back to article Join me, Reg readers, and help me UPGRADE our CHILDREN

The venerable Royal Institution - of Christmas Lectures fame - has at last got funding to do something about Computer Science education in the UK. Starting this autumn, schools will get to nominate kids who don’t just read the words but hear the music of algorithms, logic, complexity in time and space, data structures and the …

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  1. stucs201

    Apparently people live outside the Metropolis, no one has explained to me why

    We have a similar lack of understanding of why anyone would want to live in it.

    1. AMBxx Silver badge
      WTF?

      Re: Apparently people live outside the Metropolis, no one has explained to me why

      They'll probably cover the whole of 'The North' from Birmingham.

  2. Peter Prof Fox

    Science, technology or engineering?

    The headline is Computer science. The blurb is vague and hints at engineering.

    I could bore for Britain on programming, explain why real programmers are different to normal people [As clocks go tick and cows go moo, so programmers go What Could Possibly Go Wrong.] explain various methods of design, testing, emulate an every day protocol such as buying a pint using a mechanistic framework but the interesting bits are about people and thinking, not about lambada-calculus, algorithms and proofs.

    I'd use this article as a classic example of where a specification is optimistic, vague and is in effect impossible to construct... and so requires a lot of the consultancy/analysis function. Is that science?

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Holmes

      You are fired!

      Frankly, I am mightily confused by this rant.

      I can only picture Doc Brown taking a large gulp of air then going into a 30 seconds long phrase while he looks at me with bulging eyes

      Scary.

      The headline is Computer science. The blurb is vague and hints at engineering.

      Where I got my Magister Scientiae (it is a "Master of Science", not a "Master of Engineering", incidentally) we called it "Computer Science". The curriculum tried to cover the spectrum from soldering circuits to programming (in the large and small, although the "large" part was very much missing as I learned later) to theoretical informatics to pure mathematics. It was also an engineering school.

      1. Tom 38

        Re: You are fired!

        If you're soldering things, that sounds like Electrical Engineering.

        Most schools have a clear divide between Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. Some students might do classes from both departments, but they are separate departments with different goals.

        Computer science is almost an academic discipline, it actually relies very little on physical computers. Electrical and/or software engineering are disciplines that use computer science, they are not computer science. Computer science is "physics" to software engineering's "civil engineering". One tells you why bridges stay up, the other tells you how to build bridges that stay up.

  3. Irongut

    A great idea. I wish you luck and if you bring these lectures to Scotland please, please come to Glasgow (where the people are) as opposed to Edinburgh (where the foreigners go).

    Unfortunately I'm primarily a coder and you said you don't really want code. But, if you need volunteers to help organise a lecture in Glasgow I'd be happy to help.

  4. Dominic Connor, Quant Headhunter

    Yes it is CompSci

    Yes it is *CompSci* hence the "Cruel and Unusual Logic" thing as well as algos, data structures etc, that's what call real CompSci, what do you call CS ?

    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      Re: Yes it is CompSci

      "what do you call CS"

      The "Dev" in "DevOps". Generally raised with both a complete inability to grok the "Ops" part of the equation combined with such a deep and ingrained scorn for "Ops" that when they "Dev" it becomes a nightmare to actually "Ops" the shite that "CS" produces.

      But that's a bitter "Ops" guys speaking...

    2. P. Lee
      Headmaster

      Re: Yes it is CompSci

      Ha!

      When I was a lad we programmed in assembly, on paper, in exams.

      What do you mean you can't program a linked-list of generated fibonacci numbers in hex?

      Kids today...

  5. Nasty Nick
    Trollface

    Sorry to rain on your parade...

    Not. What a smugtastic article!

    This smells like the (UK) government's "Help to Buy" scheme - give more to those already have more, and leave the rest to fester in their ignorance and the prospect of joining the swelling ranks of the masses slaving away for the minimum wage.

    From the tone of this piece, I strongly suspect that those nominated will drawn from the gifted and talented list, which in my experience is populated almost exclusively by the offspring of the well-to-do wealthy middle classes, who can afford to hot-house their precious Tarquins and Jemimas, buying them all the kit they can can shake a Kinect / iPad at, and / or can afford the time to spend nurturing the priveledged little loves, introducing them to the marvels of the scientific and mathmatical when, in those rare spare moments when they are not taking them to listen to West Russian classical music, learn Mandarin/classical piano/violin/etc.

    Rant over. I wish I felt better now but I don't.

    Yours, etc .

    Dave Spart

    1. Nasty Nick
      Trollface

      Re: Sorry to rain on your parade...

      Oh and while I'm at it, why not make the parents of this select priveledged few pay through the nose for giving their sprogs yet another leg up over the unwashed masses, and put the money earned toward improving science / maths education standards amongst those others, less lucky in their financial / family situation, who might actualy deserve to benefit from this explosion of altruism.

      All done.

      1. Missing Semicolon Silver badge
        Devil

        Re: Sorry to rain on your parade...

        Arse.

        The dirty secret about the "privileged" middle classes isn't the money. It's the attitude. You might call it "indulgence", we call it "being a parent". You make time to engage them in conversations about stuff, try to show them what's out there to give them more choices what to do, or even just what to think about or care about.

        Anecdote-that-is-not-data: My parents,not being particularly well off, spent a lot of money getting me Braun Lectron sets. This gave me a massive boost into electronics.

        So leave it with the lazy class-war bollocks.

        1. Charles Manning

          Sorry...

          I could only give one up vote.

          In blighty and most of its offspring, Aus, NZ, etc.educational resources are there for everyone to use. All that matters is whether you get off your arse and make effective use of them. Unfortunately that depends on upbringing more than anything else.

          Kids of the underclass are under huge conformist pressure to not excell from parents and their mates. "Too good for us are you?". "We're a working class familiy." ...

          How do you fight that, apart from state programs that take away the children of poor parents and put them into better surroundings. That sort of social engineering fell out of favour long ago.

    2. tfewster
      Boffin

      Re: Sorry to rain on your parade...

      I guess you've had a bad day, but the tone of this article is "humer[o?]us"

      Actually, the RI/Christmas Lectures are usually very non-Dr Brian "gravity is like cheese" Cox, in that they:

      - Talk about something important in an interesting way [OK, BC +1; But "enthused" is not the same as "making $TOPIC interesting". That just makes you a geek]

      - Use metaphors that:

      - Give you an intuitive feel for $TOPIC [BC-1]

      - Are actually easier to understand than $TOPIC [BC-1]

      - Are reasonably consistent [BC-1]

      - Motivate viewers to explore $TOPIC further rather then wait for the next Coxbite treatment [BC-1]

      (Bitter, moi? OK, I might have had a bad day too...)

  6. tfewster
    Thumb Up

    Dominic Connor = Steve Bong? I claim my £5

    What a Bong-tastic sub-head: "Join me, Reg readers, and help me UPGRADE our CHILDREN " !

    Has anyone ever seen Dominic and Steve in the same room together? If they aren't alter-egos, I suspect a meeting might create a critical satirical feedback loop.

    1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
      Happy

      Re: Dominic Connor = Steve Bong? I claim my £5

      Are you sure he's not actually Kevin Warwick?

  7. SoaG

    Of possible interest for such an endeavour:

    Modular Robotics http://www.modrobotics.com/

    Pretty much what it says on the tin. Of the 2 product lines their Cubelets are probably best suited for a quick introductory and very hand-on type session.

  8. Dominic Connor, Quant Headhunter

    To Nasty Nick

    Yes, it is "giving to those who have already", if by that you mean we are helping to make smarter people smarter

    As for poor kids...

    You find me one poor kid who can't afford to go to the MasterClasses and I will personally make sure they *can* go, if need be with my own money, this is on record, it is so.

    "Missing semcolon" is far too correct about the middle class dirty secret, back in the day my dad asked "Dave's boy is doing O levels, are you going to do them ?"

    The answer was of course "No, I'm soon off to Queen Mary College to do Maths & CompSci"

    The way you deal with working class lack of aspiration is to shout at them and show them your fucking car. I don't own a flash car, I have never owned a car, there exist people who buy cars for me, presumably they do the insurance and other shit like maintenance, occasionally I sign things. That's because I have money, I got that through hard work and aspiration, I'm bright enough but no one who knows me thinks the money was because I'm the smartest person they've met.

    CompSci means I can now afford for my sons to go to private school and already the 13 yo is asking hard questions about the relative merits of Cambridge and Imperial (but not of course Reading "university"). I also met my wife at IBM's labs, so this is all part of me giving something back.

    I'm talking to a Free School about me sharing my "soft skills" with working class (as in free school meals) with kids, or more accurately imparting the necessary arrogance that has served me so well.

    As for the less able kids, if you Google long and hard enough you will find the work that I'm doing for the "other third".

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