The Programming Foundation – An Initiative to Democratise Computer Science Education

COVID-19 outbreak changed the way everyone worked, shopped, studied, used banking services, or lived their lives. The compulsory isolation led people to rely heavily on digital mode to carry out their day to day activities. This has on one hand, exponentially increased the importance of digital services, while on the other hand increased the risk associated with cybercrimes.

In today’s digital-oriented world, the businesses, the governments, the NGOs as well as the civil societies rely on digital data to influence the people. The value of data is highly significant, making the privacy of individuals vulnerable. In such a scenario, it is important for more people to understand the working of computers, operating systems and programming languages.

With the advent of WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) tech in programming, a lot of students today are taught programming through drag and drop tools. There is no emphasis on how an operating system works. Such a gap in knowledge can make technology users more vulnerable to cyber-attacks and breach of their privacy.

With an aim to help the users protect their own privacy, maintain their anonymity while using technology and democratize the computer science education, Subhajeet Mukherjee hailing from Kolkata, founded The Programming Foundation (TPF) in February 2020 in Sunnyvale, California that focuses on providing computer science education free-of-cost, without compromising data.

The Programming Foundation (TPF)

The mission of TPF is to encourage the next generation and generations to come to understand, use, and implement computer programming into their knowledge and their lives. With proper education in mind, the foundation focuses on education that is based on written instruction and concise documentation of examples and processes, as well as providing students with hands-on experience working together as a team by developing free and open-source tools for our platform.

To that end, The Programming Foundation aims to meet several goals:

Spreading awareness and Education on Computer Programming

The Programming Foundation has committed to spreading awareness and education on computer programming and operating systems in order to ensure inclusive development for every individual with the advancing world. Therefore, the foundation focuses on ensuring the widespread adoption of new and enhanced curriculum on computer programming and operating systems and for this knowledge to become mainstream in the general population.

Bridging the Employment Gap Caused By Automation

In addition to this, the foundation aims to work at bridging the employment gap that is caused as a result of the advent of automation technologies. The foundation aims at producing a collaborative society that because of their education will be able to apply their collective knowledge toward technological innovations.

To Ensure Inclusive Development of Society

The Foundation has recognised the existence of devices that are smarter than the average human. Considering the fact that this technology is becoming more widespread every day, our lack of proper education on the subject may leave many behind on how it works. In order to keep everyone on the same level and to move society at the same speed as technology advances, it is important to implement far-reaching educational systems to teach and learn how these technologies work. The foundation is dedicated to improving the available solutions in order to make computer programming and operating systems education mainstream.

The conversations and concerns over cybersecurity have increased in recent times with the rise in the number of cybercrimes. Amidst this, more people need to be aware of how the operating systems work in order to protect themselves in a better manner. If people can learn to operate smartphones, they can surely learn to understand how their smartphones work. And to aid that, initiatives like TPF go a long way.