The Ambitious Plan to Teach 100,000 Poor Kids to Code (Guess who's in charge of it?)

Time ^ | June 19, 2014 | Denver Nicks

[2ndDivisionVet]

#YesWeCode looks to close the coding inequality gap

Shortly after Trayvon Martin was shot and killed in February 2012, liberal activist Van Jones was talking with his friend Prince—yes, that Prince—about the circumstances of the shooting.

More “I think he made the observation,” Jones told TIME, “that when African-American young people wear hoodies people think they’re thugs, but when white kids wear hoodies you assume that they’re going to be dot-com billionaires,” a reference to the outerwear favored by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his ilk. “We just started thinking: ‘Well, how do we turn that around?’”

Out of that spark was born Yes We Code, an ambitious initiative of Jones’ Rebuild the Dream organization aimed at preparing 100,000 low-income children for careers writing computer code. While good-paying blue-collar jobs continue to disappear in the U.S., computer science is a rare bright spot of opportunity for people without a college education. “This is another opportunity for people to make a really serious, solid middle-class income,” said Jones, a former environmental aide in the Obama Administration.

It’s an old yarn by now that computer science is one of the fastest-growing, highest-paying career paths in America. By 2020, half of all jobs in the STEM (Science, Tech, Engineering and Math) fields will be in computing, according to the Association for Computer Machinery. The latest salary survey from the National Association of Colleges and Employers says the average starting salary for computer science majors in 2014 is more than $61,000—just about $1,000 shy of the top earners, engineering grads.

Contrast that with the fact that computer science education in STEM has seen a decrease in enrollment in the last 20 years, with a particularly precipitous drop in the past decade as school districts have reconfigured curriculums....

[alexander_busek]

As soon as the kidz discover the fun of writing malware it’s in like FlintFlynn.

"In like Flynn" is a slang phrase meaning "having quickly or easily achieved a goal or gained access as desired". - Wikipedia

Regards,

[1066AD]

Sounds good on the face of it, train your own people in preference to importing thousands on H-1B visas.

We’ll see how it turns out.

[HiTech RedNeck]

I’m being mischievous on purpose here.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Ghetto coding

[TexasGator]

Hundreds of thousands of dollars and man-months of tutoring did what for his ‘girl-friend’. ZIP. NADA. The head of the effort gave up saying that girl is just not motivated and our effort has been a failure.

[boop]

“that when African-American young people wear hoodies people think they’re thugs, but when white kids wear hoodies you assume that they’re going to be dot-com billionaires,”

Uh, NO, I've NEVER thought of white kids with their pants around their ankles, wearing a hoodie, not making eye contact being "potential billionaires".

I think of them as potentially dangerous gangsta-wannabes.

In fact, I avoid them, as I would ANYONE else who wants to play thug.

What cretin even THINKS like this?

[EQAndyBuzz]

COBOL?

My god, what’s next? BAL?

[EQAndyBuzz]

Now that I think about it, COBOl should be taught. With global warming, all those Y2K programmers frozen in time will be long thawed out and dead by Y3K.

[fireman15]

When I returned to college in the mid 1980s, I got a “work study job” as a computer lab assistant. It came easy to me because I was an enthusiast from the time the first personal computers and programmable calculators became available.

At that time there were many students who despite a complete lack of aptitude wanted to have a career in computer programming. Many of them tried and worked hard, but just couldn’t get it. It seemed sad to me at the time because failing left many feeling disillusioned.

Maybe it is different now because kids grow up surrounded by electronics. Although I think that it might be worse. I grew up in a time when software was often distributed in the pages of magazines and books. One had to type the actual program out to use it. This gave one a sense of how the program actually worked and in fact that was often the point. These days I think most people are strictly consumers of computer programs and make no effort to understand the mechanics.

I fear this program probably is a recipe for disaster and a boondoggle.

[Migraine]

First, teach ‘em to DEcode — you know, READ!

[FredZarguna]

Bada-ba Bada-ba Bada-ba Bada-ba Bada-ba.

[Nepeta]

"In like Flynn" is a slang phrase meaning "having quickly or easily achieved a goal or gained access as desired". - Wikipedia

Derek Flint is not amused.

[EQAndyBuzz]

”You MUST take calculus, however, if you want a BS degree in computer science.”

I was given a choice between calculus or statistics and discrete mathematics.

[FredZarguna]

For the real men on the thread:

**************************************************************
** HELLO - Program to print "Hello, World" on device 009 **
**************************************************************

HELLO	CSECT
	STM	R14,R12,12(R13)	Save Registers
	LR	R12,R15	Load Base Register
	USING	HELLO,R12	Establish Addressability
	SSM	=X'00'	Disable Interrupts
	SPKA	0(0)	Disable storage protection
	LA	R2,CCWS	Store pointer to CCW chain
	ST	R2,CAW	... in Channel Address Word
	LA	R2,9	Put device address in R2
CLEARIO	TIO	0(R2)	Test for device busy
	BC	CC1+CC2,CLEARIO	Wait until device not busy
	BC	CC3,IOERROR	Abort if device error
STARTIO	SIO	0(R2)	Start I/O to the console
	BC	CC1,CSWSTORE	A CSW Has been stored
	BC	CC2,CLEARIO	Device busy. Wait until clear
	BC	CC3,IOERROR	Abort if device error
TESTIO	TIO	0(R2)	Wait for I/O completion
	BC	CC2,TESTIO	Busy, Wait for completion
	BC	CC3,IOERROR	Abort if device error
CSWSTORE	CLI	CSW+4,CE	Channel End w/o Device End?
	BE	TESTIO	Yes - wait for Device End too
	TM	CSW+4,BY	Channel Busy?
	BO	TESTIO	Yes - Keep Waiting
	TM	CSW+4,DE	Device End?
	BNO	IOERROR	No - The CSW is bad
SUCCESS	SSM	=X'FF'	Reenable Interrupts
	LM	R14,R12,12(R13)	Restore Caller's Registers
	XR	R15,R15	Clear Return Code
	BR	R14	Return to Caller
IOERROR	SSM	=X'FF'	Reenable Interrupts
	LM	R14,R12,12(R13)	Restore Caller's Registers
	LA	R15,4	Set Return Code 4
	BR	R14	Return to Caller
	DS	0D	CCW must be doubleword aligned
CCWS	CCW	X'09',MESSAGE,X'20'	,L'MESSAGE
MESSAGE	DC	C'Hello, World'
CSW	EQU	X'40' Addre	ss of Channel Status Word
BY	EQU	X'10' Chann	el Busy
CE	EQU	X'08' Chann	el End
DE	EQU	X'04' Devic	e End
CAW	EQU	X'48' Addre	ss of Channel Address Word
R2	EQU	2 Regis	ter 2
R12	EQU	12 Regis	ter 12
R13	EQU	13 Regis	ter 13
R14	EQU	14 Regis	ter 14
R15	EQU	15 Regis	ter 15
CC0	EQU	8 Condi	tion Code 0
CC1	EQU	4 Condi	tion Code 1
CC2	EQU	2 Condi	tion Code 2
CC3	EQU	1 Condi	tion Code 3
	END

[PieterCasparzen]

I would like to learn coding myself, but the few computer classes I’ve taken become very boring very quickly. I’ll keep looking for the right class and the right instructor.

The best way to learn programming is on your own.

Start with Intel assembly language and C.

If you don't know assembly, you don't know what your higher level languages (all others) are actually doing.

Classes are not a good way to learn programming, unless you're a person who really has difficulty learning without a class.

[Irishguy]

oh sweet lord baby Jesus...have not seen Cobol for years! LOL

never ever did get the whole envorinment division bit...always seemed to be more free text...

thanks for the trip down memory lane!!!

[lee martell]

Thanks for the feedback.

[cynwoody]

Oh man! You are ancient!

The only part of that post that remotely qualifies as modern is the mixed-case comments, which were likely added later on a 3270l, probably using the likes of XEDIT, some time in the 80's. XEDIT was a creature of CP/CMS, a virtual operating system which allowed one to run privileged code such as your example without needing exclusive use of an expensive mainframe. Using CP/CMS, you could treat a mainframe as if it were a PC.

Looks like there was a tabbing problem down in those EQUs. Still assembles due to a white space break, but it's ugly.

[FredZarguna]

I had to convert my assembler source to HTML so it would format for FR and I was in a hurry, so my XEDIT macro dropped the </td><td> in the wrong place.

The white space break comes in comments, though, so it's irrelevant.

XEDIT started in VM/CMS IN 1980 IIRC. My thesis research predated that and was actually all done in a 28K MVS region on an IBM 029 keypunch. [They got XEDIT in TSO under MVS in 1985.] I did mixed case comments in 370 assembler as far back as 1984 on an IBM 3279-4.

Yes, I did debug supervisor code in VM/CMS, but I was a systems programmer at that time, and ran supervisor privileged production code all the time under DOS/VSE and MVS as well.

[cynwoody]

I had to convert my assembler source to HTML so it would format for FR and I was in a hurry, so my XEDIT macro dropped the

in the wrong place.

XEDIT macro?? You are still using that museum piece? Programmed in Rexx? Is it on a real mainframe? Or is it an Intel-based emulator? Are you getting paid to do it?

BTW, if you just want to post old code, or anything else typewriter-formatted, you can use the <pre> tag. No need to mess with tables. Eg.,

**************************************************************
**  HELLO - Program to print "Hello, World" on device 009   **
**************************************************************
HELLO    CSECT
         STM   R14,R12,12(R13)    Save Registers
         LR    R12,R15            Load Base Register
         USING HELLO,R12          Establish Addressability
         SSM   =X'00'             Disable Interrupts
         SPKA  0(0)               Disable storage protection
         LA    R2,CCWS            Store pointer to CCW chain
         ST    R2,CAW             ... in Channel Address Word
         LA    R2,9               Put device address in R2
CLEARIO  TIO   0(R2)              Test for device busy
         BC    CC1+CC2,CLEARIO    Wait until device not busy
         BC    CC3,IOERROR        Abort if device error
STARTIO  SIO   0(R2)              Start I/O to the console
         BC    CC1,CSWSTORE       A CSW Has been stored
         BC    CC2,CLEARIO        Device busy. Wait until clear
         BC    CC3,IOERROR        Abort if device error
TESTIO   TIO   0(R2)              Wait for I/O completion
         BC    CC2,TESTIO         Busy, Wait for completion
         BC    CC3,IOERROR        Abort if device error
CSWSTORE CLI   CSW+4,CE           Channel End w/o Device End?
         BE    TESTIO             Yes - wait for Device End too
         TM    CSW+4,BY           Channel Busy?
         BO    TESTIO             Yes - Keep Waiting
         TM    CSW+4,DE           Device End?
         BNO   IOERROR            No - The CSW is bad
SUCCESS  SSM   =X'FF'             Reenable Interrupts
         LM    R14,R12,12(R13)    Restore Caller's Registers
         XR    R15,R15            Clear Return Code
         BR    R14                Return to Caller
IOERROR  SSM   =X'FF'             Reenable Interrupts
         LM    R14,R12,12(R13)    Restore Caller's Registers
         LA    R15,4              Set Return Code 4
         BR    R14                Return to Caller
         DS    0D                 CCW must be doubleword aligned
CCWS     CCW   X'09',MESSAGE,X'20',L'MESSAGE
MESSAGE  DC    C'Hello, World'
CSW      EQU   X'40'         Address of Channel Status Word
BY       EQU   X'10'         Channel Busy
CE       EQU   X'08'         Channel End
DE       EQU   X'04'         Device End
CAW      EQU   X'48'         Address of Channel Address Word
R2       EQU   2             Register 2
R12      EQU   12            Register 12
R13      EQU   13            Register 13
R14      EQU   14            Register 14
R15      EQU   15            Register 15
CC0      EQU   8             Condition Code 0
CC1      EQU   4             Condition Code 1
CC2      EQU   2             Condition Code 2
CC3      EQU   1             Condition Code 3
         END