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Obama Calls For $4B 'Computer Science For All' Program For K-12 Schools (washingtonpost.com)
Etherwalk writes: President Obama plans to announce a four billion dollar computer science initiative for K-12 schools, where fewer than 15 percent of American high schools offer Advanced Placement (i.e. college 101) Computer Science courses. This is still very much open to negotiation with Congress, because it is part of a budget request from the President. So write your Congressman if you support it. The $4 billion would be doled out over a period of three years to any state that applies for the funds and has a well-designed plan to expand access to computer science courses, especially for girls and minorities.
After all, everybody eats. Not everyone is a programmer.
I weep for those 4 billions. What good we could have done with it, how many ivory back scratcher could have been bought...
Don't get me wrong. I am all for teaching as many people as possible how to create code for computers. The problem is that very, very few people have the required mindset to do so. Yes, with current RAD tools pretty much anyone can create some kinda code that sorta works. Personally, I call this development "total job security for the foreseeable future".
Why?
Because I'm in Infosec.
The amount of cargo-cult programming is stunning already. And with kids who don't give half a shit about programming, this is going to get worse. Especially when you make those kids think they can when in fact they can't. Remember the old saying: Those who can do, those who can't teach. And now ponder what greatness will come out of this.
No. Sorry. Programming is something you have to want to do if you want to do it right. And let's be blunt here, code that's just plainly WRONG, we already have enough of.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Works for Ben Carson!
Think Tanks: How a Bill [Gates Agenda] Becomes a Law: In 2012, the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings hosted a forum on STEM education and immigration reforms, where fabricating a crisis was discussed as a strategy to succeed with Microsoft's agenda after earlier lobbying attempts by Bill Gates and Microsoft had failed. "So, Brad [Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith]," asked the Brookings Institution's Darrell West at the event, "you're the only [one] who mentioned this topic of making the problem bigger. So, we galvanize action by really producing a crisis, I take it?" "Yeah," Smith replied (video). And, with the help of nonprofit organizations like Code.org and FWD.us that were founded shortly thereafter, a national K-12 CS and tech immigration crisis was indeed created.
Microsoft supports White House initiative to expand access to computer science: " Microsoft is one of many companies in the tech sector that is committed to this effort [said Microsoft President Brad Smith]. In addition to our business initiatives, those of us who are involved in philanthropy, including such groups as Code.org, will do more. The private sector and philanthropy cannot fill this gap without public funding. And if we're going to accelerate progress as a nation, we need federal funding. That's why today's proposal is so important. It can provide the accelerant to help more states and school districts progress more quickly."
While that's true, computer science is a good way to teach problem solving skills that are going to be useful no matter what you do.
I don't think they need to go too in depth. Just give the kids some guidance and turn them loose with Scratch or something similar where they can be creative. You're not going to turn everyone into a programmer, but you might get a few more kids interested who might otherwise not be.
Woman tend to value job stability over income, and it's hard to find that kind of stability in IT.
Where I work in government IT, many of my coworkers are women. Most of them served in the military.
40 hour work weeks, reasonable pay for the work/brainpower involved, job security, etc.
I get 40 hours a week (no overtime), pay is respectable but I could get 40% more in the private sector with fewer perks, job security for the next four years as project contract is fully funded, I get federal holidays off, a full benefit package, and 20 paid time off days.
very, very few people have the required mindset to [create code]
While there's some truth to this, the self-congratulatory attitude that comes with it has ruined the entire field.
Prior to the 90's, programming was about solving problems, and a good solution was a simple solution. Then soccer moms entered the field and programmers didn't feel so special anymore. (Exaggerating only slightly) They responded by making everything as complex as possible, and turned from problem solving to learning minutiae, so that only autistic people want to do the job, and now they can call themselves specially suited...because they made it that way. Programmers are now so afraid of doing something their peers would disapprove of, for fear of not demonstrating the minutiae they've learned, that they won't design solutions for themselves. Now they have to have frameworks and use accepted buzzwords that someone else made up to describe techniques someone else created, and they saddle their employers with having to support soon-to-be-obsolete technology that they spend more time getting to work than if they had just solved the damned not-very-complex problem they were given.