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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
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
I don't do much programming but I started in BASIC because the computer I had, OSI with a 5.25" floppy with a 6502 processor I think, I was able to start writing something right then. Then go into assembly language. Years later took a C programming course which seemed fairly straight forward. For me it is the compiler that is the biggest obstacle. There's lots of "Hello World" examples but that compiler is always the show-stopper for me (how do I find one, what do I choose? No, don't give me some goofy compiler that generates a 500K executable program when source was only 20 lines). Unless you know what and how to handle compilers, programming will always be mysterious. Yes, if I already knew where to go for compiler info then I would already know of compilers and not have to make this gripe this morning. "Lots of info on the internet, Google is your friend." Yeah right, a bunch of websites written by marketing dweebs trying to sell me something.
mfwright@batnet.com
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."
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.