'Code.org In Farsi' To Bring Tech-Backed Nonprofit's K-12 CS Curricula To Iran

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: Today, there are over 110 million Farsi speakers worldwide," explained tech-backed nonprofit Code.org in Tuesday's announcement of its new multi-year 'Code.org in Farsi' initiative. "While the majority of native speakers live in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan, there are millions living as immigrants, migrants, and refugees around the world. With the Code.org in Farsi initiative, Farsi-speaking students will have the same access to our curricula that is already available to students in all other major languages of the world."

The announcement closes with a statement regarding Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) compliance considerations: "As a U.S. nonprofit, Code.org is subject to laws regarding sanctions with Iran. After consulting with U.S. legal counsel experienced in the Iranian Sanctions and Translations Regulations (ITSR), Code.org believes that it may fund, prepare, and distribute the Farsi Translations of CS Curriculum in the United States and elsewhere around the world, including within Iran. The ITSR provides an exemption for "information and informational materials" (the IIM Exemption) and Code.org believes that this exemption will fully shield its funding, preparation, and distribution of the Farsi Translations and thus enable its Farsi Translations effort to proceed in full compliance with U.S. economic sanctions requirements.

Re:

[e3m4n]

Its been a hot minute since I was in the service, but at the time, the Iranian Guard spoke Persian. It was one the only country speaking Persian, and our intel linguists that spoke persian, were permanently assigned to the region. I guess Farsi and Dari are dialect off-shoots of Persian? The first time I heard Farsi or Dari mentioned was when the US deployed in Afghanistan. My tours predated that by a bit.

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[DesScorp]

Its been a hot minute since I was in the service, but at the time, the Iranian Guard spoke Persian. It was one the only country speaking Persian, and our intel linguists that spoke persian, were permanently assigned to the region. I guess Farsi and Dari are dialect off-shoots of Persian? The first time I heard Farsi or Dari mentioned was when the US deployed in Afghanistan. My tours predated that by a bit.

Farsi is Persian. Dari is a dialect of Farsi, and is mutually intelligible.

Recall that Iran's media wing is called the Fars News Agency.

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[lsllll]

Correct. Fars is a province in Iran. It used to be called Pars. Latin name for the empire was Persia. The name was changed to Iran in 1935. It's all here. [wikipedia.org] Farsi is what Iranians call their language.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

it's funny when Americans and Europeans judge an entire people by their government...

like for real, fuck off with your braindead stereotypes, this is what passes for interesting on here? it's not even making an effort at humor or anything insightful, this is cringe 2002 "hurr durr iranian people bomb!!!111"

so brave!

Re:

[Entrope]

110 million speakers of Farsi worldwide, 330 million speakers of English in one country, is hard to say which is more impactful. Maybe Code.org has solved all the hard problems, all the big problems, all the high-return-on-investment problems, and all the clearly legal problems, so now they are expending resources on straightforward, small, marginally helpful, possibly sanctions-violating problems.

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[chas.williams]

I am sure the women in Afghanistan will have equal access to these coding resources.

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[Freischutz]

110 million speakers of Farsi worldwide, 330 million speakers of English in one country, is hard to say which is more impactful. Maybe Code.org has solved all the hard problems, all the big problems, all the high-return-on-investment problems, and all the clearly legal problems, so now they are expending resources on straightforward, small, marginally helpful, possibly sanctions-violating problems.

It is a well documented fact that the key to fighting fundamentalism is to reduce ignorance through education and by increasing economic opportunities. This is why Islamic fanatics hate the guts out of people like Fethullah Gülen, because that is the core of Gülen's philosopy, i.e. that "..a lack of religious education would create atheism whereas the lack of scientific education would result in fanaticism" which I think is basically true even if I personally think that religious fanaticism is on

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[gweihir]

I personally think that religious fanaticism is on balance far worse than atheism because athesists, not surprisingly, tend to be relatively well educated.

Excuse me? How dare you compare atheists, which are generally pretty decent people, with religious fanatics and only find that "on balance" the religious fanatics are even worse? This seems to be something to me that a religious fanatic would claim, but not something a decent person can say.

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[loonycyborg]

Only reason Iran even has a theocracy now is because English and US interventions. Given how thoroughly they dealt with any secularist governments there we can be pretty sure they consider fundamentalists to be lesser evil.

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[mjwx]

110 million speakers of Farsi worldwide, 330 million speakers of English in one country, is hard to say which is more impactful. Maybe Code.org has solved all the hard problems, all the big problems, all the high-return-on-investment problems, and all the clearly legal problems, so now they are expending resources on straightforward, small, marginally helpful, possibly sanctions-violating problems.

I get the impression that it's a calculated gamble that the Islamic government is going to collapse in the next 10 odd years. Once that happens we'll realise what most people who've known Iranians in the west have known all along, they fit in very well. Iranians, especially young ones have no love of their government and no memory of the excesses of the shah or actions of the UK/US in interfering with their country and when taken out of the caliphate they tend to get along with western cultures (fun fact, m

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[e3m4n]

Countries like Iran, China, and N Korea want coders to steal billions from us corporations using tools like ransomware among others. Farsi coding will just lower the cost to Iran to develop more black-hat(turbine) programmers. think bugger. You cant bring forth Armageddon by writing accounting software.

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[DrMrLordX]

Think Bugger! That's a hell of a slogan. Foul ole Ron would have liked that one. Buggeritall.

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[AmiMoJo]

STEM is helping women in Iran gains some independence, under that country's strict misogynistic laws. Even if it doesn't lead to great wealth, it's a big benefit for some some people.

In any case, there is a difference between being able to write code and some comments in English, and having all the course materials explaining the concepts in Farsi. Imagine trying to learn Japanese with only Japanese language books, and no explanation of anything in English.

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[Nrrqshrr]

Careful what you wish for. The last time the US tried to interfere with the ways a country likes to run, they fought a losing war for 20 years, only for the taliban to go back and play with the toys the US left behind.
You can't change people unless they decide to change by themselves. Otherwise, you will just give more control tools to the people you were playing police against.

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[AmiMoJo]

I think there's a slight difference between a charity providing educational materials, and the military invading.

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[Chris Mattern]

"I think there's a slight difference between a charity providing educational materials, and the military invading."

When there are men with guns determined to see those materials destroyed and those distributing them jailed, tortured or killed, there's really not much of one if you're determined to see the materials get through.

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[AmiMoJo]

Why would they want to destroy them? Women attend university in Iran, to study STEM.

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[alvinrod]

All it means is that there will be better educated migrants from those countries in the future. Not everyone in Iran likes the system there and getting skills that are valuable makes it a lot easier to get out. The more worrying issue is that there's going to be a brain drain effect where the people who can make improvements to a country are the ones who are leaving. All of the Iranian people I know are either people with a masters/PhD or have one or two parents with advanced degrees. Obviously that's a nar

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[drinkypoo]

Imagine trying to learn Japanese with only Japanese language books, and no explanation of anything in English.

If some of them are picture books, and they are written in romaji, maybe. Otherwise it would be hopeless. However, if you're going to be a programmer you're going to want to learn English anyway. Virtually all of the big important OSS code has English comments and function & variable names.

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[serviscope_minor]

Virtually all of the big important OSS code has English comments and function & variable names.

That's ok, Real Programmers don't comment their code anyway. And prefer single letter variable names and obtuse abbreviations.

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[necro81]

If a non-Farsi speaker can't read your code, it's going to put you at a huge disadvantage in the job market. Earn $1,000/month working as a programmer in Iran, or learn English and make 10 times as much working remotely.

Code.org primarily uses Javascript, meaning that the syntax they're teaching is more-or-less English based. A for-loop will still use the English word for. While it is possible to use non-ASCII text (i.e., Farsi/Persian script) in Javascript for variable names, it doesn't work particular

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[gweihir]

I usually ignore ACs, but you have non-AC answers and you do make an excellent point.

Coding on any useful level comes with a requirement to be able to use online resources, books, discussion forums, etc. on the subject and if you cannot at the very least read English and write somewhat competently, you can forget about it. You can not read vendor documentation, you cannot participate in international discussions, you cannot even file bug reports or read patch notes or security-alerts. How is that going to w

Code incompetently! Now also in Farsi!

[gweihir]

I fail to see how that is a positive development.

Persian, not Farsi

[wonkavader]

Farsi is the French word for Persian. Why use a colonizer's word when you have one of your own?

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[Chris Mattern]

Er, no it's not. The French word for "Persian" is "Persan" . The word for the language in the language itself is indeed "Farsi" (at least in Iran). It is "Persian" that is the colonizer's word, which is why that nation now insists on being "Iran" and not "Persia".

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[lsllll]

No, it is not. See my post above. The "i" at the end of Fars is how in the language you relate people to something, kind of like "ian" in English. People of Fars (a province in Iran and the prominent area in the old Persian empire, at the time called Pars) are Farsi, just like in English people of Iran are Iranian. If the French use "Farsi", it's because it came from Iran, not the other way around.

Brilliant Idea

[Pollux]

Let's teach those Iranians how to make a Stuxnet that will destroy the American nuclear program!

I hope....

[drew_92123]

....this gives the kids hope for something better.

Someone has to

[dicobalt]

write the code for their morality police database.