Language!

[Farmer John]

I went to the library to change my books, they also lent me a little plastic envelope with a little circuit board and some other bits and pieces in it. This is part of the BBC micro:bits initiative, designed to get each and every student started with programming (coding) at a very early age. My knowledge of computers is fairly wide, I was quite pleased to see that a number of "languages" can be used before sending your finished opus to the little clicky board, where it can live until you power it up and run the code you have written. I think this is pretty laudable, but I do feel that one possibility will be that a smallish number of whizzy kids will go on, and the rest will flounder around in a mire of incomprehension, joined by a a good number of staff who will have gone through (very) sketchy training.

Anyone else got any thoughts on this? One of the languages that can be used is "Python", which I have encountered being used as a way of writing add-ons to the GIS software I have used, and skill in that would be interesting.

I am in two minds about this. I think installing a sound basis of logic (which underlies all computer programming) as a separate thing is a skill that has application throughout life and one that is not always mastered. I refer you to the outbreak of flat-earth mania that has broken out here and in The Other Place.

Hmm.

[erimus]

We were in the company of a small family a month or so ago.....they were,obviously, on their smartphones or whatever....the girl aged 7 had already started coding at school and their 13 year old son was teaching the class below him!

I tried to learn Cobol in the 60's and was hopeless...

geoff

[Farmer John]

The simplest language is called blocks, it describes it quite well. I think anyone could learn it, and then progress to more sophisticated languages.

[BobClay]

When I first started working at a Devon Community College looking after the IT equipment I was surprised that most IT lessons seemed to be about learning how to use software such as word processing/spreadsheets/publishing etc etc, and no actual computer science.

Learning to code definitely gives you a better insight as to how computers work, the lower the level of the code the better, (although much more tedious.)

But this changed as the years passed and coding became part of the syllabus, much enhanced by younger teachers who came in with a better background. For me decades ago the introductory code was good old fashioned versions of BASIC (Beginners All purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) much beloved of those early (now quite comical) computers. That was a good introduction to coding techniques and structures and in time you would transit to the likes of 'C' and all it's derivatives and even approach the dreaded 'Assembler' if you wanted your program to fly on the old 486 series of processors.

But modern CPU's and compilers mean you get the speed even from High Level languages. Probably no need to worry about low level manipulations, although I've been retired six years now, so I'm pretty much out of touch, especially considering how fast it is all moving.

[Farmer John]

If I have a love of software, a large part of it is for spreadsheets. They just get better and better, and since any cell can have a very complex maths and logic plus data handling formula in it, they are very powerful. The problem is that many that you come across are completely incomprehensible, no explanation as to how they work and imperfectly protected. They usually don't survive being passed on to another generation of users, then someone junks them and starts again. I made one that imitated Napier's bones both in it's operation and it's look, it took ages and the colour change instructions and cell formatting attributes were never completely right, but it was fun. When you get children of thirteen years old passing stuff down to another group, that has to be job done. Great stuff.

[Hawkey01]

"QUE" What these men talking about? Sounds like JuJu to me.

I have the new fancy Office 365 and use some of the applications for my photos and ship collection/research. However there are other applications which I want to try but cannot find out or understand how they work. No idiot guides available that I can find. Any ideas where I can find them. Microsoft seem to keep them hidden or from me anyhow.

Neville

[BobClay]

There are all kinds of courses on YouTube for all manner of software and hardware (and lots of other subjects.) Just search for the specific titles there's a fair chance you'll find something.

Pottering around with this ICOM IC7300 transceiver I've found a number of videos that made the manual a bit more decipherable.