back to article Microsoft tripped up by Blighty's techie skills gap

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 …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    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.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Take That With 100g Salt

    ...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.

    1. Loyal Commenter Silver badge

      Re: Take That With 100g Salt

      It does matter whether it is C#, Perl, C++ or Java, simply because 5000 lines of code in Java is equivalent to 500 in Perl. That language is so verbose, it'll give you RSI typing a simple Hello World.

      1. Armando 123

        Re: Re: Take That With 100g Salt

        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".

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Stop

          Re: Perl Readability

          Perl can be used to write proper, readable, object-oriented source code. But making students aware of code readability is indeed worthwhile.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Double-think

    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.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @AC 13:12

      Linux is a skill; Windows is a commodity.

      M$ seem to be whining at universities for not putting out unskilled graduates.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Flame

      Re: Double-think

      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.

  4. Dan 10

    Education and training...

    ...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?

  5. Jason Hindle

    He doesn't get the point of higher education

    Which isn't to teach Microsoft's languages and tools.

  6. DaemonProcess
    Facepalm

    expense

    One reason for the M$ skills gap is the cost of Visual Studio versus the cost of a linux distro, gcc (or your preferred language) and all the free developer tools you need. Balmer went for profit and Microsoft are paying the price, along with their suppliers etc.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Thumb Down

      Re: expense

      Hmmm, not true. VS Express versions are free and allow everyone to develop fully functional GUI apps (at least on .Net).

  7. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Breaking News!

    Microsoft tells MPs it would be happier with the state of computer science teaching in the UK, if we make every University teach everything on Microsoft software, and according to Microsoft Standards.

  8. Keep Refrigerated
    Trollface

    Leading Universities refuse to work with Microsoft

    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".

  9. Arthur Dent
    Thumb Down

    education or training

    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).

  10. dssf

    NetBeans, Eclipse, KDevelop...

    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...

  11. Bradley Hardleigh-Hadderchance
    Facepalm

    I worked for Micro£oft once - never again!

    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.

  12. Dom 3

    About STEM...

    Most of what I would say about education vs. training has already been said by other commentards, which only leaves me to point out that if I had a stack of graduate CVs to sort through I'd put the Maths graduates top of the pile *anyway*. Then the hard scientists.

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