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Fnord666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

A museum dedicated to collecting and displaying the artifacts of computing history, like pieces of the ENIAC and the Apple I, has turned its focus on something far less tangible—software engineering. This Saturday, the Computer History Museum [computerhistory.org] in Mountain View, Calif., opens a new exhibition to the public: "Make Software: Change the World!" Its goal—to show that software engineers are truly the heroes of what it calls the "Transformation Age," changing society in dramatic ways.

The US $7 million exhibit, for the first time, includes a large interactive component—hands on tasks and games designed for children approximately aged ten and up. That age target was picked, museum vice president Kirsten Tashev said, because it is during the middle school years that children start thinking seriously about what they want to do with their lives. The exhibit also aims to show tourists, who represent 40 percent of the museum's visitors, what Silicon Valley is all about, and to help local software engineers explain what their careers involve to their children and parents. "This exhibit makes them look cooler to their kids," says Tashev.

[...] The central hub of the exhibit space focuses on programming in general, with traditional computers running programming challenges and touch tables running a programming game called Frog Pond. (I got really into this game and could certainly have spent more time there.) A small theater in this section runs a short documentary on the development of the Adobe Mix [adobe.com] app: filmmakers followed the Adobe team working on the project for two years. Tashev hopes this will just be the first of many documentaries produced for the collection telling stories of software developments.

Source:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/computing/software/software-engineers-are-the-heroes-of-new-computer-history-museum-exhibit [ieee.org]

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