Should Microsoft Give Kids Programmable Versions of Office? 226
theodp (442580) writes "Over at Microsoft on the Issues, Microsoft continues to lament the computer programming skills gap of American kids, while simultaneously lobbying for more H-1B visas to fill that gap. Saying that states must do more to 'help students gain critical 21st century skills,' Microsoft credits itself and partner Code.org for getting 30,606,732 students to experience coding through the Hour of Code, claiming that K-12 kids have 'written 1,332,784,839 lines of code' (i.e., dragged-and-dropped puzzle pieces), So, if it's concerned about helping students gain programming skills, shouldn't Microsoft be donating fully-functional desktop versions of MS-Office to schools, which would allow kids to use Visual Basic for Applications (VBA)? While Microsoft's pledge to give 12 million copies of its Office software to schools was heralded by the White House and the press, a review of the 'fine print' at Microsoft suggests it's actually the online VBA-free version of Office 365 Education that the kids will be getting, unless their schools qualify for the Student Advantage program by purchasing Office for the faculty and staff. Since Microsoft supported President Obama's call for kids to 'Don't Just Play on Your Phone, Program It', shouldn't it give kids the chance to program MS-Office, too?"
Python, etc? (Score:4, Insightful)
... and that makes more sense than something like Python?
Give 'em your Kool-Aid (Score:4, Insightful)
Giving the stuff away is a way to groom the next up-and-coming generation into drinking your Kool-Aid. If they don't do this - they have only themselves to blame when the next generation grows up to be FOSS zellots...
I lament Microsoft's skills gap in UI design (Score:3, Insightful)
Bad figures (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, 1,000,000,000 lines of code. And it takes 9 women just 1 month to create 1 baby.
Re:Give 'em your Kool-Aid (Score:5, Insightful)
... Would Microsoft want to get kids hooked into nice wholesome activities like MS-SQL, C#, .net or VB -
If they don't do this - they have only themselves to blame when the next generation grows up to be FOSS zellots...
Do you mean like all those free versions of Visual Studio and MS-SQL that they have been giving away for years and years?
Re:I lament Microsoft's skills gap in UI design (Score:2, Insightful)
That is a horrible idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you ever spent time writing VBA code?
Did you enjoy it?
If we want more people to take up coding, making them do VBA code is a great way to scare everyone away from ever programming again.
Microsoft does not want kids coding... (Score:5, Insightful)
The opinions of a 12 year old are irrelevant (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless you were a roadie for Beyonce or Bieber she'd probably say the same about any job you did whether you were a top surgeon or an airline pilot.