"What the industry needs" is a moving target. And I agree, its rarely taught in schools and universities, at least in interesting jobs.
The thing I keep coming back to in my own mind mentally, is how (in my opinion) as children's brains are growing very rapidly, and also as public schools everywhere are perpetually underfunded, and teachers are in extremely short supply the earlier we expose kids to these contexts, the better.
Youre right about Linux being installable on any computer new and old and also about thats really the value adder.. but then I think of my own experience. Even in the late 1980s in the Bay Area had I not been exposed to people who took the time to explain Unix and get me on the Internet, I never would have heard of it. And its still like that today, most internet users just use a few applications and have little idea of what is actually happening there, even people who should, we would think, be experts.
If we took a totally random sample of 100 internet users, even in a major city in a major developed country, how many would be doing anything technical or with electronics? Five? Ten? but that would be pushing it. Even in a tech mecca like the Bay Area, which may be one of the most tech literate places in the world, penetration of tech literacy is still a lot lower than many would think.
We have to start them earlier and it has to be more than just schoolwork or a homework assignment.
Look, many of you are engineers, beneficiaries of a formal education that introduced each concept in order, and provided in many cases, an ideal structured environment for learning. But that is already in many cases fairly late in life - Maybe late teens or in many cases, 20s or even older. I venture to guess that many of you were already deep into the subject. But I'm sure you also shared classes with at least some students who also seemed to literally be picking up their soldering irons for the first time in those classes. Lots probably went on to do something else, eventually. Maybe using their skills for that, maybe not. But hopefully, they picked up the engineer's way of looking at things. Its likely many here already had it. You were likely already curious, incurable curious. In a way it can be like a desease, almost, but a happy one.
Maybe if they were younger they never would have had to relearn curiosity.
I hope its not insulting-sounding for me to draw certain parallels between engineering and the rapid brain growth and curious aspects of childhood. I mean that in a complementary way. Thats the way I was as a child and thankfully Ive never lost it. Even though I know I'm not as sharp in many was as I was when I was younger, I'm still leaning at an age when it seems many are just coasting. I think thats what we should be aiming for.
So sure, its boring looking at a lot of RPI projects, many of which are kind of alike and not so original, atthe same time, it a uniquely successful effort and it seems they get it, they get the magic.
Hey they help young people learn the lingo too.. not just the things they can do, this is important because they might even undersand the literaure of academia by the time they arrive in it,
How many other college freshmen would? I wonder what they would think "physical computing" meant, for example.
Thats guaranteed to put them in a better position when the time comes to hand out the grades..
So many important things depend on our younger generation hitting the ground running with computers and computing. And not just being passive consumers of vapid "content" flowing in a one way direction.
So I guess what I am meaning to say is I am happy to give them my money. Even if there are lots of cheaper alternatives.
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