Amazon To Fund Computer Science Classes at 1,000 US High Schools (geekwire.com) 147
Amazon said its Future Engineer program will fund computer science classes at more than 1,000 high schools in all 50 states by this fall. From a report: This is a rapid expansion for the program that launched in November. Down the road, Amazon aims to reach more than 10 million kids with the coding activities and lessons each year and provide more than 100,000 students in more than 2,000 high schools access to introductory or advanced computer science courses. As part of the program, Amazon also plans to award 100 students with four-year, $10,000 scholarships and paid internships at the company to gain work experience. Future Engineer is part of a larger $50 million investment from Amazon in computer science and STEM education.
In case you were wondering what classes (Score:2)
The article says they use Edhesive [edhesive.com] (Side note, maybe spell checkers should be hooked into DNS registries to avoid autocorrecting domain names).
The breakdown in study looks decent, but I can't seem to tell how the classes will actually be run.
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You know how they could reach all the kids? (Score:5, Insightful)
IF THEY PAID TAXES.
It's seriously fucked up when a company can operate and pay zero dollars in taxes.
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IF THEY PAID TAXES.
It's seriously fucked up when a company can operate and pay zero dollars in taxes.
Your anger is understandable. Try directing it at the people who write tax law such that Amazon can legally make their tax bill zero.
Re: You know how they could reach all the kids? (Score:1)
I thought Bernie Sanders goal was the opposite? Is there some reference of him opening tax loopholes for huge companies and very wealthy interests?
They are paying taxes, just more direct (Score:3, Insightful)
Amazon by offering free training to high school kids, is paying a form of tax - they are just choosing what the money gets spent on.
Wish normal citizens could do the same.
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No method of funding institutions and projects which promote general welfare of a society is perfect, but you only point out some negatives of taxation without mentioning the negatives of free market funding.
Wealthy individuals already have significant means to influence society without the use of government. A vote is one of the few avenues those with lesser wealth have available to them. Each vote may be equal, but that doesn't make everyone's voice equal. Campaign contributions, lobbying, and the use of
Your positions are patently irrational (Score:1)
* You imply optimizing for short-term gains ultimately hurts long-term gains; well, if the market's goal is to optimize total gains, then clearly it will take into account this problem, and therefore look to the long-term as well. Put another way: There's a market for long-term valuation. Put another way: Why do you think you're the smartest person on the planet, the only one who has figured out that long-term planning is valuable? Also, corporations have a government-mandated fiduciary obligation to maximi
Maybe you should check before flame (Score:2)
The funding determines the finding, right?
Does it?
Look for yourself, the classes are through the (I think poorly named) Edhesive [edhesive.com].
Doesn't seem very AWS focused to me at all. In fact you do not even reach "Unit 11: Internet" until the very end of the second term.
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And now Amazon has their claws in those schools who now have to do what Amazon wants them to do or else the
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You mean paying to improve things that you could personally benefit from rather than what society at large needs for everyone to benefit,
Pretty sure society benefits from more programmers, especially if people can lift families out of poverty my taking that career (worked for me).
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Maybe taxation is a bad way to organize society.
The only kind of large stable society that exists without taxation is one with conscription. At some point, the society as a whole needs to get something done. So either they take money, which can then be paid to someone to do the work willingly, or they take unwilling people to do the work by conscripting them.
I know which one I prefer.
SOCK PUPPET ALERT! (Score:1)
udachny is a sock puppet of roman_mir. the latter uses the former to try to convince more people that the foundational principles of his cult are righteous and sane. they both often post at -1 (and have their postings limited here on slashdot) because they have poor karma scores here as a result of repeated abusive behavior and their consistent religious proselytizing that is seldom on topic with the discussion thread. don't let him convince you that his doctrine would actually benefit you, or even result i
Comes with free delivery (Score:2)
Private Sector Education (Score:1)
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It's just not possible for education to be neutral.
Depending on your political view. Look at either CA or TX textbook standards. You will be outraged in either case. Those are the two big ones, most other states just follow one of those two. They're about equally bad.
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The problem is that both sets of textbooks play to and teach as fact, the common opinions in the regions.
It would work better if the states switched standards. So the average kids could 'spot the bullshit', not get their opinions reinforced by group thinking, conformity demanding teachers.
Sure, some kids will realize they are just being indoctrinated. But those kids would have been fine in anycase. What about the gullible ones?
IMHO every family should have an 'uncle full of shit'. To get the kids bul
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If anything, the government should butt out even more so that there can be a real competitive marketplace where you don't need to be as large as Amazon to participate in the education sector.
There's very little preventing you from starting your own private school, except for capital and a lack of customers that is.
The bastards! (Score:2)
I'm curious to read all the basher-posts.
Mamas don't let your babies grow up (Score:4, Informative)
Seriously, don't. Go into medicine unless you're a math wiz (in which case you're not really a programmer, you're a mathematician who happens to program).
The current administration just raised the H1-B cap by 20,000/yr. They passed it off as a good thing because those folks will have to have PHDs, but given the way diploma mills work that's not a high bar.
Like journalism in the 90s programming is a dying field. Steer clear. There's a reason why "Learn to Code" became an insult/slur.
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Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be programmers. [because of raised H1-B cap]. Like journalism in the 90s programming is a dying field. Steer clear. There's a reason why "Learn to Code" became an insult/slur.
I'm a professional programmer, and previously I taught coding to 8th through 11th graders, and supervised it to university undergrads and masters students.
I don't see "learn to code" as an insult/slur amongst any of my work colleagues or social colleagues. I will certainly encourage my kids (currently in preschool) to learn to code. Not because I expect them to get a job as a grunt developer in a large shop. Not because I expect them to get a job as a high-flying programmer at Google or the like.
I'll encour
Some context is needed (Score:3)
Thing is it's hard to learn a new trade when you're young. It's harder when you're old. And a lot of these folks weren't suited to the jobs in the first place. I worked with a bunch of these guys in my career and none of them lasted.
These guys are pretty fucking bitter at this point. During the 2016 campaign
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Like journalism in the 90s programming is a dying field. Steer clear. There's a reason why "Learn to Code" became an insult/slur.
Don't forget how to properly differentiate:
- Worrisome Threat To Our Technological Edge: the Chinese/Indians reached in and took the secret sauce
- Shortage Of Qualified Engineers: we brought in people from China/India on short-term visas, taught them the secret sauce recipe, and forced them to return home.
- US Companies Must Remain Competitive: we outsourced the secret sauce to China/India to boost our quarterly results.
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I respectfully disagree. Looking around I see a future where more things have computers in them and we will constantly ask our computers and things to do more. That doesn't just happen. Software developers and systems people make it happen. If your local economy doesn't reflect that then pack up and move. If your skills aren't in demand then get new ones. A person that can communicate well and has the agility to stay on the curve has nothing to fe
Local economy's doing just fine (Score:3)
Globalism means I don't need to hire local talent at local rates. I can offshore most of the work, sell the products they make and what I can't offshore I can bring in cheap workers on visas.
Just as many jobs in programming either way, but way, way less pay and you'll never get hired to do it if you're "local".
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The best developers in China are already at $40k annually and growing 10-20% YoY. At this rate they'll catch up to Americans within a decade.
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Programming (not just Excel/Word "computer literacy") is an important part of many professions. Any scientist these days has to know how to process data using Python. I am an ASIC designer (digital), and significant part of my day is programming fairly elaborate stuff in Tcl, Perl, Python and other scripting languages.
My opinion is that this is a growing trend, and programming literacy is becoming more and more important.
Obama said "Learn to Code" (Score:2)
When Obama told coal miners to learn to code, no one cared. Because there are plenty of examples of coal miners learning to code. They aren't stupid people.
When Journalists were told to "learn to code" by a random person on the internet, suddenly it was a slur. Because we all know journalists are idiots.
The big companies are looking to commoditize programming because there is a lot of grunt work to be done that doesn't require a great deal of skill. And they'd rather pay cheap labor to do it and
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The big companies are looking to commoditize programming because there is a lot of grunt work to be done that doesn't require a great deal of skill.
There's no such thing as grunt work in software. If there is, somebody would've already written a script or library to handle it.
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The big companies are looking to commoditize programming because there is a lot of grunt work to be done that doesn't require a great deal of skill.
There's no such thing as grunt work in software. If there is, somebody would've already written a script or library to handle it.
There are many levels of skill between 'can be automated by a simple script' and 'genius-level once in a generation programmer'.
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Yeah and when your skill level is close to "can be automated by a simple script", you're not a software engineer. It's only when you get past "can write a script to automate your work" that you can be considered one. At that point, you're no longer doing grunt work.
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You're thinking of John Wayne Gacy, the crawl space guy.
That's like letting Dahmer teach a class on home meat cutting.
Punchline: I was going to open a Dahmer nose pizzaria.
Why now? (Score:3)
Nobody in the US halls of influence cared about this issue, not for a generation or longer. If they needed workers, they went to India. Places I have worked (30 years running) are increasingly Indian and Chinese, verging on 95%. I don't see that changing ever.
So why this interest in pushing CS into public education?
I'll take a guess. As India and China become technological powerhouses in their own right (having expatriated their engineers to US companies for 40 years of paid top-shelf training) they are seen now as less a pool of low-wage workers to exploit, and more as economic competitors. Wow imagine that. 40 years spent relentlessly hollowing out the US middle-class labor pool, outsourcing for the quarterly bottom line, and now they are worried.
Cry me a river. I hope the Indians and Chinese take them to the cleaners, and I'm confident that is exactly what will happen.
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The reason to learn to code isn't to become a programmer professionally it's because coding and understanding how code works is valuable for most any profession. Being able to code is like being able to use office these days. In fact, advanced excel users already code.
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Right, we should pay a professional everytime we need a simple bot for a game or excel macro. Perhaps we all need professionals to keep our checkbooks or perform any math.
Or everyone can have some basic coding skill, a math and logic skill on par with basic Algebra and be able to perform coding tasks on par with changing a light bulb or doing basic day-to-day home maintenance. And if you can't handle that level of coding, your merit is burger flipper at best and that is the only job you should get.
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No, it is impossible for 'everyone' to a have 'some basic coding skill'. We can't get below 75% innumerate college grads, despite best efforts.
But your basic point remains: Anybody doing any kind of technical job needs some basic coding skill.
The world still needs ditch diggers. Sucks to be them.
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Anybody doing any kind of technical job needs some basic coding skill.
This is only true in the tautological sense that if your job needs programming knowledge, then you need programming knowledge to do that job.
And if (say) AI replaces lawyers, you're still going to have a few high level lawyers with the AI doing the grunt work, but those high level lawyers aren't going to be spending their time coding.
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All you have to do to argue, is postulate strong AI doing the coding...in other words, assume the answer you want. 'AI' does not exist today, except in the marketing sense.
Knowledge workers need to navigate, today and for the foreseeable future, that means basic coding skills. If only so they understand how their queries work (or don't).
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Right, we should pay a professional everytime we need a simple bot for a game or excel macro.
A game bot is a hobby need: if you're interested enough to want to do it, good luck to you. But it's like saying everyone should be able to make fishing flies so they can go fishing.
Excel macros are a work need: either they are a required skill for your job and you learn them, or they're written by someone else at your work who knows what they're doing.
None of this means that most people will ever need a knowledge of actual programming.
MS & IBM Lesson (Score:2)
Beware of huge tech companies bearing gifts.
Keep teaching Roman numeral Math.... (Score:2)
Programing methodologies today are like teaching mathematics with Roman Numerals. Very Limited.
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The folks who actually exhibit merit without special advantage for any alleged privileged or unprivileged group.
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They are certainly a more likely investment. Of course, in a way we might be worse off rewarding those with merit. Those who don't do as well tend to breed more. Those who do well try not have children they can't afford.
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Indeed, I'm sure it does to someone who lacks ingenuity, drive, capacity, and ability. Make no mistake, I'm not one of those who equates wealth to merit.
Wrong conclusion about amazon (Score:1)
Wrong.
1) Amazon is in a PR battle to delay the US federal government crackdown on it handling a large percent of the total retail sales in the USA. It's 4% of all retail sales, not just online only. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/03/amazon-grabbed-4-percent-of-all-us-retail-sales-in-2017-new-study.html
2) Expect the federal government to step in as Amazon gets towards 10% of USA retail sales.
3) There's been claims that the USPS loses $1.50 on each Amazon package and about 40% of Amazon packages go throuh the U
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All that might be true but I fail to see what it has to do my general assertion that those who exhibit merit are more deserving (or as I later qualified at least a safer investment) without any special qualification.
Re: Quota info? (Score:2, Interesting)
Trick question: H-1Bs since there will be less as Amazon attempts to saturate the market with talent and drive down wages.
If you can drive down labor costs from $100k+ to $60k across a pool of 7,000 engineers, you just saved $280 million *per year* in labor expenses. In total for these programs, Amazon is dumping $50 million. If it works, it seems like a solid brain dead business investment to increase their talent look and or drive down wages.
I'm more curious if there really is a talent shortage (or more b
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Hopefully they gave zero consideration to any of those things so the courses won't discriminate.
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