison between the parent post and the topic here is not something that allows reasonable discussion and progression of a solution to a problem that many are trying to deal with.
Ewww. This is getting beyond hard core :-(
I've seen in a long time:
I think any commentary I add is likely to just detract from the awesomely stupid essence of that last quote. They don't know it's available to them? What the hell does that even mean?
perhaps unaware that the company reportedly struck a deal to kill BASIC on Macs in 1985 and stopped including BASIC on PCs after Windows 95.
Perhaps the author is unaware that those events were 30 and 20 years ago respectively.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
It allowed for some that may not be programmers by trade more control of a computer than standard interfaces provide. Sure there are issues but I think that the dumbing down of interfaces in the industry currently provides more reasons for basic to exist. It has also been known to be a gateway language. It's not perfect but the bathwater argument probably fits.
"Girls don't see other girls programming," Microsoft explained in 2013
One word: Adafruit. hell, all you have to do is hit twitter to see people like @aloria (infosec engineer) fully participating in programming. Please stop focusing on why gender isnt part of programming and start focusing on the fact that, with the help of the DMCA, you've effectively crushed any attempts at hacker culture that might interest kids in technology and programming. The governments insistance that a clock is a bomb certainly isnt helping young hackers. And while you're at it, proprietary software is a huge hinderance to the type of hacker/programmer culture of sharing code.
Good people go to bed earlier.
That great American political pastime.
Is that a boxing match? I always think of two people sitting behind the President trying not to fall asleep.
And who gives a fuck?
Theodp, you've just jumped the shark
... but they showed how to go above and beyond the call of duty.
Wow, just wow. I hadn't realized that in their never ending quest to obtain their monopoly on the desktops that they would go so far as to cripple of potential generations of programmers just to make some extra money. Wow.
I left the Windows world in 1996 for Linux with Windows 3.11 as my last version of Windows so I hadn't realized all this time that basic was no longer available. Am I ever glad that I left when I did!
Did Grace Murray Hopper see other girls programming?
OTOH, she invented you-know-what so maybe it would have been better if she had been discouraged.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
But now this. He's dead to me.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
It is wounded, but it is the same foul beast that it has always been. Beware.
The article is misleading because it suggests that MS killed BASIC on the Mac, but what they really did is kill development of Apple's BASIC for the Mac. MS shipped their own version of BASIC when the Mac came out. In fact, it was the only native Mac development platform at the time the Mac shipped. MS Basic included Peek, Poke, and Call commands, so you could execute machine code. The Megamax C compiler slipped through that little opening (Megamax C was a full-featured native C compiler for the Mac that shipped in Oct of 1984).
You can't undo your foolish vote for him, and you are thus implicated in all of the damage he has done. Rejecting him now does not absolve you, anymore than the German citizens who claimed ignorance after WWII.
The event 30 years ago still has effects 30 years after said event, and the event 20 years ago still has effects 20 years after said event. These K-12 CS efforts are an attempt to undo the damage of the events 30 and 20 years ago.
So it's your contention that girls left coding because MS killed BASIC in the 80's?
Seriously, dude?
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Somewhere in Kenya there's a village missing its... Community Organizer!
When did the SoTU become the red carpet at the oscars? why do we care who's taking who? why is this suddenly news, and how is this specifically news for nerds?
They deserve each other! Maybe each one will help get rid of the other.
The point of the article How are students learning programming in a post-Basic world? isn't that we should all use Basic. The point is that there's a need for a single 'starter' language so that people who have no experience can get started using something. That language should come with practically all computers, should be portable enough so that you can write programs that port to many computers, should be immediately accessible so beginners can quickly learn some basics, and should be useful enough so that beginners can create useful programs.
There are a number of reasonable contenders, including Python, Ruby, and Java. A version of Ruby comes with MacOS, but none of these 'just comes' with the computer regardless of what OS you run - so in most cases, before you even get started, you have to explain how to download and install something. Not ideal. Java is what a lot of people use professionally, but it does take more time to get started when you know nothing. Python has many advantages for simplicity, but you need to install it in many cases.
Perhaps the dark horse here is Javascript ES6. Javascript is available almost everywhere, and people can get started quickly. As a first language Javascript's unusual approach to OO programming (with prototyping) has probably held it back, but ES6 adds standard class notation, and that might make it much easier to use as a starter language.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
Microsoft probably did the world a favour by ramming a stake through its heart.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
>> President Obama delivers his final State of the Union address
Slow clap. I never thought we'd see a second term of Jimmy Carter, and well, we got two of them.
Dijkstra contended that programming in BASIC causes brain damage. Maybe Microsoft was just trying to prevent that :)
Anyway, decisions at that time would have been down to Bill Gates, not Satya Nadella, so even if you think that Gates' decision was harmful to teaching programming, it's no reason that Nadella shouldn't attend the SOU address.
hell, all you have to do is hit twitter to see people like @aloria (infosec engineer) fully participating in programming.
This statistic shows a timeline with the amount of monthly active Twitter users worldwide. As of the third quarter of 2015, the microblogging service averaged at 307 million monthly active users.
Number of monthly active Twitter users worldwide from 1st quarter 2010 to 3rd quarter 2015 (in millions)
Microsoft did not make a deal to kill BASIC on Macs. They made a deal to kill Apple's implementation of BASIC, because it competed with their own implementation. They sold it for a decade before discontinuing it in 1995.
Not only is this story a troll, it's an incoherent, factually incorrect troll. Somehow the author is trying to assert a connection between MS not bundling BASIC with their computers and girls being less interested than boys in programming. No clue what he thinks that connection is, but I suppose if he insinuates it with enough sarcasm it must exist.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
I used to be one of those educated folks. C's lack of expressiveness makes it wholly unsuitable for large programs. It is as simple as that. The flagship C program, the kernel, as a disgusting design. The results are wonderful because the code is beaten in to shape by thousands. Look and the Linux scheduler sometime and tell me how wonderful the design is. OS programmers don't like the idea of the silent execution of code (constructors, destructors, etc), or the speed tax paid for abstractness, so they stick with C.
They've been patronizing their users for years to the point where few know where their files actually are (My Docs is now a junction point) or even what they are named (file extensions hidden by default) and they bemoan a lack of computer literacy? They've done everything possible to hide how things actually work, and no, that's not a good thing.
How many educational specialists, developmental psychologist, or educational scientists will get a seat in any of the policy making decisions? It seems like a few billionaire geeks suddenly become experts in education for... what, exactly? What's their expertise in education?
How about we get those bilionaire geeks to decide Congress' and the Senate's dentistry and medical healthcare policies and practices? How about Silicon Valley disrupt our leaders' pension funds and their social services and then everyone else can decide if they want to vote for some of that disruption for themselves?
Aren't you one of the same idiots who spouts off about how, "if kids are interested in programming, they'll find a way to learn?"
Sometimes I have taken one side, sometimes the other. It is not a fallacy to take one side in one debate and the other side in an unrelated debate, or even to present both sides of a single argument. Devil's advocacy, or arguing the opposing side regardless of the beliefs that one holds personally, prevents a debate from becoming an echo chamber. Sometimes a discussion is lacking in exploring the probable ramifications of entry barriers, such as this post by betterunixthanunix, and sometimes it's lacking in barrier-busting techniques, such as the "let 'em eat Raspberry Pi" that I've seen a lot of Slashdot users spout lately.
Either kids will find a way no matter what big, bad, evil nasty MICRO$UX does, or in 30 years, they'll be completely incapable of learning anything about computers. Which is it?
I choose C: your post implies a false dichotomy. Children of wealthier parents are more likely to find a way.
Coding is too, but if they double the number of coders, there will be no more "shortage" of those willing to work for "girl" wages.
Makes sense when you look at it from the Microsoft viewpoint.