Draining The Life Out of Computer Science?

Coding Like It Was The 1980s … So Where’s Machine Learning, Cybersecurity, Data Science, and IoT?

We all know that coding is the future and that many of the jobs of the future will involve some form of coding/scripting. The Cloud, too, with its GitHub infrastructure, open-source code, and its vast array of services, provides a way to break out of our stand-alone machine model of our computing world. But, Computer Science at school is not doing well just now. In the UK, it struggles to get into the Top 10 subjects at school and also has an 80%/20% male/female gender balance (and which rises to 85%/15% for Higher Computer Science in Scotland).

The first sight of Computer Science at school is often the usage of Microsoft Office, and where we then drag them into learning structure charts and pointing them to the creation databases in Microsoft Access. This is a 1980s model of our computing world and bares little resemblance to the future (and potential) of software.

We have thus been left with a legacy of IT Systems, and in trying to match the syllabus at school onto something that matches to university entry. But universities don’t really care that much about the subject, and it’s often not required as entry into Computer Science courses.

But surely Computer Science is now more important than just getting kids into Computer Science courses? It will build new economies, it will stimulate our new…