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ArsDigita University
Philip Greenspun, whose name you may recognize from photo.net or Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing, is founding a tuition-free program in computer science that's intended to provide the equivalent of four years' worth of CompSci in a single, 6-day-a-week, 12-hour-a-day year. You heard it right: tuition-free. And they're accepting applications. There are a few catches: you'll need a bachelor's degree already, and you'll need to be so bright that people put on sunglasses when you walk into a room. But even the rest of us can eavesdrop with lectures and course notes to be made available online. See this column about the program, or visit ArsDigita University.
As someone with a wide variety of computer-language skills, I must say that your focus is pretty limited.
I've been programming for almost 20 years, and am fluent in over a dozen languages, from 3 different flavours of assembly, through higher-level languages such as C and Pascal, to scripting languages such as Perl, Rexx, and others.
While Perl is useful to an extent, it is easily the worst language I've ever used. It's difficult to learn, and even harder to read. I've had way to many nights trying to understand bad Perl.
And just as a disclaimer, I've never been to MIT (and Lisp isn't one of the lanugages I know.)
Oh, and by the way, Perl rules the universe.
Yes? And MS Rules the PC-desktop, - was your point that "Crap floats to the top"?
Just because something is popular, doesn't make it good.
There are 3 "basic" computer related degrees.
- Computer Engineering: Those fine people who help build computers. They know the insides and outsides of the microprocessor by heart, and enjoy every minute.
- Computer Information Systems: These are the great people down the hall who call themselves sysadmins. If you have a problem, you go and ask them. What? You don't know how you use a spreadsheet? Ask one of them. Not necessarily programmers, but they can shell out a VB program pretty fast, and can teach us techies a thing or two about user-friendlyness.
- Computer Science: Computer Science is a mix between the above two. They have to know how the system works at the processor level if they want to write really great programs, but they also have to know the CIS stuff in order to write usable programs. This area probably has the largest range of what people do because it is a mix between the above. They may end up writing an OS and be friends with the processor, or may end up having to write the spreadsheet that no-one can figure out how to work. "Software Engineers" are normally put into this catagory.
Yes, some schools do just shell out "stupid MCSEs." But I would be surprised that "most CS programs" in a four year university do.As for the scientist part. It is an applied science. Mathematics, Physics, Philosophy. Problem solving at its very finest. I think you would find it very hard to write a 3D engine without a hard background in both Math and Physics. You would also find it hard to write an operating system without a good knowlege of processor and hardware design.
It also has grounds in complexity theory. Computer programs are by their very nature complex, and cannot be simplified. Physics is moving closer and closer to a unified theory, but no matter what you do, programs you write will be complex.
I'll shut up now.
the long winded AC
I went to a CS degree from a Physics/Math and some Chemistry background. I would agree that computer science is less a science than engineering profession. Now, that said, I would also say that with some improvements and more focus on theory than "implementation". Saddly, this is not what is happening. When I started my degree it did have a strong theoretical base but, by the time I finished, the Public university had pretty much taken a defacto buy-out from the largest employer in the area. Now the program is little more than a degree mill. Future CS students:
Look for a program that emphasises data structures, OS implementation, compiler construction, and Mathematical aplications. Don't wind up a slave to someone elses proprietary program and don't work on any thing that you could not re-implement yourself given adequate time.
Translation: You need to already have a degree very similar to the one offered, and be willing (and financially able) to go for a year without holding a steady job so you can study to earn what amounts to the same degree you already have. Remind me again why anyone would want to do this? I'm looking forward to graduation so that I can start earning money, and NOT have to study for 12 hours a day anymore. This sounds like a novel idea, but rather useless...
--
--
Just lurking, thanks!
Some people here have asked [1] why someone with a bachelor's would attend and [2] what's with the 6x12 work estimate.
As far as [1] is concerned, I would guess that this program is mainly aimed at people with degrees in something other than CompEng/Sci who need the technical skills from the ground up. A person who already has most of the technical skills can just attend the three week bootcamp or do the home study course.
As far as [2] is concerned, the 72 hours/week includes homework so it doesn't seem unreasonable to me, considering that it is supposed to be an MIT-level curriculum.
-- OpenSourcerers
I have no idea if it is a "good" web server but I thought people might be interested to know that there is a Lisp-based web server project at MIT.
-- OpenSourcerers
Not true... ArsDigita _already_ has a "recruitment course"... It is a 3-week long "boot camp" that they use to train and recruit prospective employees which covers specifically the sort of work done at ArsDigita.com (and can be taken at home rather than travelling to Cambridge to take the class). Incidently, it is also free.
ArsDigita university only has one section in its curriculum that covers the work that ArsDigita.com does. Mostly ArsDigita University covers the sort of computer science theory you would find in a major university.
-Dean
And that's another comment I'd like to make. Almost every LISP bigot I've heard of talks about how "beautiful" LISP is. My reaction is, So what if it's beautiful? Computer languages are written to be useful, not just beautiful. Is anyone actually developing anything useful in LISP? I think it's pretty obvious that Perl is very useful.
IMO, your reaction is valid to an extent. Surely you can see however, that a CS degree is not about learning a language (that you can then apply in a job or in a project). It is about educating you about how to solve problems using computation. Unfortunately, that's a wide remit that also includes hacking up a guestbook CGI script.
A lot of people fall into the trap of talking of 'ivory towers' in disparaging terms and suchlike. The techniques and knowledge you gain by applying yourself to a CS degree (if it was good) are not 'one trick ponies'. Sure, Perl is useful. But surely, more useful, is the mindset that can pick up and run with whatever language is going, because of the familiarity and experience of the type of language it is. That mindset will probably design a solution that is better. Sure, you don't need a CS degree and millions code really well without one. But a CS degree is not a lesson in coding. That's not what the point is.
The point is, that ArsDigita uses Tcl because it suits their requirements. Lisp might have, if their requirements were different. It could well be that no set of requirements nowadays results in the adopting of Lisp. That doesn't matter. Lisp will still suffice to illustrate points. Lisp may not be useful in production environments, but the job of a CS lecturer is not to prepare you for the workplace. That's your job.
If you want to be prepared for the workplace, then get experience in using the languages you want to work with. Of course, a CS degree will give you the background to run with these languages much faster. There's theory and implementation.
thenerd.
The camels are coming. I'm in love.
I think it's a great idea, and the syllabus and talent they've put together looks great. But who will take advantage of it? How many people are interested in learning theory and doing programming (usually means fairly young, I suspect), and can afford to go a year without pay, and are not already CS graduates? Of course, they only have space for 30, so it doesn't need to be a big market, but I feel like I must be missing something.
That's one reason they only accept people who have already gotten a degree. Not every school has to teach everything. Go to a nice liberal arts college, learn how to think and communicate, then go to ArsDigita and learn what to think and communicate about.
Most universities don't give scholarships for masters students. They also usually take more than a year to complete.
You're thinking of Computer User Training Academy. Computer Science programs teach mostly theory, which doesn't become obsolute very quickly. Much of what's taught was known 40 or 50 years ago, and it's still quite relevant.
Agreed. In comparing Math and CS, I quickly found that CS was more at the vocational training end of the scale, at least in its core requirements. However I did develop a nice sideline of acing CS theory courses, since they were full of 12-hour-a-day C programmers who couldn't tell abstract algebra from a hole in the ground.
My rule for CS is: if it can't be figured out in a few hours without a computer, it can't be programmed with one, regardless of the number of 72-hour weeks one puts in.
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
This is from the glossary of Phillip and Alex's guide to Web publishing.
LISP: "Lisp is the most powerful and also easiest to use programming language ever developed. Invented by John McCarthy at MIT in the late 1950s, Lisp is today used by the most sophisticated programmers pushing the limits of computers in mathematical physics, computer-aided engineering, and computer-aided genetics. Lisp is also used by thousands of people who don't think of themselves as programmers at all, only people who want to define shortcuts in AutoCAD or the Emacs text editor. The best introduction to Lisp is also the best introduction to computer science."
And here's what he says about Perl: "Lisp programmers forced to look at Perl code would usually say 'if there were any justice in this world, the guys who wrote this would go to jail.'"
Elsewhere on the site, he has this to say about Perl: "As nasty and tasteless as Tcl is, it is a positive dream compared to Perl. The only conceivable way to write a correct Perl program IMHO is cutting and pasting from someone else's code."
I'm up on free education as the next joe, but take into account how biased this type of education may be. If you read on in the site, you'll read more about "MIT this" and "MIT that." Perhaps that's why he thinks LISP is so great. From what I understand, MIT is a haven for LISP and Emacs bigot, whereas evereywhere else most everyone uses Perl, C, shell, Python, and other useful programming languages.
And that's another comment I'd like to make. Almost every LISP bigot I've heard of talks about how "beautiful" LISP is. My reaction is, So what if it's beautiful? Computer languages are written to be useful, not just beautiful. Is anyone actually developing anything useful in LISP? I think it's pretty obvious that Perl is very useful.
I apologize if this seems off-topic, but for me I feel wary of education which may actually be rife with a bunch of MIT intellectual "LISP is beautiful!" garbage. If LISP is so great then why does ArsDigita use Tcl instead of the almighty beautiful LISP?
Oh, and by the way, Perl rules the universe.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
Phillip, there's no need to get uppity. If I'm in the wrong, and I often am, then simply pointing out to me where I'm wrong and educating me as to the truth in this situation will be sufficient to change my point of view.
Why do we use Tcl for this last step? We don't anymore. ArsDigita will build you a 100% pure Java site and support it.
This is not an improvement! Java has proven itself to be nothing but hype and nothing but slow. Where is this supposed "Java revolution" that's supposed to have happened? Tcl/Tk (or Perl/Tk, for that matter) is more cross platform than is Java and faster, too. It is Java which has earned the moniker "Write once, Debug everywhere," not Tcl/Tk.
It turns out that AOLserver is a great efficient proven Web development tool. It happened to include a compiled-in Tcl interpreter. So we used it.
Why didn't AOLserver include a compiled-in LISP interpreter? For that matter, why isn't there any web server which includes a comiled-in LISP interpreter? If LISP is as great as you people claim it is, then certainly there should be at least one, right? Several people have come to your defense by saying, "The reason that AD didn't use LISP is because they used AOLserver, which used Tcl." I think that's a cop-out. The response is obvious: Then why didn't AD select a web server which uses LISP?
If we were as smart as you, we'd have rewritten the whole thing in Perl instead of building a $20 million (revenue) profitable business.
If you have built a $20 million in revenue profitable business then you have built one more $20 million in revenue business than I have, and that is to be congratulated. Why then do you feel the need to make such snide comments to me like the one above?
If you don't know about any of the advancements in computer technology developed at MIT over the last 40 years nor any of the useful innovative software systems written in Lisp, maybe you should take a computer history course.
Why don't you just tell me some of them? Provide hyperlinks if available. I will be convinced and believe your point of view if I see good evidence that LISP is as great as you claim it to be. But as is, you look much more like an upset, MIT snob than an effective defender of LISP.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
Phillip,
Thank you for your thoughtful response. I can see your point of view. At the same time, I think it enables me to put mine into better perspective.
My whole point is that I feared a course in programming coming from a person who was a LISP/Emacs/MIT bigot. Mind you, this is my impression of MIT people: they think they are smarter than everyone else, they think Emacs is better than any other application (I believe you wrote on your web page, "All good programmers will spend most of their time in Emacs," from which I infer that if you aren't spending most of your time in Emacs, then you're not a good programmer), and they think that LISP is better than any other programming language. In short, they are elitist snobs. I used a few of your quotes regarding LISP and Perl to illustrate.
But am I wrong about MIT people? Are they not snobs? Is LISP really a useful programming language? I don't know, I can be convinced otherwise. But I think that I'm not the only one who has this opinion.
If you look back on some of the things in your respone to my response, I think they can still reinforce my point:
Lisp programmers were too busy congratulating themselves for being smarter than C programmers.
As for Lisp, a lot of language bigotry caused Lisp programmers to waste time arguing and reimplementing Lisp instead of building apps.
So I can't be all wrong about LISP programmers being snobs.
And as to your claims about what LISP as produced,
The operating system. Time-sharing. RSA encryption. TCP/IP and a lot of earlier network stuff.
This does not really look all that impressive. Isn't it true that several of these concepts were also implemented in other langauges other than LISP? Isn't it also true that there are hundreds of other concepts in the field of computer science that were implemented in languages other than LISP? In short, what makes LISP so great? What makes it stand out among the other languages? To me, the only thing that makes it stand out is the LISP "bigots" who are "too busy congratulating themselves for being smarter than C programmers."
And another question, I understand that you are tired of people arguing about which language is better than the other, and I certainly understand that. Why then did you go into detail about how awesome LISP is and how horrible Perl is? If the tools are unimportant, then I don't see the point in all the LISP touting and Perl bashing.
I must add that what I am totally against is a few people being elitist about some "lots of inane and stupid parentheses" language that no one is using except for some research projects at MIT. Personally, I think it's what gives MIT programmers a bad name.
I appreciate the discussion.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
I don't understand what your point is in posting this. The book is posted on an MIT site. It's written by three people who are obviously affiliated with MIT. So of course they're going to fawn over the incredible awesomeness of LISP. That is one of my beliefs: that the only people who talk about how great LISP is are MIT people. My question is this: are there any non-MIT people who will rave on and on about how great LISP is?
I beg you: prove me wrong. Show me that LISP advocacy is more than just MIT snobbery.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
...to use Lester Thurow's epithet.
As a college dropout who wants a CS/MIS degree, I'm kind of oversensitive on this subject, but I've become "educated" enough to want to quit the bullsh*t and move on to the training end of it. But making a baccalaureate degree a prerequisite to this "deep-dipping" program just creates a different kind of stumbling block.
Generally, I scowl at the notion that a college degree is really a bellwether of competence and an entry visa of sorts into the world of IT profressionals. My father, a self-taught manufacturing engineer, suffered a similar fate at the hands of an industry that increasingly admitted only college-trained individuals -- never mind their lack of experience and useful knowledge -- to the ranks of "made guys."
(Donning flameproof skivvies...)
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
Hey, Phil....what's with the Bachelor's requirement?
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
How does the old scale translate to the new and why did they change?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
ok, i can see why its great to have a free education, especially if all the materials will be posted to the net. im not knocking that part, i think it kicks ass, and if it happens i will be sure to take advantage of it during vacations.
but the idea that you cant get a technical degree without an undergrad cs degree just isnt true.
every school in the country is hard up for grad students in cs and electrical/computer (ece) engineering. im not just talking phds, but also master's programs. the labor shortage, remember? nobody wants to go to school for two to five more years when they can pull so much starting straight out of college. the result is that universities and plenty of them are taking lots of people into masters' programs that have undergrad in a field completely unrelated to cs or engineering. its weird, but its definitely happening.
im a biology major from a small liberal arts college, and i got into terminal master's electrical/computer engineering programs at both uTexasAustin and cornell. (admittedly i got rejected from mit, hahahaha.) this arsdigita is really only for english/psych/polisci majors. people who majored in a science can definitely get into a master's program. and seriously, i think a master's is worth more. both education-wise and vocationally.
ok, so it will definitely take me longer than a year (im thinking 2 to 2 1/2) and it costs me money, but one year at UT costs less than half of what one year at my current school is. and so engineering!=CS but you kind of see what im saying. if youre willing to get rejected by MIT, it is still possible for you to major in something completely unrelated to computer science and still get into a CS (or related) graduate program.
with the testing-requirements as high as have been listed, the people arsdigita is shooting for may very well have these options available. finally, i too want to see what the attrition rate of arsdigita will be. to be honest, i dont think that kind of acceleration can be done well. you can only cram in so much knowledge per day. people just stop learning after a certain period- like that far side cartoon, where the guy says "can you excuse me? my brain is full." 12 hours of class a day is just too much structured work time. even if most of it is basically study hall to complete assignments, its still worse than the traditional lecture then do work in your free time aspect of college life. i dont want to sound overly critical, but i seriously feel that the biggest problem is going to be the human attrition rate to that kind of scheduling.
nevertheless, good luck. i hope the program succeeds- if only because i want my free instruction materials on the web!
unc_
That would mean I'd have to be up, like, first thing... in the afternoon! Who's together by then? You can still taste the toothpaste...
Now weary traveller, rest your head. For just like me, you're utterly dead.
If someone came to me after going through this course, I'm pretty sure they would have a good chance of landing a job.
Are there even 3744 useful productive hours in a 4 year degree or even a BS+MS? When I went to school you got a major a minor and filled out the other 40-50% with fluff. If we compare this to a typical I'net consulting engagement @ 80% utilization eg. billable hours then you're talking about a 90 hour work week for 1 solid year. If even 10% of all people can maintain that then they are probably already working @ a dotcom startup or Bain or McKinsey and being paid in the high 5's low 6's. If they aren't then when they finish the first question will be "Well why didn't you just start your own company?"
MSCS and other "trade certificates" are not so useful
Since when is a "master of science in computer science" degree regarded as a trade certificate? I agree with you if you are referring to MCSE etc., though.
--
bgphints - internet routing news, hints and ti
I mean, can you imagine what the people that have spent 6 years getting a MSCS have gone through? Let's see, in 1994 they were using Win3.11/Dos5. 1995, Win95A. '96-Win95B. 1998 - Win98. 1999 - Win98SE. Toss in the changes made to Windows NT/2000 (That would be from 3.51 to W2K) and all of the different *nixs and look what you have... People with a lot of knowledge about outdated, mundane, obsolete technology. I guess you could argue that they still have that knowledge and can use it towards modern stuff, but I would still rather have the education in things that can help me get a job today...
A university degree in CS is not about knowing how to use an operating system. It's about the concepts and the theory behind it. If you want to learn to use a specific technology, get a MCSE or equivalent.
--
bgphints - internet routing news, hints and ti
The two most valuable lessons I learned in college was to never turn down free food or free beer...
"The only really new language that's come out has been Java"
Eh? What's so new about Java?
-rozzin.
"It seems with a computer science degree, half of anything you learned more than a year ago is obsolete"
"1994 they were using Win3.11/Dos5. 1995, Win95A. '96-Win95B. 1998 - Win98. 1999 - Win98SE. Toss in the changes made to Windows NT/2000 (That would be from 3.51 to W2K) and all of the different *nixs and look what you have..."
So? Where's the connection between these two statements?
Upon starting his CS education, a friend of mine told me that he was suprised that the CS curricula didn't include courses on how to use various operating systems and other pieces of software.
I told him that CS wasn't about being able to use some piece of software (or hardware), but about the concepts that go into the creation of those things.
There are indeed operating-systems courses that one may take when persuing a CS degree, but those are in OS-design, not -use.
CS isn't about learning to use the latest version of Windows anymore than mathematics is about knowing where all of the buttons on the latest TI graphing calculator are.
-rozzin.
But that's where the buck stops. Your attitude is dripping with contempt and disregard about a subject field I dare say you probably know less about than you might think. At least if you truly are an EE, that is. Here's why...
Unless your university was a true visionary about your eventual future employment, your exposure to the field of CS was cursory at best. You might have sat in a Fortran class, maybe even a C--or, heaven forbid--C++ class, taken some abstract assembly of an imaginary processor, and patted yourself on the back about all the computer stuff you knew. Your computer training in any case would have been heavily firmware oriented, as befits an EE. You learn to bit-twiddle, and anything that doesn't look like bit-twiddling is greeted with contempt.
Now to reality: learning the nuts and bolts of computer programming (bit-twiddling) is only the first step of a long and arduous journey. The real challenge lies in complete systems, in seeing the bigger picture, the forest as it were. EEs seldomly get past the trees. The EE equivalent would be to learn the basics about semiconductors, inductors and capacitors, and then immediately have to design an entire working system from these scraps of knowledge.
EEs are woefully unprepared to deal with large software systems. I know because I've done much of the typical EE course work, and I've worked for years with entire departments of EEs. My university required more than a cursory exposure to EE subjects for my CS major, so I've mingled with both the people and the attitudes quite freely. My previous job at TVA amongst people designing power systems (substations, hydroplants, nuclear generators) has taught me quite well the superficial exposure of EEs to computer programming.
There's a world of difference between squeezing the last cycle of performance out of an 8051, and writing objects that must interface with hundreds of other ones, and making it all actually work, and work seamlessly. The programming focus of EE and CS degrees is worlds apart, as it well should. A good CS degree will expose you to the necessary notions and ideas that hopefully in the future will get you on the right path.
Now I'm not claiming that a CS degree in itself will teach you everything you need to know. In fact, it will probably teach you very little of what you will eventually need. But it will expose you to the subject matter, and at some distant point in the future you will hopefully remember sufficiently to know where to start looking. You will have a significant leg up on the EE working with you, who will have to start from first principles on a lot of those same things. It's very analogous to the EE that might have learned about MOSFETs and op-amps at some point, but will have to do some serious recap in any real job.
Let's face it, a very significant number of EEs end up working as programmers. I don't know the exact numbers, but there must be tons (same for physicists and mathematicians, incidentally, fields I originally pursued before I "wisened up"). Most of those EEs will never again use any of the EE material they spent many nights studying. Sad maybe, but that's the economic reality. There's much higher demand for high-level software than systems design or firmware. So in that light I find it ironic and slightly pathetic that it would be the EEs making fun of CS people.
To sum up, I would hire an EE if I was working close to hardware, maybe designing a board with some micro in need of firmware, or for device driver development. I would stay as far away as possible from an EE for anything with a grander scope. In my experience EEs suck above the detail level, and CS people suck below the system level. EEs can't wrap their mind around object thinking, and CS people can't shed object thinking. These are certainly grand generalizations, but I believe they conform to the broad strokes painted by the previous posters.
Uwe Wolfgang Radu
I'm sure they'd hire any black jewish gay female paraplegics who subscribe to their brand of fanaticism.
That's what I hate about plaintext. Sarcasm is so hard to detect.
pooptruck
"The greatest danger to good computer science education today is excessive relevance" -- Dennis M. Ritchie
I'm quoting from memory so I probably got it slightly wrong, but that's the gist of what he said. And he's right. Tools come and go. Vendors come and go. If you understand what you're doing, you're a professional. If you don't understand what you're doing, you're a trained monkey.
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
To go to a good colledge (really good one) will cost you around $30,000 a year.
If only! I see that the cost now to attend Harvard is $35000 + travel expenses. MIT weighs in at about the same. Stanford is $1k cheaper (Bargain!), and you pay a meager $30,000+ for a year at CalTech.
No wonder going off to college feels like an Expedition - they cos t about the same! Makes me thankful for the "paltry" $10K/yr I paid a decade ago (compare at $20,000 for Stanford).
Of course, $20,000 to $35,000 in 10 years is only 6% per year, or twice the rate of inflation. If the stock market keeps growing at 15% like it has for the last decade, the $125,000/year our kids will feel like $5500 today. That's only a little bit more than my freshman tuition was. Go, bull, go! ;-)
I think the program is aimed at smart people with bachelor's degrees in a non-technical field. I got out of college with a bachelor's in political science from MIT, and nobody was offering me a $125k job.
--
"But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
huh? so java's "int" primative is now an object? not with any compiler/vm I've ever used. The fact that your code is compiled to bytecode and executed by a VM is just an implementation issue. There can be (and are! towerj and gcj spring to mind) direct to native java compilers.
once you know a few procedural languages, and a few OO languages, and the concepts underlying each, you really should be able to pick up a new (procedural/OO) language in a weekend. The APIs might take longer, but that's not really a language issue.
Now if you know a bunch of procedural and OO languages, and you try to pick up LISP, it might take a little while, but that's because its a different model. Once you know a few functional languages, picking up a new one shouldn't take all that long either.
Take a look at Smalltalk: www.squeak.org
everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) is an object. Classes are objects that descend from Class. Defining a subclass of another class entails sending a message (think method call) to the superclass telling it to hand me a subclass that declares x as a class variable, and y as an instance variable, and has the following methods.
Blocks of code are objects. like { code; code; } in java. You want to spawn off a thread? [ code to run in seperate thread. ] createProcess.
that sends the "createProcess" message to the block of code object.
java and C++ look like C with objects strapped on (imagine that) compared to smalltalk.
Of course, I failed to mention that its a pain in the ass, and slow too. =)
They've chosen to name themselves in a language that doesn't encompass computers out of sheer pretention. Digita is the feminine singular of the noun "finger". Their new university is actually called "The Technique of the Finger".
fraser@lovatt.com
Are you kidding me? They want people to go sit in a classroom/lab for 12 hours a days, six days a week.
:)
Piece of cake. I code at work for 12 hours a day six days a week, and all it takes is 5mg of Ritalin every 3 hours.
_______
2B1ASK1
OK, I am going to have to disagree with this.
I am not coming at the situation from a technical/scientific perspective -- I am an artsie. In arts, moreso than in science, education is about learning how to think. However, the advantage that this new system offers over traditional university study is that it is intensive and thematic. I have often thought that I would benefit far more from an entire day of lectures in Russian history than from an hour every couple of days. An entire month of solid Russian history would put me far above my competitors who get the same number of lecture-hours over the span of a year.
Why? It's not because I am getting more information in a shorter time, but it's because I am immersed in the subject. My thoughts are focussed all day, every day on Russian history. The same system, to a larger extent, exists in India, with the notion of guruship. I like it.
I may be alone in this, but I really do feel that university doesn't give me enough to do. I'd welcome an immersive environment in which to study. I'd be more interested in something artsy, but maybe when I'm done my degree I'll apply down there in Cambridge anyways. By then, I am sure that we'll have a better idea one way or the other whether their system works. I'm confident that it will.
B
I'm wondering if the reason why they need a bachelor's degree is because they aren't accredited. They could get a lot more students and the class would be more meaningful if the course was accredited. Without accredidation, the course is meaningless for those without a previous college education.
However, it is a good brush-up course for those who already have a degree. It would also be a way to reach to the people who can't afford college or can't get into it for some reason.
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
> Does a polynomial-time algorithm (P) exists that can solve an NP-complete problem?
"deterministic"
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> Create a programming language that has the functional elegance of LISP, the systems programming ability of C, the type-checking system of ML, and objects like Java.
If you will settle for 3 out of 4, I will nominate Ada.
> Market it correctly so that it goes into wide use.
Well, maybe not Ada. Though it does seem to be catching on in France for some reason.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> despite my 800 in the Language section of the SAT and my attendence of AP English as a sophomore
As you were saying?
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
DGregory :
As I see it, accreditation is not the most important issue. The issue is how you are viewed in the eyes of others. Hence, if this program survives for several years, and is able to graduate top notch people with some incredible talent, then it won't take long for employers to identify ArsDigita U backgrounds just as employers identify people with Caltech, Berkeley, M.I.T., Stanford, etc. backgrounds. Every institution must
start somewhere, and I would argue that the quality of graduates is actually far more important than a piece of paper hanging in the administratives offices in a university hall.
With regards to social life, ask anyone who got a B.S. from Caltech or M.I.T. what kind of social life they had for four years. 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, is being conservative. And that was for four years, not one...
Bob
Science, like Nature, must also be tamed, with a view turned towards its preservation.
No wonder you get a degree in one year! 12*6 is 72 credit/hours each week! And if you consider the average college student takes time off for summer, they only take 2/3 of a year in school. This assumes about 50 weeks for the online program times the 72 hours/week, or 3600 hours per year! damn straight that's a four year education!
Lowmag.net
As, I belive, Djikstra have said:
Computer science is about computers as much as astronomy is about telescopes.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Are you kidding me? They want people to go sit in a classroom/lab for 12 hours a days, six days a week.
Riiight. I'll be amused to see what their burnout rate is.
Also, comparing this to a Comp Sci degree is a bit silly. This is essentially what all of the "computer colleges" out there are offering - intensive skill-based training. It may be free, and taught by some of the best people in the world, but that is still what it is.
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
And it has nothing to do with philanthropy.
Do you think that Greenspun's company might be able to emply the services of a few of the grads?
Think about it - what does it cost for them to recruit people? And once they are recruited, they still have to learn their (*cough* eliteist) AOLServer/Tcl/Emacs/Oracle way of doing things anyways.
Now you create a place to "educate" (really train them on what *you* want them to learn) people for "free" and you get to hire the best ones for your company. They get a free supply of people all ready to slam right into their workforce.
The $1M that it will cost is nothing compared to what it will save them in hiring/training costs, and I'm sure they get the tax writeoff on top of that.
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
--I think the program is aimed at smart people with bachelor's degrees in a non-technical field.--
:)
Isn't that an oxymoron?
In all seriousness, I know plenty of people who are smart who aren't cut out for a career in computer programming. They don't neccissarily equate, and getting yourself into a 12 hour a day, 6 day a week program isn't likely the best way for you to find out either.
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
Phil, let me first say that I own your book and I respect what you are doing - especially making things open and available to everyone.
:)
I run my own small business, so I do know about tax deductions, but wasn't my point at all.
You may say that you would only hire a couple of people, but I would doubt that. These people just spent pratically their entire lives for a year immersed in your culture and learning your way of doing things. More than a couple will wind up joining you.
That said, if you say that isn't your prime motive then I respect that.
Good luck hiring 200 web developers in the next year - we're in short supply
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
Considering the time span of the course, do you think it makes sense that all students (at least the on-campus ones) should already have a background in programming (not necessarily professionally, but they'd be able to write a reasonably complex program in some language)? It doesn't take very long to learn how to program, but it certainly does take a long time for someone to become fluent. It's the difference between being able to speak French by translating an English sentence you've already constructed, and eventually just forming the French sentence without even thinking in English first. That's the kind of apprehension you need to be a good programmer -- and it takes more than a few months to apprehend this.
It really surprises me that you'd think that an MIT/Stanford-style CS curriculum can be apprehended within just one year. I'm a senior CS student at CMU and while I don't doubt that all of the CS lectures I've had could fit into the schedule you specified, I don't imagine that a student would retain much of that knowledge.
You simply don't get a good knowledge of CS from just listening to a lecturer tell you about CS. You need to go off on your own and struggle with the problems. You need to spend days at a time banging your head against a wall until you can find and then prove your algorithms correct. And you need to do that over and over again, until, upon getting a new problem, you immediately say to yourself: "I can use such-and-such a theorem to reduce that problem to finding a true quantified boolean formula -- darn, that's P-SPACE complete!" (or "wow! I've proved that P=P-SPACE" if you're a supa-genius)
And what's more, this knowledge is cumulative. You simply WON'T get it in 3 months, or 4 months, or 2 years. You might be smart enough to recite every single proof you've ever encountered so far (perhaps you were an accomplished actor) but I seriously doubt that any of your students will magically transform themselves into creative computer science students within the period of just one year of listening to someone else talk about computer science or solve problems for them.
If you think it'd be fun, go ahead and teach whatever curriculum you'd like, but I have a feeling you'll lose your students after a month or two if you don't give them any time to let them struggle with difficulty. And heck, beyond just learning the formalism in CS, when are they even going to have time to hack on large projects? You don't learn software engineering by attending lecture. You learn it by building horribly unmaintanable programs (unintentionally, of course) and reflecting on that after the fact.
If this program will be valuable to anyone, it's probably for people who write about technology and want to get a sense of the depth of CS (beyond programming), but don't expect to become proficient in it.
I totally agree! helping those who have already proved themselves as being a part of the "elite" isn't really going to help the world at all. I'm sorry, but building good dynamic web sites isn't that hard. Why provide education to those who can educate themselves? Who and what does this promote? Mr "Tcl/AolServer" Greenspun? or the web as a whole?
I took a "four year" (did it in 3 years plus 17 day interim) CS degree that I started in 1992. None of it is obsolete yet.
We learned algorithm analysis, language theory, computer architecture, etc. None of this stuff is obsolete or ever will be (with the possible exception of architecture).
It's job experience that gets obsolete. That's why those "I ain't got no book larnin'--I'm a self-made man!" types always make me laugh.
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
I'm Actually quite in love with the idea of taking one course at a time intensively, it seems like the way every college should go about things. Specially in an Engineering curriculum. So do Keep up the goal.
... i was ranked 6 out of a class of 600 graduates... topping that was the fact that i took every available course in HS ( 5 years total of math actually ) grade avrg was 91, and the valedictorian was only a 93... due mostly to the great course load.
On the other hand, i have a few quarrels/suggestions.... you should not narrow it down entirely to people that have >1400 SAT scores... at leats not forever... there are FAR greater criteria to judge.... Performance related to peers is usually one.... and perfomrance retaled to load is usually another...
I'm going to make myself the subject... although i only achieve a 1300 in the SATs
this is just an example, a bad one at that... but you get the point.... there are people that are quite bright... but for some reason or another.. didn't give much importance to the SAT's... i for one... had parents that went to college and were raised outside of the US, and had a horrible college advising...
so i wound up at cornell..
(wait listed at MIT, ony applied to 4 schools, and 2 of them were safety schools)
I wound up hating the cornell engineering program... i was just disappointed.. so i unenrolled....
Maube for the better, headed to an IPO bound company as Sr sys admin for a 100k salary... so you never know, and am planning to go back to school soon, and i know many people say that and don't mean it.. but i do value education... and i will come back... even if it means going back to cornell hehe
So to make this as short as it should have been... the point is... you might have the chance to make an university the way it should be made.... SO DO SO.... don't imitate... innovate... break the rules... and take on the challenge
BTW, since you are so into greatly designed systems... why in hell are using linux... join the BSD camp
justa little flame to end things hehe
I see the point that you need to focus on SAT's initially... you do need to keep your cost down to be efficient.. and it is a quick way to cut the herd as they say...
;) , i probably would not pass the first cut as i assume quite a great deal of overqualified candidates would apply, and i'm just barely qualified... hehe
:)
But i was refering to , hopefully, the future of said university. Just not to be caught up and try to imitate the way others do it... as some said... if you wanted MIT or STANFORD.. then you would go there. Try to do things a bit different... experiment... as it might well pay off.
BTW, the point was not to pitch myself in
Just to make the call that other points should be considered, at the same stance, if not higher than SAT scores...
I do agree that MIT has great criteria...but like anything.. it has room for improvement..
as far as taking the SAT's again.... hrm, i only took them twice... maybe i should... just as a freaking ego booster hehe, thx
> A guy with an MD or a mother returning to the workforce after a bunch of years home with some kids might not want to subscribe to our brand of fanaticism.
Does this mean ArsDigita is not an EOE?
I didn't already have a CS degree. Or if they offered a masters level program. Or if they offered something like this in molecular biology or space systems engineering. Sure I'd lose a year of income, but so what? I'd be much better off afterwards. I'll be keeping a close eye on these guys.
Not the case. There are bright people out there who have bachelors degrees who are not geeks. This is a crash course program for people who want to get the technical skills to do something like, say, Slashdot.
Just because you're smart, doesn't mean that a course is CS is unnecessary.
These people may not already have a high paying job in tech. They may be people with a background in the social sciences, humanities, whatnot (Greenspun is after all a photographer).
ADU seems like a great way to get good ideas and great minds from other areas into technology really fast. Think cross-pollenation, out of the box, brilliant kind of stuff.
Greenspun is a very intelligent guy and I applaud anyone in his position to have the foresight and social responsibility to make something like this happen.
Watch what the alumni do, some amazing stuff will probably come out of this program.
adrien
adrien cater
boring.ch
Point and Grunt
OK, so now I've pissed off every moderator with a degree in computer science...
No, but they're probably laughing at you.
It's tuition-free? Free of tuition? Well, that doesn't sound very helpful! ;)
While the value to the targeted students won't be all that great. The fact that a complete CS course of apparently exceptionally good quality is going to be made available under an Open Content License is Tremendous.
LetterRip
Mills College in Oakland, California, where I teach, has had programs since the mid 80s to teach computer science to people who already have a bachelor's degree in some other field.
In one program, students take computer science courses and then go into industry or CS grad school. Last year, one student went on to graduate school in CS at University of Washington, another to University of Virginia.
Another program leads to a MA degree in Interdisciplinary Computer Science, in which students take computer science courses and do an interdisciplinary thesis combining their old area with computer science. We've had some really interesting people come through.
While our programs aren't free, we do offer teaching and research assistantships. As at MIT or ADU, your teachers will be from MIT and comparable schools. (Like philg, I'm MIT^3.) Unlike MIT, classes are small (generally fewer than 20 students).
For more information, see the web page or send me email.
There are a few catches: ...you'll need to be so bright that people put on sunglasses when you walk into a room.
You mean like through self-immolation?
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
i took 9 months to get my masters (36 credits). 32 credits per semester plus a project on the side (this is in a university ranked among the top 10 and in massachussets - no prizes for guessing which..:)).
As an addition to that point, the concept of "6-day-a-week, 12-hour-a-day year" immersion strikes me as not very good for the people involved. Too many otherwise extremely bright programmers already have a distinct tendency to become obsessive about their work, resulting in or exacerbating their personal problems, and this sort of immersion will not only tend to attract people who CAN focus to the point of obsession, but also make their personal problems even worse. Teaching balance of approach, both personal and professional, should not be forgotten, but I can't see it happening in a "6-day-a-week, 12-hour-a-day year" program.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
What is to prevent this from happening on a little more grand scale? Say, write a java app that simulates a whiteboard, and have students be able to log on whenever they want. Use a unique login, so you can track how well the student is doing, but get some accredation. Get some old college profs, who like to benefit humankind with stuff like this, and put it out there on the web. Just because it's free doesn't mean it's easy, or that anyone can do it. But it could benefit people like myself, who went to school for a year, got that 2.8 GPA, lost some scholarships, and have been working stiffs ever since so we can get that chance again. It could be easier to update the course curriculum, since it's digitally based.
PassiveRoot
You could also argue that if you're smart enough to get into this program in the first place, you're probably smart enough to figure out most of the stuff by yourself anyway. Computer Science degrees are really about teaching you how to approach solving computer-related problems. A vast majority of the classroom content is either out of date or has little practical application for most graduates. So whether you get that in a year or 4 is irrelevant. What you're missing is the years of training your brain to look at and solve problems that are fundamentally different from most other disciplines.
I don't believe you can compress that experience into one year, and I certainly wouldn't consider hiring someone who claimed to have accomplished it in that timeframe.
Shut up and eat your vegetables!!!
No, I'm not looking for a new job - at least, not one where I'd have to relocate - but I'm always curious to see what people think are important qualifications.
(I had a job interview a few months back that featured a so-called "programming aptitude test", which amounted to testing your ability to follow algorithms specified in non-intuitive formal languages. I could have done it when I was in high school. What was scary was that I was apparently the first interviewee they'd ever had ace the stupid thing. I ask myself, is the general quality of programmers that low? Then I remember some of the code I've had to maintain...)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
no
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I went to college early, skipping my senior year, in a special program. The following year I applied and gained entrance to Cornell U. After being bored and insulted with /required/ remedial writing classes, despite my 800 in the Language section of the SAT and my attendence of AP English as a sophomore (apparently they thought that since I skipped my last year of HS I must be an illiteral moron), and obtaining permission from the dean of the Comp Sci department to take 400 and 500+ level courses my freshman year there, which didn't really cover anything new anyway, I dropped out, frustrated and disgusted. I now work for that very same university in the IT dept (my girlfriend still goes to school here...so I'm not heading to the valley just yet). I would like to get a diploma, not because I think it really has any special merit, but because that's what people look for. I know I can probably quit my job and within days get another one anywhere I want, but without the diploma it still feels like the rank and file code grinders think they're better than me. I read in the Jargon file somewhere that a self-made hacker was more respected than those who had to pay to be taught. I guess that's just not true any more.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I wholeheartedly agree. College is only a
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Not necessarily. While I love the idea of ArsDigita University, and while I will be looking at their materials once posted, I wouldn't consider going there. Why? I already have an undergraduate education in CS. It's what my BS is in already.
On the otherhand, I know someone who is making -very- good money as a programmer, yet told me when he started at his current job that he could see large differences in the way he and his co-workers programmed. His degree wasn't in CS, theirs was. His code was good, theirs was better, because the theory and techniques they learned that he didn't payed off. He learned a lot from reading their code.
The ArsDigita program would be perfect for him, if he wanted to take a year off to do it. It would give him the undergraduate theoretical underpinning that he currently lacks. He can't get into a MIT/CMU/Stanford-class undergraduate program because he already has a bachelors. And a masters program at this point would also be difficult to manage -- because of the lack of the theory learned as an undergrad. That's the type of people that ArsDigita is targetting.
Since this information could be gotten by simply reading the ArsDigita website, please don't moderate me up for being "informative" or "insightful". I'm not a karma-junkie.
I agree, they plan to teach calculus in a month for people who haven't taken it before. When I was in college, it took me a good 2 years. (Differential, Integral, 3-Dimensional, and Differential Equations) not to mention other math courses just to hang on to the basics of advanced mathematics. Even if you just teach Differntial and Integral, 6 days a week 12 hours a day that will be killer. Fear for those who fall behind.
If you are worried about your 125k/year, you're already right where you want to be, so this university wouldn't help you. ArsDigita University is for people like me who aspire be the Torvalds and ESR's of tomorrow and who are willing--no, who look forward to spending a year learning as much as possible.
If you can read this, then I forgot to check "Post Anonymously".
The most valuable thing I learn't at University was about interaction with others, I've found since that the most productive team members are not always the best read, but the best able to communicate their ideas.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Disclaimer: this is a separate argument from the point that a CS degree isn't about using specific tools; I don't disagree with that argument, I just have another point to make.
In four years of doing (mostly) unofficial tech support work for my highschool, we went from a Novell 3.11 network with a 50-user license and DOS/Win3.1 workstations, switched to Windows95 on the workstations, upgraded the server to Novell 4 (and think it's at Novell 5 now), and are now running both Win98 and NT workstations alongside 95 and a few leftover DOS/Win3.1 based machines.
What's my point? Just because technology is obsolete doesn't mean it goes away. Aside from the "hey, look what Linux (or BSD) will do on my clunker-486-beige-box", in a real world of pseudo-heterogenous computing (we actually had a few BSD and Linux boxen at the school as well, so it really is heterogenous), you need to know yesterday's technology if you want to keep stuff going. I remember a teacher coming up to me last summer and asking for help with her laptop. It had died a few months previous, and I had to reinstall the OS. It was a 486 with 8MB RAM, so 95 was out of the question. I had to remember how to get Client32, Windows3.11, and Novell's TCP/IP stack working together. That was *fun*. Oh, and I had to use a VLM-based boot disk first so I could download the files I needed from the server.
I could also list some of the other crap I did (like getting Win95OSR2 to install on machines without CD-ROMs and without having to enter the auth key, thanks to the OSR2 FAQ for help with that one), kludging Netscape 4.0 under 95 to read user data from the network home directory, etc. The point? I've learned (a) how to deal with certain technologies (esp. Win3.1 and Win9x clients on a Novell net), (b) where to look for help with solutions (ie the Microsoft Knowledge Base and deja.com), and (c) how to work around inherent limitations in the software I was using. All of those skills have come in very handy since, working on various less-than-ideal networks and in less-than-ideal situations.
If you've read the links, it's pretty clear what he wants to do- he wants to provide a way for really smart people to get a really good education, without having to cater to the bottom 98%. :^)=
And the way that Mr. Greenspun works (from what I've seen), he encourages people to be more open, more giving, and more trusting.
He has put something significant out on the line here (if not money, then his own time), and I'm sure that those 30 lucky people who are accepted into this non-accredited educational program will learn a huge amount of very relevant material.
It is a great idea, I'll just leave it at that.
--Robert
We offer living stipends to people who are really smart and really poor. As for those who had the bad luck to get double 200s on their SATs, wellll.... MIT doesn't take a risk on those folks and we don't want to say that we're smarter than the MIT admissions office.
Bottom line is that we will be no more or less elitist than MIT or Stanford.
We have roughly $40 million in the bank right now.
If you are qualified to work at ArsDigita (you've got a CS degree from a top school and have done the problem sets from our course at MIT), we will be delighted to pay your travel expenses plus a $10,000 signing bonus.
We don't think 1400 is impressive. That's why it is the minimum score to apply. A 1400 would put someone in the bottom third of the class at MIT, Stanford, Harvard, or wherever. Those are the kind of people who've proven that they can make it (if only barely) through these courses.
We'd love to be accredited but it is tough when ours is the only program of its kind. Accreditation doesn't make much sense without a basket of schools teaching the same sort of curriculum.
We don't really want to teach people without a bachelor's degree. If someone doesn't have a bachelor's, he or she can simply apply to MIT and get a regular SB in EECS!
A guy with an MD or a mother returning to the workforce after a bunch of years home with some kids might not want to subscribe to our brand of fanaticism. And they won't really be immersed in our culture as you suggest. More than half the faculty are not employees of ArsDigita (we have our share of CS PhDs but we've got work to do so we're also hiring CS PhDs whose first love is teaching).
We attack the recruiting problem with little sports cars and other, more immediate, incentives. But ultimately the best thing that we have to offer people is the guarantee that they'll be working with other smart folks (our Pasadena office was started by four Caltech PhDs) and that they'll be free to build great things without meddling from clueless managers or designers.
We're sort of making up the rules as we go along (this is the first year, remember). We probably won't formally close off applications until August. We will admit some obviously qualified and committed people "early decision" to give them time to clean up their personal affairs. We've only had about 50 applications so far (last Friday's san Jose Mercury News article was the first time anyone had heard of us). Of these, it looks like about 5 are obvious admits.
I had a B+ average at MIT undergrad (math IS hard, as Barbie noted) so I'm not really in a position to call someone without straight-As a pinhead. That said, someone who got Cs and below in a bunch of courses would make us worry a bit.
We look closely at the essay and also talk to the applicants. We're very interested that the student have some goal in life about which he or she is passionate. Even at MIT, it can be depressing to teach a bright student who is simply going through the motions.
Our Tokyo office right now is ... Henry Minsky (yes, he is the son of Marvin Minsky). You can reach him at hqm@arsdigita.com
We're trying to grow as fast as possible in Japan so I'm sure that Henry would be delighted to hear from you. And it is certainly staffed locally because we don't have a surfeit of Japanese speakers around Cambridge...
It is dangerous to be a harsh reviewer of student projects in the age of universal Web connectivity (and anonymity)! (Assuming this person really is one of our students, which I'm not sure that he is because we told our students this term about the Java version of ACS and we never celebrate Tcl except as an example of how the Lisp community's avoidance of the users' problems led to oblivion)
As for the course teaching theory, we do teach the students about transactions and concurrency and abstraction but what the poster forgets is that this is a LAB COURSE. It is supposed to be about problem sets and projects and not theory. We have other courses at MIT that teach theory, some of which I've taught.
I guess I'm pretty sure now that this person isn't a real MIT student because he says that the course teaches no "practical knowledge". The students come in not knowing what an RDBMS is. After 13 weeks, they are proficient in SQL and know some of the intracacies of Oracle.
Bottom line is that people come in not knowing HTTP, HTML, or SQL, and go out having built systems like www.arfdigita.org (check it out). They must have learned quite a bit because they were helpless to build any kind of Web service (db-backed or otherwise) when they came in.
Actually we've budgeted about $30,000 per year per student in expenses to arsdigita.org and the number will probably grow a bit (for one thing, we're paying faculty $150,000/year).
I admit to secretly hoping that schools with $billions in the bank (e.g., Harvard and MIT) will find other ways to raise money than shaking down middle class families. But really the point of ArsDigita University is just what we say it is... to teach the undergrad CS curriculum to folks who might have missed it when they were in college studying liberal arts or biology or whatever.
MIT would agree with you about CS not being a science. The CS department at MIT is actually a subsection within the EE department which is part of the School of Engineering. The real sciences (Biology, Chemistry, Physics) are collected up in the School of Science.
But there is nothing wrong with engineering! It is fun and satisfying to build real-world things, even if we're never going to cure cancer.
-- Philip (kicking back at ArsDigita London where the flowering trees are really beautiful all over the city)
Fear not! As noted below, we're only going to do the first course in calculus from MIT (18.01, which is a few weeks of differential calculus and then the rest of the term on integral calculus). The last thing a CS nerd needs is Div, Grad, or Curl. Nor do they need to know how to use a Frobenius to approximate a solution to a differential equation!
:-)
And if the students don't learn calculus, they can always become lamers like me and use Maple or Macsyma
Most of the hackers at ArsDigita (including moldy old me) have built Web presentation layers in Perl, Tcl, and Java. We agree with you that Java isn't an improvement over Tcl for merging templates with db data. On the other hand, since the presentation language isn't core to our toolkit, why not make our data models and abstractions available to those who've got big Java libraries (and, okay, the ArsDigita investor in me says "to those who have big budgets")?
Why didn't AD select a Web server that uses Lisp? There weren't any back in 1995 that could talk to an RDBMS. We wanted to build applications to solve real users' problems, not get mired in a tools debate. So we built apps instead of tools. SAP was written in COBOL initially. I'm sure that they didn't like COBOL but they wanted to solve the ERP instead of the language problem so they did (and now SAP is the world's #2 market cap software company, after Microsoft).
Why was I snide? I'm sick of hearing arguments about languages and development tools. It is what gives programmers a bad reputation for being losers.
A few MIT things? The operating system. Time-sharing. RSA encryption. TCP/IP and a lot of earlier network stuff. Computer algebra (and the Lisp-based Macsyma, which is still the most useful computer algebra system (though I admit that Maple is easier to install and use)). As for Lisp, a lot of language bigotry caused Lisp programmers to waste time arguing and reimplementing Lisp instead of building apps. But some good apps were built, esp. in the areas of electronic design and automated mechanical design. A lot of systems used Lisp as an extension language, e.g., the Interleaf publishing system and the AutoCAD drafting system. And a lot of the good ideas from Lisp made it into Java.
But the bottom line is that tools per se won't make much difference. At MIT, we teach our students to generate entire Web sites (including all the scripts) from machine-readable specs. Instead of arguing over tools and maybe getting a 3X productivity improvement (e.g., from using Apache/Perl instead of Netscape Enterprise Server/Java), they are writing programs that write programs. They'll get a 1000X productivity improvement over even the best Perl coder even if their ultimate target language is EDSAC machine code.
The future of Web development is high-level specification and automatic generation of sites. This is what we try to teach students, where we do at ArsDigita when appropriate for a service, and where we are pushing toolkit development.
... and yet here is one of the faculty members who tortured me in grad school, coming into slashdot anonymously. It hurts.
If I were intelligent or level-headed, I would have gone to medical school like my brother Harry.
But rest assured, ArsDigita University students won't have to suffer with me all year. I'm only teaching one course (though I might be a TA for some of the others).
(Note to the rest of you: before you start a little online community like photo.net, be aware that you might get "a few dozen" unsolicited emails over the years from someone like this anonymous coward. It is one of the great joys of being a non-commercial Web publisher.)
I think that the reason colleges do 4 courses in parallel instead of intensively is because it leads to maximum admin convenience given (1) full-time faculty, and (2) students in different majors or on different schedules. Note that MIT was built during the Industrial Revolution and works sort of like a facotry. The professors are like machines. They are nailed to their classrooms. The students are like the widgets. They move from machine to machine on conveyors (corridors). Compare to Oxford University, started during the time of guilds and apprenticeships. They have tutors.
1300 on the SATs might be good enough if you took them before the rescaling. Your HS career is certainly better than mine! (see photo.net/samantha/ for an account of my high school achievements). Anyway, we don't stop people from taking the SATs again and crushing them like a bug.
Why do we focus on SATs? MIT has a huge admissions bureaucracy that does a great job but costs more money to run than our whole little school. So we needed some criteria that would yield us a high-quality student body but that wouldn't take up a lot of time to administer.
I'm in our London office now, as a matter of fact. We're expanding Munich and Tokyo. We'll be opening Sydney and maybe Paris Real Soon Now (TM).
I'm already at the ArsDigita London office (got here on Friday night) and I must say that English ISDN lines feel slower than my old 14.4 modem in the US. The only reason British Telecom can do this to you guys is that the government has taken away your guns. We may have mass killings in the US but at least the firepower seems to have cowed utility monopolies into a semblance of service.
To the extent that we have a "business model" (I don't even like to use the phrase when talking about ArsDigita Corporation), it is.... Open Source. All of the materials that we develop, including the video lectures, will be available free of charge to other schools worldwide. So it is true that we're too poor right now to make a huge difference by ourselves (teaching 30 students). But remember that the world is full of rich people and companies who might like to do this but have not because they can't get the curriculum together or don't know enough PhD CS nerds. If 100 other organizations worldwide pick up our courseware and use it, that would be 3000 people/year. That would be a lot more than MIT and Stanford together educate.
Not only have we open-licensed all of our content but we're going to spend summers inviting people from around the world to come learn how to teach our curriculum.
Basically the world right now is floating in money. And many of those with money are in fact quite generous. What is in scarce supply is knowledge and human resources. By showing other people how to do what we're doing and helping them do it, we hope to encourage imitators.
You've a bright future in business, Tom, but only if you learn that businesses don't need tax writeoffs. Businesses aren't taxed the same as individuals. Virtually everything that a company buys is 100% deductible. I can hire a personal masseuse for every programmer here (currently we only have one masseuse). Her fees are deductible. A donation to the Boston Symphony Orchestra is no more or less deductible than the salary of the masseuse, the salary of a programmer, the rent on the building, the pencils in the stock room, etc.
As for whether this is a recruiting pipeline for us, it isn't a very effective one. We need to hire 200 developers in the next year or so. The first ADU graduate won't be available for more than 14 months. Many of them will return to their professional lives (some are university profs or MDs or PhDs in other fields). Some will wish to start their own businesses. Some will wish to work for large companies. We might end up hiring a couple. That would be $500,000 per person in recruiting expenses. Plus a lot of distraction. So it wouldn't be very good business.
Oh yes, the most interesting question you raise is actually answered in a cut-and-pasted excerpt from my Tcl for Web Nerds intro. Why weren't there any good Lisp-based Web servers in 1995 (or now)? Lisp programmers were too busy congratulating themselves for being smarter than C programmers. So the C programmers sat down and figured out what the real problems of publishers and end-users were and came up with practical stuff like AOLserver in 1994, Apache/mod_perl (1998 or 1999 by the time all the db connection pooling kinks were worked out?), etc.
Engineering excellence doesn't mean having a fancier system; it means having a system that solves the users' problem better faster and cheaper.
Am I bitter? No worse than Medea...
(I'm also confused by the person who claims that pgreesnpun isn't me. I am me, dammit!)
Your suggestion that we try to do more than a post-bacc is a good one. But keep in mind that we don't have much money (only $1 million/year). It is a lot easier to teach a Harvard grad than a raw high school kid. We're going to do the easy stuff first, try to do it well, and then expand as we get more resources.
If you look at Michael Saylor, who started his school with $100 million, you see the difference that more money makes. He is trying to do a whole liberal arts curriculum. He is trying to innovate in the method of instruction (online instead of face-to-face). I predict that he will have a tougher time than we will, even though he isn't constrained by money. When looking for teachers across a broad range of subjects, he will have a tough time just figuring out whom to call. Whereas I'm only one degree of separation from any qualified CS teacher in the world.
If we were to start giving bachelor's degrees we'd have to ask ourselves in what way we were better than Harvard or MIT. Those schools have, respectively, about 350 and 150 years of experience doing what they do. We would be tuition-free but so will they in the long run (I think). The guy below who said that I was an egomanaic is mostly right. I don't like to be involved in something unless it can be the world's best. I know how to make the world's best post-bacc CS program. But I don't know how to build a great college that will do all the things that need to be done for 18-22 year olds.
It certainly does not make sense to require folks to have a programming background. MIT does not require a programming background for admission to the EECS undergrad program.
As for "struggle with the problems" our students will have ample time for that. Only 2 or 3 hours per day (out of 12) are spent in lecture. The rest if problem sets.
When will our students have time to "hack on large projects"? The rest of their frigging lives! We want to do the best that we can with one year and then send our graduates on their way. We don't expect them to become Richard Stallman-grade programmers during one year with us or anyone else.
Finally, who ever said that we were teaching programming? We're teaching computer science! Some of our students might choose to go on to grad school at CMU and bury themselves in complexity theory or parallel algorithms or whatever. (We do have a couple of courses in software engineering but those are only two out of 11).
- a data modeling and declarative query language (SQL)
- abstractions implemented in PL/SQL or Java running inside the RDBMS
- helper code implemented in C running inside the RDBMS or the Web server
We do some presentation and merging RDBMS data with graphic design templates in Tcl or the AOLserver templating language (ADP).Why do we use Tcl for this last step? We don't anymore. ArsDigita will build you a 100% pure Java site and support it. Our toolkit is about getting the data models and workflow models right, not about language religion. Beyond that, we use whatever is most expedient. It turns out that AOLserver is a great efficient proven Web development tool. It happened to include a compiled-in Tcl interpreter. So we used it. If we were as smart as you, we'd have rewritten the whole thing in Perl instead of building a $20 million (revenue) profitable business.
If you don't know about any of the advancements in computer technology developed at MIT over the last 40 years nor any of the useful innovative software systems written in Lisp, maybe you should take a computer history course.
Some of the folks who have applied to ArsDigita University already have MDs, for example, and they fit your profile of the "costing these people $125K". But others have history degrees from Ivy League colleges. High SAT scores + a Yale degree in humanities big bucks job. Even ArsDigita.com pays graduating CS nerds a mere $100,000.
:-)
But you're kind of missing the point. This isn't career prep. We don't teach C programming or Oracle DBA. We teach the standard MIT/Stanford-style CS curriculum. We want to teach people who are going to change the world in some interesting way, not get all excited about $125K one way or the other (that's kind of like a rounding error for someone skilled in IT).
On the social life score, all I can say is that we expect our students to enjoy the same rich social life enjoyed by top computer science students around the world
Here's a fine example of how MIT turns out better engineers than Swarthmore. Elliot is whinging about Tcl and AOLserver while the engineers at AOL built a $120 billion business serving over 30,000 hits/second with AOLserver. Elliot hasn't bothered to check the arsdigita.com Web site (we've announced Apache and 100% Java versions of our toolkit, which really never used Tcl for much more than presentation; the Apache version is already up and running (it was authored by Robert Thau, the designer of the Apache module structure)).
If Elliot had looked at the curriculum, he'd have noticed that, just like MIT, we don't actually teach any computer languages. We expect the students to be bright enough to pick up the syntax as they learn the concepts (we might have to break the rules a tiny bit at http://arsdigita.org/university/ because we're introducing Java relatively early and Java has so much syntax and machinery).
As for teaching the "elite", Elliot, well we're sorry that we don't meet your standards. But with my piddling $1 million/year that I could afford to invest, we can't innovate too much. We're going to teach the Stanford/MIT stuff to people who had the qualifications necessary to get into Stanford and MIT in the same way (face-to-face education) used by Stanford and MIT. We're also going to let it all hang out on the Web for those who want to be monsters of self-motivation, but we don't judge ourselves by how well those folks learn.
Anyway, the bottom line Elliot is that if we had your intelligence and generosity, we could do more. But we don't so we're limited to just teaching 30 people/year in Cambridge for free.
... to keep your skills up to date ?
Now don't get me wrong, just because you are done with school, doesn't mean you are done with learning !
If you ALREADY need a degree to be able to participate, then what's the point of spending ANOTHER 6-day-a-week, 12-hour-a-day year ?
"If I protest an illegal tax, does that make me an illegal tax protestor ?" - Pohoreski
"Our goal is to offer the world's best computer science education, at an undergraduate level, to people who are currently unable to obtain it. "
Lack of financial means is just one limitation. Some people may honestly want to take the program, they may not be the cream of the crop in academia, but grades aren't everything. They are important, but..
What about all the brillant folk out there who just had a run of bad luck on their SAT's ? Making a cut-off for a standarized test is in some ways unfair to them.
What if, for whatever reason, their transcript is not 4.00 or close to stellar ? I hope this place doesn't turn out to be some sort of elitist institution
Okay let me get this straight. They only accept people who already have bachelor degrees, and they only accept really intelligent and motivated people. Wouldn't these people already have really nice jobs that they probably won't be willing to leave for a year? That doesn't make this program cost-free, it costs these people the $125k they'd be making at work. Oh yes and their social life... how much of one can you really have, being in school 12 hrs a day? And what do the students get out of it? Some experience maybe (but we all know it's job experience that really counts) but a degree from a college that isn't even accredited.
If that isn't wacked, I don't know what is.
This is brilliant. Degrees mean absolutely nothing. I have a Bachelor of Cello Performance from NYU, and quite a high GPA. However, I have never once been asked about it. Now, nine months after graduation I am being paid very well as a UNIX systems administrator and part time programmer for an internet company. Money is easy to get, easy to save, and easy to lose. Nothing to lose sleep over as far as I am concerned. This program is great for people like me who have taught themselves computer science from books while riding the subway to school and work. I have done pretty well, but without knowing everything in advance it is difficult to build a curriculum for yourself, or to hold yourself accountable for what you have learned. I don't want to go baclk and get another bachelor's degree-been there, done that, and I especially don't want to be in classes with a bunch of youngsters learning to drink. This is exactly what I have been looking for, and you can bet I will be applying next year.
I agree. The whole Photo.net website is some quasi-religious experience but has more than just a textual level as it is populated with incredible photos (many of them scanned at 1500x1000 pixels as excellent wallpapers). And his book is also online for free.
rob@techboy.com all the tech, a growing boy needs
I am currently just about to exit college and enter the 'real world'. Because of some poor choices as a freshman, I am graduating with an English degree. Now, not to knock English degrees TOO much, but I am at least moderately interested in this program simply because it offers a quick way to get a useful specialty in today's world. English majors aren't exactly overpaid. As for the burnout rate, I suspect it will be high. But med school (which looks for roughly the same level of candidate) generally has a similar level of intensity, especially during intern shifts. So maybe it wouldn't be that bad after all. I just wish there was something that you could receive -- if not a Masters, perhaps a second BS so that the work is evident to everyone as having been harder than DeVry's Technical Institute.
I wish there was a choice that said "Factually Wrong -1" when I mod.
anonymous coward: raw cod annoy sumo | Amorous? Candy NOW
Redundant WTF?
You may be able to infer from the time-stamp that the immediate parent comment by myself was posted when the parent comment by Mr. Greenspun was at 1.
Then, after some moderators saw my message and moderated up Mr. Greenspun's comment, a clueless moderator comes along and moderates down my message asking where in Hell's name, the moderators are. Yet another example of incompetent moderation. My comment had relevance at the time and may have become redundant after it was acted upon. It was not redundant at the time of posting.
Oh well. Probably serves me right for my attachment to karma. See sid=moderation for more info.
Clueless Moderator: A Closured Molester
*/RANT*
This in just another example of one of the many benefits that Arsdigita has contributed to the community. I have been following their Open Source toolkit they use for building online communities and they were influential in convincing AOL to Open Source AOLServer which after evaluated multiple web servers I decided as being the perfect tool for my own web site. The company also has a foundation encouraging young people to build community beneficial sites that gives out a scholarship every year. The company also has a track record for building sites that are *useful* to society ie an environmental aware site and adopt a pet site and an online charity site and an online legal resouce for consumers and the list goes on. They additional continually offer 1 day, 2 day, 3 week free training courses on their own Open Source software. I for one am happy to see that in todays society where corporations are constantly known for their despicable deeds am happy to see a company that gives back. I personally have gleaned much from their resources and would just like to say thanx.
This could be a really exciting development, especially given the threads on Dave Farber's IP listserv regarding the scarcity of high-tech workers and whether or not tech companies should be able to have all the high-tech visas they want.
The argument has shifted past debate over whether or not tech firms are trying to screw american workers and into examining fundamentally why the scarcity exists. The consensus seems to be that the quality of CS faculty is decreasing, becoming more and more isolated from the world outside of academia.
This could be amazing, injecting an academic perspective into the career-oriented IT pool. The concept of a free university is wonderful. But the big crippling problem I see is why should this be a post-bachelor program? If someone's got a degree, they don't really need a program like this as badly as say, someone who didn't have the financial means to go to/finish college in the first place.
Let's face it, the current university programs aren't doing a good job at making graduates understand the industry. An institute like this could take care of that problem.
If this program gets off the ground, I would like to see them courting the biggies like Cisco, Oracle, the IPO darlings (Hey, RHAT is going down but they've still got serious market capitalization value) for some heavy heavy endowments. That way they could dramatically widen the entitlement to prospective students.
With this sort of arrangement, prospective IT professionals get something more in-depth than an MCSE mill, and the tech companies get a solidly-trained work-force of people that really understand the concepts at hand.
-carl
. We've got computers, we're tapping phone lines, you know that ain't allowed - Talking Heads, "Life During Wartime"
I first learned of him when read something he write called Travels With Samantha -- it's about a trip around the country he took one summer after his dog George died. It really is worth reading -- his description of Minnesota (where I spent a year in college) is one of the best-written things I've ever read about the state.
Oh well, sorry for the WOB.
Take care,
Steve
========
Stephen C. VanDahm
I have been researching alternative avenues to a CS grad program for a number of months now, and I find this program very intriguing. However, I cannot afford (I am paying for two degrees already) to take a year off to continue my education. As such, the distance learning approach seems to be the only workable solution for me. There is little mention of distance learning either on the web site, or in this discussion. Will distance learning students have access to the professors/faculty to pose questions, participate in lecture/discussions, etc? Or, will the distance degree be more passive in nature?
It's about the concepts and the theory behind it.
I'll second that. I am just finishing up my CS degree.
The vast majority of the "real" CS classes are theory. We write very little code. A lot of it is math and optimization techniques.
Most of what is taught transcends any operating system, or even a programming language. I've had a few classes where we can turn in our homework/projects in any language we'd like, just as long as the professor can check it on a computer on the network in the college. (Which includes C/C++, Java, Pascal, FORTRAN, ADA, even MATHLAB.)
In my college the 20x level "CS" classes are things like Microsoft Office and really basic programming. My guess is the initial poster has these classes confused with "real" Computer Science.
Computer Science is the science of solving problems using computers. It is not the science of how to use an operating system.
- Bunny
intended to provide the equivalent of four years' worth of CompSci in a single, 6-day-a-week, 12-hour-a-day year.
This just seems weird. It's as if they're targeting the wrong market of people. Most people I know who are good at computer science have nowhere near that sort of work ethic, at least not in any sort of schedule.
CS is very theory based, but the whole point behind it is to apply it practically sooner or later. (Usually sooner.) There doesn't seem to be enough time for anything except learning and applying somebody else's rules, and it probably won't help with getting decent experienece in actually making stupid mistakes.
It's good to have people around who can be heavily committed to something, but (IMHO) they're often only half the equation of getting a decent product. Sometimes good ideas can only come from getting a chance to sit back and forget about everything for a while.
Good luck to them though and I'll be really interested in how this turns out.
=P
Free music from Jack Merlot.
People seem to forget (or not know in the first place) that a good computer science degree isn't about learning how to use the latest operating system, or how to use the latest languages, but rather the principles behind each. Sure, we learn various languages, but we also learn the common features between languages, and the different styles of programming. Makes it really easy to pick up a new language when you've already seen one similar to it in the past.
As for staying current, sure, the stuff that's used out in the world changes fairly frequently, but to use your example of the Windows line, how different in Win95 from Win98? WinNT? Win2K? Not *that* different. As for Unix, well, it pretty much looks the same (from the command prompt, anyway) as it did back in 1995 when I started my degree. The only really new language that's come out has been Java, and it's not exactly a hard language to learn. Regardless, if you're interested in computers as a whole, keeping on top of the latest operating systems or the latest language shouldn't be too much of a problem. If you're not interested in the field, well, one has to wonder why you got a CS degree in the first place.
As always, my two cents on the whole issue.
I mean, can you imagine what the people that have spent 6 years getting a MSCS have gone through? Let's see, in 1994 they were using Win3.11/Dos5. 1995, Win95A. '96-Win95B. 1998 - Win98. 1999 - Win98SE. Toss in the changes made to Windows NT/2000 (That would be from 3.51 to W2K) and all of the different *nixs and look what you have... People with a lot of knowledge about outdated, mundane, obsolete technology. I guess you could argue that they still have that knowledge and can use it towards modern stuff, but I would still rather have the education in things that can help me get a job today...
Your above example depends on the strength of the computer science department at whatever college you attended. In general a good computer science degree will not be bogged in specifics of any one operating system or language except as tools to teach specific concepts. For instance here at GeorgiaTech the OS of choice is primarily Unix, every CS student takes intensive classes in compiler and translation theory (code in C, lex and yacc), object oriented programming ( 1 class in Java and 1 in Smalltalk), operating system components (write hard drive controllers and other low level system components in C/C++), automata theory, proofs and applied combinatorics as well as a design class that involves creating a shipping product for a local company of choice. What I have just described is the mandatory CS curriculum that every CS student takes before branching of into specializations. Now with this non-OS specific (yet primarily *nix based) curriculum I have friends who will be working at MSFT in the summer (Yes, even though most of their school-based experience of NT is simply as the OS where their code is written because they don't want to boot Linux or Solaris) as well as others who will be working on next gen web applications using technologies that were still drafts a year ago. Now the jobs and positions most of my friends and I have gotten are irrespective of applications we used in school because employers know we have the background to pick up new technologies and understand the concepts behind technologies and not just how to use them.
Case in point, I recently turned down a position at Intel working on testing compilers for a new generation of chips for mobile processors because I hate testing. I got this position even though I have no knowledge of assembly because I have the knowledge of compiler theory concepts and know how to program. The poeple at Intel realized rightly that this was more important than merely knowing the specifics of a language, in their words if you believe you can pick up assembly, the job is yours.
On the other hand at my girlfriend's university the entire CS curriculum is taught by 2 professors and is peppered with classes like Programming with Visual Basic, Introduction to C++ and Using Computer Applications. I agree that such a curriculum will create students that will be obsolete before they graduate.
"Just because it seems like a good idea while drunk doesn't mean it will be a good idea when you are sober.... and find you're married to a man."
Errr... not that I'd know from personal experience, mind you.
I think I'll just shut up now and go back to shaving my goldfish.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
I find if a bit inspiring that on the same day that people are debating about RMS's ideas concerning EBooks and people locking down access to information, we get a story about a University that will offer free education.
I recognize that the standards needed for entrance into ArsDigita are high, but this is a step in the right direction.
Maybe knowledge, like energy, cannot be destroyed or contained in one place, but comes out somewhere else transformed....
I'm not saying that they should necesarilly get a Master's degree in Computer science by completing the course, but I'm sure a lot of people are interested more in the lectures and curriculum than in the diploma.
All of the lectures, course notes etc will be released on the internet.
A MSCS ( wtf this is, I'm not sure ) is not a CS.
From what I know of a CS degree what is important is not the stupid luser interface -- espeically that of Windows. What a programmer needs to learn is things like semaphores, shared memory .. things like that don't change.
DanteAliegri
-- What doesn't kill you hasn't tried hard enough.
Stanford didn't offer an undergraduate program in computer science until the late 1980s. Big political battles preceded that decision, but that's another story.
The ArsDigita curriculum looks reasonable. The MIT influence is clear; they start with Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. LISP as a first language seems strange today, though. Perhaps the idea is that learning LISP, like learning Greek, improves your thinking.
I have misgivings about trying to do it all in one year; the students won't have much time to do anything with what they're learning. Two years, maybe.
I don't think it's logical to assume that because SOME comuter science programs are bad and totally misdirected, that means ALL computer science majors are nothing more than the equivalent of informations systems janitorial workers in training. Not that janitors are a bad thing. We need 'em. Apropriately, they should not be considered engineers, but contrary to popular belief, some people that are NOT engineers lead happy, productive, self-actualized lives.
:-P
Let's be realistic here. I'm in a good computer science program (true, it's still getting some of its bearings), and I take classes right alongside this so-called academic aryian nation of engineers, and will continue to do so up to graduation. I perform just as well or better than many of my peers. Where our paths diverge is, appropriately, the electrical engineering aspect. Believe it or not, I don't WANT to be an electrical engineer. I want to develop software. I want to have a good understanding of the theory of information. I want a rich, rounded education, with arts, sciences, and the humanities.
No, I'm not this drooling troglodyte stereotype of a Comp Sci major that spends half his day playing Quake and the other half taking classes like James Bond Film Theory. And no, I'm also not an engineer -- but that's not what I want to be. Am I a scientist? Probably not. But this is all semantics anyways. (Tell me again, how did we go from arguing semantics to assuming Computer Science was for pumping out a race of sub-human idiot MSCE's?) Call it Computer Theory, call it Bit-Basket-Weaving, call it whatever you want, and I'm still happy and confident with the academic path that I've chosen. So stuff your insecurity-driven condescension in your pocket protector.
Well you haven't pissed me off, then again I'm not quite finished my course.
I'm not sure if this will get rid of the obselete stuff, it may result in graduates being unable to handle change... That all depends on the emphasis of the course though. If Arsdigita, like so many other colleges and universities, teach 'how to program a computer using ', instead of 'how to program a computer' then their students may end up being left behind in 5 years time.
The college I'm currently in makes this mistake, and, combined with a lack of resources, and lack of foresight, a lot of students suffer as a result. 4 years ago, 1st years were being introduced to Modula-2, 3 years ago C++, and now their introductory language in javascript.
These days, a lot of people study Comp Sci. for job-prospects, not for pleasure. If the faculty does not encourage students to use the machines outside of class, just to play with them, this genre of student will not become more than a slightly competant programmer, and will probably be slow to change in years to come. And with the current lack of IT people, we'll end up seeing a lot of low quality software being produced, and being accepted as worthwhile products. "Hey, it only crashes twice a day! Let me get my cheque-book!"
What I like about the arstechnica initiative is the focusing of students towards hands-on developement, and towards co-operative work.
The fact that they plan to release notes on the web is particulary pleasing, although it will be interesting to see how well they keep this promise.
"A goldfish was his muse, eternally amused"
Vs lbh pna ernq guvf, ybt bss abj. Tb bhgfvqr. Syl n xvgr.
Unfortunately, i think you mean the really rich people, not just the smart - or those who still live with their parents, or have a spouse who can support both of them for a year.
Have you guys really thought about this? Its not just that you cannot earn money during that time, its that you still have to live! You have to have food, shelter and an internet hook up, with approx one day a week to earn money in (assuming the 6 days 12 hours included study time. If not, good luck finding time to shower.) And if this program really isn't acredited, that means no grants, or student loans.
So anyone who doesn't have a) someone capable and willing to completely support you for the course of one year, including paying the internet charges and any computer upgrades or repairs, or b) an entire years salery in your disposable savings, this is just a crazy idea. I could probably qualify for the program, but wouldn't even consider it. Its just not free. Its incredibly expensive.
And non-acredited? Please! Just go out and buy some good comp sci books, audit some comunity college lectures then write a nice essay telling your prospective employer what you learned. It will be worth just as much, or little, and you can read the books on the commuter train.
SUDDEN TRAIN OF THOUGHT SWITCH! Hey! I wonder if the on line notes and such will be AvantGo compatible? RETURN TO FORMER THOUGHTS. Then you can read that too, while pursuing a personal study program.
-Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
There are 6, look at the "OF"'s.
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
The cost of an education is not directly related to its quality, but the value of the union card (diploma) does have some positive correlation. I went to an Ivy League school, got a middle of the road education and spent, what was back then, the cost of a small McDonald's franchise for the privilege. My brother graduated suma cum laude from UConn, got a top flight education for a fraction of the cost. He has done very, very well. On the other hand, when I was starting out and had no work experience, the degree opened doors. No one gave me anything; I still had to prove my worth before hiring.
Mr. Greenspun is a long-time advocate of a tuition free undergraduate education, and for good reason: Our country is not making enough engineers, not making enough good ones, and we're not learning fast enough. I've used Unix systems since the mid-80's, and the same problems that I encountered then exist today! If civil engineering learned as slowly as the computer "scientists", our bridges would fall down with alarming regularity. No, ArsDigita University is not about getting people jobs or recognizing time serverd with a diploma, it is about creating an intelligent generation of engineers who know enough about our history not to repeat it.
1)When is the application deadline?
2)Are you admiting people as you get applications (do you have a better chance of getting in if you apply early) or are you going to collect all the applications you can get, and then pick and choose from the whole lot?
3) If you're granting admitance as you go, how many people have been admited so far, and how many have applied?
4) How much do you look at the college transcript? I meet the minimum SAT score, and have a degree, but I'm afraid my college grades weren't the best. I could get recommendations from my professors, who always told me that my work in classes was exceptional, but my grades don't reflect that fact. (I had a problem with handing in course-work in on time, which was a combination of too many interests not enough time, and a perfectionist personality.)
Thanks.
It depends on what you want to learn, but you want to learn about computer or learn how to get a job in the market place?
For example, if you learn binary (which most colleges teach), this does NOT go out of sytle. If you learned binary operators (add/substact in binary for example) 30 years ago, this CONCEPT will still be usefull today. College teaches CONCEPTS.
Training programs/certifactions and the like do NOT teach concepts, they teach USAGE. How to USE the concepts, not how to understand the concepts.
If you want to learn an operating system about concepts, start with an Open Source Unix, and do everything in `vi` and do it by the book, till you understand it, then start programming it and looking at it's souce code (posix docs help). If you want to use an operating system so that you can get $10 an hour at "Bob and Tim's Big Ass Computer and icecream store", get Microsoft/Apple OS and you get your job.
Good Concepts will stay with you forever, Good Marketable jobs skills with stay with you from anywhere from 2 weeks to 20 years, take your chances.
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
Eh? What's so new about Java?
IMHO it is just C++ "cleaned up", more OOP concepts (everything is now an object
Nothing is NEW about Java, all these concepts have been used in one form or another. It is just a New "package" it was put into. Just "mixed and matched" concepts from the CS/programming "bin of ideas already used and known to work"
If you have a firm grasped on the basic CS concepts, you should be able to pick it up in a couple weeks (months at most).
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
Sorry, "most" everything in Java is an Object. Java really tries to push (even enforce) OOP practices on anything that it is justified (I don't even think Sun could justify an int being an object).
o ur_crappy_web_site.jar`
:)
Java IMHO is a hardcore OO language.
Some launages *cough*perl*cough* you can do OOP(ing) in, but it isn't required or enforced, where other launages *cough*java*cough* stictly enforce it even when sometimes it doesn't make sense to newbie programmers like myself. Like a "Hello World" program, that the only thing it does it print "Hello World", my understand is you HAVE to make an object to do this and their is no way around it (maybe I just haven't gotten to the chapter on "How to break Java of enforcing OOP on simply 'one liner' programs)
You comment on that "is compiled to bytecode and executed by a VM is just an implementation issue", this is true, but my point here was that it was a concept and to really understand computers, one must understand the "why" and "how" it is implementation, and not just know "why" and "how" to use it (javac blah...; java blah).
There is a differance between knowing why and how Sun impletnated Java this way, and just merely knowing how to use it to `Big_Bobs_java_applet_to_annoy_people_that_vist_y
I know there are native java compiles, but that wasn't my point
I do agree with you that a decent programer should be able to quickly pick up another programming launage from knowing the concepts of a former/current launage they where/are working with.
My point was simple, I don't know why I used so many words, just confused everyone. The point being
"USING a computer, and UNDERSTANDING a computer are two completly diffearnt things."
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
Yes!
A lot of us, self taught programmers, would be very grateful for some guidance:
A suggested curriculum.
Bibliography.
Lectures, notes, when possible.
etc.
I think a site like that woukd be a very cost-effective way to spread kowledge.
Anybody interested?
Only 30 people are admitted each year--and each of them must hae SAT scores over 1400, and recommandations from their bachelor college. I bet that the people who get into this ArsDigita University could just as well get a full scolarship on one of the other great computer science universities(MIT, CMU, CIT, etc).
What we need is a online university where anyone is accepted, and which gives its courses over the internet. I'm not saying that they should necesarilly get a Master's degree in Computer science by completing the course, but I'm sure a lot of people are interested more in the lectures and curriculum than in the diploma.
I mean, can you imagine what the people that have spent 6 years getting a MSCS have gone through? Let's see, in 1994 they were using Win3.11/Dos5. 1995, Win95A. '96-Win95B. 1998 - Win98. 1999 - Win98SE. Toss in the changes made to Windows NT/2000 (That would be from 3.51 to W2K) and all of the different *nixs and look what you have... People with a lot of knowledge about outdated, mundane, obsolete technology. I guess you could argue that they still have that knowledge and can use it towards modern stuff, but I would still rather have the education in things that can help me get a job today...
OK, so now I've pissed off every moderator with a degree in computer science...
kwsNI
http://photo.net/teaching/psets/
it's funny that most of the posters don't seem to get the point of the requirement that applicants have a bachelors degree already - the program is for people who did NOT study cs in college.
had this been available two years ago, i would have given it strong consideration (my degrees are in history). a senior professor in the humanities at a research university makes around 60-70k a year - adjuncts and TAs make around 15K a year, so the income a smart, non-cs major would forfeit would be negligible.
It's only free if your time has no value.
Even though there is no cost (and no real degree out of it) the value is immeasurably high.
Just my 2 Canadian cents (which works out to about 1.3333 US cents)
BlackNova Traders
Differential and Integral calculus are covered in the most basic math course (18.01) at MIT. Most students have finished Multivariable (18.02) and Differential Equations (18.03) by their freshmen year. Both 18.01 and 18.02 are "General Institute Requirements" (necessary for graduation regardless of your major).
I don't think the ArsDigita course intends to go past the material present in 18.01. Fitting single-variable calculus into a month isn't as bad as you might think. Remember, they're going after the best and brightest grads, people who have learned how to learn.
The lack of any kind of business model makes ArsDigita University not very interesting, I fear. It's pure philanthropy-- Greenspun's company is footing the bill as an act of pure public service. Service that only benefits 30 students per yr with high intelligence and SATs. Is this the most worthy cause he could find? This model is not sustainable, and won't be widely copied. What's the point? What I'd like to see is true open source university model, that combines money from Universities, corporations, alumni, advertising dollars, whatever, to provide free high-tech teaching. How's this for a model: companies donate employee time to teach current software classes. In return they get access to graduates as interns and new employees. Universities donate faculty time to teach the more basic-science courses on data structures, algorithms, mathematics, etc. In return they get... well I haven't figured that part out yet. Maybe there's a model where graduates who land high-paying gigs give back to the University, and the more they make the more they're obligated to give? Although I think that's been tried (at Yale?) with only moderate success... Any ideas?
Democracy is the worst form of government ever devised, except for all the others. -Winston Churchill
That statement is way too generalized. I agree that most programs are geek churns, but if you look at a high quality program like the one that I am finishing at Virginia Tech, you will see that it truely is a science. Not only was I required to have a rediculous knowledge of physical science, statistics, and math, but I was also required to have incredible problem solving skills and theoretical intuition. Our program included fundamentals of EE, discrete logic and other low level skills, as well as high level theory and science, such as physics, algorithm analysis, and computer graphics. I'd like to see someone without my scientific background design efficient graphic algorithms or implement modern estimation and feedback techniques for mechanical equipment. Some of us are engineers and scientists wrapped all into one incredibly dense particle similar to a black hole. In conclusion, you are an unsophistocated simpleton who eminates the pungent odor of brain-rot.
Funny, I'm an MD/MPH student and the CTO of a (succesful) internet start up. I crushed the SATs like a fly hitting a Buick, and so did the other half-dozen ex-programmers in med school that I've met.
...)
ArsDigita isn't looking for people with either brains _or_ drive, they quite explicitly stated they are looking for people with both. If you've spent any time around MIT you'd instantly recognize these people. There are lots of folks who can handle the intensity of 12X6 easily (med school is a great example -- even an absolute moron can get through it with a good work ethic), but that doesn't mean they could keep up with their very bright peers also working those hours.
And, of course, for what its worth this isn't a cheap "online coursework deal" -- its in-person courses taught by some of Boston's brightest. If I had a year to spare I'd jump at the chance to learn the theory that I never got (seeing as my major was poly sci
+--------------------- You idiot! I told you we were facing the wrong way!
At $0, it is cheaper than any college degree you can buy from the classified pages of the National Enquirer. And accepted by just as many people.
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they make as they fly by
... and yet here is one of the faculty members who tortured me in grad school, coming into slashdot anonymously. It hurts.
/. The 20 responses you posted thus far point to some need to get the last word in. Just let it be. Let the program, not sarcastic mean spirited comments be the vindication.
For God's sake man, I don't know who lead you to believe any of the attacks on the program were personal. People have been known to troll on
I've posted stuff here and gotten flames about stuff like my mother being a hoe. I didn't write back and egg it on. Just let it be, write up a web page defending your ideas if you must, but don't carry on like this.
A professional should be able to handle criticism, even it hits close to home.
No sig is worth reading.
You're 100% right.
Computer Science could be a discipline, but many schools are running their programs like a vocational school.
I've been responsible for hiring and managing over 50 people during my career as a manager...and I can say that I'd rather have someone with a Math degree or a E.E. degree nine times out of 10.
--- Speaking only for myself,
It'll be interesting to see just how well the Ars Digita curriculum holds out against traditional four-year programs.
After reading this this morning, I sent an email to Philip Greenspun asking about the logistics of the Distance Ed. part -- How will it work? What kind of time commitment will it require? How large will the 'classes' be? etc..
He responded right away:
"Just connect to http://arsdigita.org/university/ in September. We will not provide any support to distance learners beyond the materials."
Not to be rude, but how big is your Tokyo office?
And is it staffed locally like your Caltech offices??
Just the idle questions of someone who would love the opportunity to work for AD.
That's fantastic to hear. _And_ the son of Minsky; doubly impressive. As for me: I read wtr/thebook/ in the fall of '98; it really impressed me, but I had school to finish. I'm afraid I don't have the rep to impress yet, but I've been toying with a new message system (bastard son of NNTP, one might call it), so perhaps I can impress soon.
/. nerds.
Thanks for responding; a look at your User Info indicates you've been busy today, not to mention more pressing issues than random
ArsDigita is really concerned with the quality of the world. Sure it boost philg's ego to be both rich and philanthropic, but underneath this is someone who really cares about the world (i.e. a sensitive artist type, as is also evidenced by his great photos). I don't think this is "just a recruiting strategy".
There might be more impactful ways to spend 1M (i.e. birth control to countries that need it etc) However, ArsDigita is to be comended for sticking to philanthropy in an area they know and love -- using computers to better the world.
I say keep up the amazing work. What a wonderful company.
Tim
If you are independently wealthy (from a few years of work in the computer industry) and you wanted to go get a Ph.D. in computer science, not for profit but to contribute to the field, where would you go to get ready for such a program? With free tuition, who needs Federal Programs? To prepare for medical school, places such as Columbia's School of General Studies over the course of a year prepare the premed with no science background for medical school. They generally don't grant a degree; and people completing such studies are much more likely to get into medical school than biology majors. What counts is who your professors are, when graduate school admissions time comes around. If Patrick Henry Winston says that you are good enough, you are good enough -- and any sufficiently advanced Ph.D. program usually is tailored to the student, so a track such as this one might make perfect sense to the student who realizes later on in school that computer science (viewed as an aspect of formal logic and philosophy) is where her interest really lies. This is an excellent idea to get bright minds into the University, so that 10 years from now, our computer science professors will be the best in the world. Remember, most job postings say Bachelor's degree OR EQUIVALENT. This goes beyond the equivalent. I plan to ruthlessly appropriate the information these kind souls plan to give out.
Now I would like to pursue a Masters Degree in a Computer Science related field but find myself lacking the theory required for a reasonable comfort level. The fact that the Course is unaccredited makes absolutely no difference to me as I will have my B.Eng and M.Sc by the time my education is completed. A high quality online CS course is exactly what I need to prepare and I will certainly be taking a year to study this course after my graduation if it lives upto it's bold claims of MIT level education.
However, I would like to ask for some elaboration as to what exactly will be available to us. Will distance learners be examined and submit assignments for correction or are you merely proposing that all course material be available to study independantly? Presuming you would even consider International students I really do not want to waste time an energy sitting a rather silly SAT test and I doubt I could afford the expense of living in Mass. for 11 months nor would I probably even get a VISA to do so.
I am suprised that so little attention has been afforded this point by previous posters and I think people should give more consideration the worth of off-campus education. After all you could always study part-time and slowly digest the course over a couple of years while working if finance is the issue. Or you could consider re-location for the duration of you're study to a nice cheap country with a decent telecomms infrastructure ;)