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I don't think it's necessarily fair to call this program "philanthropic." It's teaching kids how to use proprietary and commercial software, like iMovie, iBook
by dublinben 10y ago
I don't think it's necessarily fair to call this program "philanthropic." It's teaching kids how to use proprietary and commercial software, like iMovie, iBooks, and Tynker, when completely free alternatives exist like Blender and Scratch.
This is essentially building a new generation of future Apple customers.
- rm_-rf_slash 10y agoIt's still better than nothing. If Uncle Ben's rice donates its branded rice to victims of a natural disaster - provided the containers say "Uncle Ben's Rice" - would you refuse it for a generic?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- dublinben 10y agoIf I were a relief agency, and those were the terms of their donation, I would refuse it. If they aren't willing to donate without making it a marketing opportunity, it's not really charity/philanthropy.
- rm_-rf_slash 10y agoWow. You would rather people starve than look at a logo? Wow.
- dublinben 10y agoNo, they would rather let people starve than not look at their logo.
- michaelvoz 10y agoThen I am glad you are not a relief agency...
- Grue3 10y agoThis is more akin to a church providing help to victims of a natural disaster... provided you agree to convert to its religion first. Uncle Ben's Rice is not an ecosystem.
- jshevek 10y agoStraw man - you misrepresent the argument. Uncle Ben's is merely a brand. After you've gotten used to one brand of rice, there is truly zero switching cost to switch to another brand.
- eanzenberg 10y agoTeaching a for/while/if loop in Swift is useless in all other languages \s
- jshevek 10y agoThe existence of similar structures doesn't making switching costs zero, therefore the Uncle Ben's comparison remains a straw man fallacy.
- pjmlp 10y agoIt is also teaching kids that there are more ways to do low level stuff and cool games than being forced into pure C culture. Having a new generation being brought up in compiled safe languages like Swift will be a great improvement for the mainstream coding.
- rm_-rf_slash 10y agoExactly! I gave up on programming in high school when my borrowed C++ textbook started getting into memory management and I couldn't stop my head from spinning. I didn't even know simpler languages like Python existed until I started college. I'm all for learning the hard stuff, but programming is such a different way of thinking from most things that it's hard enough to get beginners into the mindset, let alone be comfortable and confident with the syntax.
- dijit 10y agoThis will sound like one-upmanship and I definitely do not mean it that way. When I was a kid I wanted to code to be like the cool dudes I heard about on the internet. The only book I could get was a book on COBOL, with a compiler which would only run on DOS. COBOL is a horrible language and I never learned to code, now I'm 26 and can do the basics with python.. I'm a sysadmin, maybe that would have been different with a language that actually functioned in the modern day (at the time). I feel somewhat similarly for swift/rust and the younger generation, there is a very high barrier to entry for C/C++, which flavour should you use? C99 or C11, what compiler, and what flags are needed for compiling your flavour?.. how do I google errors "C null dereference" when "C" is short enough a letter to be ignored by most search indexes? Personally, I see initiatives such as Apples as a good thing and something I wish I'd had as a kid, even if they have a more sordid agenda.. it's not like coding skills and critical/logical thinking are not transferable skills.
- JustSomeNobody 10y agoYeah, it's a shame the skills you get from learning how to program on one platform don't translate to any other platform.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- wwweston 10y agoThe industry would do well to better absorb the underlying point here (seriously, people, if Emeralds on Trails was really that great of an abstraction, a decent QIQ programmer with Orchestra framework experience would probably be able to pick up the important bits in the time an Emerald dev would be learning the domain specific portions of the app). But unfortunately, there are still costs to switching platforms and if you want to learn about or do anything other than learn new platforms, there's a limit to how much of that you can do. And since we're talking about Apple here, it seems pretty safe to say that those costs are going to be higher than, say, a shift between Ruby and Python. A language whose current practical use and reason for existence is entirely about developing for a single platform owned by an entity that has repeatedly demonstrated an indifference (or outright hostility) to outside use is not a language I'll likely use as an early one for learners.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- _djo_ 10y agoApple released a Linux port of Swift and its standard library when they open sourced it[0], indicating they are neither indifferent nor outright hostile to the language running on other platforms outside their ecosystem. [0]: https://swift.org/blog/swift-linux-port/ https://swift.org/blog/swift-linux-port/
- wwweston 10y agoIf a widely distributed open compiler for Objective C and GnuStep (and other related efforts) had resulted in thriving Cocoa cross-platform development, I might be heartened by Swift's port and standard library. As it is, even after NeXT had started down a cross-platform development road, Apple made several decisions that were indifferent to it (and a few that were hostile). Why will Swift be different?
- melling 10y agoSwift is free and cross platform. I'm sure after 6 months of Swift, that C#, JavaScript, etc will be much easier to learn. The syntax isn't as important as the concepts: loops, conditionals, functions, types, etc
- dclowd9901 10y agoI'm not sure I see the relevance of the program's proprietariness vs. its philanthropic value
- jshevek 10y agoI don't see the issue as being fundamentally about whether or not it is proprietary per se, but Apple's choice of technology makes it clear that Apple's actions are self interested, and not philanthropic. Philanthropic means "seeking to promote the welfare of others, especially by donating money to good causes; generous and benevolent". It does not mean "selfish action which happens to also benefit others" There are several ways apple could have been less obviously self interested, not purely by choosing FLOSS.
- dclowd9901 10y agoPeople are often incentivized by providing philanthropy, if not monetarily, then simply by feeling better about themselves or guilt they might feel. In my humble opinion, if someone has a selfish reason to give, they're still giving.
- jshevek 10y agoYes, absolutely. There is nothing philanthropic about what apple is doing, just like there is nothing philanthropic about Google's efforts to bring effective, low cost computers into schools. Both companies are fully aware of what they stand to gain in the years to come by familiarizing young people with the corporation's own technology.
- up_and_up 10y agoHonestly it seems like (nearly) everything they do appears narcissistic and self-serving.
- rimantas 10y ago"when a thief looks at a saint all he sees is pockets" I am not saing Apple is a saint, but too many look at it with a thieve's attitude.
- jldugger 10y agoThis is as philanthropic the Apple II educational program under Job's Apple.
- jaegerpicker 10y agoTynker and Sphero aren't owned by Apple though? and Using blender for what iMovie does is nuts! Why on earth would you do that? Blender is a really complex piece of software and not at all the same as iMovie. Maybe you could say that about Swift playgrounds on iPad but even swift is open source so I don't know what you are talking about?
- dang 10y agoWe detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11946924 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11946924 and marked it off-topic.