Seeing as most UK unis...
...are MS shops (as are most schools), I would have thought that MS would be more than happy. After all, people with any actual IT skill stop using MS products where possible.
One of the UK's top Microsofties told MPs on Tuesday that even the mighty Windows maker was feeling the impact of Blighty's skills gap. Although Microsoft was able to reel in top-flight graduates, said Head of Skills and Economic Affairs Stephen Uden, its partners and suppliers were affected by the lack of science talent going …
...as I think your body will be barely able to sustain that. Of course academic studies do not mean being taught all the claptrap details of win32 or Active Directory, especially because that will be irrelevant in ten years time, but graduates want to have a job in 40 years time, still. Solid theoretical and conceptual foundations are essential for that. Having a broader perspective than just windows/c# or just unix/java is also essential.
I do agree though, that CS should include *real* experience in analyzing a non-trivial problem, design and debugging of the solution by each and every student. I don't know the situation in the UK, but in German universities you can graduate without any *real* exposure to any compiler or interpreter. The number of theoretical CS jobs is minimal as compared to software engineering jobs which include developing systems with easily 1 Mio lines of code.
So your uni project should at least include 5000 lines you have created and debugged into a state which is at least barely functional. It does not matter whether it is C#, Perl, C++ or Java, just do something from beginning to the end without someone holding your tiny little hands.
Plus Perl can be so wonderfully write-only that it will give students real-world experience on trying to figure out just what the insane whacko (ie me) was thinking when he opted for obscurata.
Trust me, this is a skill that canNOT be underdeveloped. I've often considered writing a blues song called "Other People's Software".
It's funny how many people in this thread are slagging off Microsoft for being easy, not requiring learning and simplifying to the point of banality, who are also the same people who argue that Linux is just as easy to learn as Windows in other threads on this site.
In other news, the last two companies I've worked for - in data protection - my knowledge of Windows and Linux has enabled me to identify potential data loss problems in the Windows configurations of systems, caused by UNIX admins who didn't understand Windows. These UNIX admins were happy to slagg off Windows, presuming that knowledge of Linux/UNIX somehow grants you knowledge of Windows.
Windows is probably more complex than Linux, if you look under the hood and into AD, DirectX, NTFS, ACLs, .Net runtime and all that. Just because there exist dumbed-down installers means nothing. Just try to fix the registry and file system if they don't work for some obscure reason.
Have fun with those hundreds of directories below c:\windows\system32 and about five millon even more obscure registry keys.
...are not the same thing.
I'm all for educational establishments using something relevant and interesting to get kids engaged, but that doesn't mean that you get to skip the fundamentals in favour of just learning how to call functions in APIs.
I wouldn't expect MS to publish a book on binary, why should academia upgrade to Visual Studio 2010 or something just so the kids can play with the latest widgets for Team Foundation Server or whatever?
That says it all. I'd love to see a Microsoft competitor use this line in their marketing.
BTW "...impacting Microsoft's business partners..." is the key phrase. Yes this is not about Microsoft struggling to recruit, this is about "We've sold MS products to thousands of businesses and now they're struggling to recruit graduates who want to work with it".
It seems pretty clear that Uden regards universities as having a training function, not an educational one.
I'm glad he presented this claptrap to a Lords committee; if he had fed it to a Commons committee they'd probably have believed him, but the Lords has a lower proportion of idiots amongst its members (I'm sure Cable and Willets think he's just wonderful, fo example).
Komodo
http://www.activestate.com/komodo-ide?gclid=CJmG09jkw64CFcwBRQodkXMYVA
Gambas,
Cloud9:
http://www.webresourcesdepot.com/cloud9-ide-open-source-web-based-ide-for-javascript-developers/
QT/Trolltech
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_Development_Frameworks
Although I'm wondering that ms/nokia means for QT...
Well, not if they have anything to do with it anyway.
I blagged a job via an agency doing debt collection.
.
Spent all morning on the phone saying:
"That would be lovely, just super, if you could pop that in the post, it would just be GREAT".
I was escorted out of the building by SECURITY at half past twelve. Told never to darken their doorstep again. Even the agency I got the job with would not return my phone calls.
I mean, wtf did they want? A leg-breaker? Look sunshine, I've heard this shit before and I know where your daughter goes to school - pretty little girl - so pay the fuck up by Wednesday or I'm gonna burn yar fucking house darn - Cunt!
Crikey, I could never take that tone with someone I had never met!
Definitely a communication problem between management on that one.
I say I got off lightly.