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Microsoft President Brad Smith: Computer Science Is Space Race of Today

Posted by BeauHD on from the computer-science-race dept.

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.

6 of 171 comments (clear)

  1. Stop laying people off at 45 by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And stop with the night and weekend hours, 72 hour weeks, and low status compared to the sales and marketing wing of the country.

    But having a career that ends 20 years after you start is the worst part. It was true even in the late 1980s when i saw lots of 45ish year old programmers laid off and pushed out of the field.

    When you combine the low status, long hours, short career window, you can see why people avoid the field.

    It sorta has pay going for it- but not so much when you consider the sudden age discrimination end compared to many other fields.

    --
    She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    1. Re:Stop laying people off at 45 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Dunno, I'm well over 45 and the only time I have ever been "laid off" was when the startup I was at ran out of money. I know plenty of others in my line of work who are well past 45 too.

      Could it possibly be that those 45 year olds that got laid off had become complacent and hadn't kept their skills current?

      Staying current is hard work. Software development is very different from what it was when I started my career. Yesterday? Today? Tomorrow? it doesn't matter whether it's software development or something else, if you don't have the necessary skills to do today's work, no company is going to keep you on the payroll.

      I know that might sound harsh, but it's the reality of things.

    2. Re:Stop laying people off at 45 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      "Staying current" is essentially like doing the final year of university non-stop. New hardware (6502, 6800, 68000, 80x86, ARM, MIPS), new software languages (Pascal, C, C++, Objective C), new programming models and notation (flow-charts, data-flow diagrams, UML)

      Best way to survive is to find a niche area that values experience over cost, and to avoid employers that play dead-man's shoes or don't let you keep your skills up to date or allow you to network outside of work.

  2. IT industry is the Stasi of today by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Computer science of today is more like the espionage part of the cold war, not space race. IT companies, including Microsoft, are now concentrating just on gathering more and more of information out of people.

  3. Mising the point by CanadianMacFan · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Back in the days of the space race it was the environment that got people interested and they went into the field that mattered most to them.

    Today they are trying to force computer "science" onto every child and hope that it sticks with them. It's going to turn kids off computers more than get them onto programming because it's being forced on them for the whole of their education. While I have no problem with it being offered and having it introduced to everyone I don't think it should be shoved down their throats. Our schools should not be used to train students for particular jobs. I believe that a school should be teaching students a wide variety of skills in order to let them discover what they enjoy.

  4. Re:Hard not to lay off a lot of them by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This is the crux of the matter. Newer, less-developed languages/frameworks, languages/frameworks that no one can be an expert in because they are still so new...is what employers are looking for "expertise" in.

    You can't expect to reason with unreasonable people and the world is full of them.