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The BBC’s Micro Bit finally launched last week just as the children headed off for the Easter holidays.
Many won’t get their hands on the tiny computers until they return from their spring break in mid-April, although the hope is that some will play with their new devices at home over the vacation.
The BBC has bigger ambitions for the little machine, hoping that it will help kickstart a revolution in coding in the same way as its big brother the BBC Micro did in the 1980s.
But how will the Micro Bit – which currently is only on offer to 11 and 12-year-olds around the UK – inspire a generation and what exactly will it inspire them to do?
Computer history
The project is late – and there was clearly a rush to get it into the hands of children before most schools broke up for Easter.
This delay is perhaps unsurprising – it is a complex task launching new hardware especially with the huge range of partners that the BBC is working with – but it has frustrated teachers who are hastily rewriting lesson plans, initially slated for the beginning of the academic year.
It mean that schools now only have one term to start using the device in classrooms and, perhaps more worryingly, when this year group of students leave the classroom at the end of the summer term they will take the Micro Bits with them, thanks to a decision to give the devices to individuals rather than to schools.
“It is vital that there is a fresh supply of Micro Bits each year for it to have a long-term, sustainable future,” said Bill Mitchell, director of education at the British Computing Society (BCS).
The BBC has said that the devices will be made commercially available from next year although there is little detail about how this will work or how much they will cost.
The BBC Micro became the centrepiece of the BBC’s first computer literacy push in the 1980s and a hugely influential piece of kit.
When it hit the market, an estimated 60% of primary schools and 85% of secondary schools adopted it and many of the influential leaders in the technology industry now cite it as having been crucial to their computing careers.
Now those willing the Micro Bit to succeed hope for similar.
“Many of our volunteers and staff say that they learnt to code using a BBC Micro and we want to replicate that with the Micro Bit,” said Code Club director Clare Sutcliffe.
Separate to the roll-out of the device to a million schoolchildren, the BBC is also making extra ones available to after-school clubs such as Code Club.
“We will be getting 20,000 Micro Bits in a few weeks time and we plan to give them to the venues so that they can be used over and over again,” said Ms Sutcliffe.
Computational thinking
There is no doubting the fun that children can have with the Micro Bit and it has already inspired a bunch of interesting projects but what is the longer-term goal of the technology?
Those who argue in favour of the hands-on approach to computer science say that, just as children learning about Shakespeare need to see the Bard’s plays performed to truly understand the work, so those learning about computing need to get under the bonnet.
“The Micro Bit is a device that interacts with the physical world and children can see that the device can have a physical effect, which helps them understand how computation can solve problems in the real world. That is hugely important,” said Mr Mitchell.
He hopes it will create a new generation of school leavers who can “analyse real-world problems and find an algorithm to solve them”, which he said will not only put the UK leaps and bounds ahead of other countries but will also help those children as they enter adult life – whatever profession that they choose to pursue.
“There is a misapprehension that the new curriculum is about churning out a generation of computer programmers but that is not the case,” said Mr Mitchell.
“It is about creating a generation of children who can think computationally.”
Hardcore programming
That is something governments around the world are recognising and back in 2014the UK overhauled the ICT curriculum, which had drifted from teaching hardcore programming in the 1980s to classes about how to use Word and create a spreadsheet from the 1990s onwards.
And in the US, President Barack Obama pledged to provide $4 billion in funding for computer science education in US schools.
The UK’s national curriculum now acknowledges that “high quality computing education equips pupils to use computational thinking and creativity to understand and change the world”.
The shift in thinking harks back to the era of the BBC Micro although this time around, Mr Mitchell hopes to inspire more than just the computer geeks.
“In truth the BBC Micro only reached around 10% of children – those who were interested in hardcore programming. For the rest, it was just far too challenging to get to grips with,” he said.
The onslaught of new, user-friendly programming languages coupled with gadgets such as the Micro Bit offers a whole new world of opportunity, he thinks.
The BCS estimates that a quarter of UK schools are doing “an excellent job” in implementing the new computer science curriculum.
The challenge now, said Mr Mitchell, is to convince head teachers in the other three-quarters to put computer science on a par with subjects such as maths and English.
The founder of VR (virtual reality) firm Oculus has hand delivered the first Rift headset to a customer.
Palmer Luckey handed over the headset a couple of days before the consumer version of the Rift is officially due to start reaching customers.
The recipient was Ross Martin from Alaska who ordered the headset when pre-orders opened in January.
Mr Luckey said he wanted the “satisfaction” of delivering the first Rift headset.
Special delivery
On 28 March, the consumer-ready Rift headsets should start to reach people who were among the first to order it in January.
Before now the only versions of the headset available were made so developers could familiarise themselves with the software and hardware in the device. The consumer-ready Rift has improved lenses and electronics to make VR as immersive as possible.
Mr Luckey said it was important to him to hand over the headset given that he had been involved in its development since 2009.
“I’ll be damned if some random delivery guy is going to get the satisfaction of delivering the first Rift,” he told game news site Polygon. “That’s mine.”
A video of the handover was posted to Mr Palmer’s page on Facebook. Oculus was bought by Facebook in March 2014 for $2bn (£1.41bn).
‘Regret’
Mr Martin said he had no idea that his headset was going to be handed over by Mr Luckey.
He said he received an email saying it would be delivered on Saturday but assumed everyone who pre-ordered got the same message.
It was only when he rang to confirm delivery that he realised who was handing it over.
Mr Luckey said he only had one regret about the stunt, which was wearing flip-flops while walking around in Alaska during the winter.
The Rift is the first of the sophisticated consumer-ready VR headsets to reach customers. A rival device from HTC is set to reach people in April and the headset for Sony’s PlayStation will be available in October.
The PlayStation headset is the cheapest of the three, retailing at $399 in the US and £350 in the UK. By contrast the Oculus costs $599 (£499) and the HTC $799 (£689).
(BBC News)
Data scientist has been called the sexiest job of the 21st century on multiple occasions. A data scientist is a rare amalgamation of a data hacker, an analyst, a communicator, and a trusted adviser. In this article, we’ll tell you more about the job and how much you can make at some of the biggest companies.
We presented the list of 13 hottest jobs for 2016 back in February. The runner up position was grabbed by the job of Data scientist. If you are aware of the current scenario in the technology field, this won’t come as a surprise. It has been called the sexiest job of the 21st century by Harvard Business Review.
“It’s a high-ranking professional with the training and curiosity to make discoveries in the world of big data. If your organization stores multiple petabytes of data, if the information most critical to your business resides in forms other than rows and columns of numbers, or if answering your biggest question would involve a “mashup” of several analytical efforts, you’ve got a big data opportunity” — This is how Harvard Business Review describes the job of a data scientist.
However, the shortage of efficient data scientists with right skill set has become a serious constraint in the technology sector. This has also opened a big gate of opportunities for the people with the right mindset.
According to Glassdoor, data scientists make about £82,000 a year, on average. At some of the biggest technology companies, here’s how much these geeks make:
Apple: £105,233
LinkedIn: £98,028
Twitter: £64,600
Facebook: £94,100
Microsoft: £84,136
IBM: £77,600
What kind of person does all this? What abilities make a data scientist successful?
Think of him or her as a hybrid of data hacker, analyst, communicator, and trusted adviser. The combination is extremely powerful—and rare.
Check out Ryan Orban of Zipfian Academy and Dennis O’Brien of Idle Games talking about becoming a data scientist.
//www.slideshare.net/ryanorban/how-to-become-a-data-scientist
https://www.dropbox.com/s/r4m9aym2xvyadzk/SFDataScience_DennisObrien.pdf
Check out a range of some other jobs that you may be interested right here //bit.ly/1Pa80Eq
12 Software Programmers that inspired the world!
A software programmer is a person who can create and modify computer programs. No matter what type of software programmer one may be, each and every contributes something to the society, no matter how trivial. Yet, there are those few who have contributed beyond what a single software programmer usually does in an entire lifetime. These software programmers are pioneers in their respective areas and have each contributed something that has completely changed the way human’s access information and media. So without further ado, here we present some of the greatest pioneering software programmers that have inspired the World!
12. Ada Lovelace
Augusta Ada King, more commonly known as Ada Lovelace, was an English mathematician and the world’s first computer programmer and was chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage’s early mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine. The notes she created for the Analytical Engine include what is recognized as the very first algorithm created solely for the intent of being processed by a machine or in other words, the world’s first computer program.
Ada was a gifted girl from the beginning with an uncommon mindset who predicted that one day computers would transcend from simply being used for crunching numbers — totally against the popular opinion of that time. Ada’s main inspiration came from her father and without her, who knows how long it would take for another person to design a computer program.
11. Niklaus Wirth
Niklaus Emil Wirth is a Swiss computer scientist who is regarded as a pioneer of computer programming among other fields in software engineering. He is best known for designing several programming languages, including the highly popular Pascal, Euler, Algol W, Modula, Modula-2, Oberon, Oberon-2, and Oberon-07. He also designed the simple programming language PL/0 to illustrate compiler design which formed the basis for many university compiler design classes.
Niklaus had previously worked on part of the design and implementation team for the Lilith and Oberon operating systems as well as the Lola digital hardware design and simulation system. Wirth’s pioneering work and development of innovative computer languages helped him win the prestigious Turing Award in 1984.
10. Bill Gates
Arguably one of the most popular and actually controversial computer programmers of all time, Bill Gates is an American business magnate, computer programmer, PC pioneer, investor, and philanthropist. He is the co-founder, ex-executive officer and current chairman of Microsoft, which is the world’s largest personal-computer software company. He is the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution and helped develop Windows, which is the most used operating system in the world.
For the first 5 years at Microsoft, aside from handling the business side of the company, Gates also personally oversaw every single code that the company sent out, often fixing ones he deemed incorrect or buggy. Aside from his programming skills, he is widely praised for his generosity and keen investment planning, but is highly criticized due to his anti-competitive business tactics.
9. James Gosling
James Arthur Gosling is a Canadian computer scientist and an officer of the order of Canada. He has coded quite a number of programs but is widely known for his creation of the highly successful and commonly used Java programming language in 1994 as well as its original virtual machine and compiler. He credits his creation towards his graduate student days where he created a p-code virtual machine for the lab’s DEC VAX computer, so that his professor could run UCSD Pascal programs and then realized that the architecture-neutral execution for widely distributed programs could be achieved by a similar technique.
James has also made major contributions to several other software systems, such as NeWS and Gosling Emacs. Due to his extra-ordinary achievements Gosling was elected to Foreign Associate member of the United States National Academy of Engineering.
8. Guido van Rossum
Guido van Rossum is a Dutch computer programmer who is the author of the popular Python programming language that is wildly used today. His creation of Python lead him to being declared a “Benevolent Dictator For Life” the In the Python community which means that he continues to oversee the Python development process, making decisions where necessary, forever.
Rossum had developed Python while working at Google, where he also created Mondrian (a code review system internally used by the Google) and Rietveld. After working for Google for 7 years, he is now working at Dropbox. Rossum has been recognized as a distinguished engineer by the Association for Computing Machinery and also received the NLUUG Award in May 2003.
7. Ken Thompson
Kenneth Lane Thompson, or simply “Ken” as he is called by the hacker community, is an American pioneer of computer science. Thompson had designed and implemented the original Unix operating system and also invented the B programming language (the direct predecessor to the famous C programming language), and was one of the early developers of the Plan 9 operating systems.
Since 2006, Thompson has also co-invented the Go programming language while working at Google. Ken’s other contributions included his work on regular expressions, early computer text editors QED and ed, the definition of the UTF-8 encoding, and even his work on computer chess that included creation of endgame tablebases and the chess machine Belle.
6. Donald Knuth
Donald Ervin Knuth is an American computer scientist and mathematician as well as a Professor Emeritus (retired professor) at Stanford University. Knuth has been dubbed as the “Father of the Analysis of Algorithms” as he has contributed to the development of rigorous analysis of the computational complexity of algorithms and systematized formal mathematical techniques for it.
Knuth has also popularized the asymptotic notation and he is also the creator of the TeX computer typesetting system and the METAFONT font definition language and rendering system. He has contributed to several branches of theoretical computer science and has also created the Computer Modern family of typefaces
5. Brian Kernighan
Brian Wilson Kernighan is a Canadian computer scientist who worked at Bell Labs alongside Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie. He is the co-creator and developer of UNIX. He is also co-author of the AWK and AMPL programming languages. Kernighan is currently a Professor and the Undergraduate Department Representative at the Computer Science Department of Princeton University.
Kernighan became famous by co-authoring the very first book on the C programming language and by authoring many UNIX programs such as ditroff, and cron for Version 7 Unix. His other notable work include his popular criticisms for Pascal called “Why Pascal is Not My Favorite Programming Language”.
4. Tim Berners-Lee
Sir Timothy John “Tim” Berners-Lee is a British computer scientist who is renowned all across the globe because of his creation of the World Wide Web as well as the implementation of the first successful communication between a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) client and server via the Internet in November, 1989.
Tim has won multiple awards for his pioneering ingeniousness such as becoming one of only six members of the World Wide Web Hall of Fame and one of five Internet and Web pioneers who have been awarded the inaugural Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering. He is also the holder of the Founders Chair at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
3. Bjarne Stroustrup
Bjarne Stroustrup is a Danish computer scientist who is credited for the creation and the development of the widely used and highly successful C++ programming language. He not only invented it, but also evolved it, all by himself, by writing its early definitions, producing its first implementation, formulating its design criteria, designing all its major facilities, processing extension proposals for standards committee and its standard textbook.
Bjarne is currently working as a Professor and holder of the College of Engineering Chair in Computer Science at Texas A&M University.
2. Linus Torvalds
Linus Benedict Torvalds s a Finnish American software engineer, who was the principal driving force behind the development of the Linux kernel. Its creation itself is attributed towards him and he later became the chief architect of the Linux kernel, and is now the project’s coordinator.
Linus was honored with the 2012 Millennium Technology Prize by the Technology Academy Finland because of his creation of a new open source operating system for computers leading to the wide spread use of Linux kernel. He also created the ever popular distrbuted version control system called Git in 2005,as well as the diving log software Subsurface.
1. Dennis Ritchie
Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie was an American computer scientist who is credited for shaping and pioneering the digital era. He created the most commonly used C programming language that is used today in various software applications, embedded system development, operating systems, and has influenced most modern programming languages.
Dennis also co-created the UNIX operating system. For his work, in 1983 he received the Turing Award from the ACM, the Hamming Medal in 1990 from the IEEE and in 1999 the National Medal of Technology from President Clinton. He was the head of Lucent Technologies System Software Research Department when he retired in 2007. He passed away on October 12, 2011 causing the Fedora 16 Linux distribution to be released in his memory.
Software, like a novel or film, can leave some people remarkably pleased and others utterly disappointed—if not at the application itself, then at the software programmer behind it. More likely than not, we have all sat at a keyboard feeling frustrated, and wondering why an application didn’t work this way or that.
Then again, we may have felt truly in awe, using a piece of software that was so swift and seamless that we’d like to shake the hand of the software programmer who wrote it and thank that person for making it so understandable and so easy to use. Depending on your point of view, this list might include some of your unsung heroes, or perhaps a few people with whom you’d like to have a few words. Nevertheless, these software programmers have built world-famous applications, whether we like it or not.
Software Development could be the perfect job for you!
Have you ever thought that Software Development could be the perfect job for you? Software developers design, build and test computer systems that help organisations and equipment to work more effectively. Examples of work of software development include information databases, programs that control robotic systems, and cloud and mobile applications.
If you are keen on computing, can pay close attention to detail and enjoy solving problems, software development could be the ideal job for you.
Employers look for other personal attributes and skills, beyond academic credentials, when assessing candidates’ suitability, for instance creativity, a collaborative approach and an entrepreneurial spirit are as important as aptitude and experience.
So to help present the skills needed for software development in a different light, here are 10 signs coding could be right for you; signs that aren’t always accounted for in academic tests.
- You’re a problem-solving pro
Lots of people will simply tolerate problems without looking for a proactive way to solve them, particularly if tolerating the problem is easier. If you don’t take this approach, but actually enjoy the challenge of solving problems of all kinds, then that’s a great sign that you could be suited to software development. If, in your desire to solve problems, you also take into account realistic constraints – such as timeframes and budgets – then this could be a real asset in your search for a career.
- You have a passion for strategy games
Yes, it can be true that gaming is good for you, particularly where strategy games are concerned. These help hone your ability to make decisions based on a number of relevant factors, taking into account both short and long-term consequences. As well as computer games, those who enjoy offline games like chess, bridge or risk, could also have an underlying aptitude for programming.
- You have a musical mind
While the evidence for the correlation between music and maths is still in debate, it seems commonplace for those with musical talent to have mathematical abilities too. You often find some IT buffs and coders have additional interests such as composing music, singing, or playing an instrument.
- You have a talent for winning arguments
No, we’re not talking about full-blown shouting matches. But if your logical approach to arguing your points in a structured way means that you frequently win over your opponents, this could be a sign that you have the systematic thinking needed for software development.
- You love making things
You can get the same sense of satisfaction from making something in the virtual world as you can in the physical world. Indeed, in the digital world, you aren’t constrained by practicalities like materials and space, so imagination is your only limit. Having a natural curiosity for how things work, and how to make them work better, is a good indication of a nascent software developer.
- You’re a people person
Contrary to the stereotype of the IT team hidden away from the rest of the company, working as a developer can actually involve a great deal of interaction with others across the business. This means that an enjoyment of communicating and an ability to explain things in a way that is easily understood by others are both really important.
- You’d like to know more about the theory of computer science
While you may not have digested the full history of computer science, an interest in the theory behind software engineering is an important aspect of a coder’s skillset. You don’t want to spend your time re-inventing the wheel, so being interested in what others have discovered, and being prepared to build on those foundations, will fast-track your potential achievements.
- You’re a team player
Coding itself is a very collaborative process; continuously reviewing and redefining code with others helps you to shake out bugs, makes your work more likely to meet users’ needs and is one of the best ways to learn. Developers therefore need to enjoy working together and should be prepared to study, critique and improve one another’s work.
- You are intrinsically motivated
Putting some amateur psychology to use, it seems to be true that the best developers are intrinsically motivated. This means they take their reward and motivation from the process of finding a solution to a problem, or creating something innovative in itself. In other words, developers often do what they do for the love of doing it, rather than just being paid to do it.
- You love technology
This is fairly obvious, but it is worth re-iterating that if you want to work in software engineering, you need to have an appreciation for the amazing possibilities that technology brings to the world. Being interested in how you can harness the potential of technology, for whichever company you want to work in, will definitely stand you in good stead, and is a sure sign you are on the right career track for success in coding.
Job opportunities for software engineers are expected to grow much faster than the average for all occupations. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the overall employment of computer software developers is expected to increase by 30% percent from 2016 to 2020. The demand for software engineers is increasing because of the Internet’s expansion and the growing complexity of data-processing systems used in business, telecommunications, healthcare, and government.
So what do you do now?
Check out your local Colleges, Universities or online courses to find out how to get started in software development. Further information can be found below.
e-skills UK
1 Castle Lane
London
SW1E 6DR
www.e-skills.com
British Computer Society
1 Sanford Street
Swindon
Wiltshire
SN1 1HJ
www.bcs.org.uk
Institute for the Management of Information Systems
5 Kingfisher House
New Mill Road
Orpington
Kent
BR5 3QG
Tel: 0700 002 3456
www.imis.org.uk
Institution of Analysts and Programmers
Charles House
36 Culmington Road
London
W13 9NH
Tel: 020 8567 2118
www.iap.org.uk
Skills Framework for the Information Age
www.sfia.org.uk
Microsoft UK
www.microsoft.com/uk
Sun Microsystems
www.uk.sun.com
Oracle
www.oracle.com
Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW)
www.ciwcertified.com
Developer.com
www.developer.com
Or you can contact us to have a chat about your options and jobs available in your area, get it touch now we would love to here from you: Contact Us
