Shut up and code

You'll have been on a desert island if you haven't seen something of the flak surrounding the UK government's initiative to introduce programming into the school curriculum: the Year of Code. Rory CJ on the BBC web site, gives a good background to what's been going on including such hot topics as whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer makes for a good front man on the web site and whether the admission by the project's head that she does not know how to code herself is actually an issue. I'm not going to retread that flooded pasture here but I do have some thoughts.

There's a whole generation of programmers, mostly games, who grew up with the 1980s BBC Computer Literacy Project. At this time the UK government subsidised hardware for schools, with the famed BBC Micro and computers from Sinclair and Research Machines being the choice. RM is still going and still in education.

The idea was just like the one espoused by the Year of Code: how do computers work and how do you make them work?, rather than the usually disparaging comments about being taught to use Powerpoint. It worked then and so could well work now.

Is programming (now apparently called coding) on a par with being able to read, write and 'do maths'? In the old project, much was made of teaching BASIC but that would be totally inappropriate now and in any event the really keen people got into the guts of the computers and wrote in machine code. You could teach something like Objective C, so pupils can program apps for their phones, but would that be useful in the long term? Perhaps there should be an emphasis on task analysis and algorithms. Great as a way of abstracting the learning from current technology but, I have to admit, probably not much fun; and you do learn more by doing something useful rather than working with abstractions. Plus, learning how to write any kind of computer program, from machine code to (even) HTML and CSS, teaches you to think logically. The computer is a very fast, literal idiot. It only does what you tell it and the skill is in telling it the right thing.

Back in the Computer Literacy Project days I was asked what a computer could do and I responded by saying that it's rather like a pencil. It's not what it does ... it's what you do with it that matters. Don't underestimate the potential here - it could make or break the UK for the future.

The final question may actually be the most important. It is not just what you teach, it is how will the content be structured, presented, and assessed and over what period: and just who is there to do this?

[Later] More views in this interesting article in Computer Weekly.

Windows pi and a new pad

Lots of interesting things on the horizon, ranging from new versions of old 'friends' to a bit of deja vu all over again.

Both Apple and Microsoft have announced new versions of their operating systems. Apple have found a new beast in Mountain Lion, otherwise known as iOS X Mountain Lion ... inspired by the iPad, they say. The shift away from a friendly front end to a heavy-lifting Unix-type OS (as some see it) towards ultimate user-friendlyness continues and is generating some controversy. (MacinTouch, as always, is a good place to check such things out). Are Apple moving away from the professional market with a consumer-oriented OS? Given where they make their money these days it wouldn't be that surprising, but the flak against the current OS, Lion, is enough to give me pause. Have your designers taken the plunge? What is your experience?

You might have thought that Microsoft would have provided a haven of professionalism (as IT support might put it), but perhaps they have also been bitten by the tablet bug. Windows 8 is available to preview, and it also slides and swipes its way around the screen.

What The Register lovingly calls the fondleslab may be due for some updates soon as well. The image on an invitation to an Apple event next week has us anticipating an iPad3 and possibly an announcement of a smaller version of the iPad. Several of our clients have incorporated the iPad into their workflow, with one making good use of it as an inventory tool when roaming their giant 'zoo' of test equipment.

But for me, the delight of the week is the Raspberry Pi, which looks set to bring the 1980s fun of computing back to a classroom near you. Shades of the BBC Micro for those of us old enough to remember it (and I was quite adept at programming it in machine code!) it even has a Model A and a Model B and uses an ARM processor that is a direct descendant of the Beeb micro. At £22 it went on sale yesterday morning and sold out in nanoseconds. More on the way.

I'm excited by the Pi's possibilities as an educational tool but it should also have application as an embedded processor and general gizmo. I can't wait to see what people do with it. As Yogi Berra also said: "You can observe a lot by watching".

Reboot for computing in UK schools

"... bored out of their minds being taught how to use Word and Excel by bored teachers ... " is how UK Education Secretary Michael Gove put it. The teaching of ICT in schools has drifted off track from a time when everyone and his mate tried to program a BBC Micro or Sinclair Spectrum in their bedroom and some, like the legendary David Braben and Ian Bell of Elite fame, managed to write a genre-changing game.

Instead of learning how to use a spreadsheet, said Mr Gove, "... we could have 11-year-olds able to write simple 2D computer animations using an MIT tool called Scratch. By 16, they could have an understanding of formal logic previously covered only in University courses and be writing their own Apps for smartphones."

I will admit that I hardly ever get into a classroom these days, but the indication was that computing in schools was no longer about creating software. It was a bit like teaching English without ever writing it. The curriculum document I found didn't even mention programming. Yet, as friends at the National Museum of Computing tell me, schoolkids visiting them really enjoy sitting down at a BBC micro (it is a museum after all) and writing a fun bit of BASIC.

The ghost of Alan Turing (and Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace steaming in behind) is usually invoked for occasions such as this. The UK pretty-well invented computing with everyone from universities to the corner tea house embracing the technology at a time when the government felt that five machines would supply all computing needs for the foreseeable future. Now, just as our televisions probably originate in the far east (even if via South Wales) our computer hardware is probably American, the software we run on it either American again or of no-fixed abode, and the social networks we use are also probably American (or if they're any good, get bought up by an American).

OK: so far so promising. I must ask how many brilliant programmers you know were actually taught how to do it? Didn't they teach themselves? But that is missing the point. This initiative should bring new opportunities. Teachers will have "freedom over what and how to teach" and "Universities, businesses and others will have the opportunity to devise new courses and exams" especially GCSEs. The Royal Society has already chipped in recommending that ICT is actually a group of subjects such as computer science and digital literacy. It should be treated as a "rigorous subject" as are maths and physics, and "digital literacy needs to be put on a par with reading and writing" (BBC news story here). This is the result of a report led by Steve Furber, one of the designers of the BBC Micro (it's that machine again) and the man I remember as having invented the ARM computer.

I should also mention that David Braben is one of the people behind the Raspberry Pi $25 computer, which would also fit into this brave new ICT curriculum as it's intended as a kind of latter-day BBC Micro equivalent to teach children how to program. (There's an interesting post on the Raspberry Pi front page about their problems in manufacturing in the UK, including a tax conundrum ... UK government please note ... that duty is payable on components but not an assembled motherboard; hence it's tax-efficient to manufacture overseas.)

So, now is the time for your company, especially if it has links with education, to have some input into the curriculum for the next generation. Influence your local schools and what they teach as ICT. Let us know what you think ... and how you get on. Let us hope that this bodes well for the growth of the UK iMedia industry as much as it does for other branches of the computer tech revolution.