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Microsoft President Brad Smith: Computer Science Is Space Race of Today
theodp writes: Q. How is K-12 computer science like the Cold War? A. It could use a Sputnik moment, at least that's the gist of an op-ed penned by Senator Jerry Moran (R., KS) and Microsoft President Brad Smith. From the article: "In the wake of the Soviet Union's 1957 Sputnik launch, President Eisenhower confronted the reality that America's educational standards were holding back the country's opportunity to compete on a global technological scale. He responded and called for support of math and science, which resulted in the National Defense Education Act of 1958 and helped send the country to the moon by the end of the next decade. It also created the educational foundation for a new generation of technology, leadership and prosperity. Today we face a similar challenge as the United States competes with nations across the globe in the indispensable field of computer science. To be up to the task, we must do a better job preparing our students for tomorrow's jobs." Smith is also a Board member of tech-bankrolled Code.org, which invoked Sputnik in its 2014 Senate testimony ("learning computer science is this generation's Sputnik moment") as it called for "comprehensive immigration reform efforts that tie H-1B visa fees to a new STEM education fund [...] to support the teaching and learning of more computer science," nicely echoing Microsoft's National Talent Strategy. Tying the lack of K-12 CS education to the need for tech visas is a time-honored tradition of sorts for Microsoft and politicians. As early as 2004, Bill Gates argued that CS education needed its own Sputnik moment, a sentiment shared by Senator Hillary Clinton in 2007 as she and fellow Senators listened to Gates make the case for more H-1B visas as he lamented the lack of CS-savvy U.S. high school students.
One of the things that the "New Math" textbooks in my state employed was the concept of a "function machine". It was essentially reducing math processes to black boxes for the purpose of understanding how inputs related to outputs. This was at an elementary grade level.
The next time I saw a construct like this was in Differential Calculus, where functions are the very basis.
Of course, functions are also at the very heart of Computer Science. So my "New Math" stood me in good stead.
you wouldn't be bothering with "learning to code" today.
I completely disagree. I got into coding when I was in 5th or 6th grade with Hypercard. Then (mostly in order) Applescript, the Mac debugger, my TI-89 calculator, Matlab, PHP, Java, C, C++, Python.
I'm just a Mechanical Engineer. My job title has nothing to do with any of those languages. No interview I've ever had has ever even touched on how much of those I knew. They're just tools I use to get my job done. It's beyond frustrating dealing with co-workers that refuse to learn to program or worse refuse to use a one-off program to solve a problem they're having. 90% of 'work' is done in Excel. Cell equations that would make small children cry.
I wouldn't be in the job I have now or doing it as proficiently as I do without having learned to code when I did. This national initiative to teach people to code isn't to churn out coders. It's to turn out _____ that can code. Mechanical Engineers that can code. Doctors that can code. And in doing so they don't need to get into all the dirty internals.
It's just "keyboarding" class all over again. I'm sure all of the Typists were crying left and right that schools teaching people to type was going to cut into their job.
My wife works at a hospital with older doctors that were told "You don't need to learn to type or use a computer. You'll have a secretary!".
Once upon a time coders didn't even enter their code into the computer, you had the punch card operator.