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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?
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
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.
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.
"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.