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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.
... dearth of inspiration or even otherwise useful things to say. It's all transparently self-serving but so conspicuously lacking in substance and foundation.
If you really wanted to ensure a solid influx of STEM university students a few years down the line, you wouldn't be bothering with "learning to code" today. You'd make sure they get a solid grounding in the basics. You know, spelling, grammar, thinking, coming up with things to say. And, of course, math. Not "new math", but actual real math taught in a way that is maybe not huggy-feely, but certainly imparts the skill without putting off. Mathematicians have known for years that the math grounding is awful (along with the rest of highschool), and that it only gets interesting once you "catch the bug" and dive in, later, much later. Do something about that and raise the expected literacy and math proficiency floor from "typically functionally illiterate" to, well, somewhat higher at least.
But that isn't sexy. That's boring and hard work. Companies and politicians don't want to sponsor that.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It's too late. Tech seemed like a great career many years ago, but the successful tech corporations lobbied their way to bring in cheap foreign labor and for tax breaks for moving call centers and jobs to overseas locations.... (blah blah blah)
Let me guess... you're a Donal Trump supporter, right?
Bzzzt! I'm an American software developer over 50.
My turn: I'm guessing you're a young person in tech working in the US on an H1-B, right?
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Ok, I have designed a small spherical computer program that does nothing but beep at me every 20 minutes.
I'll accept my Nobel Prize and high-level position at Microsoft now, thank you.
I think, but don't quota me on this, that there's a possibility of more foreign students in a university than nationals due to the university earning more money from the foreign students.It's nothing to do with affirmative action.
sag
When I was younger hearing things like this scared me, now that I'm mostly on my way to 45 I know exactly who those people that get laid off are. They're the people that refuse to learn anything new past getting a job. Learning is a life long activity. If you aren't continually updating your skill sets during your entire career you're going to find yourself obsolete.
Take a hypothetical example of an old programmer that refuses to learn about newfangled "Makefiles". For a while they'll be able to carry on just fine doing their job. But add a decade or two and suddenly they're the slowest part of the development process and let go. You have a 'highly skilled' person in their 40s that is lacking a skillset that makes them a non-starter in the hiring process.
The same thing with Engineers and CAD decades ago. It's easy to look back and say that "Everyone" knows CAD but there was once a time when Engineers refused to learn it because it wasn't the same as paper drafting. Eventually those that refused got laid off. People with Masters and PhD degrees were being replaced by fresh college grads. If you asked those that got laid off it was ageism, people stealing their jobs, etc. But it boiled down to the fact that they were no longer relevant.
Some of us are writing the tools of 2050 and are having a near impossible time getting our co-workers to use it. "Oh it only takes 5 minutes." "It's not that hard to do the old way" etc. In most circumstances my life would be better off if I could get rid of half of them and replace them with H1Bs that would actually use the new tools.
What job doesn't change significantly in the ~45 years between when someone starts in their 20s to when they retire in their 60s? Adapt or get left behind.