Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Invests in the University of Waterloo
saforrest writes "Say goodbye to independent academia. In a presentation by Microsoft on Wednesday at the University of Waterloo, a new joint initiative was announced which involves the addition of a mandatory course on C# for all electrical and computer engineers. 'Completion of this course
will be mandatory for students entering the E&CE
program.'" Microsoft's press release is available.
Is this going to be Bill's waterloo?
I think the real travesty here is that any corporation could get the university to run a mandatory course about thier product. Where's the academic integrity?
Help us build a better map!
Now the phrase "school sucks" is no longer a subjective comment.
*sigh* I had hoped that the mathematics & Comp Sci department at U of W knew better. But who am I kidding? When I went there, we used to joke about how U of W's secondary campus was located in Redmond - given the large # of UW CompSci co-ops and graduates that worked there.
Ah well, at least my old Physics department is underfunded (wait... RIM is investing $150 million in a new Physics research institute @ the U of Waterloo? DOH!)
Waterloo always had close ties with industry. Now they appear to have an umbilical cord.
I went to school at JMU and the NSA actually has a small office there. I know more than a 'few' people who have been recruited directly out of there into the black world. They funded some of the CS and ISAT dept. there and had some core curriculum additions made. I certainly dont remember there being two Algorithim Development classes being required there before they showed up.
This may be the first time that Microsoft has funded a school but it is definitely not the first time that a gov't entity or corporation has.
Honesty may be the best policy, but apparently by elimination, dishonesty is the second best policy.
All I have to say is I'm glad I graduated from there already
:P
AirSpeak - http://itunes.com/apps/AirSpeak
When I connected to the site:
/home/uws/websites/uwstudent.org/lib/dbconnect.php on line 2
/home/uws/websites/uwstudent.org/lib/dbconnect.php on line 2
Warning: Too many connections in
Warning: MySQL Connection Failed: Too many connections in
could not connect to database
Someone you trust is one of us.
Warning: Too many connections in /home/uws/websites/uwstudent.org/lib/dbconnect.php on line 2
/home/uws/websites/uwstudent.org/lib/dbconnect.php on line 2
Warning: MySQL Connection Failed: Too many connections in
could not connect to database
How much of that money is going to be spent on a shiny new SQL 2000 server?
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
I think the move toward corporate education at the university level is a good one. Perhaps now that the people being fed the lies are at a cognitive level where they can see through it, they'll fight back. The little ones have been handed this kind of crap for years.
I'm much funnier now that I'm a subscriber.
Now that Microsoft, ummm... owns a University does that mean I can get a BA or phD when I update my NT and XP licenses?
Well microsoft will do what it can to have it's new programs and languages adopted. It's apon the univerisities to make the desiscions which keep them impartial institutions for learning. Perhaps the university should consider if the funding donation is enough to compromise their proported impartiality.
-- Greg
Slashdot, would a spell-checker for posting be too much to ask? It's not rocket science!
How does it work in college? some subjects you enjoy, some others you don't like but you know they'll be useful, and some others you just loathe, but you have to complete them in order to graduate.
So what if they have to learn another programming language. I once had a full course on Prolog, which I hated, but I went through it, passed, and then forgot completely about Prolog.
This seems to me like just it. Pass the course on C#, maybe with the help of some nearby geek, for those who don't like programming too much, and then go on with your life. It's not like C# will be the only language they'll ever use after that.
Unless, of course, it's the ONLY mandatory programming course they have?
And what about those students that are already here? I'm not in Computer Engineering, but Computer Science at Waterloo. I find it offensive that my school would sell out its curriculum to Microsoft. Switching schools is hardly a reasonable option for someone that's already here, though I would consider it if it happened in CS and not just CompEng.
-Rob
-Rob Ewaschuk
The fact that this University is willing to sacrifice any sort of appearence of propriety in order to squeeze a few bucks out of Microsoft is as pathetic and outragous as if they were to let the parents of poorly-performing students buy their way in with large cash donations.
Of course, the latter example happens all the time, but at least they don't brag about it in press releases.
Anyhow, it seems to me a horrible idea to set this sort of prescident. What's next? Coke gives a few bucks to the football team and suddenly all students have to undergo a session about the crisp, refreshing taste of Coke, Diet Coke and Sprite? The music industry buys the U a building and, next thing you know, all students are required to buy $300 of Britney and N'Sync albums for their music appreciation courses?
Universities should be about education, not indoctrination. Unless these are the best languages for teaching the foundations of computer programming (and they are not), they shouldn't be required.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Years ago, I read that Microsoft invests more in Waterloo than in any other university in North America.
Waterloo is the top comp sci school in Canada (no, I went to the University of Victoria, so pretty objective), and in the top 5 in North America.
Bummer that they've sold out.
First they came for UW, and I didn't speak up because I didn't go there...
It's a good deal for both sides.
Deals between hospitals and insurance companies for managed health care are good for both sides. But are they good for the patient? Deals between the military and arms contractors are good for both sides. But are they good for soldiers & taxpayers? Hypothetical deals between congressmen and lobbyists ("hypothetical" because there is, of course, no quid pro quo) are good for both sides, but are they good for voters and citizens?
Is this deal good for the students of UW? THAT is the only question that matters.
There is a reason why serious academic institutions do not overwhelmingly adapt Microsoft. Primarily it is the cost both in dollars and also in loss of academic freedom that comes with the restrictive licensing that comes with many proprietary applications. One of the founding tennants of higher education is that information should be freely and intensely pursued. Sure some "MIS" programs may just be an advanced MCSE/CCNA course, but most real computer science programs could not afford such a narrow scope. CS by definition is much more broad than software developement, MIS, EE, or networking; rather it is the culmination of all of the above with other studies mixed in.
Any CS program that concentrates too heavily on one thing (ie programming in C# or Java for that matter) really short changes its students and limits the potential that they can achieve. A much more broad approach, while not churning out top notch Java developers, produces excellent problem solvers who are able to quickly learn and adapt to the ever-changing technology world. Looking back on my undergrad experience I think that playing around on the HP-UX and AT&T UNIX (R) box helped me break out of the mold and learn much more effectively.
Doesn't matter, because US universities have been communist for quite some time now. I doubt microsoft will make a difference.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
This is nothing new. For quite some time, every CS Freshman at UIUC was issued a free copy of MS Visual Studio.
Of course, it happened my Sophmore year, so I was not gifted with the freebies. Of course, I did get a free copy of the one true version of Windows (Win2k) from MS for free later, so I'm no more bitter than I usually am.
Gentoo Sucks
If the CS department is worth a 1/2 a crap it doesn't really matter what language[s] they teach the classes in. The students should come away with a good solid foundation of general programming knowledge. Languages come and go, if a CS grad needs to know one they should be able to buy the reference and compare to their base of knowledge. Note: I'm not saying CS grads should be guru's in whatever language they choose after a day, but they should be able to get by.
They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty nor security
Community Colleges that have courses available, are very PRO-Microsoft. The Community College I am going to has,
The rare Linux, or C++, or C class is taught at night and there tends to only be one class. It is more a matter of Microsoft taking over all computer learning and other stuff is just a set of geeky computer products.
Jane: "Darn it, Bob, I just don't understand. No matter how many times we ask people, 'Where do you want to go today?', they still seem to think of us as a big, bullying monopolist."
Bob: "Well, Jane, maybe we should just change the message. Perhaps if we say, 'Where do you really want to go today?', people will respond better!"
The guy in the corner from developer marketing meekly raises his hand. "Uh, guys, perhaps if we didn't put out press releases crowing about our ability to buy out universities, we wouldn't be perceived as bullies."
Jane: "Bob, I think your proposal is right on the money!"
Bob: "Hey, that's why they pay us the big bucks, right?"
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
The students don't have to use Microsoft's compiler. This is a very stupid move on Microsoft's part, because it just generates bad publicity, without any payoff. They think that they can own a programming language and somehow exert control through that ownership. Right, the same way Stroustrup controls the activities of thousands of Visual C++ developers. And hey, those C coders won't twitch a finger without Dennis Ritchie's approval.
Not to take M$'s side or anything, but at least they're teaching something RELEVANT now. When I went there, they were inflicting MODULA-3 on us. (And Pascal.. but then, I like Pascal)
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
Whether you likeit or not, if you wanna make big bucks from sitting in front of a computer, Waterloo happens to be the best choice. I am gonna have to go there MS or no MS
Say goodbye to an independent Slashdot. I got an ad box for Visual Studio .Net. :)
By Ryan Chen-Wing on Wednesday, August 14, 2002 at 12:33 p.m.
MS Ca Pres Clegg and Dr. Dave sign agreement At 10:00 today Microsoft Canada Co. President Frank Clegg announced $2.3 million funding that will facilitate three projects in the areas of academic research, education solutions, and curriculum integration. UW President David Johnston, UW's Director of ICR Vic DiCiccio, and MS Canada's Director of Education Sector George Kyriakis spoke as part of the announcement.
The aim of the research project is to develop equation recognition for new Tablet PCs that, in addition to having the functionality of laptops, have a screen which is touch sensitive to styli.
Clegg said that Tablet PCs are set to be released 7 November this year. He said he couldn't say for sure what the retail price will, "It would be great if we could get it down to the price of of a regular laptop."
Clegg and Dr. Dave discussing the Tablet PC The education solutions project will allow students to access lab equipment and simulators. A press release says that 8,000 course students in E&CE will benefit from this.
Under curriculum integration, first-choice applicants to UW's E&CE program will be allowed to take a new pre-university programming course in C#, E&CE 050. Completion of this course will be mandatory for students entering the E&CE program. C# is a new programming language developed by Microsoft.
The existing course E&CE 150, an introductory course to programming, will change from using C++ to C#.
DiCiccio commented on changing curriculum under the agreement, "E&CE weighed all the aspects of it and was comfortable with the change...UW is really sensitive to curriculum decisions it makes." He also joked, "$2.3 million isn't enough to sacrifice curriculum."
DiCiccio, Johnston, Clegg and Kyriakis At the end of the press conference, Clegg and President Johnston signed the agreement using an Acer Tablet PC. The announcement was made at UW in the Davis Centre's ICR Corporate Partner Lounge, which is also known as the fishbowl or the wine-and-cheese lounge. About 100 people attended.
The funding is part of the Microsoft Canada Academic Innovation Alliance, a $10 million dollar fund administered over five years that will accept proposals from acredited universities. A press release describes the four categories of the fund, academic research, education solutions, curriculum integration and industry outreach.
Kyriakis said, "We believe we should create ties between the business community and the academic community to ensure that innovation happens into the future." He added, "What we're doing at Waterloo is just fantastic."
All projects under the alliance will incorporate Microsoft technology. Clegg said, "We think that is the value that we provide."
Microsoft Canada President Frank Clegg has agreed to answer the 10 best questions posed by uws readers about the Microsoft Canada Academic Innovation Alliance, and its impact at UW. So, post your questions. uws editors will select the 10 best and send them to Mr. Clegg, then post his responses.
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
what, WANKING?
free (as in mp3s) electronic music
I can see how where this is leading...
In twenty years, my as-yet-unborn children will be attending "University of Microsoft, Waterloo" because the tuition is cheaper than "University of Microsoft, California".
mandatory course on C# for all electrical and computer engineers.
That just doesn't make sense. Last time I checked, C# was supposed to be a high level language (MS's competitor to java) and electrical and computer engineering are very low level (C++ is as high I'd expect them to work with).
And he's right. No university, even a Canadian university, is so cash-strapped as to have to change their curriculum for a $2.6 million grant.
I have met David Johnston and know him to be a man of integrity.
Sad to say, Waterloo chose C# and Microsoft for reasons other than cash. Like, perhaps, that C# is an easier language to learn for beginners than C++. I'd rather they chose Java instead, but on the merits the two languages are probably just as easy to learn. C#, however, looks likely to provide better starting salaries for this year's crop of freshmen.
Really, this not a troll. Yes SUN didn't "force" anyone to teach their lang. but majority of 4 year colleges here in U.S. are using Java for comp sci 1 + 2. It's not like you have a choice in being taugh comp sci 1 + 2 in C++ or pascal etc. Why is MS's lang. worse than SUN's to be using for a class or two?
yes but those books,especially history, have also been known to rewrite history in 'favorable' ways
or misquote , or take out of context things, and that my friend is the problem
back in the day we didnt have no old school
Ah, I see. We have resorted to the 'use of many verys' technique to show our strength of opinion in something that we know nothing about. This anchient time honored technique has been used by childred, teenagers, college students, and politicians for many generations. No need to stop now.
Carry on.
"Who am I" and "Why are we here" are not the problems.
The problem is when someone asks "Why are they here."
Jack
Guys, this is an ancient practice dating from when IBM and alums would give away mainframes for market share and also writeoffs, all the way through to Apples in the classrooms to hook the little monsters on GUIs. This is so old hat, it's just a knee-jerk reaction story. Move along, nothing new to see here.
________________________________________ History Must Not Fall Into The Wrong Hands ___________________________________
at KTH university in Stockholm. Swedens universitys is mostly Microsoft shops and it shows on our CS students. It shows in our corporate world also, we have nuclear plants running NT.
A good thing i dont live near one of those.
HTTP/1.1 400
For example, Sun and Cisco sponsor academia. As long as they don't buy the government and judges, it's OK (they don't, don't they?)
IANAL, but imagine a beowulf cluster of in Soviet Russia all your belong are base to us welcoming the new SCO overlords.
I'll worry when the University makes the C# class mandatory for English majors.
The difference here is choice. It's not a matter of it being Micosoft that's doing this, it's a matter of a company being able to have the influence over academia to mandate students learn to use their products.
There is nothing wrong with a University offering classes that deal with MS, but when they are forced, the message is sent that MS is insuring that when people graduate, they will have a healthy number of people in the workforce who are famiular with their prodcuts.
Weather or not MS's products are better or worse then their competitors is a moot point. I certiantly woudn't want to go to a school that mandates I am knowledgable of a particular comapnies products at the expense of learning about another companies products that I am more interested in (or am seeking a job working on after graduation)
Microsoft gets a good deal more of blame then if this was proposed by another company because it fits into a larger scheme of gorillia marketing tactics. Why spend more money/resources making our product better if A: we can make sure that everyone uses ours, and B: we can make sure that there will always be people around to fix it if it breaks.
The Internet is generally stupid
MS wants everyone locked into a single proprietary platform. GPL (Linux included) is about freedom of choice.
Java is a good foundation language to teach in universities. Last time I checked though, Sun wasn't "convincing" people to teach it in schools? Different schools have "choosen" to teach it. Big difference.
The duration of a project is inversely proporational to its difficulty.
seSales, Point of Sale software for OS X.
Microsoft had a conference of some sort
;-))
this week or last week in Seattle where they invited
faculty from all over the world to increase
their interaction with academia.
I am sure various proposals would come out of this:
- windows source code to academia for students to hack with. (Beats me why would any student want to do this
- more MS sponsered 'research' ofcourse based on MS technology.
It sucks a monopolistic company with money will decide what students are taught in CS/EE departments around the world.
Our server's been slashdotted.. we're working on it, meanwhile here's the story and top level comments.
n t/ RTGAM/20020814/gtwat/Front/homeBN/breakingnews
n t/ RTGAM/20020814/gtwat/Front/homeBN/breakingnews
_ 15_2002_fund.asp
... they give us a few million... so that we can:
Breaking News: UW receives first $2.3M from Microsoft alliance
By Ryan Chen-Wing on Wednesday, August 14, 2002 at 12:33 p.m.
At 10:00 today Microsoft Canada Co. President Frank Clegg announced $2.3 million funding that will facilitate three projects in the areas of academic research, education solutions, and curriculum integration. UW President David Johnston, UW's Director of ICR Vic DiCiccio, and MS Canada's Director of Education Sector George Kyriakis spoke as part of the announcement.
The aim of the research project is to develop equation recognition for new Tablet PCs that, in addition to having the functionality of laptops, have a screen which is touch sensitive to styli.
Clegg said that Tablet PCs are set to be released 7 November this year. He said he couldn't say for sure what the retail price will, "It would be great if we could get it down to the price of of a regular laptop."
The education solutions project will allow students to access lab equipment and simulators. A press release says that 8,000 course students in E&CE will benefit from this.
Under curriculum integration, first-choice applicants to UW's E&CE program will be allowed to take a new pre-university programming course in C#, E&CE 050. Completion of this course will be mandatory for students entering the E&CE program. C# is a new programming language developed by Microsoft.
The existing course E&CE 150, an introductory course to programming, will change from using C++ to C#.
DiCiccio commented on changing curriculum under the agreement, "E&CE weighed all the aspects of it and was comfortable with the change...UW is really sensitive to curriculum decisions it makes." He also joked, "$2.3 million isn't enough to sacrifice curriculum."
At the end of the press conference, Clegg and President Johnston signed the agreement using an Acer Tablet PC. The announcement was made at UW in the Davis Centre's ICR Corporate Partner Lounge, which is also known as the fishbowl or the wine-and-cheese lounge. About 100 people attended.
The funding is part of the Microsoft Canada Academic Innovation Alliance, a $10 million dollar fund administered over five years that will accept proposals from acredited universities. A press release describes the four categories of the fund, academic research, education solutions, curriculum integration and industry outreach.
Kyriakis said, "We believe we should create ties between the business community and the academic community to ensure that innovation happens into the future." He added, "What we're doing at Waterloo is just fantastic."
All projects under the alliance will incorporate Microsoft technology. Clegg said, "We think that is the value that we provide."
Microsoft Canada President Frank Clegg has agreed to answer the 10 best questions posed by uws readers about the Microsoft Canada Academic Innovation Alliance, and its impact at UW. So, post your questions. uws editors will select the 10 best and send them to Mr. Clegg, then post his responses.
Presentation Slides
Eligibility Requirements
Submission Process
Academic Research
Curriculum Integration
Reply
Feds strategic plan: Di Lullo seeks to diversify
previous story
Comments
Concerns
By Rob Ewaschuk on Wednesday, August 14, 2002 at 12:51 p.m.
Mr Clegg,
This agreement includes teaching C# to high school students applying to UW. C# is a nascent language. It is younger and less mature than Java was when the Computer Science department accepted it as a tool for teaching first year students. I do not believe that C# is a better teaching language than Java, but more importantly, I don't believe that it has time to show whether or not it a better teaching tool. Since it is not more mature, it is not a better teaching language, and it is not (as far as I know, inflated figured from both sides being rather untrustworthy) a more popular "real-world" language than Java, it seems to me that Microsoft has convinced the University to sacrifice using the right tool for the (academic!) job. Clearly this curriculum change would not have happened without this donation. My reaction to this is that the University curriculum has been bought, despite DiCiccio's comments. I'm sure you find this notion as offensive as I do. Could you allay my fears?
Agreements like the one announced today often stimulate fears that alternatives to (in this case) Microsoft will be stifled, either as part of the agreement, or as an implied threat. Can you assure us that no projects that work against Microsofts (real or perceived) interests, such as work on Linux, releasing publicly funded research as GPLed code, teaching of Java, use of Solaris in much of our infrastructure, etc., have no more to fear today than they did yesterday, and that it is very clear that Microsoft will not move (explicitly or implicitly) to stifle this diversity in our systems, tools and culture?
Thank you for your time,
Rob Ewaschuk
Reply
* Clarification by Rob Ewaschuk
* A second clarification by Rob Ewaschuk
C#?!
By colin on Wednesday, August 14, 2002 at 1:57 p.m.
I think this C# choice is going to cause an uproar!
here the globe&mail blurb on the alliance:
http://globeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/fro
Reply
C#?!
By colin on Wednesday, August 14, 2002 at 1:57 p.m.
I think this C# choice is going to cause an uproar!
here the globe&mail blurb on the alliance:
http://globeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/fro
Reply
Disgust
By Mark Schaan on Wednesday, August 14, 2002 at 2:00 p.m.
I am disgusted by the university's decision to accept this donation and believe that it violates the principles of academic freedom on our campus.
Curriculum development is a product of the faculty and should be preserved as such. Changing curriculum to satisfy corporate desires crosses the line from private-sector funding of university priorities to private sector determination of university priorities. I heard of no desire to make such a curriculum change until news of this donation came about. I believe this fundamentally violates the separation of academic freedom and corporate giving in the university setting, something that was subtedly encroaching on our campus previous but is now out in full view.
In addition, I stand against the university's decision to offer "special" classes to a select group of students. This is a stunt to try and win the battle for top-quality students and it creates a two-tier system within the university system. The university should be caring about quality across the board and should not be subjecting average students to large classes while it rewards a few hand-picked students with a better quality education. If we all pay the same price, we should all have equal access to what the university has to offer.
I am saddened that the sea change in administration has seen fit to compromise the hard work done by previous administrators (Jim Kalbfleisch especially) to protect academics from corporate interference.
Reply
* Encouraged by Aaron Lee-Wudrick
* Let's not make darkness the new standard by simon
* I'm partly joking, Simon by Aaron Lee-Wudrick
* Selling out Smartly by simon
* That's pretty much it by Aaron Lee-Wudrick
* E&CE 050 allowed to applicants, required for students by Ryan Chen-Wing
* Further Clarification by Aaron Lee-Wudrick
* E&CE 050 clarifications by Ryan
* That would be bad. by Josh
* For scholarships... by Giant Space Hamster
* would UW touch C#? by simon
* Oh yeah, and by simon
* Partners? by Josh
* So why would the university do it then? by Aaron Lee-Wudrick
* Reputation by P. Quealey
* Whose reputation? by Aaron Lee-Wudrick
* Reputation by Anonymous Coward
* exactly by P. Quealey
* But what do potential students look at? by Aaron Lee-Wudrick
* Not Open To The Market- Just One Corporation by Mark Schaan
* Is Monopoly Really What You Are Worried About? by Aaron Lee-Wudrick
* mmmm by P. Quealey
* You didn't answer my question by Aaron Lee-Wudrick
* Below by P. Quealey
* I choose no money by Jesse Helmer
* Isn't it a dilemma? by Aaron Lee-Wudrick
* 1 day = 24 hours by Josh
* Once you've learned it.. by Aaron Lee-Wudrick
* Research chairs are not unheard of... by Ryan Bayne
* Direction of Bending by Anonymous Coward
* dillemma? by simon
* Which drives which? by Ryan Bayne
* I agree by Aaron Lee-Wudrick
* Doubtful by Josh
* Probably...but.... by Jeff
* special classes? by simon
* Two-tier? Umm.... by Jeff Henry
* Thanks for the Clarification by Mark Schaan
WTF???
By Three-Legged Hamster on Wednesday, August 14, 2002 at 2:16 p.m.
Here's the PR http://www.microsoft.com/canada/press/releases/08
So let me get this straight
- build a math-symbol text recognition program for THEIR stupid computer;
- teach our first year students THEIR stupid language;
- train our students to build circuits for THEIR stupid ASP initiative.
Is there anything GOOD that we get as a part of this package? Or are we just going to rename ourselves University of Waterloo (A Division of Microsoft Research)?
Reply
Discouraging this Alumni
By P. Quealey on Wednesday, August 14, 2002 at 3:42 p.m.
This Microsoft deal bothers me for three reasons.
1. It is showing that the University admin will do just about anything for money. They will change the curriculum, the will place whatever pressure is necessary on students and they will sacrifice the University's role as an institution of knowledge.
2. It seems as though the only financial deals the university is interested in making are with companies who will benefit the engineering and/or computer science departments. This school, believe it or not has many other faculties that do very very good work. In fact that work could be made better if Johnston put effort into partnering with other organizations willing to invest research money in faculties and projects across the board. My own former faculty of environmental studies has numerous innovative and revolutionary (in the good sense)projects that stall due to lack of funding.
3. Given the Universities deal with Microsoft and other winning initiatives like Quest, UW may well soon prove to be one of the wealthiest schools in the country, but something tells me they will not remain best in class.
If we're partnering with Microsoft, Johnston is obviously taking UW down the quantity, not quality road.
Since Mark's comments (despite our personal and public disagreements) fairly sum up how I feel, and are laid out about as well as I could, I'll just say this:
This university is run by a bunch of money grubbing idiots who care more about appeasing political and corporate masters than providing quality academics; for shame (I acknowledge that this might not be as eloquent as I normally write but this really pissed me off).
Due to the policies of the current administration I will donate not 1 cent to the school. I cannot support a University that is actively trying to shed its academic integrity and honour. I will also make a point to discourage as many people as possible from attending this 'school' in future.
Reply
* One question by Aaron Lee-Wudrick
* Aaron by P. Quealey
* It's not a trap, its a fact! by Aaron Lee-Wudrick
* In tech feilds perhaps by P. Quealey
* Can, but won't by Aaron Lee-Wudrick
* Independence and quality aren't inversely proportional by Steve
* Independence and quality aren't inversely proportional by Steve
In addition to commenting please ask questions
By Ryan on Wednesday, August 14, 2002 at 4:02 p.m.
Microsoft Canada President Frank Clegg has agreed to answer the 10 best questions posed by uws readers about the Microsoft Canada Academic Innovation Alliance, and its impact at UW. So, post your questions. uws editors will select the 10 best and send them to Mr. Clegg, then post his responses.
If you have questions, please post them here.
Reply
home page
This is just the beginning.
Next High School classes win corporate sponsorship.
American History sponsored by Nike.
Paul Revere sprints from town to town in his air jordan cross trainers, gortex all-weather jacket, and teflon stretch pants to warn people of the British invasion.
English sponsored by Budweiser
Shakespear is replaced by the poetry of three frogs and a lizard. TS Eliot's "The Wasteland" is determined to be too long and replaced by the first WASSUP commercial.
Etc... etc... etc...
you sound a bit bitter. I am a CE major myself right now got a few more years till I am done with a BS and then maybe a masters. I really hope there is a market for me when I finish.
I was actually thinking of something worse than this a week ago. The future could be bright.. for those who submit to a corporation - it'll support ya from cradle to grave... if you work for 'em.. use the products they sell/authorize. Imagine the power of a corporation who can control a person's spending for life!
(1st sig) If this were a snappy sig, you'd be reading it right now. (2nd sig) I'm a karma whore. >Insert FUD here
normally I would agree with you, but considering MS's history of domination, they will end up with a lot more cotrol over the industry, then most companies.
Where does someone go to school when they all are like this? how does one minimize the effects of corporate bias?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Resistance is futile
IANAL, but imagine a beowulf cluster of in Soviet Russia all your belong are base to us welcoming the new SCO overlords.
The University of Waterloo actually has two computer studies programs. Computer engineering is part of the engineering faculty while computer science is part of the math faculty.
The engineering programs tend to focus on the parts of computers that can be kicked. They're what you take if you want to work with embedded systems or processor design. They don't focus on things like software algorithms so much so if you're into programming, you take comp. sci. in the math faculty.
That program uses Macs for the first year and after that, a sprawling network of Unix servers and X-terminals (i.e. thin clients) running a goodly amount of free software. There isn't too much of a MS presence there, although they did install a Citrix server a while back so that students could run Word. (It's been a while since I've been a student, though, so I don't know whether that's still there.)
I suspect (the original site being down) that the C# course is probably the "this is what programmers do" course required of engineering students. So this might be the thin edge of the wedge, but it's certainly not MS-University.
Yet.
I've mirrored the U o W page here complete with comments(don't shoot me, it's free).
The text of the main article is below:
At 10:00 today Microsoft Canada Co. President Frank Clegg announced $2.3 million funding that will facilitate three projects in the areas of academic research, education solutions, and curriculum integration. UW President David Johnston, UW's Director of ICR Vic DiCiccio, and MS Canada's Director of Education Sector George Kyriakis spoke as part of the announcement.
The aim of the research project is to develop equation recognition for new Tablet PCs that, in addition to having the functionality of laptops, have a screen which is touch sensitive to styli.
Clegg said that Tablet PCs are set to be released 7 November this year. He said he couldn't say for sure what the retail price will, "It would be great if we could get it down to the price of of a regular laptop."
Clegg and Dr. Dave discussing the Tablet PC The education solutions project will allow students to access lab equipment and simulators. A press release says that 8,000 course students in E&CE will benefit from this.
Under curriculum integration, first-choice applicants to UW's E&CE program will be allowed to take a new pre-university programming course in C#, E&CE 050. Completion of this course will be mandatory for students entering the E&CE program. C# is a new programming language developed by Microsoft.
The existing course E&CE 150, an introductory course to programming, will change from using C++ to C#.
DiCiccio commented on changing curriculum under the agreement, "E&CE weighed all the aspects of it and was comfortable with the change...UW is really sensitive to curriculum decisions it makes." He also joked, "$2.3 million isn't enough to sacrifice curriculum."
DiCiccio, Johnston, Clegg and Kyriakis At the end of the press conference, Clegg and President Johnston signed the agreement using an Acer Tablet PC. The announcement was made at UW in the Davis Centre's ICR Corporate Partner Lounge, which is also known as the fishbowl or the wine-and-cheese lounge. About 100 people attended.
The funding is part of the Microsoft Canada Academic Innovation Alliance, a $10 million dollar fund administered over five years that will accept proposals from acredited universities. A press release describes the four categories of the fund, academic research, education solutions, curriculum integration and industry outreach.
Kyriakis said, "We believe we should create ties between the business community and the academic community to ensure that innovation happens into the future." He added, "What we're doing at Waterloo is just fantastic."
All projects under the alliance will incorporate Microsoft technology. Clegg said, "We think that is the value that we provide."
Microsoft Canada President Frank Clegg has agreed to answer the 10 best questions posed by uws readers about the Microsoft Canada Academic Innovation Alliance, and its impact at UW. So, post your questions. uws editors will select the 10 best and send them to Mr. Clegg, then post his responses.
Let me put it this way -- there's ALWAYS a market for very talented people.
[This is an excerpt from chapter 2 of my book.]
- adam-- Say goodbye to independent academia.
.Net evil? Is C# useless? What would be the difference if Waterloo graduates emerge from their classes drooling .Net Framework acronyms instead of Java Framework acronyms? If you don't like what your college is teaching then shake your fist until something more important comes along, say, like a mortgage.
Say goodbye? No need. It was never here. Or perhaps, I'll venture, I'm missing it, but please demonstrate five major medical research programs in the U.S. that don't get funding from large pharmaceuticals (some of which, btw, make Microsoft look like Holy Saints Inc.). Or nuclear energy research programs that throw their hands out and say "No! We will not be influenced!" when the DoD comes by with a few mil. And please don't hold up those one-off programs at every university that serve as exceptions that prove the rule. Every major university and college gets money with special interest behind it, and that ain't just in this great nation. Microsoft has been giving money to educational institutions for many, many moons.
It's only because it's Microsoft that this even got posted. The better question isn't "Where's the money coming from?" (because I think that's just naive in this country and in this day and age) but "What's the money buying?" Is
You can have my watercooling kit when you can pry it out of my cold dead computer.
I think that sig should be: You can have my watercooling kit when you can pry it out of my steaming, dead computer. :)
I've read the article on UWStudent.org, and while I don't know anything about E&CE050, as a computer engineering student at UW, I have taken E&CE150 not too long ago and I can definitely say that the focus is not really on the specific language used, but things like algorithms, data structures, sorting/searching, root finding.
The second course of the set - ECE250 - is titled Algorithms and Data Structures and is taught in Java, and in either case, you are expected to pick up the language and start using it without any hand-holding. There's one hour tutorial at the start of the course that explains the language used (it was C++ for me), and after that, it's just TA's helping people during lab hours.
I don't think this is as big a deal as it sounds...
First, I'm a BSD person and really don't give a piss about the GPL except I don't like it much. Secondly, Slashdot is like heroin. There are many site with better information about stuff w/out the rediculous comments by people who don't actually read the articles, but i'm adicted. I can't stop coming back. It's even my home page on my work box (which, incidently is redhat, and is the most unpleasant experience i've ever had. RH5.2 was very nice once upon a time. I simply can't abide by it anymore).
You have to remember that most Canadian Universities are publically funded. Waterloo happens to be *the* place to go for Computer and Math studies in Ontario (if not Canada). Think of it as MIT, but cheaper.
If you live in Canada and want a computer degree with a good reputation, you go to Waterloo.
Quite simply what ties the bulk of the world to MS products is ignorance. They assume that they won't be able to work with another OS, and if it breaks, won't be able to fix it. But modern universities are churning out CS and computer savvy students at an alarming rate. The bulk of which were trained on *nix. They have the power to completely avoid MS and would rather be on open source software where if something breaks they can fix it.
This is something be concerned about, for MS to have their way they will have to stem the tide of the hacker culture by cutting off its source: Education.
On a side note, Waterloo has always been in corporations' pockets, they have pimped out their CS students as slave labor for many different companies' projects.
Lan Rover
The response of going to another school is so shallow it's hardly worth replying to, but as the comment got modded up...
At the University of British Columbia (where I'm a PhD student) Coke has a monopoly deal -- all vending machines and food sources on campus sell only Coke products. (UBC is isolated -- virtually no off campus sources are available.) So what -- just drink water? UBC has removed/is removing the drinking water fountains from around campus, because of "maintenance costs" -- which is a bit of a joke because none have ever been maintained as far as I can see. No connection to the contract with Coke, I'm sure... My collegues and I currently fill waterbottles from the taps in the bathrooms, and we're just waiting for some nasty disease to ripple through.
Universities fill a WAY larger role in society than job training. Deals like this one erode the functions of independant criticism.
Is this deal good for the students of UW? THAT is the only question that matters.
... I went to a school in the Redmond area where Microsoft had invested a lot of money -- the tuition was reasonable (it was a community college) and we always had pretty new computers (due mostly to Microsoft contributions) ... the fact that I was learning how to program in VB didn't really matter that much, I was just learning the basics. I think Microsoft's contributions to the school I went to definitely made my learning experience better.
In this case it comes down to a choice between higher tuition rates or using MS technologies. Personally, I'd rather have lower tuition
(Score:-1, Wrong)
sniff...sniff... what is that smell? Perhaps a troll is about?
seSales, Point of Sale software for OS X.
MS is never going to win any mind share, but they still have the upper hand ... Because every last person I heard say "Fuck Microsoft" didn't turn down a job offer doing development on MS platforms/compilers -- if an offer was made.
Having principles can be damn expensive
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
The problem is if the choice of C# over C++ hurts the quality of the education.
Note also that over the past decade we have changed from Fortran to C to C++
Ryan C-W
As a developer who uses C++ and who realizes that very, very few people who use it actually know it I would like to thank UW for ensuring that I never have to look at a resume from a kid who graduates from there.
Droping C++ from the cariculum ensures that students graduating with degrees from UW will not be suitable for working on anthing that most of my peers would consider interesting.
Bravo UW.
Beware the wood elf!!!
I don't think i will consider waterloo as a place to go anymore :(
Well, Apple came after the academic markets longer and more aggressively than Microsoft. It paid off for them as those students turned to PC shopping consumers. But yet nobody lets out a peep when they did it. Why is that? Why all this vicious hating from the slashdot crowd? Are you guys insecure about something?
SIG:Slashdot: indymedia for nerds.
at my community college our data structures class was taught in C and we had to build our has tables from scratch. etc etc
According to this article from The Globe And Mail, the terms of the deal don't stop at just replacing C++ with C#.
.NET servers."
"The third project intends to teach the concepts of circuitry by having students work with Microsoft's new
Scary, scary stuff. Apparently $2.3 million buys a hell of a lot more here in Waterloo than I had originally thought.
----------
Darryl Ballantyne
http://www.darrylballantyne.com
you are right, but in most cases student opinion really doesn't matter.
I graduated from Bowling Green State University this past December. They completed our new student union sometime around then (I really don't remember when it was done, maybe Spring Break). Anyway, this fucking project was funded in part by a large donation from Pepsi Co. which came from the school deciding to go 100% w/Pepsi instead of multiple vendors.
I never have and never will like Pepsi. It's not b/c of them being stupid w/Spears, etc, it's just b/c it tastes like shit. Anyway. My last year or so I didn't have the choice of what drink to have on campus (no, I didn't have cash on hand to buy Coke somewhere else and drink it on campus).
The student body was asked what their opinion was. A panel was formed, they decided, fuck Pepsi and the Union donation, we were sticking w/choice.
The school OTOH decided that 8 million dollars was worth pissing on the students and building a huge Union (with a lot of empty space I might add).
back to the original comment. Yes, they make these deals but w/o really caring for the students. $ > students, always.
Tell me, why is exercising free choice a shallow response? My school had a monopoly deal with Pepsi throughout the campus, whats your point? And please put your tin foil hat back on, if you think Coke is influencing your school to take away the water fountains.
SIG:Slashdot: indymedia for nerds.
Here in the UK our universities have been a bunch of evil sell-outs for ages. We always joked that our university was really a conference park that took students in when it wasn't conference season. We joked, but the conference guests got better amenities in the university accomodation than the students did.
Also there was a lot of courses in compsci where you'd just think "Why the hell is this course in here ?" An example was on the MSc in Information Technology (basically a 1 year conversion course for people new to IT) where they had a course on inductive logic programming. This was way ahead of anything else the students were taught (data structures, basic pascal programming etc). The real reason was that the inductive logic dude was a former Oxford lecturer who came with attractive grant prospects.
It's all about making money and not teaching students. Universities are businesses. They have only a little more integrity than those spammers who offer to sell you a degree over the internet!
Also look at the fact that final degree marks have changed. In my parents' time it was incredibly difficult to get a 1st class degree, you had to work really hard to get a 2.1 etc. Now they basically split it like:
bottom 10% = Do no work at all- go to no lectures: pass general , fail or 3rd class (randomly decided)
middle 80% = 2.2 or 2.1- either did work or was intelligent but did no work.
top 10% = 1st.
graspee
Going to a University to get an MSCE seems like a little bit of overkill... doesn't it?
Or would I rather make the joke about this being Microsoft's Waterloo?
Can't decide.
-pyrrho
Following in the footsteps of the esteemed Universtity of Waterloo, we'd like to announce a joint venture with the RIAA. In return for a generous donation from the music industry, we're adding a mandatory course in copywrite extension and protection. Students will learn first hand how the indefinite extension of copywrites and the robust persecution of lawbreakers, help insure the future of our great legal tradition.
Well, probably nothing. I don't mean to troll, i'm just sick of everytime there is a post about MS, they must obviously be up to no good. Every time some rediciulous piece of hardware comes out everyone's like "too bad it doesn't run linux", or if it does "cool! it runs linux!". The people here, on a large scale, seem to be preoccupied with taking over the desktop (as if joe schmoe's mother needs a multi-user, multi-tasking os to play solitare), destroying Microsoft, eroding commercial UNIX and saying how BSD is stupid and BSD people should all start using LINUX. MS wants to controll the desktop (check), wants to erode commercial UNIX, and wants to squash Linux. You're playing the same game by different rules. Much like cricket and baseball. Only not.
U Waterloo has always been in the computer industry's pockets, it seems. Back in the 80's it was IBM, now it's Microsoft. Ho hum. UW does produce good engineers, but they tend not to think outside the box. (Which may not be a quality you want in all your engineers, anyway.)
(Disclaimer: while I've never attended UW, I used to live a block from campus, my (now ex-) wife worked there, and I once worked at a company where there were only two other (out of about fifty) non-UW grads on the tech staff. I also worked at the computer center of another university a few miles down the road from UW, we were pretty familiar with things at that campus.)
-- Alastair
This just proves that when you are having trouble earning respect, you can always buy some.
C# is carpsh..
Waterloo, Canada is named for Waterloo, Germany (it was founded by German people and it used to be called Berlin before WW2 when people made them change it).
Napolean's battle of waterloo took place in Belgium, not Germany, therefore a Napoleon joke is not required.
ALL of Conestoga College computers in EVERY computer lab will be running WinXP by the start of this semester. why? nobody I have been able to talk to knows, the instructors aren't really happy, the IT people sure aren't happy (some still stuck on Novell). They are building a brand new building though... ;)
- email president@uwaterloo.ca
- phone 519-888-4567, Ext. 2202
- fax 519-888-6337
4 years from now a bunch of grads will be heading to interviews...
...
Grad: "I know C#! Hire me!"
Industry: "C#. Check. What else do you know?"
Grad: "Huh? Like what?"
Industry: "Well, what did you learn in some of your other courses?
Grad: "I know how to design a web page so that it only works under Internet Explorer."
Industry: "Hmm..okaaaay. What type of degree did you say you have again?"
Grad: "I have a copy right here..."
Industry: "That says MCSE. That's not a diploma."
Grad: "No, it is. There's some fine print at the bottom. See?"
Microsoft has been giving free software to universities forever, hence influencing what is taught to students.
======== In the future, everything will be artificial. ========
Well, it sucks a bit because it's MS, but to be fair, I've had three courses that used Java exclusively during my studies at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada.
The two first year intro to programming courses as well as a second year data structures course all used Java. As much as it is a cheap rip-off, MS seems to be paying more attention (or lip-service) to the standards bodies than Sun did.
Don't get me wrong, I don't like that MS has basically ripped of Java, but I honestly don't see how this is any worse than the many schools using Java in the curriculum.
Plus, in my experience, C# encourages bad programming style. I wrote a work report last fall (I'm a UW CS co-op) tearing it apart, but I'll leave a full discussion of that to someone else.
This coming year being my last in high school, I have to start thinking about university. This is just one less application to worry about. Why is it that I want to do Computer Science again?
Come on, the reason why AutoCAD became the standard was because they seeded tons of junior colleges and trade schools with it. In the early days of engineering workstations it was considered commonplace to feed a few dozen into big engineering schools. C# is nothing but Java with Microsoft's legal restrictions rather than Sun's legal restrictions.
Microsoft picked a good timing schedule for announcing this. The university admissions/offers cycle has just ended, so you can't easily rescind your acceptance of their offer of admission and switch to another university that also sent you an offer.
The way it works in Ontario, Canada is that the central university admissions group, the OUAC manages all admissions requests and communicates between the high schools and universities. If a university sends you an offer of admission, you reply to the OUAC before a deadline which is common among all universities. If you get another offer you like more (maybe with better scholarship $$) you send that one to the OUAC and it overrides the previous one. This is all nice and good as long as it is done before the deadline.
This deadline has already passed - I think it was about a month ago, so if someone got into Comp.Eng at Waterloo, they may just be kicking themselves now. (Note: I am not in this batch of applicants ... I have been in a well respected Engineering program at a well respected Ontario University for some years now. My Engineering Faculty actually did a formal survey of all students regarding this very subject last year because a situation like this with an unnamed but controversial corporation has arisen.) I think the timing of the announcement shows that MSFT knows that there will be opposition for this among students, thus they announce it now when it's too late to change your mind.
One other thing to note is that not all universities send their offers of admission around the same time. For example, I got my offer from UofT a couple of months before the dealine, but Waterloo's came 2 days before. Waterloo doesn't give you much time to decide. Furthermore, they give priority to a very small number of students with elite marks. This one person I knew in high school who was an uber-intellect got her waterloo admission even before I got mine from UofT. (Note: The 'elite' mark status depends on the University. Waterloo's threshold is very, VERY high, somewhere above 96%. I believe I had 'elite mark status' from UofT with my 90+% average, thus getting me an early acceptance from them.)
Note: I am not nor was I ever a student of the University of Waterloo or the University of Toronto. I chose to accept at another University.
First they came for UW, and I didn't speak up because I didn't go there...
By not going there, you are speaking up.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
I always thought that open source software or free software had a great place in the university setting. Teaching students at an earlier age about the many advantages of open source software is a great thing. Ever since I was introduced to the Solaris workstations, GNU gcc, emacs, I've realized how powerful they are. I wouldn't want tomorrow's students missing that experience.
Actually, Kitchener used to be called Berlin before WW2. They changed the name because... well I think you know why.
Are you sure that wasn't Walden College? It sounds right up their alley.
:)
Someone needs to tell Mr. Trudeau so he can mock this.
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
"All your brain are belong to us!"
What posible reason, other than M$ involvement, would there be for EEs to learn C#? I would think C or C++ would be the better fit since that is what is most widely used for embedded development. Looking back my class in C was like typing class in highschool...one of the more practically valuable classes I took.
that is easier said than done considering waterloo is one of the top computer schools in north america, their math department is their big money maker. they are one of the two schools in north america to offer degrees in telcom.
hopefully the student body that pays the money to go there, will have a better say at changing the tide, considering the university of waterloo has spawned their own unix distro, licq and tux racer, among other linux and unix projects. so tho m$ might have a say what they students could learn, there will always be *nix friendly users and projects.
What's to stop MS from controlling and directing the direction of C#? It's been their general strategy to offer two parts to things: a service pack fixes a security problem but installs spyware. They add neat features to the latest version of their Office file format but lock everyone else out.
They're just playing on Americans' indifference. As Lessig put it in his speech at OSCON, small grassroots movements are no match for large corporations because they control the media and what little people who're aware of the situation there are aren't even raising a finger.
They "own" the language because no one will say otherwise.
Please note that uwstudent.org will be asking reader questions to the President of Microsoft Canada Frank Clegg. So post your questions on uwstudent.org. If for some reason you can't, post them under here and I'll check back to make sure they are considered. Thanks!
News for UW students
I'm just trying to offer an objective opinion..
It's mildly true that thinking alternatively doesn't make you any less brainwashed. Favoring the GPL is still favoring the GPL. Microsoft's Licenses and the GPL are extremes. Microsoft's solutions are closed and notouriously bug-ridden. Still, their solutions are nearly guarenteed to work out of the box.
Solutions based under the GPL such as linux are STILL notouriously bug-ridden (linux has it's share of bugs, whether you admit it or not). The GPL forces people who use it to open their code. Now in a perfect open, academic utopia, this is great. But freedom comes at a price. People in buisiness can't afford to do this. If say... Photoshop was open-source, what stops anyone fromo taking the code, modifying it, and creating a new product? Freedom isn't always free, and GPL doesn't give you a choice to keep your sourcecode a trade secret (good or bad thing, that's up to you)
I don't really think Microsoft is forcing anything upon consumers/corporations themselves. If you don't want to run Microsoft software, don't. It's really very simple.
People tend to hit the extreme when they believe linux is better. Suddenly everyone running non-GPLed software supports facist regimes of capitalist corporations. It's simply not true. If the GPL is really about "choice," If you run linux, you are now using a new platform. True that it isn't proprietary, it's free, but odds are you will still have to upgrade it at some point, just like microsoft software. Though Kudos for free stuff, us linux people don't pay for the countless upgrades (maybe countless is a little less than I was thinking..). Windows is a business. Linux is a hobby. Besides the fact that linux is free, and windows isn't, they both offer similar solutions. I don't see where you're locked in at all. I can run PHP on windows. If I don't like windows, I can go use my PHP scripts on linux.
Really, some people are blowing this whole situation out of proportion. One C# course is not going to kill you. Most geeks know plenty of languages and it won't hurt to learn one more. Plus, you learn more from experience than you do in a classroom anyway. Anyone adept at programming can pick up a language quickly.
Microsoft is evil, I'll agree but don't say microsoft is removing your choice. Microsoft made and sells the software. There are plenty of server applications for both platforms.
As for desktop applications... linux is still maturing, loki showed that linux game sales weren't a very profitable enteprise. It isn't entirely Microsoft's fault that it has more software availible for windows.
For the record, I use linux but I wanted to show some objectivity.
When all freedom is outlawed only the outlaws have freedom
It might be interesting to let them know that there are quite some people who don't like the idea of "buying a course" :)
For example: mail them to ask the pricelist to buy a course
This is nothing new. Rich patrons have been tying strings to their donations since the first university.
The only alternative to private charitable donations is more government funding. But I don't know about you, but I trust my government even less than I trust Microsoft. In my home state of California, University curricula change every four years like clockwork, just after elections.
I think a lot of the angst over this one is simply because this time it's Microsoft. Reactions would be much more subdued if Sun made a donation requiring a Java class. And the reaction would be downright positive if Redhat made a donation that required a GNOME class.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
No, there is more to the story. I don't go to UBC, but I live in Vancouver and am going to SFU (another local university) next fall from HS. Anyway, a year or so back UBC didn't meet their quota for selling and Coke was threatening to pull out unless they started to really change the status quo. Well, I am not sure what really happened after that, but they didn't apparently pull out. It is not paranoia, it is quite rational thinking.
Buying a Dell computer is equivalent to dropping the soap in a prison shower.
don't go to waterloo if you want to be an engineer and don't want to take C#?
====
Crudely Drawn Games
Don't kid yourself - Microsoft is reaping what it has sewed in the IT industry for decades now; distrust.
Ian Goldberg
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
From Waterloo, an MS means exactly what, now?
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
because Redhat can't afford to give them enough money to have them switch. when MS invests in education he gives them new computers, not just the software.
My alma mater, the University of Washington, probably has the tightest relationship with Microsoft than any other school yet we've maintained a strong separation.
Our new building is being funded almost exclusivly by personal donations from Paul Allen and Bill Gates. We do a large amount a research with Microsoft Research. All students get all the free Microsoft Software they want (except games). Some of our talented faculty have spent many years at Microsoft
Desite all that we still have Unix orientation for new students. All homework is required to be turned in with a Unix Makefile and compile under gcc. Java is our introductory language.
I didn't write a line of code in Windows while I was there and I'm the rule and not the exception. I suspect University of Waterloo is has a pedagogical philosophy more along the lines of a community college and scimps on theory.
At the University of Washington I felt no pressure to learn Microsoft products or proprietary languages. It was quite the opposite, in fact. I'm certain no other University has a stronger relationship with Microsoft.
The largest employer of University of Waterloo students is Microsoft. Somehow I doubt that they'll be complaining about the said lack of knowledge in Linux or Java :-)
Think this is bad?
How about all those donations from SUn and HP last year in suport of teaching J2EE at collges..
What did they give them? Guess knwing that real programmers test J2EE code on real servers not demos..come on take a guess..
demos of theri j2EE servers which can be had fro just $5 in shipping some donation!
Don't Tread on OpenSource
When the CS Department became the School of CS, though, they messed something up for my class (I'm going into 2B in the fall). They're changing the concurrency and operating systems courses around, but only after I've taken one of them. So I end up seeing concurrency twice, and I already know that stuff. I don't know why they have to change things for people already in a program. It feels like a bait and switch.
--University of Waterloo--
Wasn't that where Napoleon went to school? CHARGE?
Why is it that michael appears to be the only editor who cares at all about Canadian issues? Whenever it's a Canadian story, it's michael posting it. I know without looking. And I congratulate him for standing up and letting Canada be counted, but why can't CmdrTaco or Nate ever get their act together and post something when something important arises? I'd just maybe like to see that an american gives a shit, that's all.
But then again, if my ECE dept did this, I guess I'd just suck it up and take the damned class..
But I'd speak up! That's what students need to do. At a school where students make their voices known, things get done more than in any other institution.
Berto
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
This is not a case of an "additional mandatory course on C#" being added to the curriculum. This is an instance where the language of instruction in one of the already mandatory courses, namely ECE 150, is being changed from C++ to C#.
This does not make the degree a "Microsoft degree," anymore than using Java in introductory courses (as UW's School of Computer Science does) makes a degree a "Sun degree."
There are a lot of things you have to do before you go to U of W. You need to write the Euclid, the Newton, if you got more then 80% in my high school chem class you could write another test to get credit on first term chem. Most of them aren't hard (except the chem one) and are not manditory. Its easy shit. This C# thing is just like that; a pre-test. It will be nothing more then programming a C64 at overnight camp to play Centipede. Though there is still something off about the whole deal.
What is not acceptable, however, is for grants from a company to be tied to the use of its products in the curriculum. And, in fact, while C# is fine technically and educationally, Java would still be a more useful language for students to learn.
Decisions like this really call into question the academic integrity of a university; potential students of U. of Waterloo should take notice.
I'm just suprised it's taken this long. In New Zealand, the Government can't afford to pay for tertiary education, and the majority of students seem unwilling to pay their own way - I'm picking it's only a (short) matter of time until the same thing happens here.
Until Governments everywhere bite the bullet and stop using other peoples money to pay for Public Education (an oxymoron if ever there was one), underfunded Universities are going to have to try every trick in the book to obtain funding.
If students themselves paid, in entirety, for their tution, then Universities wouldn't find themselves in the position of sucking up to large corporations in order to obtain money they desperately need, thereby compromising the education they are providing to their students.
Microsoft has been after Canadian universities for years. In my first year at my university, Microsoft held a info session about jobs and stuff like that and introduced a programming contest. The contest was to write a program for Windows CE. No problem, right? Except the emulator (which was free) only ran on Win2000 or NT. To get around that, they gave away free copies of Win 2000, with a free development environment. I still have mine.
.NET and gave away free copies of VS .NET Beta 2. Do some stuff (write programs in VS, talk about them, etc) and get more free stuff (Office XP, Win XP, mice, etc). Need Win2000 to develop Web services? No problem. Ask and ye shall recieve. I still use VS .NET Beta 2, learned VB .NET on my own, learned C#, and will try VC++ .NET sometime. I keep my programs for a future application to Microsoft, (despite my dual booting Red Hat 7.3).
.NET and related technologies with tutorials, how to's, all kinds of neat little things. Students can post their creations, or tutorials. Some of them were damn good. Points were awarded for more free stuff. I used it frequently.
This year, a slightly different spin. Microsoft was introducing Visual Studio
Microsoft piloted DevHood.com, a website aimed at students using VS
The point? Microsoft wants kids to use their stuff and like it. They want kids to find out how easy it is. C# is easy. But then I've also taken 3 Java courses, so picking up C# was easy.
Don't knock Waterloo too badly. There was a time when I would sell my soul to go there. (I'm not there now). But Microsoft isn't doing anything different. They're just more direct. Most employers that I've been told about want Microsoft knowledge. Waterloo is doing what most universities say they are doing to their grads.
Making their grads marketable.
Pad're, I'm sure when the Medicis contributed to U. Pisa they financed the "Sermon on the Mount" lectures. I don't think so ... but a 'natural products' course more like it.
>My collegues and I currently fill waterbottles from the taps in the bathrooms, and we're just waiting for some nasty disease to ripple through.
Write a letter to your dean explaining that you plan to write the newspaper should you become sick from being forced to drink the water in that unsanitary mannner.
Next time you have the shits send them a bill for any costs you incurr (immodium, pepto-bismol, whatever).
When they refuse to pay up, phone up the newspaper and explain to them the water at the University may be making people sick. It'd be good if you can get your friends to do the same when they're sick.
The moment there's a story in the newspaper (and there will be -- water quality scares always make great headlines) about the University's water making students sick and the University refusing to pay up for medical bills, the health inspector will probably tell them to turn off the water to the bathrooms until its fully tested (including the dean's) and you watch, they'll re-install the fountains faster than you can imagine.
Because, seriously, no water fountains is seriously not right. I've been in virtual sweatshops and even they have water fountains. I'm surprised it isn't a law.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
...another garbage course.
When all else fails, run.
... I do wish colleges did _offer_ (not force you to take) something in the way of formal schooling in a particular proprietary technology.
Here's the beef -- my company is planning on migrating to Oracle sometime in the next 2 years, and they want me to slowly assume the position of DBA (after the consultants finish porting it over from 80s RDBMS technology). I've been able to pick up some basic stuff (HTML, JS, VBScript) just by reading books, but I've always learn best by having a mentor around to bounce ideas off of. College was a boon in this respect -- most of my hands-on programming courses in college (TurboPascal 7.0, Lisp) taught me a lot because I was able to ask the teacher why certain techniques were better than others.
That being said: since I've graduated, the only technical schooling I've had has been in those week-long certification courses my employers send me to. And while I do learn something, there's simply not enough time for me to absorb (and retain) it all. As such, I wish there was something in the way of a semester-long course that I could take in Oracle, SQL Server, even Linux........ I simply work better when I have a person who I can bounce ideas off of.
Did any of you try C# ?
It's the best from C and the best from VB in one cute package. It's fast and easy to learn as VB yet as powerful and elegant as C++. That's why they target engineers : easy and powerful. This is big and it's aimed directly at Java. Java is being shot at with this thing. They can duck, they can run. They can shoot back. But they better do something fast because when Microsoft shoot they fire more than one bullet just to be sure
-Linux is SO fast it does an infinite loop in 5 seconds.
I must try to correct some misconceptions somewhere.
1.) We don't have a Math Department, we have a Math Faculty.
2.) CS is a department in the above faculty.
3.) E&CE = Electrical and Computer Engineering, and is not a CS course.
4.) E&CE 150 is one intro course in one of 3 programs that involve computers (CS, Soft Eng, and ECE, 4 if you count Systems Design).
5.) All higher level courses still revolve around C++.
The Waterloo-developed engine will enable mathematicians to enter and compute complex formulas using pen-based input.
So I have my Matlab, my Maple, my LaTeX, all combined into giant ball of code, with an even bigger price tag. Goodie.
It affects a student indirectly even if not directly. The "spirit" of the E&CE department may have changed irrevocably today.
:-)
I don't think there's been a CS class since UW started that didn't have some screwiness. I went through the first CS130 as Java instead of Pascal. We also had things moved around with CS246, and ended up with a course that had about 5 weeks of material. It's part of the process of education, albeit one that they aren't very forthcoming about.
If you're interested in signing onto the letter that will be drafted to the CS department, drop me a line.
my user id is raewasch, and I go to the same school as you. you can figure out my email.
-Rob
-Rob Ewaschuk
Perhaps university ratings should include a rating of the university's academic independence, and a list of sponsors, as is done politicians?
I believe I read somewhere that this curriculum change will occur fall of 2003, which means that this year's students will still be on the old curriculum.
School is to teach you how to think, how to learn. How many people spend the rest of their life coding in the same language they coded in, in college. When I went to school pascal was the main teaching language, it's been ages since I wrote in pascal. But they taught me learn one language inside-out, then learning other languages will be simple and they were right. C# is a modern language representive of the current trend so not students learning inside-out will be prepared to work in any language in the real world.
Apple worked hard to SELL their products to the school for students to USE. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Apple ever gave money to a school to mandate that students study Apple-proprietary technology. If they did, I'll slam them just as hard.
http://wwwtor.activate.net/microsoft/Aug14-02/incl ude/forms/proceed.htm
...that's because no one wants to corrupt young minds with their proprietary, inferior academic and development tools. If you don't believe that they are inferior, just try using their c++ compiler for classes that use inheritance and/or polymorphism. Getting it to work is more or less a crapshoot. [Granted, gcc 2.x has problems too, but that's what 3.x is for.]
And, for the record, the reason Sun does so well in academia is that they purposely avoid locking people into using their products through proprietary-isms. Profesionals in academia don't take to well to that kind of bullying, and they tend to be computer-literate enough to depoly OSS.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Berlin, Ontario was renamed Kitchener in 1917, during World War I; Kitchener was a British General. Waterloo, Ontario was named in honour of Napoleon's defeat.
MA (Waterloo, 1996), and not happy about my alma mater doing this.
Ok, now seriously people, pay attention to the article. The class in question is a pre-university programming course. Intended to help those students who have never programmed before catch up.
Under curriculum integration, first-choice applicants to UW's E&CE program will be allowed to take a new pre-university programming course in C#, E&CE 050. Completion of this course will be mandatory for students entering the E&CE program. C# is a new programming language developed by Microsoft.
It's understandably confusing in the article I suppose, since the author clearly isn't an Eng student and is in no position to really know (or care about) the curriculum. But most students will never take this course, it's mandatory that the material be understood and credit granted, but most students will demonstrate their knowledge and not care.
And in case you still protest, does anyone really think C++ is a better introductory language than C#? Hell, Turbo Basic would be an improvement!
Back in my college days, my CS professors stressed understanding of the concept over understanding of the language. As long as the concepts are reinforced I don't have a problem with implementing them in C#.
I do, however, have a problem with this quote from the article:
Kyriakis said, "We believe we should create ties between the business community and the academic community to ensure that innovation happens into the future."
What does the business community have to do with innovation? Most innovation in this country comes from academia. The biotech industry was built around university research, most of the computer industry from "Stanford University Networks" (SUN) to Cisco had their foundations in academia. The innovation usually flows from academia to the business sector...not the other way around.
Public sector businesses are great at refining the technologies for commercial sale and use, but when it comes to truly groundbreaking work...they stink at it. Research for research's sake costs lots of money and no corporation wants those costs to smack the bottom line.
I've got a suggestion for the people in Redmond. If you want to give "innovation" to academia publish the source code to Microsoft products for academic study.
-ted
This isn't news. Maybe it's still worth talking about. But let me paint you a picture from 15 years ago at my university.
CS graphics labs full of SGI, NeXT, and Sun workstations. Library word processing labs full of Apple hardware and Microsoft software with tutorials and manuals to encourage use. Another word processing lab full of IBM hardware with Big Blue banners. Students trained on proprietary software (Adobe, Microsoft, Corel), corporate posters polastered on the walls.
Okay, so this C# course is mandatory and in -theory- you could avoid all the other corporate influences. Yeah, in theory, but almost never in practice. And from looking at resumes, I know that Java(TM) has worked its way into mandatory paths of education recently. And let's not even get into the Maya, 3DS, Photoshop, and AutoCad stuff that goes on.
So let's keep talking about the downside of this trend, but as fun as it is to hate Microsoft, let's acknowledge that this practice wasn't started by them and they're not the only ones playing the game today.
It doesn't matter how current your programming language is. If you're using a toy to demonstrate concepts when a full blown implementation is just as available, that's where things get ugly.
Programming languages are not much of an issue to me nowadays. All of the languages that have seriously caught on (apart from Basic) have their structure ripped from C/C++. You can look at PERL and find bits of Bash and awk, but still.
How long does it take to learn a new programming language, and its syntax? Not *incredibly* long. It takes longer to learn the syntax, and find out about all the specialized functions that each one has built into it.
Being a compsci student, programming languages should be fairly simple to pick up (after C++, give a few weeks to learn how to do things equivalently). I wish we'd get more time learning how to do things (Makefiles etc) than focus on 10 different ways to say "Hello world"
I'd much rather take two semesters of a class that does something real (like tweak with linux, or write a C compiler) than one semester of something that won't be useful in the real world (tweaking NACHOS, or a COOL compiler).
It's times like that I wonder what *really* goes into getting a diploma.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
I can't wait to see what sort of scary EULA madness will eventually and inevitably be shrinkwrapped over the University of Waterloo's degrees. Just imagine the happy faces at graduation as they peel back the shrinkwrap on their degrees. And when MS move to a new licensing model, will all the version 1.0 University of Waterloo degrees be de-activated unless graduates pay a re-activation fee? The mind boggles.
Da Blog
"Universities should be about education,"
Yes in a ideal world it should be, but post HS education is all about money period. The fact that people get an education is just a byproduct of a business transaction.
"Anyhow, it seems to me a horrible idea to set this sort of prescident"
How about the deals college make with Credit Card and Long distance companies? You do know there are kickbacks for those little booths setup on campus? You also do know that most students get in way over their head in debt and that colleges and the CC companies know the parents will bail them out? Tell me that's not wrong. Did you also know colleges are scrambling to recover costs because students are bypassing the schools highly profitable phone service by using their cell phones. Bet you didn't know that most colleges either in the phone company business or get kickbacks from the local phone company. I am not even going to go into the deals which decide which textbooks you get and how much you will pay(get raped) for them.
"Higher Ed" sold its soul for money long ago.
BTW I also happen to be more than a little bitter about the spiraling cost of education. All I can say is support your local community college.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Vasiga saves the day! :)
Well, I guess other ppl helped, too.
The local community college here uses almost pure MS crap in teaching CS. Not just specific skills, either, but general computer science.
I intend to appeal to the chairperson of the department to support me in setting up free(or very low cost) "workshops" for students(and faculty if they're interested) on other programming languages and environments. We have a Linux lab, but it typically goes unused since none of the faculty know enough to teach the students how to use it.
The key is to change that. Spread thw word that there are alternatives.
Wasn't it New Berlin?
Hey, that's my school they're fucking with. Bleh.
Need Mercedes parts ?
I'm very disappointed in UW for this. As a UW Alumni (albeit math), my pledges are now history.
pi=sigma{n:0-infinity}[(1/16)^n][(4/(8n+1))-(2/(8n +4))-(1/ (8n+5))-(1/(8n+6))]
How dare they teach computer science with a M$ language like C#! Waterloo sold out to M$! They should use Java like everybody else. That's not corporate.
oh wait... nevermind.
Back in the early 1980's, there was a change in the accreditation rules which stated that a College or University could not teach a specific computer language and remain accredited.
The result was a lot of courses, like "Data structures using C++" and "Business programming with FORTRAN", rather than specific language courses, because computer languages were no longer allowed to be an ends in themselves: the accreditation committees had seen the writing on the wall that days of "COBOL is forever" would son be over.
It's interesting to see that the U of Waterloo is endorsing a pure language course as a program entry requirement; I would not like to be standing near the fan when the accreditation committee gets a hold of this (though I'm not adverse to turning the fan on by telling them).
If I were a student currently at, or considering entering, the U of Waterloo, I would be rather worried that I would not be able to go on to a graduate degree from Stanford, MIT, CIT, Berkeley, etc., because the University from which I received my undergraduate degree was not accredited.
I would be particularly concerned if this was my third or second year, or even my first, if I turned down other offers to attend there instead.
-- Terry
And it doesn't seem to have cause any permanent brain damage, even with that stupid WIDJET system.
I can't get too worried about this. What semi cluefull Math/CS student would take C# seriously?
Besides, there's a PDP 11/45 running UNIX on the sixth floor of the math building in a case with a sign saying "in case of emergency break glass".
Need Mercedes parts ?
Are you slashbots sure other companies haven't tried things like this before? Don't you find it funny that a lot of the colleges in that Google search have gotten funding and done collaborative work with Sun Microsystems and -- strange! -- some of their courses are taught in Java?
Do you really, really think other companies don't do this? Do you seriously think it's bad just because it was Microsoft and C#, and not Allegro and Common Lisp?
And I defy any of you to tell me why it should matter that some students are taught C# as their introductory programming courses, whilst others are taught Java, C++, or C. They're supposed to be learning the fundamentals of programming, not learning how to write a fuckin' application. Why the fuck does it matter what language a college finds this easiest to teach in?
Grow up, people.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
I thought it was "Microsoft Infests in the University of Waterloo".
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This is almost true. A real CS department does teach at a deeper level than the language, but language also shapes how you can think. Only an idiot or a masochist would teach recursion in basic, or OOP in prolog, or lambda-calculas in Java, or manual memory management in Lisp. Any decent education will show all fundamental designs (though not all combinations). This should include functional/procedural/OOP/rule-based as well as static/dynamic/weak typing etc. Once they've introduced this, each course should use the best language for it (e.g. AI in Lisp, Kernels in C). They should probably even teach the skill of choosing a language for a given project.
Now, there is still the question of what language to teach first. The first language taught will set up patterns that are rather hard to break. I think Dijkstra made a comment about basic.... I started with Hypertalk (don't ask why) and I never had trouble with event-based programming. This is not a coincidence. What language to start with is an important decision, and should be made on the language's merits -- not corporate contributions.
Now, C# may actually be a good choice. Many schools use C, which is awfully difficult on beginners, and many use Java, which IMO beats in OOP the wrong way. I might start a class in PERL, but I would have to be careful to stress readability. I would look for a procedural language with some OOP and functional capabilities, and a generally sane design. C# may be this. I would also want something with some history behind it, a user community, and developement tools I really trusted. C# IMO fails here, but these aren't the most vital charactoristics.
So what languages they teach does matter, and what language they start with does matter, though they certainly should teach well beyond that. It also matters whether they show their students to make choices on a technical basis or a marketing/bribery basis. It probably doesn't matter as much as it looks like at first glance, though.
Now if UWaterloo starts publishing research papers on how reliable and secure WinXP is, then we'll know they were up to something.
Sig:Why copyright isn't a fundamental human right
Cisco paid my highschool a million dollars and gave them shitloads of hardware to teach cisco classes and they've done the same for several junior colleges and schools all over, you don't see anyone complaining about that.
Whoah, that's only a little tiny microscopic part of the problem. Consider a University that does not only ask students to be high profile and high pocketed and high IQ, but also MANDATES them to _BUY_ MS OFFICE and to intall it in the students personal computers (bough by them of course).
There should be plenty of universities, the one that I know is Harvard. You either install XP and MS Office or you can choose yourself another university (a lossers one or what?)...
Take a look at the computer requirements and be enjoy! (warining: the requirements are sent to the students as MS Word Attachments, so you must have office to look at them).
Linxu evangelization is fine, but when you have the inquisition at universities, what good is the Cult of Linux??? They'll just hung or burn you if you don't pledge guilty of wizardry!
unfinished: (adj.)
Yes you certainly can "test out" of this course, or at least you could back in September 2000. I should have done so when I had the chance, but I was under the naïve impression that they would be teaching new and interesting stuff.
In reality, for someone who has high school and/or independent programming experience, it's a bird course.
Lots of talk in here so far about this is good/bad for Education so I'd like to make another point.
I looked at the numbers in the MS press release and thought: $10 spread over 5 years and across all the universities in the country? How lame? $2.3M for this deal ($7.7M left for the remaining 4 years).
Ten million dollars is equivilant to what, perhaps 4 seconds worth of profit from Microsoft? Consider that Microsoft proper currently sits on $40 billion in cash. If they where taxes 30% on that money. $2.3 million would be due in about 2 hours. This doesn't even get in to their temendous cash flow.
Waterloo isn't just a Microsoft whore, it's a damed cheap one at that. I can understand selling out for the money, but they should have at least demanded $50M per year.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
And at an Ivy League school you work real hard also, and you come out with the same work hard all the time attitude.
- adam
The Ivies recruit (well they don't "recruit" per se, more like "harvest") from the top high school all over the US.
- adam
In earlier years, the language CS students usually programmed in first was Pascal.* Java has now largely supplanted that, probably because it's freely available, easy to get impressive-looking results with (due to the standard GUI toolkits included with it), and stands a better chance of being relevant. Sun may have had a hand in promoting Java for academic use, too.
So Microsoft's trying to even the score...hopefully, most schools will look at C# and decide "no, we already teach Java, how is this any different?" Of course, if M$ waves cash in their faces, all bets are off...
* - At least, this was the case in the late 80's, when I went through the CS curriculum at UCSB. Lower-division CS classes tended to use Pascal; upper-division ones used C. They've since switched to Java in lower-division courses.
Be who you are...and be it in style!
I've got a suggestion for the people in Redmond. If you want to give "innovation" to academia publish the source code to Microsoft products for academic study.
like they already do? anyone at a decent college can get access to the source for microsoft products..
the University of Washington, probably has the tightest relationship with Microsoft than any other school
nope; harvard
Your mother implements multi-vendor protocols without synergy
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Apple ever gave money to a school to mandate that students study Apple-proprietary technology.
Giving schools free computers and bribing faculty and staff with cheap/free computers for personal use accomplishes the same thing.. Apple is after all a hardware company.
Well if you do in fact go there, you'd know that they didn't sell out their curriculum to microsoft, they just changed 1 class that was already mandatory and taught in c++ to c#.
/. Everyone knows going into a program at Waterloo that they will mostly likely have an easy chance at getting at job at MS.
Switching schools is hardly a reasonable option for someone that's already here, though I would consider it if it happened in CS and not just CompEng.
No you wouldn't.. you're just talking a big game because this is
We are the Borg
Resistance is futile
You will be educated
Cheers
Stor
"Yeah well there's a lot of stuff that should be, but isn't"
mod parent up!
Your mother implements multi-vendor protocols without synergy
I'm really surprised that UW went for this; I realize it's a lot of money, but UW has been known for being pretty active in the Open Source community.
It will be interesting to see how this develops, for not only UW, but other universities as well...
Hans
Is can we teach student proprietary languages/systems or not? If we throw out C#, we should also throw out Oracle, Java, Access, etc. So, we have students who don't know the tools most companies use. Tough call.
Read reviews of shopping cart software
This new course can be looked at from both perspectives. C# is state-of-the-art, easy to use (it's case-insensitive just like VB!), has a great support organization behind it, and will undoubtedly achieve good market penetration. On the other hand, it's very new, still has flaws, has security holes, and is generally not quite ready for prime time. Since these students are the ones who will be coding the next generation of languages (face it, a lot of them will probably end up at MS), it's better that they should be familiar with what's out there now, and what's wrong with it.
On the other hand, I'm now a six-year Java vet, and I have no intention of switching...
you will want to read these results
Your mother implements multi-vendor protocols without synergy
This is pretty much why after getting my master's in CS (not from UW) I started to study pure math almost exclusively as the graduate studies for my CS PhD (math will be my 2nd major). Math still has some integrity and class left and in my opinion it has been much more useful (and also more challenging, you have to work really hard at graduate-level math) than most CS courses.
The reason is of course that my interests lie in signal processing, data compression, virtual reality and the like (i.e. math-heavy CS). Knowing math will make getting through CS theory much easier and you can bet that math skills will be noted (math = pure problem solving). The added bonus is that the skills won't age as fast as the what-ever-is-in-fashion-in-the-industry-type CS skills they teach you nowadays. I know a lot of CS-types who would rather ditch math, but imo most math courses are flunked because of laziness not inability. Seems that hobbyist coders pass CS too easily because they've practised before and don't have the patience to really study math because it requires more work. You can also see this effect when trying to teach self-taught C/C++ programmers in scheme. Yes, you may really have to spend two whole days going through the week's homework excercises in math (as opposed to the usual 15-45 minutes in CS).
If I'd start my studies again, I'd choose math as major and do a lot of CS studies. Seems the general trend is that the requirements (and amount of theory) in CS courses have gone way down after the number of students admitted has sky-rocketed in the last few years and the focus of the courses has become much more industry oriented. I also hear that a lot of math graduates get work in the IT sector, and I'm not surprised. They used to become math teachers, but now there's a shortage of teachers, because almost everyone goes to work in the IT sector.
Compulsory Microsoft courses requiring acceptance of viral Microsoft 'shared source' licensing to basically 'salt the earth' and prevent OSS from ever growing any more.
It is a fact that acceptance of Microsoft's 'Shared Source' involves legal admissions of being privy to Microsoft IP, and also legal admissions that you have no rights to any of it. For that matter, there was something else in there blocking you from bringing suit against Microsoft over patents.
Any compulsory Microsoft programming language course could easily be made to require reference to 'Shared Source' to pass the course- what do you think the course materials would be? This is a missing step- but so easy to implement, given the existence of the viral Shared Source licensing, and the existence of schools in which you MUST take a Microsoft programming language course (presumably for certain majors).
It just falls into place- beautiful, beautiful strategy if you look at it strictly as warfare. If you look at it in terms of creating a society that's functional, then no- you are creating a society filled with booby-trapped coders, who can be taken out of action at any time by Microsoft.
Any college taking such a path would turn out EXCLUSIVELY coders who were legally vulnerable to any Microsoft action. They would be on record as having agreed that they had seen and worked with Microsoft IP, and that this IP was not theirs to keep. This is a setup for directed lawsuits to shut down any OSS project deemed threatening, because the burden of proof would be on the OSS project to prove that it was not infringing proprietary Microsoft IP, even though it was using coders that had made formal legal admissions that they had seen and worked with such IP, and knew it wasn't theirs to keep.
I really fail to see how this isn't a problem. It's not about 'mindshare' at all, it's about leveraging Microsoft's capability to get in a position where ALL CODERS (from a given school) are tainted with the Microsoft version of viral licensing, which equates to a permanent legal timebomb.
That is too high a price to pay just to have the pleasure of playing 'free market capital' with education, and being given money. People seem to have forgotten that there are IP concerns that could arise from this sort of thing. It is a very deadly threat, perhaps the only thing that could genuinely cripple OSS itself (a widespread condition of guilty-unless-expensively-proven-innocent w.r.t. software) and I don't feel I am underestimating Microsoft when I say that this threat is being wielded with full awareness and attention.
Microsoft has been involved with the Universities here in waterloo, Ont (i live here i know) they have been coming in and speaking to students every year recruting actively with UW help. Bill has been coming in and taking the top 10% every year since probably the early 90's. This is not a big leap for them...
That about 20 years back had the lab full of IBM 5100 native APL machines instead of the much more successful and usable Apple computers? Does history repeat?
I was a freshman at UW in 1981. Back then it was IBM playing these games. And they've always had the idea that you take what they tell you to take.
/tmp drive to preserve space in your home directory. Ocassionally if you wanted to keep a compiled output you would just mv /tmp/output /home/myname. mv had a bug where it forgot to adjust quota usage. If you then deleted this file from your home directory, it would add space to your home directory quota that had come from the /tmp directory! Many of us had megabytes of storage once this was discovered.
/tmp that when he deleted it from his home directory, his quota wrapped to zero. Now he had an account where his home directory was frozen like ice and he was too afraid of confessing what he had done to ask the sysadmin to fix it.
I travel 3000Km across Canada to go to the school regarded as having the best math/CS program and when I get there I discover that the CS faculity has been pillaged by the private sector, so the new rules are that first and second year CS majors can only take ONE course in computer science each term and that for that ONE course each term there is ONE choice. First year: FORTRAN and COBOL. Second year: 6809 assembly language and an introduction to data structures.
Back then Ontario had grade 13, which meant they often had a computer credit on their high school transcript. None of us from out of province had this credit. If you had this credit, you could elect to take Pascal instead of FORTRAN (but the problem assignments were the same). It cost the university an extra $10 a student/term in extra computer time.
The WIDJET terminal rooms we were given were the worst computing environment I've ever encountered. Waterloo Interactive Direct Job Entry Terminals. Ugh! A complete waste of phosphorous, although it did save trees.
IIRC there were four IBM mainframes clustered together in the big Red Room. The terminals were handled by minicomputers which gathered the jobs together and submitted them to the IBM cluster.
Some of the terminal rooms were worse than others. As a student you were given roughly 100K of storage area for your work in progress. In order to get a directory listing of the files you owned, you had to submit a job. This meant you had to sit there with your "give me a directory listing" job in the job queue. On any given night you could be stuck in the job queue for five to ten minutes. Then you had to submit a job to call up the desired file to edit. Another five to ten minutes. You couldn't do anything else on the terminal while you waited. Unless you were foolish: doing anything else cancelled the job you were waiting for!
Finally, you would submit you program to run. Upper year students had priority over freshmen. Sometimes you would submit a job that would start at queue position 7. Half an hour later you might be at queue position 30. You can't work on another assignment while you sit there. That would cancel your run job. Other people are lined up at the door waiting for a terminal, but the terminals never come free because the whole room is stuck in the run queue, and no one is getting anything done.
For one of my statistics courses I had the joy of using the IBM PC room. Brand spanking new 4.77MHz machines. We did our coursework for that course in APL in the greek/geek APL character set. I learned APL inside out in my highschool days so this was one course I enjoyed.
The IBM PCs were so unreliable that at any given time 25% of the systems would be unresponsive. You'd be standing there waiting for a system and one out of every four systems would be inoperative.
In an evil moment I discovered a way to reserve myself a keyboard. Take two systems set up back to back and reverse the keyboards. People would come up to the system, press a key see nothing on the screen. Then they would press CAPS lock and the keyboard light would toggle on and off. Obviously a dead system. Nothing to see here, move along! Too many hours at queue position 30 in that other terminal room, my survival instincts had taken over.
The 6809 room was mildly redeeming. They were crashed a lot, almost as much as the IBM PCs. But if you did get a system that worked, you could actually use your time well. We used a 6809 assembler known as WSL (Waterloo Systems Language). WSL was the most modern and well structured language I learned at Waterloo. It was an assembler where you could right proper block structured code with a while/if/then syntax. I think this was an offshoot of the Waterloo Systems Group that eventually spun off the excellent Watcom C/C++ compiler.
The only way to get a CS education at Waterloo at that time was to get a COOP assignment to the WSG. There you would meet real CS professors who would teach you real material like how to unroll conceptually nested iterators either forward or backwards.
The other nice thing about the 6809 terminals were all the bugs in the file system. You had very little storage for your own programs. Roughly 100K. Sometimes it was hard to save all your work for just one assignment there. If you wanted to keep your old assignments for reference, tough luck. It became common practice to compile your programs to the
I explained this trick to a roommate of mine and went wild with it. He created such a huge file on
The non geek faction at Waterloo was very small at the time. The math/CS dept. had 4000 undergrads, engineering was next, then science, then the arts the professional schools. Some of the non geek departments were so small they got stuck in cubbyholes. For example, the kinners and wreckers (Kinnesiology and Recreation) shared the fifth floor of the math building with the pure math dept.
There was this strange geek ordor that hung around campus and even pervaded the arts faculties. Over in the English dept. they had a required course in CS which Waterloo was teaching in PL/C of all god forsaken languages. One of the best jobs on campus was being the TA camped out in the corner of the PL/C terminal room. Half the females on campus were all in that one room, and they all needed help. Hmmm, perhaps there was a method to the cirriculum selection at Waterloo after all.
In my residence the students in Systems Design Engineering and Physics had access to better CS instruction and better CS systems than those of us majoring in CS. At that time you needed a 92% graduating average from high school just to apply to Systems Design. Where I went to high school I had an English lit teacher who said he had given out one grade higher than 90% in the last ten years. The school system in Ontario had suffered from massive grade inflation in the grade 13 school year so that Ontario students could get all the scholarships according to these insane admission requirements. The guy who got the 90% grade at my highschool graduated Summa Cum Laude from Harvard in world literature, but he wasn't smart enough to be admitted to many of the programs at Waterloo.
The other language I encountered at UW was Snobol, I think for one assignment in the second year introduction to structured programming. This was the one time Waterloo exposed me to something that really set me back. I didn't know what to make of Snobol. It had this weird PL/1-like puffy pastry syntax, yet under the hood it had this powerful string matching facility that reminded me a bit of APL's powerful array primitives. This was the first time I used a language that encouraged you to code only for the cases at hand. Your patterns weren't necessarily foolproof, but they worked for the cases the assignment required. It was my first exposure to a Perl-like environment.
One language they wouldn't teach at Waterloo at that time was C. I think some senior courses used C, but they didn't teach C even for those courses. Even at that time, if you met a person who impressed you as a lean mean programming machine, nine times out of ten they did their serious programming in C.
In second year I obtained a C compiler for my 26 pound Osborne. It came from Software Toolworks in a zip lock baggy. By the end of second year I was spending half my time programming in C on my Osborne at home, and half my time in the arcade. Much later I explained the consequences of this set of choices to my family this way: the arcade was the only place on campus where talent was rewarded with a good result.
On one assignment intended to teach programming efficiency I came up with a superior algorithmic solution. Under interpereted Pascal on a 2MHz class machine, my program ran in 10 seconds, of which 7 seconds was spent by the program listing the results to the console. The class average run time was 30 MINUTES for the brute force algorithm (coded according to the lecture's efficiency guidelines). I got a 6 out of 10 for inefficiency. In Pascal I had written a for loop where the end value was a complex expression. In Pascal the end value is evaluated once and then pushed onto the loop stack. The TA didn't know the difference between Pascal and C so he marked me down for writing a complex expression that was evaluated each time through the loop. Then he marked me down another point for multiplying the same two integers in two different expressions (and not manually creating creating a temporary variable to save an entire machine instruction). Of course, if I made that change my program ran slower due to interpretation overhead. I lost 40% of my grade for four different complaints, every one of which slowed my program down! And I didn't even get a point back for the algorithm two orders of magnitude supperior to the brute force solution. I appealed this injustice to the arcade, which awarded me with a high score for the week.
Back then IBM was the evil beyond evil. Waterloo had the same kind of relationship with IBM that they are forming with Microsoft now. And IBM had the same vision (and respect) for the minds of the future: whatever we pour in there they'll be stuck with forever. Only I think they got $5 million in kind from IBM in the form of vastly overpriced IBM equipment. And yes, it had a direct impact on Waterloo's CS cirriculum. The good news, in the case of IBM versus the free world, is that IBM was soon knocked off their arrogant throne.
Now let's step back and look at C# versus C++.
My understanding of C# is that it's a C/C++ like syntax on top of the CLR and that the CLR is a model in same general family as Visual Basic and Perl and Python and Java (to some degree): values are typed dynamically, and statically enforced type declarations are optional to the programmer. I could be all wet. I formed this impression by listening to TechNetCast archives, which is all the depth I want on C#.
It makes my job easier here that Dijkstra, sadly, was in the news this week. Try to imagine what Dijkstra would have to say about the CLR as an introduction to programming.
Many people seem to think that an introductory course has succeeded if the students can create a program, knows how to execute the program, and can debug it to the extent that it often produces a correct output. Students exposed to computers in this context come away with a runtime centric view of the programming process. If only they had more time to trace their values through the helpful and forgiving runtime, their programs would be correct more often.
This is not the lesson I would choose to teach first, and most definitely not at a university with pretensions to serious education.
There is another view of programming that what matters is the text of the program. That the text of the program has a significance far beyond the runtime nature of the code. That you refine your programming skills by learning to structure the text of your program until it convinces you of its logical integrity, to the extent that your mental model of the problem itself is correct. (If you have real talent, the process of writing the program text will debug your mental model long before you run your code for the first time.)
We often forget that the text of a program represents one instance of a larger conceptual family of programs. In a language such as BASIC the text to runtime correspondence is so dominant you can't help but forget this.
Languages with the concept of a type hierarchy and object derivation are a better introduction to programming because the idea that a program text belongs to a family of related programs is explicit in that construct.
Languages which also feature static polymorphism (Ada generics, C++ templates) are explicitly oriented toward the program text as being more fundamental than the program runtime.
At this point in my programming career manifest types don't seem any different to me than manifest constants. The real types that algorithms manipulate are sequences, arrays, and associative arrays, yet many languages still persist in having a notion of declared types which is directly equivalent to the language's runtime type layout. The CLR makes it explicit that the syntax of the language is just a different face on exactly the same runtime type model. What a strange way to introduce polymorphism to new programmers: surface syntax as a polymorphism on runtime object representation.
For all the things you can say about C++, it has at least the virtue that it makes explicit all the features of programming where the text of the program is of paramount importance.
It's hard for me to be objective, after 15 years of living with it, about the syntactic contortions of C++ and its split personality as a C impostor.
For the most part, the syntax is not so bad that you can't cut and paste from working code most of the bits and pieces required to assemble something of your own. I can write advanced HTML verbatim, but for CSS I've never managed to rise above grab, paste, and mutute. The first 30 lines of every Perl program I write I have to try three variations for the syntax of each construct until my eye for line noise returns to me.
There are a couple of areas where the syntax of C++ stoops to the unforgivable and these all have to do with irregular composition. Nesting a template type into a template can blow off your leg with the >> parsing anomoly. There is absolutely nothing worse you can do with a beginnning programmer than reward their first courageous foray into composition with a parse error from left field.
The syntax of a template function declared within the class scope is different than when the same function is declared outside of class scope, for reasons that take a long time to master. (The type of the function return is likely to be in scope in one context, out of scope in the other, requiring Byzantine changes to your function prototype declaration.)
In my view this is the tragic flaw in C++ as a teaching language. The syntax nests differently than the language semantics. The scope of the return value for a function should be a function of the scope of the function name, but it isn't because in the PARSE of the declaration the subordinate term happens to come first. You are trying to teach the principles of semantic nesting, but every time the student becomes brave enough to reform their syntactic structure basis on these insights, the syntax blows up horribly.
I think C++ can be an excellent teaching language if you have a mentor who can help you past the punishments you don't deserve before your nerve collapses.
The other point I should mention here, for people who had an impression of C++ once upon a time, is that modern C++ is not your father's C++. Now that the standard library is complete and fully integrated with the philosophy of the language and its type system, there is no difficulty teaching C++ at a level of abstraction suitable for geeky neophytes. Modern C++ is entirely unlike C and much the better for it.
Third on my list for C++ is the support environment, and by this I primarily mean the quality of the diagnostics that come from the compiler when your brave attempts to nest one working structure into another working structure fall flat. To put it bluntly, it horrifies me that a language with the complexity of C++ did not admit the quality of the diagnostics into consideration during the standardization process.
Yet C++ is not uniquely to blame here. Wouldn't it be cool if someone would sit down and classify all the kinds of mistakes that programmers make in translating their often imperfect mental model into working code, define a standard of acceptable diagnostics in all such cases, and then work backward toward a surface syntax which ensures that the compiler can achieve those diagnotics standards? (I think I was told that this was how PL/C became the supreme mess of all time and perhaps poisoned this well for all time.)
But in real languages, 90% of the mistakes one commonly makes are artifacts of the way the language has been structured.
More to the shame of the C++ community is that few (if any) C++ compilers see fit to offer a diagnostic listing in which the compiler identifies the fully qualified entity to which it binds each variable, function, and operator (or the selection procedure it used to admit or reject the available search scopes).
Suggesting that Turbo Basic would be an improvement over teaching C++ is like suggesting that the New Math was so badly flawed students would have been better off practicing sales tax calculations.
My opinion is that C++ contains more deep wisdom about the whole of the practice of programming than any other pair of langauges combined. The languages that set out to be languages universally disappoint me. In that family I would lump FORTRAN, COBOL, Pascal, PL/C, BASIC, Java, C#, and Python (my choice from this group when all I want is a language). The other family, languages with an internal vision I would lump LISP, APL, Snobol, Perl, Ruby, Prolog/Haskell/Scheme, and C++. These are the languages that can actually change the way you think. C++ stands out among this group as the language that least tries to simplify the world around it. All the other languages in this group have a strangely hypnotic character (even Snobol which I primarily included as an honour to its paternity).
As a calorie free course credit, judged either by the pantheon of languages or the nature of the institution, one could do a lot worse than C#.
In my mind the repugnance of this development has less to do with its affiliation to the Evil Empire Mark II (this too shall pass) than with the very real possibility that one could emerge from the University of Waterloo, after four years of study, and still have no idea what an intellectual calorie tastes like.
Ah memories....My first CS class used Waterloo Pascal on some big ugly IBM mainframe that had spare CPU cycles so they dumped us poor freshmen onto it....It had such a wonderful editor too...WYLBUR.
Maybe we'll see Waterloo C#....
Computer Science programs at accredited universities are accredited through the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, Inc. (ABET), specifically though the Computing Accreditation Commission (CAC).
i te .html
~ csab
The ABET CAC web site is located at:
http://www.abet.org/cac1.html
Here is the accredidation criteria:
http://www.abet.org/criteria_cac.html
Here is the current list of accredited Universities:
http://www.abet.org/accredited_programs/CACWebs
Please note that the University of Waterloo is absent, but the University of California at Berkeley and Washington State University are both present.
If your College or University is not on this list, expect to have to take additional classes in order to be admitted to graduate degree programs at anywhere that *is* on the list.
See also:
http://www.acm.org/education/
http://csab.org/
Have a nice day.
-- Terry
but WinForms and ADO are the only things not submitted to ECMA
.NET framework has been submitted.
I've mentioned this before, but I'm always happy to squelch misinformation, so I'll repeat. The only things that have been submitted to the ECMA are C# and the CLI. The rest is not. Let me say that again. No part of the
A University can not require a specific computer language and remain accredited. Those are the rules.
Requiring C# (or *any other computer language course*) will endanger a University's accreditation.
A Computer Science program is supposed to teach Computer Science. If you want to learn a computer language out of that context, you might as well go to a trade school or enroll in a vocational ng if it's a training program.
By requiring a course in a particular computer language, the U of Waterloo is damaging itself.
I don't give a flying XXXX *whose* computer language it is, or if the thing is public domain.
-- Terry
But UW math girls kick ass.
UW has the hottest CS girls. Period.
My list of multiplayer
You'd have to be terminally thick to think stock options and other indirect employee benefits from Microsoft were worth the paper they're written on, in the long run.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
In a year two CS class, Applications Programming (an introduction course to APIs and whatnots), we have been offered "educational" registration keys to SQL2000, WinXP and VB .Net. Apparently these keys are for life (I haven't tested this yet), but only for non-profit use. We are given access to the software via borrowing the 8 cd set over night, to freely burn. Now, that's quite a package for free *cough* when the course costs (US)$300.
Sig:Get Pierced Before Lunch Time
So... Modula-3 is not relevant because you don't like it, but Pascal is?
Admittedly, gpc exists but gm3c doesn't. Yet.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
He could fund a space elevator. USD$5-10G, cheaper than a bridge, bargain price and roughly 10% of Microsoft's current cash reserves.
I was going to say `no strings attached,' because nobody would be stupid enough to use Microsoft software to stabilise something that big (and therefore dangerous), but then I thought (1) sez who? they run Navy ships on it; and (2) the thing's just a great big carbon string anyway... a superstring, sort of.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Because the 90% that you so blindly look at is only on the desktop side of the equation. You're not taking into consideration development on embedded CPUs, minicomputers, mainframes or larger data clusters, all of which will mostly run some *NIX variant or other. Dedicating an entire entry level course to a language that is totally 100% only on a singular platform (Windows on Intel CPUs) is downright stupid of UWaterloo to do. Most CS/EEE students may not even use Windows after graduation. They may end up using higher end RISC boxes with SGI chips or Sun machines. These are the core development systems that engineering specialists use. So, the question then is: what good is C# for these graduates? Simple. No fucking good.
pi=sigma{n:0-infinity}[(1/16)^n][(4/(8n+1))-(2/(8n +4))-(1/ (8n+5))-(1/(8n+6))]
Okay, how many times do I have to explain this. Java is coded once. One time. The JVM is different for each platform. Thus, a Java program is basically system-independent since the JVM is the actually execution mechanism. Thus, a Java program doesn't give a shit if it's on a Windows box, or Sun box, or something else. What does all of Microsoft's software run on? Only Windows. What has Microsoft spent the last 20+ years doing? Making everybody run only on Windows. What will C# programs do ultimately? Run only on Windows. Is C# a standardized language? No, it only runs on Windows.
C# is not nearly as good as Java. Sure, it has some improvements but the fact that it belongs to the largest closed-source, proprietary software developer in the world is simply a bad thing.
pi=sigma{n:0-infinity}[(1/16)^n][(4/(8n+1))-(2/(8n +4))-(1/ (8n+5))-(1/(8n+6))]
Coming soon to a high school and elementary school near you also.
I think that the key idea here is that the course is an introduction to programming not a C# course. U of W would not be teaching a course on C# but rather a course using C#.
I don't see any differnce from using a language such as Scheme (other than being functional vs. OO etc).
It doesn't matter what language you learn in, as long as you are learning the fundamentals.
I thought it said *infests*, not *invests*.
Apparently you've never seen C#.
Well, that's true now, but when I was at UW ('82 - '87) there was no Computer Engineering. A lot of the Computer Science students were there to learn how to program. I liked the more mathematical approach, but then I liked C&O 230 too.
I can never figure out why an electrical or computer engineering course would teach such a high level language such as C# or even C++. These are computer engineers we are talking about, not application developers. They should really be learning C or even assembly. They are more likely to need to use that than C or C#.
blah blah blah blah blah
They're supposed to be learning the fundamentals of programming, not learning how to write a fuckin' application.
AFAIK, the entire premise of C# was pretty much take everything that was right with Java and mix it with everything that was right with C++. However, it was also created with the specific intent to be used to quickly create applications using VS.NET, and tools such as windows forms. On the educational level (i.e. negating lack of truly scalable I/O, etc.), the only thing wrong Java is that isn't very speedy. Whew, because you know, when I wrote my first linked-list program, I sure could have used those extra 147.8 milliseconds. Java also allows anyone (even say graphic designers or computer animation majors, who may be using an Apple, taking an intro CS course) to write and run their programs just about anywhere. Until Mono is complete (and even then..it won't have out of the box OS X support), that can't be said about C#. My point here is this: Java, C, and other high level languages (there are even better than these two) are *MUCH* better suited for education. C# is very much a language created almost solely for creating enterprise-class interoperable applications, which is in stark contrast to your portrayal of it. As a last note, most colleges and universities have UNIX labs in their CS department, and until Mono becomes enterprise-class as well (Even then, for any graphical apps, they'd have to use Gnome), they'd have to make the MS switch.
--- What
When I was in first-year Computer Science (not Computer Engineering) at UW I had to take a course in COBOL programming. There were FORTRAN and Pascal courses, but co-op students had to take COBOL because that's what IBM and the insurance companies wanted us to know.
So don't get the idea that there's something new going on here. UW has been making deals with companies about curriculum for at least 20 years.
And people have been complaining about it for 20 years too. Heh, anyone remember the phony posters announcing a presentation by the head of IT on why we had to use a crappy IBM system?
I call that selling out curriculum.
And yes, I would consider leaving. I'm not particularly attached to my waterloo degree. I patently refuse to work for microsoft. I have plenty of work experience, and plenty of good references. I don't need a waterloo degree to carry me, I can stand on my own merits.
-Rob
-Rob Ewaschuk
I use Java all the time but replacing Scheme with it for AI makes no sense - not much different really from replacing Lisp with Pascal 20 years ago [shows age], and why would anyone do that?
Logically, I should feel that there's a place for C Sharp somewhere in the courses just as much as Java - after all it's a standard, right? But this feels worse, and a successful Mono won't make me feel much better.
As I understand it, Apple has provided special deals for schools all along. I'm sure the idea is to promote *Apple* computers.
So, what's the difference?
And to think I was pissed as a new EE when they made me take those stupid-ass Java courses. What the hell will and EE do with Java? Even the instructors were pissed.
But Microsoft has accorded Waterloo this special status, like its graduates are better than top US schools. So you have to talk more about the 75+ percentile student. So questions like:
1) Is the average Waterloo student coming in better than the average at a top US school.
2) Does Waterloo do a better job with those students than a top US school.
I think the answers are 1) almost certainly not and 2) maybe, which put together doesn't make a Waterloo grad anything unusually special.
- adam
To learn the fundamentals of programming, it helps if the environment is as open as possible. Seeing resultant machine code, tracing through code in a debugger, dumping data structures in a compiler, running interactively via a REPL - a lot of these aspects are best done with "toy" languages or environments such as DrScheme.
In my day, Pascal (which I think used a compiler from the University of Waterloo), C, C++, Lisp, Prolog and Smalltalk were the mainstream languages and all except the last ran on a positively eclectic variety of machine environments.
Now in other courses where languages are not the focus, C, C++, Java and C Sharp might have a place. However, there is a risk of such languages or associated tools and libraries being tied to particular products. This is not much of a risk with C on its own, only a little more with C++, a risk with Java and a certainty with C Sharp.
Why only a 'risk' with Java? Well, although commercial, Java is fully implemented by a number of vendors - IBM and Sun, of course, but also BEA and a large group producing VMs for phones, PDAs and other devices. When you leave college and start buying products, there's only a modest chance that they'll come from Sun (unfortunately for Sun). More likely is that you $$ will go to Borland or IBM, with some small % going to Sun for things like their certification tools.
There are really two important points to keep in mind - that learning is about ideas, and for computing fundamentals this are best facilitated by specific pedagogical tools; and that academic institutions should be as independent as possible to preserve their own reputations and to avoid arbitrary constraints on a student's future.
At the University of Ottawa (a few hours' drive North of Waterloo, for you Americans), we seem to be safe. Most of the terminals at the library are Sun workstations, and even on the Windows-based PCs the browser you use is Netscape (version 4, even). A number of the special services on the university servers require a telnet into a Unix server.
:)
Microsoft couldn't make a substantial investment here without also volunteering to overhaul the entire network and convert the database. 5 years later, we might have a complete network again... if it doesn't break somewhere along the way.
Imagine if universities got into deals with book publishers that said they were going to use only books they published for educating students. Granted that some professors like to push books they have written, but a deal with a publisher would result in an extremely spotty curriculum and would ultimately produce a rather narrow education.
.NET and C# the students (and therefore ultimately faculty and staff) will be forced to gravitate towards this platform. While companies like Sun are entrenched in academia, at least a C/C++ compiler can run on NT, Solaris, Irix, HP/UX, Linux, etc. etc. etc.
It's not so bad that C# is being taught, what is more devistating here is students will end up having to purchase Microsoft software to do their work. Academia has traditionally tended towards heterogenious computing environments (mainframe, UNIX, MS Windows, Mac, etc.), but with deals that force programming to happen with
Universities should wait until C# proves itself commercially and academically. There are plenty of language implementations out there, schools should be focused on those languages that teach programming principals and that have demonstrated themselves as historically significant.
Eric Sarjeant
eric[@]sarjeant.com
we are we are we are we are we are the engineers!
we can we can we can we can code C# with our peers!
drink rum drink rum drink rum drink rum and come along with us!
for we change policies for the companies that allocate funds to us!
(next step: The Ridgid Tool replaced by The Flaccid Software as department mascot)
The complete source to all their products? I had no idea.
-ted
Don't expect any real opposition from students... A lot of them just don't give two shits about anything, and won't oppose anything, as long as they get their degrees.
In addition, you may no longer use any knowledge gained there or subsequently without a monthly donation of 25% gross salary to MS Alumni, PO Box 12345 Redmond WA. Pay up or become a drooling husk.
Perhaps this is Microsoft's Waterloo?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
I don't think US vs. Canada is comparable though. Canada uses uncurved percentages for its grades (aka marks) (except in Quebec AFAIK where the government manages to curve percentage numbers, neat trick that), the US uses curved GPA for its grades. Some people try to convert saying 90 is an A or whatever, but it's not like that. Often it's just the top X percent get an A, the next get B, etc (college is usually like that). So if someone gets an A in the US, that could be a 99 in Canada, or a 90, or an 83.
Plus of course you have this huge difference in how grades are applied. For example my brother and I went to different high schools in Quebec. The top average in my high school was about 87 or so, at my brother's it was about 95. Same school board, similar kids (in fact he went to his because mine closed, so a lot of the same families were at both). So I don't think it was smarter kids, just different degrees of grade inflation. Then you imagine how grades can vary all across Canada. That's why the SAT gained the importance it did, because US high school grades varied so much.
- adam - adam
The worst thing, perhaps, is that C# is simply not used as an engineering programming language. Most engineers use Fortran, C, Matlab, spreadsheets, have software like Pro/ENGINEER, or, God forbid, use calculators, paper, and pencil.
C#, at best, is an application programming language useful only in the context of Microsoft Windows. Where is the logic in choosing this for non-CS engineering disciplines?
Also, UNIX always has had a strong userbase among engineers. How is C# going to help them?
I think the choice of C# has really detracted from Waterloo's attractiveness as a top-notch engineering school. I agree with other comments that the choice of C# is more along the lines of a communitity or technical college, which is expected to "sell out" to industry.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
Java and C++, the full gamut of languages from A to B.
At Truman State University we will be taught Ada. I've heard it is a good structured programming languager which forces the programmer to use good technique. Ada is I believe related to Pascal. I've read that is mainly used in embedded devices (probably embedded as in the program in airplane, as opposed to a Palm). It has some OOP, but they were added kind of as an afterthought (as opposed to Ruby which lives and breaths OOP.)
In theory I think it is a good idea and it probably will be in practice as well. You go to college so you can have a basis of knowledge to work with the rest of your career. I have some programming experience and know that it isn't that difficult to apply your experience from one language into another. So colleges top priority should be picking an language that is best for teaching with. The professors that I've talked to seem to really embrace Ada, and that's important. I wonder what kind of reception C# is getting from the U of Waterloo. Its one thing to learn a somethinge new, its another to have to teach it.
They've made C# a req for ISU MIS majors as well now.. This is the first year for it.
I'm really not looking forward to it, but the people I've talked to say that it's worth it... But these are the same people that think COBOL's still alive and kicking.
"Shut up about my driving. You're still alive."
Personally I would love to see Microsoft survive but be knocked off their monopoly status. Let them continue to make software but, and this is the important part, not be able to control the software and pc industry.
Does this mean Linux on grandma's machine? Probably not. Linux is great for developers, not so great for grandma. Perhaps Grandma will run windows or OSX! But being able to have that kind of choice is what it is all about.
MS making moves like this have one goal in mind. Their goal is to remove choice and freedom from the computer industry. That is what all of us are fighting against.
seSales, Point of Sale software for OS X.
Not yet. The recommendation will be announced later today.
Damn straight. And you can even get that slogan on a tank top.
My logic is more like
1) Microsoft hires a disproportionate number of Waterloo students.
2) Incoming Waterloo students are not superior to other schools Microsoft hires at.
3) Waterloo does not do anything particularly unusual with students beyond the co-op jobs.
4) Working as a co-op has no effect on your long-term potential at Microsoft, which is what Microsoft is theoretically hiring for.
5) Therefore there is likely something in the way Microsoft interviews that makes it overvalue Waterloo co-op students.
- adam
Mod3 and Pascal may both be decent enough teaching languages, but neither is particularly widespread in modern day, mainstream programming... although you could make a case for Pascal being more pervasive because of Delphi.
As for my "but then, I like Pascal" bit which so grievously vexed you, I was referring to the "inflicting" nature of being taught it... you know, the transitive verb from the prior sentance I was expounding on?
Hmm.. let's play the anal, inventive nitpicking game with YOUR post... just for fun!
So... Modula-3 is not relevant because there's no GNU compiler for it, but Pascal is?
--
"Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence"
- Napolean Bonaparte
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
Do the math, people.
We have 300 students in ECE. We'll ballpark their tuition at AROUND $6K CDN for a year.
300*6000 = 1.8M
Still below the $2.3M from MS, granted.
But then, those are just the ECE students. What about the REST of the engineering Faculty? Or the rest of the student body? A student society rep from the Arts & Social Science Faculty at my Uni took it upon herself to write letters to the editor complaining about business grants to the Engineering faculty with FAR fewer strings attached (no curriculum changes).
Very simply, if even 400 UW students make flat out complaints, things will start happening. And it's not just tuition money that talks.
UWaterloo is, at least, partially, riding their reputation. That's not to say that they don't have a good program, but all accredited engineering programs in Canada are BASICALLY the same (they're all within 1 or 2% of each other in a continent-wide ranking of engineering programs). $2.3M is chump change compared to the reputation loss that would happen if they got massive complaints and didn't listen.
Dark Nexus
"Sanity is calming, but madness is more interesting."
"Yes they are. IN THE FUCKING USA!!!!"
Read the links.
The ACM is an international organization.
We are not talking about U.S. accreditation in particular, we are talking about accreditation in general.
And people outside the U.S. wonder why the U.S. is kicking everyone else's rears in software as a percentage of GNP... sheesh.
-- Terry
"It's Electrical & Computer Engineering. That may make a difference."
.com crash. Not a lot of high paying work for Java programmers these days: the skills were intended to make the people modular and replaceable -- and they are. Without an artificial shortage to drive wages up, the pay is lower than for other skill sets.
It only makes a difference as to the subcommittee doing the accreditation. The accreditation is a strange thing, but most of it arises out of the wishes of professional societies, and most of them are international. In this case, an E&CE program falls under the blanket of the ACM (and IEEE).
The professional societies have a vested interest in keeping ceritifcations in their professions from becoming nothing more than the moral equivalent of "union cards" -- "You got a card, you work; you don't got a card, you don't work. You don't like it, you talk to the shop steward".
"I went through this program, and I remember those courses. They used to be taught in C++."
Back before the rules changes in the mid 1980's, there were tons of language courses, as opposed to "CS concept using " courses (I took all of them that were available at my University, actually, including "COBOL" and "Business FORTRAN": this is not about me being a snob about my education vs. someone else's education).
The ACM and IEEE ended up all pissed off that the colleges were turning CS classes into vocational education programs, and insisted that the "Science" part of "Computer Science" get the major emphasis. Most of these classes stage largely -- or even completely -- the same, just under new names. After a while, the courses evolved away from teching languages. Just as the people who had changed the rules intended.
Their point (and I agree with it) is that there is a difference between a programmer and a software engineer: a programmer turns people's algorithms into machine instructions, whereas a software engineer solves problems using a computer as a tool. The mindsets required for these different approaches are miles apart.
Is C# a valid language to know? Probably it will be something nice to have on your resume in about 3 years, after the economic recovery gets going, now that VC purse strings are starting to open up again and new businesses are starting to be created again. Just like Java was the thing to have on your resume, before all the J2EE and other Java based Internet startups folded in the
But that's not my point.
My point is, and always has been, that if you intend to go on to a graduate degree (and most students would be smart to want this, now that there are no longer high-5 and low-6 figure salaries available to people without degrees or experience, just to get *any* warm body plugged into a cubicle), then you need to consider accreditation, and the ability to enroll directly into graduate programs at name universities, without having to take a semester or more of "make up classes".
You can say it's snobbish, the way that credits transfer between the University of California and California State University systems (for example).
OK. You've said it. So what? Does that get your degree from one accepted at the other's graduate programs without "make up classes"? No, it doesn't.
By acting in a way that U.S. Universities are not permitted to act and retain accreditation, U of Waterloo is going to hurt their graduate's ability to get into U.S. University graduate degree programs, without adding a semester or more of "being gratuitously different on purpose" tax.
You may not think this is fair, but that doesn't make me an asshole for pointing out that those are the facts, or that that's the risk they are running when they do what they are doing, and require a specific language class for entry into their programs.
-- Terry
"Just wait, fellow code monkeys.... India and China are the rising stars...."
;^))...
China will not be a threat until they go from an ideogrammatic to an alphabetic language representation, perfect written/voice input, or figure out how to build a keyboard with 32,000 keys (same for Japan, which has kana, but doesn't use it for digital documents).
Not to mention that problem solving ability tends to self-select against people in repressive societies, since problems-solvers don't tend to be incredibly particular about *which* problems they solve, or necessarily agree with their governments about *what* constitutes a problem.
India is more of a threat to U.S. supremacy in information technology, but until they get their act together on state interference with etherpreneurial ventures (e.g. 3 weeks for a business license in the most heavily regulated locations in the U.S. vs. 3 months or more in India), it's much more likely that they'll simply come to the U.S. and start their business here (1/3 of all businesses in Silicon Valley are started by non-US born people). At which point, it's still U.S. supremacy, even if it's a non-U.S. citizen doing the coding.
And it's not like people like me are sitting by and not saying anything when people try to dumb-down universities in North America (for example
-- Terry
Kitchener was named Berlin before WWI but then was named after General Kitchener for 'patriotic' reasons.
I am going to hell and I am going to take all of you with me.
I've put a copy of my work report up on my webspace. Take a look if you're interested; it provides a good comparison against Java, and shows why C# is, in my opinion, inferior: Every chance they had to do something right, they blew it. Sorry the link took so long to get up.
The Kitchener/Waterloo newspaper, The Record, has as the headline today (Aug 17) UW, Microsoft deal under fire. This Slashdot discussion is mentioned.
http://www.therecord.com/news/news_0208179293.html
"You are setting a dangerous precedent..."
Like refusing to support a school because it doesn't rabidly support your worldview isn't a dangerous precedent in and of itself.
Ooooooh, better bring back FORTRAN and COBOL and RPG like they still have in at least one community college I know of... but wait that's because several facilities in the area are still *using them*...
Fire away folks, but because it has been 1994 since I did any programming school and because Docushare and Sharepoint can make me money if I work hard enough at it and help out the people I like working with; I'm going to pick up what I can regardless of platform - that is, Java since Docushare is moving from Python to Java with its next release and C#/.Net because Sharepoint and such will be utilizing them - and continue to work with whatever technology is being used by that particular client at the time; without using "anti-capitalism/monopoly/whatever the buzzword is this week", "embrace and extend", or "viva la [bleeping] revolution!" tactics to do so. That's right everyone uses tactics and I often disagree with the ethics of both sides.
I think with the interesting people, their lives can't possibly be wrapped up into a nice little package.
However, I have to wonder what makes people think that the instructors of these courses have neither discretion in how they teach a course, nor well-formed opinions of their own.
I am an instructor. I teach web development for one of the trade schools, which is heavily Microsoft-oriented. You think I don't tell them what I really think? Please.
On a related note, one of the faculty volunteers leading a discussion group for the much-debated freshman reading assignment on the Quran at the University of North Carolina is a guy you may have heard of.