The subject of my next few articles is going to be about how people can start to learn computer programming. However before I start I'd just like to sat that it is strange how I get an idea for writing an article for this blog. This article started because a couple of different people, a news article and a podcast that pointed me to this subject. So right now I am forced to mentally connect the dots and I can only hope that it is worth your while.

I'll start by mentioning The Journal of New England Technology (Mass High Tech) and a story I happened to read this week entitled As IT talent shortage looms, employers focus on pupils. In the article businesses in my local area complain about the lack of students preparing themselves for a career in the Information Technology (IT) industry. The problem has gotten so bad that companies have seemingly given up on the students that are attending college right now. They are instead hoping that younger students can somehow be motivated to study in that discipline. This is all the more interesting because we are talking about the Boston area that has the largest concentration on colleges and universities in the entire world. On a personal level I find this very interesting because I recently completed my graduate degree. During that time I remember MBA students heckling those of us trying to get a degree in Information Technology because of the likelihood that our potential jobs would be "outsourced." I can completely understand why students would choose another career path when the future, from their prospective, is so bleak for IT in America. In my opinion that prospective is shortsighted and in the long run there is going to be a great need for IT professionals in the United States. Overcoming the negative stereotype is going to be very hard to do right now though with troubles we have had in the job market since 2001 and the hype around outsourcing the media has brought about.

So under this assumption we need to find a way to get younger students excited about computer programming and potentially open their eyes to a career in IT. I'm not saying that they will spend they entire career as programmers in the U.S. but in order to start a career in IT a person needs to start somewhere. How can we start students down this path?

Based on my experience and conversations with others is seems that Java has become the language most teachers are using to introduce students to programming. However, I'm not so sure that using Java is the best way to teach kids who are just starting out with programming. I would not want to sit a person who has never programmed before in front of eclipse or Netbeans and start teaching them.

I was going to continue but this article is getting a bit long and I have a lot more to say on this topic. I will talk more about this subject some more in my next article. Specifically, I will lay out three possible ways we could help get kids started with computer programming.