There is a reason for 80s nostalgia.

Of course, the whole reason for the longstanding dearth of people with decent programming experience is because of that very abolished ITC GCSE subject. I was one of the first people to take it, and it was utterly, utterly useless. Hours wasted on Excel and Word 1.0 and PageMaker, while I was writing operating systems in 6510 asm and teaching myself OO in my spare time. Of course, nobody wanted to do A level computing, not if it was as useless as the GCSE (which I understand it was).

It's a real shame that they kept the typing course on (that's what ITC is the descendant of), while ignoring the BBC TV computing programmes and all that sprang from them (a generation of UK hackers! The last generation until now, to be honest. Even now, the newly-resurgent UK computer gaming industry is mostly populated with people who grew up with the BBC B and Speccy.)