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The story I heard was that the UK Government, when designing a new curriculum for computing, consulted with Microsoft on what to include in the curriculum. Micr

The story I heard was that the UK Government, when designing a new curriculum for computing, consulted with Microsoft on what to include in the curriculum. Microsoft said office software would be really important and used the opportunity to pitch their own products. Now because everyone learned Office in school it's the thing that got used in the workplace and this self perpetuated up until a few years ago when (in England) I.C.T, which was the new name for the subject, got replaced by Computer Science which focused more on programming. When I studied I.C.T, if the teacher knew how to code, she sure as hell didn't show it. What was it like with the BBC micros? Did the teacher know enough to teach the class? I know this is a problem with the current Computer Science curriculum.

stuaxo 7y ago
They seemed to know enough to load the disks as far as I remember. One school I went to had "computer club" after school to use BBC Micros. We were playing games on them: Thrust, Imogen and Repton.
- Symbiote 7y ago
  I was very pleased when I found that Repton 3 has been released for Android, by the original developer. When I was 6, I couldn't get beyond the 4th level. Now, I have completed a few of the level sets, but I'm still stuck on others. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.superiorinteractive.repton3&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.superiorin...
  - Zenst 7y ago
    That's cool, though if you feel nostalgic for worms, get a retro emulation version as the play store version will cause all sorts of WTF moments and utter price gorge.
    - Symbiote 7y ago
      Repton, Imogen and Thrust are 9-10 years older than Worms (1995), it was a very different era for graphics.
TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
There was a wave of 8-bit interest from 1980 onwards, with the ZX80/81, ZX Spectrum, Electron, Dragon, and other cheap machines. The BBC eventually caught up with its own micro, but it was between and four times the price of other machines, so it was only ever bought by very rich parents and universities. And a few schools. These machines were all zero-setup hands-on BASIC environments. A lot of people used them for games, a smaller number typed in listings by hand from paper magazines, an even smaller number learned assembly programming. It was incredibly easy and cheap to set up a games company. You wrote your game (hard - but not that hard), you paid a relatively small fee to have some tapes duplicated, you put an ad in the back of one or more magazines, and when the orders came in by post you sent them out by post. Marketing? Send games in for review and maybe hire a stall at a computer fair. If the game was even slightly better than average it would sell. The result was that anyone born between around 1960 and 1970 had cheap access to good-enough hardware on which to learn simple programming and a ready-made business model they could copy, all requiring next to no start-up capital. There was a shake-out in the mid 80s. The PC arrived and business-ised the market, raising the cost of entry. Games became more challenging to develop as graphics techniques became more sophisticated. The 16-bit machines arrived, which took things up a level as dev tools started to cost real money. So by the 90s the scene was an industry. Schools were largely irrelevant to it. Some schools had "computer clubs", and the BBC had promoted BASIC for a while, but in 1991 8-bit BASIC started to be replaced by VB, which wasn't a school-level topic. Windows 3.1 programming was hugely more complex than either BASIC or assembler and the tools were insanely expensive. By now the cost of entry was far beyond the resources of most teens/students, and alternatives like Delphi (Pascal) couldn't sell directly to schools like Microsoft could. And even if they could, most parents weren't going to buy their kids a PC to play on, because PCs cost as much as a car. Schools taught Office because there was no longer a useful entry-level for developers. And anyone who'd been up through the 80s was now working as a developer and getting paid a lot more than they'd get as an ICT teacher. tl;dr the industry cut out the educational system. "Business-ising" the technology starved a generation of access to affordable computing and the high cost of entry made it very difficult for talented teens to build the next generation of businesses.
- Symbiote 7y ago
  > Schools taught Office because there was no longer a useful entry-level for developers. And anyone who'd been up through the 80s was now working as a developer and getting paid a lot more than they'd get as an ICT teacher. The second part is much more of an issue than the first part. My father was a teacher at a fairly expensive private school, where the pay was a fair bit higher than normal. The ICT teacher was a friend of my dad's, and helped me if he visited. He could do some programming, and taught the students using robots (Fischertechnik and later Lego) and Visual Basic. Both were options on the curriculum, but many ICT teachers chose the "easier" options, i.e. word processing, graphics, presentations. The robots lent themselves very well to introductory programming. There was a model of automatic sliding doors, a fork-lift truck (with a light sensor for line following), and a lift. All had appropriate sensors and switches to control them, and the computer had software to program graphically, or in text.
chrisseaton 7y ago
> But growing up there were quite literally no resources to learn anything about computers or programming. This logical jump doesn't seem to make sense to me. Almost every developed country on earth used Microsoft Office in the second half of the 90s and the 00s. Why do you think in the UK it was specifically caused by it being taught in school, when it was also successful everywhere else when it was not taught in school?
- dijit 7y ago
  I wasn't really a functioning adult at that time, but the impression I got was that LOTUS NOTES and things of this nature were equally competitive during the early 90's. And Microsoft getting into education began to cement their domination as the generations became old enough to enter the workforce.
- Wildgoose 7y ago
  Because they changed from teaching the basics of programming and how computers work to how to use Microsoft Word or Powerpoint. That is a MAJOR jump, from teaching programming to teaching word processing.
- coribuci 7y ago
  > > But growing up there were quite literally no resources to learn anything about computers or programming. > This logical jump doesn't seem to make sense to me. Almost every developed country on earth used Microsoft Office in the second half of the 90s and the 00s. Why do you think in the UK it was specifically caused by it being taught in school, when it was also successful everywhere else when it was not taught in school? Because the reason why every developed country used Microsoft products was corruption (you can call it lobbying if you feel good).
davidwtbuxton 7y ago
I was at a private boarding school, aged 10 in 1985. They had a computer lab with ~20 BBC model B's and we were taught BASIC, how to load and run programs from tape, how to use this paint software I don't remember the name of. It was all solid stuff. But the real draw was playing video games, which was only permitted on weekends. Hours and hours of Chuckie Egg, Cylon Attack, Stryker's Run, etc.
- Zenst 7y ago
  Yes things did change around then,before you had to write your own game or type them in. Then suddenly lots about and in part that IMHO played a part in removing the need-appeal to learn more for many. Though for some the challenges in hacking games and redoing boot loaders did happen, it was more niche scene wise and not part of schooling.
saw-lau 7y ago
Our teachers certainly did (comprehensive school from 1981). I guess because the subject was computer studies (think it was 'studies' rather than 'science') and the curriculum was about programming and how they worked, I guess they had to hire people who knew their onions.

stuaxo 7y ago

They seemed to know enough to load the disks as far as I remember. One school I went to had "computer club" after school to use BBC Micros. We were playing games on them: Thrust, Imogen and Repton.

Symbiote 7y ago
I was very pleased when I found that Repton 3 has been released for Android, by the original developer. When I was 6, I couldn't get beyond the 4th level. Now, I have completed a few of the level sets, but I'm still stuck on others. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.superiorinteractive.repton3&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.superiorin...
- Zenst 7y ago
  That's cool, though if you feel nostalgic for worms, get a retro emulation version as the play store version will cause all sorts of WTF moments and utter price gorge.
  - Symbiote 7y ago
    Repton, Imogen and Thrust are 9-10 years older than Worms (1995), it was a very different era for graphics.

TheOtherHobbes 7y ago

There was a wave of 8-bit interest from 1980 onwards, with the ZX80/81, ZX Spectrum, Electron, Dragon, and other cheap machines. The BBC eventually caught up with its own micro, but it was between and four times the price of other machines, so it was only ever bought by very rich parents and universities. And a few schools. These machines were all zero-setup hands-on BASIC environments. A lot of people used them for games, a smaller number typed in listings by hand from paper magazines, an even smaller number learned assembly programming. It was incredibly easy and cheap to set up a games company. You wrote your game (hard - but not that hard), you paid a relatively small fee to have some tapes duplicated, you put an ad in the back of one or more magazines, and when the orders came in by post you sent them out by post. Marketing? Send games in for review and maybe hire a stall at a computer fair. If the game was even slightly better than average it would sell. The result was that anyone born between around 1960 and 1970 had cheap access to good-enough hardware on which to learn simple programming and a ready-made business model they could copy, all requiring next to no start-up capital. There was a shake-out in the mid 80s. The PC arrived and business-ised the market, raising the cost of entry. Games became more challenging to develop as graphics techniques became more sophisticated. The 16-bit machines arrived, which took things up a level as dev tools started to cost real money. So by the 90s the scene was an industry. Schools were largely irrelevant to it. Some schools had "computer clubs", and the BBC had promoted BASIC for a while, but in 1991 8-bit BASIC started to be replaced by VB, which wasn't a school-level topic. Windows 3.1 programming was hugely more complex than either BASIC or assembler and the tools were insanely expensive. By now the cost of entry was far beyond the resources of most teens/students, and alternatives like Delphi (Pascal) couldn't sell directly to schools like Microsoft could. And even if they could, most parents weren't going to buy their kids a PC to play on, because PCs cost as much as a car. Schools taught Office because there was no longer a useful entry-level for developers. And anyone who'd been up through the 80s was now working as a developer and getting paid a lot more than they'd get as an ICT teacher. tl;dr the industry cut out the educational system. "Business-ising" the technology starved a generation of access to affordable computing and the high cost of entry made it very difficult for talented teens to build the next generation of businesses.

Symbiote 7y ago
> Schools taught Office because there was no longer a useful entry-level for developers. And anyone who'd been up through the 80s was now working as a developer and getting paid a lot more than they'd get as an ICT teacher. The second part is much more of an issue than the first part. My father was a teacher at a fairly expensive private school, where the pay was a fair bit higher than normal. The ICT teacher was a friend of my dad's, and helped me if he visited. He could do some programming, and taught the students using robots (Fischertechnik and later Lego) and Visual Basic. Both were options on the curriculum, but many ICT teachers chose the "easier" options, i.e. word processing, graphics, presentations. The robots lent themselves very well to introductory programming. There was a model of automatic sliding doors, a fork-lift truck (with a light sensor for line following), and a lift. All had appropriate sensors and switches to control them, and the computer had software to program graphically, or in text.

chrisseaton 7y ago

> But growing up there were quite literally no resources to learn anything about computers or programming. This logical jump doesn't seem to make sense to me. Almost every developed country on earth used Microsoft Office in the second half of the 90s and the 00s. Why do you think in the UK it was specifically caused by it being taught in school, when it was also successful everywhere else when it was not taught in school?

dijit 7y ago
I wasn't really a functioning adult at that time, but the impression I got was that LOTUS NOTES and things of this nature were equally competitive during the early 90's. And Microsoft getting into education began to cement their domination as the generations became old enough to enter the workforce.
Wildgoose 7y ago
Because they changed from teaching the basics of programming and how computers work to how to use Microsoft Word or Powerpoint. That is a MAJOR jump, from teaching programming to teaching word processing.
coribuci 7y ago
> > But growing up there were quite literally no resources to learn anything about computers or programming. > This logical jump doesn't seem to make sense to me. Almost every developed country on earth used Microsoft Office in the second half of the 90s and the 00s. Why do you think in the UK it was specifically caused by it being taught in school, when it was also successful everywhere else when it was not taught in school? Because the reason why every developed country used Microsoft products was corruption (you can call it lobbying if you feel good).

davidwtbuxton 7y ago

I was at a private boarding school, aged 10 in 1985. They had a computer lab with ~20 BBC model B's and we were taught BASIC, how to load and run programs from tape, how to use this paint software I don't remember the name of. It was all solid stuff. But the real draw was playing video games, which was only permitted on weekends. Hours and hours of Chuckie Egg, Cylon Attack, Stryker's Run, etc.

Zenst 7y ago
Yes things did change around then,before you had to write your own game or type them in. Then suddenly lots about and in part that IMHO played a part in removing the need-appeal to learn more for many. Though for some the challenges in hacking games and redoing boot loaders did happen, it was more niche scene wise and not part of schooling.

saw-lau 7y ago

Our teachers certainly did (comprehensive school from 1981). I guess because the subject was computer studies (think it was 'studies' rather than 'science') and the curriculum was about programming and how they worked, I guess they had to hire people who knew their onions.