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 Last week, everyone from U.S. President Barack Obama to top model
Karlie Kloss tried their hand at writing software for one hour in
the global campaign by nonprofit Code.org to make coding less
intimidating to students and teachers.
The "Hour of Code" campaign, which ended on Sunday, was the latest
step by large tech companies to help boost American interest in
computer science as they face a shortage of qualified engineers and
developers in the United States.
Code.org, which offers online tutorials in coding, has the financial
backing of tech leaders, including Microsoft founder Bill Gates and
Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg, who have called
for more computer training in schools and U.S. immigration reform to
allow more programmers and other technology specialists into the
country.
The nonprofit also raised just over $5 million to expand the "Hour
of Code" to 100 million students worldwide in a crowdfunding
campaign that ended on Sunday. Google Inc, Salesforce.com Inc and
others have agreed to match donations made to the Indiegogo
campaign, according to Code.org.
More than 75 million people have used Code.org to study code since
December 2013, when it launched the first weeklong "Hour of Code"
campaign.
Last week, Obama wrote his first line of code: "moveForward(100);",
enabling Elsa, the character in a video game based on Disney's hit
animated film "Frozen," to move forward 100 pixels. Code.org now
plans to sell T-shirts printed with that line of Java script, said
angel investor Hadi Partovi, who founded Code.org last year with his
brother, Ali.
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The nonprofit says just 10 percent of U.S. schools teach computer
science. Partovi said many students and teachers are under the
mistaken impression that coding is for geniuses.
He added that the coding campaign is part of a larger effort to get
every U.S. school to add computer science to its curriculum rather
than help tech giants hire engineers.
"We're getting third-graders to code," said Partovi, who worked at
Microsoft and has advised many companies, including Facebook. "Who
knows if any of these corporations will even exist when these kids
graduate from college?"
(Editing by Jonathan Oatis)
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