Right now, there's a big trend in Silicon Valley that's all about lobbying the government to relax immigration rules in order to bring in more highly qualified programming talent from abroad. However, some believe this overlooks the masses of unemployed workers here in the U.S. who could really use those jobs, if they only had the necessary skills. To address this issue, a new initiative called Code.org has been launched to help spur more interest in teaching people, especially kids, how to program.
Set up as a non-profit venture, the organization has recruited some of the biggest names in tech to endorse the effort directly by appearing in a video in which they describe their first experiences with coding. The video includes the likes of Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter and Square creator Jack Dorsey, musician Will.i.am, Valve co-founder Gabe Newell, Dropbox co-founder Drew Houston, and, surprisingly, Miami Heat center Chris Bosh, who apparently dabbled with computers long before joining the NBA.
The five-minute film goes a long way towards humanizing the act of learning code by having famous coders demystify the process. The site also has several simple coding examples provided by Khan Academy, Codeacademy, and others to prove how easy it can be to get started learning to code, and provides volunteer opportunities for those who already how to code.
You can learn more about the program here, and check out the entire film below.
Via Code.org
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