Pi in the sky. ?

We did identify at least one anyway, pl/sql, and the point of that is to get you locked into Oracle, if you've written pl/sql then the cost of migrating away from Oracle has just increased massively and you're locked in.

The same might apply to windows, except that the way the OS and the languages and the produced code are used is different. There is no advantage to Microsoft to make a language paid for, it'll just guarantee that no-one uses it as there are inevitably free alternatives available.

Indeed, which is why they now have the Dreamspark programme to give away development tools and software to students (copy of Windows Server 8 for development work, for free, go on then). And the Express versions of Visual Studio for the various languages. And getting their languages accreddited as open standards (meaning anyone can develop compilers / VMs for the .NET languages).

The development side of Microsoft has moved into the development tools market rather than trying to lock people into languages in recent years. And that work is paying off for them, (despite how much anywebsite will disagree) VS2010 Pro is now a much nicer development environment than Eclipse. This in turn is making Eclipse better, which is a good thing.

And getting their languages accreddited as open standards (meaning anyone can develop compilers / VMs for the .NET languages).

Except that their compilers/VM doesn't confirm to the open standards so you have the choice of using a standards compliant compiler/VM that might not work with MS stuff or a non standards compliant compiler/VM that might not work with standards compliant stuff and might not work with MS stuff either because you don't know which bits of the standard MS don't comply with. (A bit like with the OOXML file formats).

More seriously, the vast majority .NET libraries aren't part of the standard so if you use Mono to run .NET code you're on legally dubious ground.

Wow! Which school did you go to?

 

In comparision I was very lucky. I was at secondary about the same time as you (I've just turned 31) and when I started in Y7 there were already 2 dedicated IT rooms with around 25 PCs in each. I was already PC-savvy having had one at home for over a year previously (First on was an Amstrad 8086 with a massive 10mb harddrive!). By the time I came to do my GCSE IT the number of computers had swollen to around 400, all network linked and there were 3 more dedicated classrooms, however 2 of these were for "business studies"

A month into my GCSE myself and another lad were approached by the head of IT to take part in extra-curricula activities with the IT tech support. I accepted but the other lad didn't. Even though I already knew a lot from self-teaching, I learnt a lot more.

 

Halfway through Y11 the IT tech quit without notice and because I knew the system, had all the passwords etc I 'assumed' the role of IT support in the spare times in my schedule. It took the school to the end of the school year to find a suitable replacement. I stayed on in Y12 and for that year I was considered an equal partner to the new tech & I had to teach him the niggles etc of the system as he'd not used Novell Netware before.

 

Although I didn't get paid in money for the work that I did, the school built me a top of the range PC and gave it to me but for me the experience was more than worth the hard work I put in.

I went to Meadowhead. There were 3 rooms with about 15 Acorns in each & 2 rooms of about 15 386 PCs with Windows 3.1, not networked. About 1600 kids, biggest school in Sheffield. We'd be lucky if 10 computers in each class worked, there were 30 kids in the classes. They had a couple of BBC Bs left hidden away in a back room from when they used to teach proper computing, I got a chance to use those sometimes.

I don't remember doing any IT in Y7 or Y8, we had 4 weeks of IT in Y9, but only 3 of the PCs started up until I went & 'fixed' them, kids had messed with the autoexec.bat the IT techs there didn't have a clue, they were just 'broken'.

I took the dedicated ICT GCSE which meant I was stuck with broken old Acorns, classes doing IT & Business Studies combined got PCs.

ICT was an optional GCSE subject at Meadowhead when I went, I think some kids only had 8 hours of IT during the full 5 years of school.

I think a year or two after I left they got a load of new PCs & networked them. I didn't see a network until college & I was put off from doing any IT related courses because of the state of IT in the school I went to.

I had a 286 at home, upgraded to a 486 when I was 15.

Built into that particular IDE doesn't mean that they own them or the right to sell them. Which of those languages are not actually available for free?

All of them, if you have to run Windows then they're not really free, even the 'express' editions, it's more like "buy one get one free"

I bet if you look hard you can get a VBScript compiler for linux, maybe you can do it with Wine... But I'm not sure your argument really counts there anyway, the language is not for sale separately if it comes bundled with every version of windows.

You can't get a vbscript compiler for anything, it's a simple interpreted scripting language built into Windows. You might be able to run it with Wine, probably not properly, but that's been reverse engineered. It's not free if you need to buy something else, like Windows. It's not really free (as in freedom) if you can't download the source code, modify it & create your own version.

Didn't someone already point out that the SDK is free unless you want to sell your program?

https://developer.apple.com/programs/which-program/

It's $99 per year, unless you're a University. You also need a Mac. The app store is the only official way to distribute iOS apps, whether you're selling them or not. It's possible to develop apps for the Mac without paying apple $99/year. If you plan to distribute iPhone/iPad apps to non-hacked devices then you need to pay.

So what you're accepting here is that C++ is not owned by intel and is free. In fact you can download right now the gcc compiler for it and compile some code that will run on your intel based pc. Intel do not and cannot sell you c++.

GCC is different to the Intel compiler. Intel sell C++ compilers, their compiler is slightly different to others, that's why people buy them. They own their own C++ compiler & that version is not free. Before GCC you had to pay for any decent C++ compiler.

Why do you think PL/SQL is any different to VBA? If you're saying VBA is free (it isn't, you need to buy office) then surely PL/SQL is free when you buy Oracle too? You can even download an 'express edition' of Oracle for free http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/express-edition/downloads/index.html

I went to Meadowhead. There were 3 rooms with about 15 Acorns in each & 2 rooms of about 15 386 PCs with Windows 3.1, not networked. About 1600 kids, biggest school in Sheffield. We'd be lucky if 10 computers in each class worked, there were 30 kids in the classes. They had a couple of BBC Bs left hidden away in a back room from when they used to teach proper computing, I got a chance to use those sometimes.

 

I don't remember doing any IT in Y7 or Y8, we had 4 weeks of IT in Y9, but only 3 of the PCs started up until I went & 'fixed' them, kids had messed with the autoexec.bat the IT techs there didn't have a clue, they were just 'broken'.

 

I took the dedicated ICT GCSE which meant I was stuck with broken old Acorns, classes doing IT & Business Studies combined got PCs.

 

ICT was an optional GCSE subject at Meadowhead when I went, I think some kids only had 8 hours of IT during the full 5 years of school.

 

I think a year or two after I left they got a load of new PCs & networked them. I didn't see a network until college & I was put off from doing any IT related courses because of the state of IT in the school I went to.

 

I had a 286 at home, upgraded to a 486 when I was 15.

I was at Aston (technically a Rotherham school). All the computers were secured so you couldn't access autoexec (unless you knew the exploits of Win3.1 ) and networked to a central server using coaxial ethernet & BNC connectors. It was awfully slow even by those day's standards & the main issue was actually students pinching the terminators from the ethernet cable.

These things:

http://www.katstar.com/store/sc_images/products/cable/02044.jpg

GCSE IT was an optional but you were taught the basics in the first 3 years. I actually got in trouble in my first lesson as we were given an instruction sheet and the teacher stood at the front reading each instruction and explaining it. However because I already knew the basics I just went ahead and completed the worksheet without listening to him and I got a telling off

Take my example earlier of the almost graph based software we used during my secondary IT education to build programs to run miniture traffic lights. It wasn't teaching you a language, it was teaching you how to build a program - loops, conditions (if a pedestrian pushes the button to cross, how does that interact with my cross roads). You dragged and dropped processing elements from a toolbox into the workspace, and could then edit the properties of those elements (i.e. an "IF" element would allow you to type in the conditions you wanted to allow though, and had nodes to connect a "match" or "unmatched" output to further elements).

Presumably you had to use the correct syntax to modify those if conditionals? It's a language, it just happens to be a 4GL one.

 

Furthermore, if actually trying to teach a language, there's a real risk that the language will become obselete / sufficiently different by the time the students get into the real world that it becomes pointless teaching them the specifics.

The point of teaching the language isn't to learn the language, it's to learn the principles. I was taught Ada at uni, not because I was likely to get a job programming missiles, but because it's a well structured language that lets someone teach how to program well.

 

 

 

Which is where I came into this discussion - that I think the education version will probably come with a specific environment / framework to help new people get interested, which is why they've released to the enthusiast crowd first, as they want help building those tools. There will probably be a language chosen to use in those tools, but I don't believe for one moment it will just be a text editor, a command line and a java compiler.

I never thought that it would involve a text editor or command line, I don't use those in my java development at the moment (well, I do start maven scripts from the command line, but I don't have to). I doubt it will be java though, it's probably got the wrong focus to be useful easily in a teaching environment.

 

 

 

15 years ago when I was at school, GCSE IT was a compulsary subject, I don't believe that has changed since, and I don't believe there are plans to change that now.

I left high school in 96, it wasn't compulsory then, I don't think it was even an option at my school.

 

 

 

Maybe I did, but then look at the number of people coming on here daily who say grammar isn't necessary unless you're doing an English exam. Obviously teachers have a hard enough time teaching something everyone sees constantly, let alone something which is even more rigid (and cryptic to newcomers).

IMO a GCSE that includes programming should be optional, most people don't need to know anything about programming a PC, the most they'll ever do is use one.

All of them, if you have to run Windows then they're not really free, even the 'express' editions, it's more like "buy one get one free"

 

 

 

You can't get a vbscript compiler for anything, it's a simple interpreted scripting language built into Windows. You might be able to run it with Wine, probably not properly, but that's been reverse engineered. It's not free if you need to buy something else, like Windows. It's not really free (as in freedom) if you can't download the source code, modify it & create your own version.

 

 

 

https://developer.apple.com/programs/which-program/

 

It's $99 per year, unless you're a University. You also need a Mac. The app store is the only official way to distribute iOS apps, whether you're selling them or not. It's possible to develop apps for the Mac without paying apple $99/year. If you plan to distribute iPhone/iPad apps to non-hacked devices then you need to pay.

 

 

 

GCC is different to the Intel compiler. Intel sell C++ compilers, their compiler is slightly different to others, that's why people buy them. They own their own C++ compiler & that version is not free. Before GCC you had to pay for any decent C++ compiler.

 

Why do you think PL/SQL is any different to VBA? If you're saying VBA is free (it isn't, you need to buy office) then surely PL/SQL is free when you buy Oracle too? You can even download an 'express edition' of Oracle for free http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/express-edition/downloads/index.html

Your arguing that a language isn't free because you need to buy the operating system that understands it and PC to run the OS... You're being facetious in order to try to score a non-existent point... I never claimed that all languages were free, I actually posed a question and pl/sql answers it.

C++ is free, we can both download a development environment for it now and start developing and distributing code.

VBScript is an odd case anyhow, it's name suggests that it's actually a script rather than a language at all. I'm not claiming that proper languages can't be interpreted, but where does the boundary lie between a command script and programming language?

Are they? It must have changed since I was at school, I'm pretty sure I had at least 2 one hour lessons for all my GCSE's... Maybe more in fact.

Aren't there around 30 teaching hours in a week, and around 10 subjects to take...

Kids will often be doing less than 10 subjects at KS4 due either to the school cutting down on the subjects they do or the kids themselves choosing to do double options. Some subjects take up to 6 lessons a week but these are not the ones where you would come out with a single GCSE. A single core GCSE is often given an hour a week at KS4 unless a child chooses to take it as an option (in which case the child can receive up to 340 GCSE equivalents depending on how much the school is trying to fudge its figures)

Has this thread lost its way? Just picked up the latest issue of LinuxFormat who are running a competition to win one - apparently Boards 5 and 6 designs have been sold on eBay for $3000!

I'm selling one here if anyone is interested in grabbing one: http://www.sheffieldforum.co.uk/showthread.php?p=8840106