2019-05-01_Linux_Format

http://www.techradar.com/pro/linux May 2019 LXF249 45

Omoju Miller IntervIew

toquantitativesubjectslikemathematics,
thesamemechanismisstillatwork.
However,ifitisintroducedinawaythat
incitessomekindofanxietyorfrightor
discomfort,thatoverridesyourcapacityto
integratewiththelogical.Certainpeople
mightnothavehadthatlockapplied–it
wasintroducedtotheminwaysthatdid
notelicitthoseemotions,soitwaseasier
forthemtoacquiremathskills.
Butthatistherootcause,whyasa
societywehavedecided“Iamamath
person”or“Iamnotamathperson”.
Wehavethisweird,bizarremythnow
thatthosemathpeoplearejusttwoper
centoftheworld’spopulation.That’s
notenoughtodocomputationalwork:
softwareiseatingtheworld.Mostjobsat
somepointwillrequiresomeknowledge
aboutsoftware,andwecan’trunamodern
societyontwopercent.
Soatsomepointwehavetogetas
manypeopleinthedooraspossible,and
thatmeansweneedtobreakdownthese
myths.Thenpeoplewillseethemselves
differently,andactuallyunderstand“I
feelanxious,thishasnothingtodowith
myabilitytolearn.Itdoesn’tmeanI’ma
failure,itjustmeansIdidn’tacquirethat
knowledgeyet.Letmetryagain”.Sowe
needmoreeducationandresearchto
reallyunderstandhowpeoplelearnand
toapplywhatwedoknowwhenwe’re
writingcurriculaanddecidinghowcertain
subjectsareintroducedinschools.

lXF:Canweuseartificialintelligence
tohelpusdothis?
om: We actually can. The challenge is to
have a dataset that is large enough that
you can tease all these things apart. And
that means you also have to perhaps
deliver some forms of the knowledge

content on an education platform. We

already see that happening – it’s called

GitHub. There are tons of people on

GitHub learning, they’re just doing it in an

ad hoc and natural way, because they can

pull all the materials in there, they share

it with each other and they can create for

each other. It’s slowly becoming a thing,

but it’s still not a traditional school.

We’re in this weird space where we

know that the future is different, yet we’re

still trapped in the society of the present,

that we kind of know isn’t going to work.

We’re in this transitional phase and it’s

verychallenging,butatsomepointwe’re

goingtohavetochangethewayschools

areorganised.

lXF:MicrosoftacquiredGitHubandI’ve

justhadalongchatwithMicrosoftCTO

JamesTurnbullaboutthat[inOctober

2018].ThewholeGitHubecosystemwill

bringalottoMicrosoft,butwhatdoyou

thinkMicrosoftcanbringtoGitHub?

om:Financialstability:GitHubwillnolonger

havetoworryaboutitsfuturefinancially.

Thatmeansitcanfocusexclusivelyon

creatingthebestproductouttherefor

developertools,andactuallyachievethe

missionthatitset

outforitself.

Soit’san

audaciousdrive

towardsachieving

ourmissionnow

• wedon’thaveto
  worryaboutifwe’ll
  beabletokeepthe
  lightson.Andalso
  wedon’tneedto
  worryabouttrying
  togenerateten-timesgrowth,because
  whenyou’reventure-backedyourventure
  capitalpartnershavecertainrequirements
  ofyou.Butwhenyou’reanindependent
  subsidiaryofacompanythatseesvaluein
  thecommunitythatyouarebuilding,then
  youcanleandeeperintothat.
  We’regoingtoseeadifferentkindof
  GitHubforthebetter:muchmoreshipping
  ofproducts,muchmoreexcitementfrom
  peoplewhouseit–enterpriseaswell
  asindependentdevelopers.Because
  Microsoftisalreadyoneoftheleading
  contributorstoopensource.They’re
  alreadydoingit–IthinkVisualStudioCode
  isoneofthetopIDEsnow.It’sadifferent
  kindofMicrosoftnow,theyjustopen
  sourcedabunchoftheirpatents–60,000
  ofthem,infact.

lXF: There’s still plenty of anti-Microsoft

sentiment in the Linux community, and

I daresay within our readership too,

but I think that’s an old grudge that’s

no longer relevant. There may still be

enemies of open source out there, but

times have changed and patent litigation

oranti-competitivebehaviourareno

longerviablestrategies.

om: Open source is not going to slow down,

it’s only going to accelerate even more.

The growth of GitHub’s platform has been

astonishing. In October 2017 we had a sort

of ‘state of the world’ conference at GitHub.

There were 21 million developers then, and

now [one year later], there’s 31 million.

That’salotofnewpeopleonthatplatform.

Ifthattrendcontinues,we’regoingtosee

very interesting things emerge from that

platform.

GitHub is basically the reason why

machine learning has been able to

advance as fast as it has. GH is ten years

old, and a lot of machine learning rests

on open source.

TensorFlow, the deep learning

framework from Google, is one of the

most popular repos on GitHub. But before

TensorFlow could be built, there had to

be NumPy [the numerical computation

package for Python], another open source

project hosted on GitHub, there had to be

SciPy, there had to be MatPlotLib, there

had to be pandas [not the animal – the

Python data analysis package].

All these things are open source, and

these are all the things that created the

ability for there to be PyTorch, TensorFlow

and everything else that we’re seeing now

come to scale. I think we’re going to see

more and more of that.

Omoju believes

everyone has the

aptitude for maths.

on changing education...

“We’re in this weird space where

we know that the future is

different, yet we’re still trapped

in the society of the present.”

Microsoft is a force

for good with GitHub,

says Omoju.