It is all too obvious that computing devices pervade our daily lives. As we rely on these devices for an ever increasing amount of work, a good and thorough understanding of the underlying principles is crucial. In order to deepen this understanding, the Swiss Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research dedicated a day for training and discussion of this matter. Prof. Juraj Hromkovic, who holds the chair of Computer Science Education at ETH Zurich, has been invited to organise a workshop with an introduction to computer programming for 570 members of the Federal Department. For this workshop, the ETH team chose the Python environment TigerJython, which I have developed to a large extent as part of my PhD studies with Prof. Hromkovic as my supervisor. Accordingly, I had the pleasure of meeting Federal Councillor Johann Schneider-Ammann, and have a brief talk with him. Moreover, it was most exhilarating to witness that the entire Federal Department took a genuine interest in programming, and to chat with its members. Finally, it is a special reward as author of a programming environment if the state government takes an interest in your work. However, I would like to thank Prof. Hromkovic and his team at ETH Zurich for making this possible. A (german) news article reported the event here. Picture by courtesy of Pascal Sommer.
