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Fewer Computer Science Majors
skrysakj writes "USA today reports that there are fewer undergraduate students choosing computer science related majors in the USA. What really woke me up was their statement that only 6% of the worlds engineers are educated in the USA. Before there was a dot-com bubble to burst, I knew lots of *amazing* programmers and IT professionals who had non-IT degrees, so how is this new trend any different than before?"
Cheers,
Erick
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Basically this post can be summed up in a few sentences:
I knew lots of *amazing* programmers and IT professionals who had non-IT degrees
You need to BS boots rather than a BS degree. It sucks but you have to play the game play - say things like sir, thank you, and yes I can develop 2.57 billion lines of code this month all with zero defects fully tested delivered signed and sealed. Let me say that if you don't have a degree today, you have closed a lot of doors yourself. Very few will hire you without a degree - why should someone unless there is nepotism. Get a degree where you work closer to the money and make tech a secondary skill.
43% of computer science and engineering recipients are non-resident aliens
Our government is making it a little harder to float into the country. Now the schools are whining about loosing revenue - tuition must be cheaper here than overseas (hard to imagine)?
computer science and computer engineering majors in the USA and Canada fell 23% vs. the year before
Students of today are not stupid. Would you choose the tech field today? You would be better off getting a MBA and if you like the tech stuff than you can still assist with it but you have to be closer to the money or your at risk of someone else making your life decisions.
about 75% of the worlds lawyers. maybe that why sco in such a pickle
Supply and demand, no?
Curb CO2 emissions: Kill yourself today!
This is a no-brainer. Most people in computer science got into it because they heard there was money in it - not because they had a love for it. Now that it's become clear that compsci's not a crap shoot when it comes to getting a high-paying job, they're jumping ship like there's airborne HIV on board.
Only the true geeks (the ones who love the stuff) will stay with it even when it gets rocky.
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China.
:)
Start learning chinese, American kiddies.
- The press reports explosive growth in an industry
- The press reports that there are not enough workers in a particular industry
Both of those items imply a higher salary. This is not new. Students who don't have a true interest in something before they get to college will nearly always opt to go where the money is. When the expected salary dries up, they look elsewhere. It's happened over and over in the past and, I expect, will continue. Those are the students who do have a true interest in the computer field before they get to college. Again, this is not new, and virtually every job segment has people like this.Speaking as an employer, I'm very happy with this trend. The quality of graduates with programming degrees has been absolutely terrible for years now.
What really woke me up was their statement that only 6% of the worlds engineers are educated in the USA.
I'm not sure why this is seen as surprising. This is actually pretty good, given that Americans make up less than 5% of the world population. America isn't particularly known for its long line of fine engineers (although there are many, I'd admit), or its large scale industry, being known better for the development of the service industries. I'd like to see the figures, but I'd put money that there are significantly more engineers coming out of industrial stalwarts like France, Germany, or Japan (which have large manufacturing sectors).
The article is followed by a bunch of ads for distance degrees, in which the University of Phoenix features prominently. Has there ever been a greater curse on the CS field than people getting degrees from places like this in the middle of the dot-com boom? The worst aspect, I think, being how many of these degrees are in "IT management" or some such garbage, thus turning out a whole bunch of apprentice PHB's who think they're qualified to tell people with real educations what to do. If the current decline in enrollment trims the fat by getting rid of those people, it won't bother me a bit.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
What really woke me up was their statement that only 6% of the worlds engineers are educated in the USA.
This shouldn't be surprising. Since engineers are naturally capable people, they tend to be the type to start their own businesses and create with an education of their own appetite. Just because someone doesn't have a formal degree doesn't mean that they aren't "educated".
What about the proverbial millionaire/billionaire who dropped out of college to start [insert successful company here]. I know several.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
I make my living as a programmer and database designer, though my formal education is in German literature and fine art.
Among the many great computer people I've worked with in the last 11ish years, about half had computer science (or for that matter engineering) degrees.
My brother writes insanely complex software for NASA, and his degrees are in aerospace engineering, not CS.
We all "played computers" back in the 70s, and now many of us work with them. Seems pretty natural to me.
TFA is really a FA (at USAToday? gasp!) in that it draws a scary picture based on very little real information.
Of course CS and related enrollment is down.... for the same reason it was up during the dot-comedy. These are perfectly normal cycles, and have precious little to do with the actual talent pool.
If you want to blame the lack of interest in engineering and science on something, blame it on the miserable quality of public schools in the US.
This Like That - fun with words!
with the outsourcing thing going on shouldn't we be expecting this?
in the mid-late 90s having a CS to a lot of people ment lots of money. they thought it was a secure job that paid well. now however it seems you actually have to want to program for a living to go into CS.
i have nothing wrong with that. the college i went to 70% of the undergrads changed majors by their sophmore year.
I find this a bit arrogant. The USA population doesn't even represent 5% of the world population. That's nothing compared to countries like India.
I knew lots of *amazing* programmers and IT professionals who had non-IT degrees
I knew lots of *amazing* programmers and IT professionals who had NO degrees. Desire for self-study combined with a willingness to take on resposibility went father than a whole room of antisocial PHDs.
I was recently "orphaned" in my program - a degree/diploma compsci/telecom course in Canada. The college providing the telecom/IT portion of my classes has dissolved their IT department, and while they'll finish any students still in classes, we're now orphans...
With everyone hearing about how the tech industry is still doing crappy overall, and how jobs are getting outsourced, it's no wonder compsci enrollment's down...
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
--lawyers
--patent lawyers
--or reality tv "stars"
Are there really any other careers in America these days?
Getting back to CS, it's a very different job landscape then 8-10 years ago. They only "safe" CS job in America is one where you get a security clearance and work on government related projects that can't be farmed out due to security constraints.
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
Gee, should I major in a field that is virtually guaranteed to be completely outsourced to the Thirld World in five years, or should I study something like mathemtatics, physics, or engineering that will not miasma of death associated with that field? Better yet, from a purely job-oriented point of view, maybe I should major in Dental Hygeine--hard to make an economic argument to Westerners for teeth cleaning in India or China.
After all the flood of comp sci majors realized they couldn't make $150,000 with just a degree and no ambition or geeky desire of computers, people stopped choosing that major. A lot of schools were rushing them through and dumbed down the curriculum to get them through. People just chose computer science not because they liked computers, but they thought they'd have an easy job that paid well. The job market became flooded with these people who could maybe use windows and simple programming, but not much else. I've read accounts on slashdot of people saying how many people in their classes could barely use a CLI. I'm happy there are less comp sci majors, it takes away the needless competition facing the good ones.
so how is this new trend any different than before?
From what I can tell, they aren't any different than, say, 10 years ago.
It's the same in IT as in any other occupation; those who are devoted to their work are the best - regardless of the level of education.
If I were an employer, I would be interested in hiring uneducated, skilled programmers. Since they went through and learned everything by themselves, they are most likely good workers with devotion and it's less likely that they will jump up and say "Allright, that's IT, now I'll learn how to repair cars!".
A recently graded IT student, however, may in fact not even like the job, but he's just doing it for the cash..
it leaves behind only those truely interested in the field.
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I just graduated in May from University of Connecticut with a Computer Science and Engineering degree. I found a job by the begining of August... but I'm the rareity. Most of my friends have had a real hell of a time finding jobs, and even the job I took didn't pay as much as I was hoping. Finding a CS job right now is not so easy. Is the market saturated with computer people... Are employers taking experience over education? Is it really worth it to get a CS degree, or would it be more valible (and a couple factors of 10 less expensive) to get a bunch of certifications?
Your mammas flamebait.
I have noticed over the years that those who have a talent for designing software and/or writing code are not necessarily the those who study the hard sciences. The ability to think logically is not a function of the "nerd gene".
That said, I wish I had gotten a comp sci degree. I think it would have been much more "hands on" than my poli sci degree and would have been equally as interesting. As it was, I learned programming by myself, motivated by the many luminaries who said that many great hackers are self-taught. Nevertheless, I would have appreciated a general OS class, an algorithms class, or learning how to make a language with accompanying compiler. I'd love to learn how to make a runtime like Java or Python. I can code in Java and Python, but I want to understand the guts of it.
These are a few examples of things I think one would learn with a comp sci degree.
Most engineering schools are reporting declines in enrollment. This is hardly surprising since most engineering curriculums, including CS, are difficult compared to other fields of study. Without the prospect of a good job waiting for them, many college students are veering away from these majors.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
In my case, it would be that university professors have less knowledge than the students. Students in the computer science classes are writing their "final" programs in less than 10 minutes. Running pentiums with windows 98 first edition in the computer science lab doesn't make me want to jump up and become a computer science major, either. Maybe if the professors were a bit more qualified and had real world experience instead of learning how to program from a book it would be helpful.
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I think this is good news. Not because I'm looking for job security but because there are FAR to many CS majors out there who are CS majors because they couldn't decide on anything better. They figure "I like to use my computer, I should get a job dealing with computers." Meanwhile they have never programmed and couldn't care less about trouble shooting anyone's PC but there own. I'm in college now and I know 3 people who dropped CS as a major because they found out that they hate it after a year of studding it.
(disclaimer: that is until the next great new thing comes along so we can all jump ship and oversaturate the market causing another stock crash as the markets correct themselves against the inevidable flood of humanity panting to get some of the money. This disclaimer is valid in most states and countries except Virginia where they don't know how to read and Utah because those Mormans are just plain wierd.)
It take more faith to believe in evolution than it takes to believe in God
CS doesn't mean the same thing to everyone. To some, it's a computer degree. To others, it's a science degree.
At my school, there are three options:
1. Computer Applications - Learn how to use programs
2. Management Information Systems (MIS) - Learn how to write programs
3. Computer Science and Engineering - Learn how to write an operating system
You don't need a computer-related degree at all to be able to do any of these. I started programming when I was about ten years old, using the Apple IIe from my elementary school. By middle school, I was writing bulletin board door games and by high school I was writing my first applications.
In college, I was bored in the few programming classes I took (three weeks to learn conditionals?!) and started taking self-directed courses because I could teach myself better (with the aid of Google) than most of the profs I could take classes from.
Oh, and I was a Japanese major. Go figure.
It's not like us mechanical engineers had a sudden influx of phonies and money-grubbers in the dot com bubble.
Software piracy is victimless theft.
so only %6 of the world's engineers are educated in the USA? Considering the USA has 4% of the world's population, and only a minority of people live in developed countries, this doesn't bode well for the US.
I go to LSU, and many of the computer science majors switch to ISDS (Information Systems and Decision Sciences, a major in the College of Business). I was a computer science major when I started here, but found that the curriculum was not to my liking, so I switched to ISDS. Many of the students in ISDS have done this, partially because it is a more rounded degree, and partially because the computer science department here isn't all that wonderful.
Atleast at GaTech, there was a huge surplus of networks/systems/labs which were built during the "boom". Most of this equipment is now underused and/or outdated, with less students and consequently less funds to upgrade or maintain them. A lot of sysadmins have left due to better jobs in the industry or other departments.
It's a vicious cycle - unless the schools can attract more CS students (mainly grad students, because they bring in research grants through company/science grants etc) to enroll, their funds decrease, and they can afford less Teaching/Research Assistants which are essential to the smooth and lucrative functioning of the department. As the quality of teaching/research reduces, it further brings down enrollment, etc. Hope the state governments do something constructive other than cut down grants to these schools.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
When I was a student all the best programmers I knew were math majors.
Implying that an MCSE is a path to a career in programming or computer science is like saying that a certificate in oil and air filter changing from Micks auto shop is a stepping stone into car engineering and design! Sorry , I'm not trying to be anti MS but MCSEs are just mickey mouse qualifications (and frankly a lot of other companys in house certs arn't much better). Learning to do A,B or C if X,Y or Z happens is NOT computer science!
I orignally wanted to do Computer Science since I wanted to make computer games. However, after taking a bunch of high level CS courses, I learned tha CS is not just programming. There is a ton of crazy math crap that I have to learn. Before college, I would have never imagined that mathmatical induction would play a vital role in computer science. All I really wanted to do in CS was just to make computer games and the more higher level courses I took, the detached the work was from game programming. I know a real programmer should know the complicated math behind it, but CS no longer appealed to me the same way it used to so I switched majors to Human-Computer Interaction since it was much closer to what I wanted than CS (now I am just minoring in CS).
so how is this new trend any different than before?
Education is meaningless in today's workplace, unless the lack of a degree can be used to disqualify a candidate, at which point it becomes the most important part of a resume.
Education is meaningless. The phrase itself sounds absurd, but it is most certainly the basis for the entirety of management theory in modern business. Cash grab is important. Education is meaningless.
And it was only a matter of time before people realize that if education is meaningless, pursuit of knowledge is also meaningless. They've taken our homes, communities, retirements, any possibility of a family and our savings and now they are taking our educations. I remember once being told "now that you've earned your degree, it can never be taken away from you." Well, until now.
We are watching the destruction of the educations of an entire generation of people. Seldom has there been a more profound tragedy.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
And it mirrors what's going on here at University of Maryland at College Park.
/.'ers claiming college is worthless for learning computer science.
The enrollment in the CS program has been dropping like a stone (we're like 400 down, to 1800, since the bubble popped, IIRC). Curiously, engineering has been mostly untouched, which is why I found the talk about "engineering" to be a non-sequitur.
I don't really see this as "greedy students are gone!" so much as "less incentive to do the work with lesser pay". I mean, you can always hack on computers while doing something else entirely. Why not feed yourself with a steady job and do what you love in your spare time? Seems reasonable to me.
I also predict a steady flood of
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
"Graduate programs haven't seen the same decline yet."
When I got my masters degree in CS 4 years ago, it seemed that about 45% of the grad students were from China, 45% were from India, and the rest of the 10% of us were US citizens. Since the graduate community in this country is already overwhelmingly foreign, that might explain why these numbers have remained stable.
Funny, I thought the only people with this mindset were the freaking TA's I had @ UWO ...
Those who can do, those who cannot teach, those that are scared of employment assist professors with their drudge work (-;
Certainly, there are plenty of talented IT professionals with non-CS degrees...or no degree at all. Also, there are many people who are great at understanding human motivation who do not have a psychology degree. Still, the degree is the foundation for a career. Concepts and theory require study. If that study is achieved by some other means, then fine--but I think most non-degreed professionals are not achieving their full potential.
I am glad that things are evening out and people are jumping ship. I am a Computer Science graduate, what separates me from most of the others is that I wanted to be involved in a computer industry since age 7. My dream back then was to design video games (I'm sure most of my fellow geeks went through a similar phase..)
I worked as a Computer Vision developer for 3 years during college, and more recently as a Database Monkey (current job.)
I think it takes a lot of love for the field to be able get through some of the more mundane days. The pay isn't that great either, but I really can't think of a job I'd rather be doing that doesn't involve a computer.
Choosing a career based on a market trend seems like a bad way to go about choosing a profession for life. It's like becoming a Brain Surgeon because the pay is "good".
Population of World 5000+ Million, to use the American version of a Billion.
That comes to 5%. So the 6% figure says you have 20% more than the world average.
That's not too shabby. Especially as you have all the wealth as well. Too bad about all that polution.
[% slash_sig_val.text %]
I'm sorry, but there is a huge difference between a software crash course and a proper computer science or computer engineering degree.
A good CMPSCI or CMPEN program doesn't teach programming languages; they teach how to program in general and how to reason about programs. Once you master this, you can apply it to any language.
Too many people with these crase course certificates only care about getting something working, whereas understanding why it is working will always be better for the project in the long run.
(S(SKK)(SKK))(S(SKK)(SKK))
My school which shall rename nameless has two levels to the CS program. There is a regular undergrad with about 400 people and a professional program. Now out of those 400 people, my school looks at your grades in art, math, physics, and everything except CS courses (mostly because by the time you're applying for the pro-program you haven't taken any) and grabs the top 95.
This left me high and dry, as I had an issue with a math class. I asked the head undergrad advisor and he told me to wait a few years and enrollment in CS should drop.
Next I walked over to the Math Department and got my degree in Mathematical Science with a Computer Science focus and a Computer Science minor.
The point is, rather than basing the program on skill (currently I write software that Cisco uses in hardware diagnostics) some universities are basing it on grades. The system needs to be overhauled to judge the skill of the programmers, not their book smarts.
=================
Unix is very user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are.
I'm an IT Professional with a non-IT degree, I read psychology. It's actually come in more handy than an IT degree probably would have. Not only was it a big help in landing the job in the first place (the value of being different from the herd). The content itself has continued to be timely and useful even ten years on, be it a behavioural approach to OO systems or knowing what makes meetings more productive.
;)
I'd recommend any beginning IT professional to minor/subsid in a good psychology course, it'll last you a lot longer than some of your IT knowledge
Hmmmm, it couldn't possibly be related to this could it: http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/0 8/08/0533220
Article I, Section 10, Clause 1 prohibits any State from granting any titles of nobility.
The framers really hated titles of nobility.
What is an academic degree, except a title of nobility?
The real transformation that is going on here is a loss of American culture. In true American culture, nobility is in the creative act, not in any titles conferred. This is one reasons the framers set out to create patents of invention for a limited time -- thinking this would make clear the idea that we Americans don't bow to anyone "for life" nor do we bow to anyone who isn't creative at all.
Recent history has been a continual degradation of those core American values.
America is becoming an old world culture.
Seastead this.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Of course there are less undergrads. The market to find a respectable job is almost zilch. I've got a job, but not exactly what I want to do. I've been searching and sending out resumes for the past two years and still haven't been able to break into development work that interests me.
I don't care as much about money as I do enjoying what I do. Maybe this is a sad cry to any teams in the Atlanta, Georgia area looking for a hardworking junior engineer. There just doesn't seem to be any positions out there... or I'm looking in the wrong places.
- Austere in Atlanta
Developer A - Architect, super-badass.. self-taught, went to MIT for 1 year but has no college degree. 2nd Youngest of bunch. (late 20s)
Developer B - Me, Senior Developer, pretty good all-around coder and designer, went to college for 2 years but didn't do much with it and has no degree. Youngest of bunch. (mid 20s)
Developer C - Developer, Masters in Psychology and some other discipline of that type (non-comp related). Pretty good developer, but not great. (2nd oldest of bunch) (Early 30s)
Developer D - Junior developer, Masters in Computer Science.. can't grasp anything bigger than a small feature, all code has to be reviewed by someone higher up. (oldest of bunch) (Late 30s)
What does this tell me? Experience and work-skill are a *lot* more important than degrees. This is just one small example, but most every company I've ever worked for, the super-badasses never had degrees, and were all either self-taught or had a little bit of college, and tended to eventually rise to the top.
-- Jinsaku
I forgot to mention, I got into IT because I love it. Never saw the need to get a degree in something I'd been passionate about since I was in short trousers. Might as well go learn something new instead.
What do you expect from a country where education and intelligence is not a "High priority"? Education is competition, meaning tomorrow's educated students, who become business men could be your next big competitor. And as everyone knows in the USA people don't matter, Big business does. Yes business's would not be around if people couldn't buy their products, so they (we) get paid just enough to buy their products. And for those who can't afford it, that's what credit cards are for. We are losing a battle, not just with the rest of the world dealing with education, business, ethics(?) but a battle of bettering ourselves and giving our children a chance to survive in the future.
TruePunk | Games
Really? Are colleges teaching students how to administrate networks efficiently and properly? Sure, we are being taught how to program, but in such a "read this, do this" method that it's hardly what I'd call trouble shooting.
Colleges aren't teaching people anything helpful beyond a language or two. At least, they weren't when I went through. They had 1 linux class, taught on RH 5.2 ( already old then ), with a professor who was learning as he went. We went through the installation ( over 3 classes mind you ), and we got all sorts of things wrong ( KDE = Kernel Development Enviroment. Good guess ), and wouldn't give out CDs with the software because of "licensing issues".
The more advanced programming classes were a joke. I mean, if you did what the professor wanted, it was moderately interesting, but your program didn't even have to WORK! As long as you got close to the algorithm, regardless of the language,he was happy. And, incedently, if you used a language that the professor didn't know, you could simply write a "hello world" program, obfusicated of course, and he'd pass it.
No, I am not surprised by the articles claim. And neither should anybody working it the field.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Maybe the reason that there are fewer IT degrees is that to get an CIS degree you have to take a whole bunch of classes that you dont need.
I'm a software developer who has taught a few colleges in NYC and I can see why these companies are wanting to hire foreigners. There were and still are a lot schools out there that promise all kinds of money if you get their degree. They rush you into the field without having you fully understanding the "science" behind computers just to make a quick buck off you. Now we're left with a bunch of American computer engineers who know a lot of acronyms and buzz words but very little about how to apply it correctly. Sure there are great American computer engineers still left, but I think a lot of companies are tired of weeding through the crap.
People in other countries (ie. India, China, Israel, etc) are not lazy. They don't take their education for granted like we do here. Sure they are willing to work for cheaper, but I don't believe thats where it ends because they are also willing to understand the "science" where most Americans are just interested in the big pay off their guidance counselor told them they would get.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
My advice to protential computer scientists, is major in Math and take a couple programming classes. Math is far more useful and prepares people more completely for the problem solving skills needed for a career in programming. Computer Science is far too cobbled together from other disciplines right now, it honestly lacks identity. The formula now is, (some)Math + (a tiny bit of)Engineering + (a lot of)Programming = CS. CS should be a concentration under a Math degree.
I think it's pretty clear that CS undergrad degrees are out there to improve one's income. They are generic, marginally useful, and are basically an exchange of a piece of paper for time and money. Having a CS degree tells nothing of a person's ability with computers. There were countless people who went to school with me and by their time of graduation knew less about computers than some english and history majors I knew.
I do find it very disappointing though that the promise of a payoff isn't in fact paying off. Just last week I contacted my agent to try to negotiate a better rate with my current employer and one of the reasons was that I am graduating in two weeks with a Math and Comp. Sci. degree. She basically told me that it isn't worth a cent in terms of my rate of pay!
I'm in the middle of interviewing candidates right now to fill a junior network admin position, and the overwhelming vast majority who shout out their list of certifications loudest at the tops of their resumes, trying to look impressive, are proving to be the least knowledgeable of the whole bunch. All they know how to do is memorize a study booklet or braindump full of quick answers long enough to take a test. No thanks. The MCSEs are the worst. Even the Cisco CCNA's are getting to be just as bad. Part of my interview questions involves asking the candidate to write down a simple cisco extended access list to filter out all inbound connections except inbound http to a specific host, and only one had gotten it right (it's only three farkin' lines for crying out loud!!!) and he's not Cisco certified either. He's only got hands-on experience. That's what I'm looking for... EXPERIENCE. Paper certs be damned. The only problem with the good candidate is that he's not a citizen and needs company sponsorship to stay in the US. My company refuses to sponsor any more foreigners, having been burned too many times in the past by those who just stayed long enough to get some experience to put on their resumes, then bailed out on us to move back home when we could least afford to lose them.
The difference is that the cat is out of the bag as far as people knowing that CS is a risky career in several respects - long hours, difficult work, offshoring, value dilution from OSS (sorry guys), and few new exciting software startups.
It's not just fewer CS majors, fewer people will be switching from other career areas, unless some of the above changes.
What really woke me up was their statement that only 6% of the worlds engineers are educated in the USA.
Since the U.S. only has ~5% of the worlds population, this isn't too out of line... However, I'm sure we have the capacity to educate more, it's just that people aren't choosing engineering careers for a variety of reasons. Also, don't forget that a substantial percentage of those educated in the U.S. head back to their native countries with the knowledge they've gained - and the percentage of U.S. educated foreign science/engineering grads is quite high.
Simply put, we need to interest more U.S. students in math and science AND provide real incentives to choose science/engineering careers.
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
I was a person who loved to read and learn, and enjoyed figuring things out.
So I found out that no matter what I did, I always ended up writing code for somebody else. I went into business as a consultant, and that was over 15 years ago.
A lot of this "degrees are necessary" and "who needs 'em" talk is basically people just repeating what they have experienced. I think the real questions to ask are "What have you done lately?"
Positive attitude and desire to learn outside of work will take you a long ways further than anything else I've seen. When interviewing coders, I used to ask them "How do you make a class in language X?" Usually most of them got the answer. Then I would ask them "Ok. Now WHY would you write a class? What conditions would you require to make a new class when you are making a program?"
The first question required education. The second required some sort of wisdom and practical experience.
As a University engineering student in Canada's likely best known engineering school, we got to learn about the licensing process and what it is to be an engineer.
I think part of the problem is the constant abuse of the word "engineer" in the United States. In this country (Canada) you cannot designate yourself an "engineer" without being licensed by your provincial body (at least here in Ontario). The word is protected to protect the public from people who don't have the necessary license and/or training to perform engineering tasks. The best example of this is the MSCE designation, which Microsoft had agreed to not use MSCE (Microsoft Certified Engineer) in 2001 and now reversed their decision.
The provincial bodies are now considering enforcement, and they are well within their right to do so. I went to a Microsoft presentation recently here and in their software development jobs, and 3/4 of their "college" (University here) full-time positions had the word "engineer" in them . (For those who don't want to RTFA, there is Program Manager, Software design engineer, Software design engineer in test, and software test engineer). Choice quote from the article:
I'm sure there are more examples of this at other companies, for example the term "network engineer" and other such titles given without certification or engineering licenses.
There is another kind of evil which we must fear most, and that is the indifference of good men. -- Boondock Saints
I just finished my undergrad CS degree last december. But something the article doesn't talk about is IS degrees. At my school during the time I was there the CS student numbers were dropping and more people were getting IS degrees (if they can be called degrees).
I agree with some of the other posts that certain courses were a joke but at the same time not all of them were, and even though I have used linear algebra or any Calculus since leaving college I still think they were important classes for developing the proper thinking skills needed for a CS degree.
I think the article would be much better written if they had looked at the other non-Science Comp programs that are out there and that are growing really quickly.
Starting in 2004, the Computer Science major at UC Berkeley is no longer impacted. That is, you don't have to compete to get into it, even though you're already a student. Not because the program grew, but because the demand shrinked.
:-P
Also, I did get my degree in CS because I love it, so there
Computers are tools to solve problems. From my experience, those who use them as such, know how to use them best.
Degrees in using computers are like degrees in using hammers...
...not that you are necessarily educated in that area of your major, but instead proves that you have endurance to stay with something for the long haul. In essence it is a proof that you've successfully passed thru the biggest bullshit filter known to society. College is not a place you go to get educated -- you actually end up teaching yourself the course material, which you can do without school. It's a place to go thru to see how much bullshit can be thrown at you, to see if you are capable of withstanding it all and coming out on the other side. College is a place to filter out those who cannot withstand an endless stream of bullshit thrown at them, because that's what you'll have to face in corporate world if you expect to survive and prosper there.
Well, having just completed a degree after a thirty year hiatus from college -- in which I made a very nice career in IT -- all I have to say to "well-rounded education" is, puh-lease !
I found today's university experience to be no more than high-schooler baby-sitting. The classes were dumbed down and the "instructors" (except for three) knew less about *every* subject than I did.
Businesses want to treat computers like a tool, not a core function. Rather like file cabinets and cubes. Need them to operate but not the true focus.
Therefore, lowest bidder wins. The only people that believe spending $120k for a job competing w/ $12k/yr workforces are too stupid to get into college in the first place.
That leaves a small pool of the 'pioneers' - whose business is computers (hdwe, sftwe). These 'islands' of tech will design the cutting edge and then pass it down to be 'massed produced' if feasible. This is the area for established countries.
Analgous is the auto industry. Designers in the wealthier countries, manufacturing spread out into the cheaper areas (Brazil, Mexico, etc.)
Hopefully those that remain are actually interested in computer science and not just trying to get a fat paycheck.
We have 4-5% of the population, and produce 6% of the engineers. Sounds like we're well ahead of the curve there. Not mind-numbingly ahead, but decently so.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
I knew lots of *amazing* programmers and IT professionals who had non-IT degrees, so how is this new trend any different than before?"
Never let well-researched statistics get in the way of anecdotal evidence.
Students are now trying biology, nursing or other majors.
This line brought a smile to my face. Somehow I don't believe any computer nerds are saying, "Hmmm, maybe I'll go into nursing instead".
Your sample size is so tiny, at best you can form a hypothesis (i.e. not a conclusion)! I guess you'd need a much larger workplace to actuallly carry out the experiments that could support or disprove your hypothesis.
... hence the nit-picking ...
Okay, I'm admittedly in the middle of preparing lectures for first-year science students
YS
"Arrr! The laws of science be a harsh mistress." -- Bender
When I first looked into college, I wanted to do the whole computer science thing... but then I opened my eyes and saw something, VIRTUALLY NO DEMAND FOR IT! And the demand that existed wasn't very rewarding...
:P
So, I looked at other options and ended up picking a business major. I figured this would be a more useful degree in landing a job. I'd be more likely to land a managerial position than some grunt job this way.
Any computer science skills (including web design and other misc. things of course) I have I've learned on my own time. It's mostly a fun hobby for me and I'd like to keep it that way. It's more rewarding and productive as a hobby skill.
Just my little rant... I'm off to my accounting course.
Fear the turtle farming ninja!
Good, more work for me!
Enrollment in the CS programs of study, both degree and certificate, is down sharply and the majority who change program of study state "I want to be able to get a job when I graduate" as the reason for switching. One of the instructors I recently spoke with was visibly upset at how bad things are and that most local businesses they work with have abandoned them.
It's hard to justify two to five years of education when most jobs have disappeared or have such extensive requirements that a college graduate has little or no hope of finding an entry level position to obtain the experience required to get a good job.
-Phil
Shoot questions, first ask later...
well... at a school I used to go to they got rid of some of their best CS/CIS/MIS teachers/profs by not keeping them happy. Those good teachers/profs went to places like TTU and elsewhere.
This was also exasperated by the people running the IT department (not the professors, but the management) who didnt know anything about running a network correctly. They fired two of the best people they had (even railroaded one just to save face). Ever since, their CS dept has gone downhill...
It doesn't take a CS degree to be successful in IT. Most of the people that I encountered in IT early in my career were not CS majors. (Well we didn't call it "IT" back then; it was Data Processing.) They were EE majors or from some other science program. One of my first bosses was very highly regarded for his computer skills and his background was EE and broadcasting. For some reason I kept running into a lot of physics grads who were crack programmers. A close friend has been doing quite well in the IT field after taking a degree in English and a brief stint teaching high school English. The missus was doing quite well as a programmer before the kids were born. And her degree was in Fine Arts.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
The USA has 4.6% of the world's population, why would it be surprising that we only have 6% of the world's engineers?
had a BA in physical Education. Go figure.
I had a few programing language courses at a community college, and one real computer science course at Caltech, an intro to data structures and algorithms.
Early on I could see how I was at quite a disadvantage compared to those with CS degrees, so I put a lot of effort into studying programming - reading books like Knuth's Art of Computer Programming on the bus to work, learning to program macs by writing a graphics editor on my Mac Plus, reading other people's source code and fixing it.
It's been quite some time since the lack of a CS degree has been a problem. I have seventeen years paid experience as a programmer, and have run my own consulting business for six years. Here's my resume.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
The retention rate for computer science was low even in 1998. I began with 275 computer science majors and by the next year there were only 75 remaining. The coursework is difficult and requires true commitment. Maybe it begins because people want the money, but once they see the road ahead most back out to an IST, CIS, or MIS major.
Two of the best professors I ever had for programming started out as chemists. I started out as a chemical engineer, hated it, and went to graduate school to switch to programming. Great programming is a passion, and people that love it find it eventually, even if they did not start out doing it. That is probably like alot of fields.
Well, having just completed a degree after a thirty year hiatus from college -- in which I made a very nice career in IT -- all I have to say to "well-rounded education" is, puh-lease !
I found today's university experience to be no more than high-schooler baby-sitting. The classes were dumbed down and the "instructors" (except for three) knew less about *every* subject than I did.
Unless you are retard, what do you expect with 30 YEARS MORE life experience than your class mates?
I would hope that after 30 years you can do college in a breeze and would know more than some of your professors in some subjects.
i dont have a college education, im a pretty good flash developer, and had a job with another flash developer who went to a four year college and frankly sucked at flash, but he got paid more, and after our team was terminated he got another job and i cant. so why wouldnt certs proving what i know be any good? i dont think i can wait through four years of living off ramen to make a good living, it feels like i am wasting my time by going to a college, but i am starting anyway, because EVERYTHING requires a BS in "a related field" i thought getting java programmer cert and mscd and flash mx 2004 dev cert might actually get me a job, or am i horribly mistaken? most of the comments against certs come from the need for logic process and wisdom earned from attending college, but do certs really not work at all?
I'm sure you do know lots of amazing IT people without CS degrees, but that's because CS has very little to do with being a Helpdesk or Cisco monkey. Think of it this way, real CS folks are like the people designing cars. IT folks are the UAW workers building them, or more likely Bob, from Bob's Towing and Autobody.
as kids get into CS when there seems to be interesting things to do with computers.
The early PC boom of '81-'85 is one example, where JMU had about 200 CS majors. By the time the IBM-PC took over the world ('89), the general feeling was static, of things not really changing, not being interesting, not being worth a career. JMU's CS class of '93 (my class) was only 24 graduates -- and those of us who were programmer-hackers tended to prefer hanging out on the Unix boxes or the Vax/VMS system over the stoic IBM-PC (which we only went over to for playing games).
5 years later, in the midst of the internet and dot-com boom, things looked interesting and promising and people were really doing "new" things (in spite of what the granted patents of the time would tell us) and CS seemed an interesting thing to get into again. JMU's CS graduates got up to about 125 / year.
So now, the rush to do "new" stuff of the dot-com era is gone, people are back to just doing work for businesses that pay, which is rarely interesting, and the military has slowed down its spending on software in order to pay for the replacement weapons we've been detonating all over the mid-east. Add the outsourcing demonstrated by the dot-bomb fallout and it leads people to think that CS and the software industry is just business and not interesting (or lucrative) enough to bother with.
something will arrive in a couple of years which nobody would have predicted (hint: it isn't Longhorn, and like Netscape it WON'T come from Microsoft) and will spin the cycle round again.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
gather subjects in a room and recite out loud
..
==--==---==---
The Halting Problem: Given (m,n) does the Turing machine Tm halt when given the input n?
Prop 7.29. [The Halting Problem is unsolvable.]
There is no algorithm which will decide the halting problem for all pairs (m,n).
Proof: Suppose there is such an algorithm.
Then , there is an algorithm will decide the question:
does the Turing machine Tn halt when given the input n?
By Turing's thesis, this will correspond to a Turing machine T that will give a result 0 or 1 depending upon whether Tn halts or not for the input n.
Thus with input n we have T halts
(i) with output 0 if Tn halts with input n and
(ii) with output 1 if Tn does not halt with input n.
Here's a new Turing machine B:
Do T and when T halts, look for a non zero square on the tape.
If it finds a nonzero square, halt, otherwise, keep looking!
Thus for any n,
If Tn halts on input n, then B does not halt on n, and
if Tn does not halt on input n, then B does halt on n.
Now B is on the list of Turing machines, suppose B = TN.
So Does TN halt on input N?
If TN halts, then B doesn't halt... ooops B= TN
If Tn doesn't halt, then B halts... OOOOPs.
So there is no algorithm that will decide the Halting problem.
==--==---
observe reactions..remove those who stare blindly
and go: uh?. Send them to get a their MS Cert.
==---==--
Second test.
exclaim: GNU stands for GNU is Not Unix.
==--==--==
observe reactions..remove those who wont smirk.
Send them to get cisco certs.
Keep the rest.
- these are not the droids you are looking for -
It's because of all the booming IT schools that hand out IT degrees like it's water. Get your computer degree in only 24 hours! IT schools make me want to switch my major to something less main-stream.
irc.enterthegame.com #linux
As a current CS major at university, I think that most people coming from high school have a general misconception of what CS is and what it involves. I think people still look upon computer science as an insanely lucrative field that is fairly simple to master. However, I think they are quickly shocked once they start to learn that it really is a difficult major. At my university upperclassmen speak of how some of the more advanced CS courses are famous for causing people to switch majors. For instance, one class started with two sections of about 50-75 people each and by the middle of the term they were down to around 12-15 each. This drop was very shocking to me, at least.
I have always had a passion for computers and technology and I can't really see my doing anything else with my life. However, I sense a lack of this passion from many of the CS majors. In one of my classes we had mock interviews and some of the questions revolved around general ideas of technology and things that you probably wouldn't pick up in class. I was surprised by how many people couldn't answer the questions or didn't seem to really care about anything that wasn't taught in lecture. I have always paid attention to technology and things going on in the computing industry, but I seem to be in the minority among my fellow CS majors. I can't imagine choosing a major simply because it seems lucrative, but it seems that many choose CS for that reason.
SIGFAULT
The programmers, admins and other "IT professionals" out there are analogous to auto mechanics and carpenters, or at best construction formen. Nobody is talking about architecture majors in relation to the recent building boom, are they?
A CS degree, a proper, accredited CS degree from a school with a good reputation, makes you more of an architect or mechanical engineer, better suited to designing the skyscraper or concept car than to actually build one.
And before people jump on me for glorifying CS degrees... Few architects and mechanical engineers could build a solid addition onto their house, or even hang kitchen cabinets or lay carpet, better than a professional suited and trained to the task. How many lines of code have the likes of Alan Turing and C.J. Date written, in comparison to the lot that tried to "Learn C++ in 21 Days"?
The world only needs so many designers and theory-people. CS grads were filling the programming and admin needs, and largely wasting their theory education, because there isn't that much need for theory in the "real world". The bubble burst, and the people who went into CS for the money are no longer doing it.
Conversely, those of us who truly love the field would still be doing theory and research, even if the only relevant job we could find was a teaching VB to industrial technology majors.
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
Back when video games were ultra-cool (watch movies like Tron to see the hype), there would be students showing up for comp-sci, and getting thoroughly disappointed when the professors went on about optimizing your sort strategies when you only have three 9-track tape drives to use...
There were a lot of drop-outs and changes of major after the 1st semester of comp-sci when they found out the universities didn't teach how to write the next Pac-Man.
Those that lasted were those who were really into computers, either the technology or the industry. I liked both, I guess. The industry was always interesting -- something new every week. The technology was fun too.
Chip H.
Had you actually read what I wrote, you would have learned that I found the instructors, not the students to be less experienced than I.
I found that *only three* instructors knew their subjects better than I. That is a sad state of affairs, regardless of my age. The instructors are *supposed* to be at the top of their subjects.
Those non-CS background IT programmers typically program just sufficient to make things work. They don't care about data structures, complexity (things like big-O), scalability, etc, which is important to produce efficient code, when handling huge amount of production data. This is especially true in corporate settings when they want to deploy their projects fast to the end-users.
I don't mean that programmers with CS background will always do a better job, but at least they get formal CS training over a 3- or 4-year period, which cannot be comprehensively taught by a 1-year conversion course, assuming that these non-CS background people attempted to do such a course in the first place to 'convert' themselves.
...is the statement at the bottom that GRE's from China and India have dropped by >50%. Given that grad CS is more like Asian Club than anything else, there's going to be a serious shortfall of graduate students. You know, the people who do the actual research while the professors crack their whips. If (when) that comes to pass, US research will be in serious guano and Asia will fly right by them.
Damn, I knew I should have taken Chinese in high school. Only it wasn't offered.
-Lars
you dont need a degree for programing, just look at John Carmack, here is someone with no degree but arguably one of the finest programmers of the time and quite capable of other engineering tasks , (ie rocketry)
"Computer science is
no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes." -- Dijkstra
If you want to be a code-monkey, then some certifications might get you there. And maybe 80% of the world's programming jobs can be done by code-monkeys. However, it's rare to find someone who loves CS who is content to implement specifications, especially if they aren't interesting and challenging. That is what separates the men from the boys. So take your MCSE, A+, Cisco, Java, etc certifications, the jobs at the top require far more depth and breadth than you can get from them though.
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
most real engineering companies require a Bachelor's or better
Or Equivalent Experience
Computer Science is not the same as Information Technology (professional I.T.). You can do I.T. without knowing one lick of Computer Science -- lots of people do. Also, you can do Computer Science knowing surprisingly little I.T. (I help Senior Engineers do basic IT stuff all the time, because they just couldn't figure it out/don't have the patience/focusing on something else/etc.)
stuff |
Desire for self-study combined with a willingness to take on resposibility went father(sic) than a whole room of antisocial PHDs.
To obtain a PHD requires a quite strong sense of responsibilty for your what you produce, whether that is a thesis or a project. The desire for self study over classroom or group project learning is a definate sign of being antisocial.
That said, there are many people who are either amazing programmers or excelent administrators who have no degrees or certifications. The reason for this may be that they often have something in common with the PHDs: The majority of PHDs in the US (and possibly Europe?) left school (ie: dropped out) at least once while attempting to obtain their undrgraduate degree. The traits that make someone brilliant in their field are most often not those that make them a successful student in a traditional environment.
(qtp at work. IANAPHD)
A lot of people have asked me why I didn't major in CS (I majored in Mathematics instead). There are so many reasons to not major in computer science, and so few reasons to do so.
First of all, the degree is nearly useless in the sense that everything gets outdated so fast. The program at my school when I started college was so extremely different from the program when I graduated, and it continues to change.
Next, you spend a lot of time studying algorithmic stuff you will never use. That's great that they have you write a bunch of array sort algorithms, but there aren't too many of us who will be using them very often in the real world.
I have met very few, and by very few I mean not a single one so far, computer science graduates that were worth their weight as a programmer. Most, in my opinion, are people who heard that you could make a lot of money as a computer programmer so they decide to study CS. Now I'm sure there are amazing programmers that have come out of CS departments, but it seems like the greatest come from Math, Physics, Engineering, you name it just not CS.
There are actually more 'Computer Science' majors, but at the risk of being overqualified for the jobs at McDonalds, they are lying about it.
If US has about 4% of the world population, what's the problem with a 6% figure?
(8-DCS)
I currently don't hold a degree. However I do run a succesful/profitable OSS related tech company. I see degrees as just another tool for some people to structure themselves. Companies who limit their hiring to people who only have degrees are limiting their talent pool. I personally feel that working your way up from the bottom and attaining the knowledge on your own is much more valuable.
Sean Milheim
iDREUS Corporation
enjoy calculus and statistics more than video-games and recently found out how much actuaries get paid.
Mathematics is not a crime.
Had you actually read what I wrote, you would have learned that I found the instructors, not the students to be less experienced than I.
I did read it. Apparently you didn't read everything I wrote. But I did have a chance to reflect more on what you originally said.
Why do you think you know more about a subject than the instructor? You may know more or you may know so little that you don't know that you don't know more. I've taught before and had students who often thought they had a better solution than methods currently taught. That is great for them. They should look for better solutions. But I usually explained what was wrong with their solution and they said, "Oh." Maybe your instructors were lousy instructors or they didn't care enough to tell you that you are full of crap. It doesn't mean they aren't knowledgable in their subject area. You may have just gone to a crap school.
Learning to do A,B or C if X,Y or Z happens is NOT computer science!
:-)
Really? Because I really don't understand finite state automata then. Crud.
The poster to whom you replied was correct, and your retort was misplaced. "Doing A, B or C if X, Y or Z happens" is merely what FSAs do rather than FSA theory, and does not require any technical knowledge about FSAs at all. MS admins are often taught to perform reactive duties like that too, as if they were cogs in a machine, since the platform is largely a black box. Being able to do that yourself does not constitute understanding how it is done, nor does it provide you with any of the background or principles of FSAs.
That's the difference between vocational training and education. An MCSE suggests that the holder is competent in certain computing duties for a particular platform. It doesn't pretend to offer an education in computer science.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
You see, your personal experience is called an "anecdote". It is just a single data point and doesn't really mean anything. People aren't entering computer science anymore because they don't think they'll get a job, or the job won't pay as much as in the past.
At the risk of being modded flamebait, my immediate reaction to the line you quote was to wonder whether the surprise was at the fact that there are people outside the USA.
"'Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.' -- Dijkstra
That is what separates the men from the boys. So take your MCSE, A+, Cisco, Java, etc certifications, the jobs at the top require far more depth and breadth than you can get from them though."
you hear that sound? it's all the CCIE's in the world laughing at you.
Their are two kinds of computer professionals in the world; those who truly enjoy the tech (geek) and those who simply do their job (drone). The drone will do what is required, but only what is required. He takes no joy in his profession and marks time until he can leave it.
The geek on, the other hand, is the far more desirable employee. He'll keep up to date without prompting and will even educate himself on his own time. While work can be a grind, the satisfaction of doing it well is often enough compensation to keep him going. He'll even occasionally work for a lower paycheck if he finds an environment to his liking.
Unfortunately, while these two species can easily recognize each other on site, outsiders have a harder time differentiating. In an interview, the successful drone has a disconcerting ability to mimic the geek, casting a cloud of confusion around their true skill level. Conversely, the geek may not adequately convey their skill level to those not conversant in reading the signs.
I now see fewer drones than in years past. If this is a sign they are dying out, I welcome it.
For the record, I'm an Oracle DBA / developer with a BS in English Lit. The best geeks are, as always, self taught.
If a person has already broken into the IT sector without a degree and now has 7 years of experience and is now being promoted into IT managment; would you say that person should still go back to school and get their degree? I think this is a rare senario, but this it was I have done. My Mom & Dad are constantly bugging me to go back to school, but at this point I don't think a degree will help.
/.
What is your opinion
© 2004 The SCO Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
I have a CS degree and have never written a line of code(professionally). I have, however, been a Network Technician and Administrator for more than 10 years(before that I chased electrons as a technician doing R&D work for a gov't agency). CS taught me some wonderfull ideas and concepts and is\has been a great tool in planning many projects. I'm just a gear-head with a degree in something I don't really use(like so many others with degrees), I just wanted the paper, tired of going to interviews and being asked why I never graduated. I just like the challenge of troubleshooting and fixing things and playing with computers and networks. The talent was first noticed by my dad when I took our first color TV apart and 'adjusted' it at age 6, after the ass-whupping I was encouraged to ask questions BEFORE I dismantled something. That's my rant and I'm sticking to it.
I think a lot of open source projects are proof that Comp Sci degrees are almost pointless.
:-).
I just graduated with CompSci degree and instead of being taken seriously at my new job, I am the new guy fresh out of college. I've been programming since I was 4 years old (Commodore 64), and I can confidently say I know more and code better than the guy who's been at this company for 10 years.
Experience is really the key. You have to know your stuff and be prepared to tackle tough problems. You have to be a great problem solver.
True, Engineering courses at school help you learn how to solve problems better, but those were only 5 really helpful courses and then there is the rest of liberal arts easy A stuff
Thats BS, and I'm not just saying that because I happen to be a network 'monkey'. If the CS coders are building the car, then the network monkies are building the highway infrastructure...without which, your car don't go.
So start giving thanks to the people who make your life possible.
... and the best in your division. Why not just start your own company instead with your affected peer group? Walk away! You get to keep your brains, they don't. If your employer was able to pay you 6 figures average, that means they were making at least probably double that off of your labor. Screw em! They want a piece of paper instead of productivity, take your productivity to your own office and take all the cash, not some of it. The proof is in the product, not the degrees hanging on the wall.
And something the petit pompous bosses aren't bingoing to yet, even though it's staring at them. First they came for the blue collars who actually produced, and everyone else sneered and laughed at them, and told them to pull themselves up by the bootstraps. Now they are coming for the white collar actual producers, telling them-and you- to pull yourselves up by the bootstraps "or else". Next they-they being the billionaire globalists who could give a rats ass about anyone else except their profits are going to start eating the lower level managers and sales people, and those dudes STILL think they aren't replaceable with outsourcing overseas. Ha! Sure they aren't!
Get self employed if you want to STAY employed, no matter what field you are in. Better to be employed at 50 or less a year then unemployed at whatever you used to make. And there's no profit for your soul working for cretins like that, and it's something you can't put a dollar tag on.
You don't need a degree to be an effective developer. Not necessary. Amply demonstrated. For years now.
On the other hand you do need a CS Degree to create new chip designs for example.
In terms of the world's economic needs, what is the required ratio of programmers to chip designers. 100,000 to 1? Anyone have the actual stat?
Why is it that 6% of engineers are trained in the US news to you?
Are you aware that there is more to the world than the USA? You know, good ol' America only contains about 4-6% of the world's population. You think the other countries have no need of engineers?
That figure is totally in-line with what you would expect!
or everyone else with half a brain will leave you in the dust.
The fact of the matter is IT is becoming a major factor for all types of degrees. We live in a generation that essentially grew up with computers and saw the birth of the internet (and some major advances in networking, computing, applications, etc etc). Sure there are less and less degrees in the field obtained, but more and more people are becoming familar with the way a computer works are earlier and earlier ages. Eventually its going to get to the point where advanced languages (what we consider advanced) will taught at lower and lower grade levels (Java/C#/C++, etc.. is already an elective in some high schools).
Sure, people can still go out and study further into these disciplines (PhD's are good to have, as they advance whats known). But your average accountant should have the skills to write himself a nifty little batch or a cute little applet to help him achieve his goals at work in a more efficient and timely manner.
When I began working on my CS degree at Ohio State the department was warning incomming students that they might not be able to get into the major. The department scales the required minimum GPA for atdmittance to the major with demand. In 2002 the requirement was a 3.2. Since then it has slipped to 2.5. Because of this I've noticed that, contrary to the artical, the quality of students in the program has decreased somewhat.
I think it is a good thing that there isn?t as many CS Majors as in the bubble. I was in the CS Major (doing the classes to get my major) from 1999-2001. During that time the bar of excellence was lowered repeatedly because a great number of the majors were doing it for the money and not the love of tech or computers. It was quite annoying to work hard and get a good score on a project or something like that, let?s say a mid A and then to have the proff slide everyone up, lets say a D to a C+. My grade couldn?t go up anymore but all of a sudden my knowledge of some material was equivalent to another that it wasn?t! I also got tired of the people who could barely get through high school algebra in the Major because they have repeatedly taken math up to what, the Calc I required and squeaked into the major. I can go on, but I think my point is made. Back in the bubble there were many people getting a CS degree for reasons other than the love of computers/tech and many people getting degrees in CS who should have been flipping burgers at McDonalds. The bursting of the bubble was a good thing, now the industry will be filled with better qualified, my passonate workers.
Nuttles
Christian and proud of it
First a disclaimer- one of my undergrad degrees is in CS, I did 3 years of a CS PhD program, and taught undergrad CS. My feelings on CS are colored accordingly
Could someone please explain to me why this is a bad thing? The economy cannot support the current numbers of IT professionals, as evidenced by the unemployment statistics. Further, outsourcing isnt entirely to blame for this, though I do see it mitigating job growth. Fewer CS majors means we will have a higher "signal to noise ratio", our universities will output higher quality CS grads, and the economy will have a better chance of supporting them with job opportunities.
The vast majority of people fleeing CS at the moment are doing so because they have no interest in the subject matter other than fiscal. Most of my freshman CS majors fell into this category in 2000-2001. Does this mean that we might miss the next Turing? Possibly, but truely great minds will find a way to enrich our society regardless of the field of study they pursue. If anything, these numbers are further evidence that the dot com bubble burst was a return to sanity.
As someone (dijkstra? soustroup? one of those guys with a funny name) said, computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. Knuth said in his lectures on theology that he was not the person to ask if you had problems getting lotus 123 working. Computers are very useful to computer scientists in that they can perform the algorithms computer scientists study.
Why don't we change the name of computer science to something more appropriate. Algorithmics? Computational theory? (that one still comes too close to the word "computer") Symbolic processing? (and that one may just be my Lisp background showing through.)
I don't know. But I'm both amazed and saddened by how many job postings I see saying something like "need a cold fusion developer. Bachelor's in CS required." That's idiotic.
Computer science is not programming, though programming is a skill that most computer scientists need to ahve. Ditto networking, hardware troubleshooting, etc. But that's also true of physicists and chemists. Computer scientists study efficient means of transforming sets of symbols and numbers. Why don't we just sever the imagined link between that discipline and writing the crappy string transformation routines that make up most of development today?
All's true that is mistrusted
Computer Science is a facinating field of study, and a great hobby. Its a rotten career.
Its like being the high school nerd for the rest of your life. There are very few companies out there that truly respect their programmers, and with outsourcing becoming more and more popular, that trend isn't going anyway anytime soon.
College Students: It may sound GREAT to have a swell job where you get free coke and code all day. Thats because you associate coding and programing with learning and new discoveries. Every programming project, every new linux distrubution, every class has been something new and interesting. When you hit the real world, that ends. It becomes the same old shit everyday. Yes, you can learn on your own, but that isn't your job. Sure, i'm "learning" C#
I myself am halfway through my masters in a different field so I can change my career. Do you really think you'll be excited about working on version 6 of the same product you've been working on for 5 years? Do you think you'll be able to switch jobs at a whim when you get bored?
I make it a part of my life to talk young people out of entering technical fields. Maybe when our society starts respecting us, instead of treating us like we're a bunch of strange teenagers, i'll change my mind.
BTW: I've made my own situation better by demanding to do other tasks at work, and again, working towards a new career in my spare time. I see so many programmers hit their early 30s and really hate their jobs. Think before you choose a career with computers.
the correct English in this circumstance is "fewer". "Fewer than %5 of the people" is correct, "less than..." is incorrect. "Fewer" is used for numerically-definable quantities, "less" for quantities that are undefinable in numerical measure.
We may produce 6% of the world's engineers total, but I bet you the breakdown would be something like:
Aeronautical: > 6%
Chemical: > 6%
Civil: 6%
Mechanical: > 6%
Industrial: > 6%
The demand for Civil engineers I imagine is far less here in the states than it is in developing nations that are still building out their basic infrastructure.
--Rob
Employers are more likely to be concerned than educators. Sure enough, the next sentence reads:
but what he really means to say is that he's, "having trouble finding some highly skilled programmers at the salaries we offer"The following shouldn't be all that surprising as jobs are easier to come by in those countries and educators won't be all that much concerned about this trend either,
because grad students don't bring in the big bucks to universities.Politicus
You need to look up the difference between "life peers" (knights, squires, etc.) and "birth peers" (barons, dukes, etc.). Both are titles of nobility and both were prohibited by the US Constitution.
If you ever told a life peer that his title wasn't earned, you would be treated with a degree of contempt no less than you would receive from a Harvard PhD.
Lemmie guess, never graduated college, and are bitter that it's a needed thing for corporate advancement?
Let me guess, you are bitter you got saddled with a $100k debt and nothing to show for it but a tendency to "correct" people by making statements like "Nobility is an inheritable title".
Seastead this.
Not to learn how to do things. The whole key to learning is being excited about the subject. Rarely can a teacher do that. Today schools, be it university, college or high school is not about inspiring creative thought and self motivation. It's about a grade and a paper. I went to school to read literature, since I knew I would program for a living. Not that I know everything, but I knew I felt it would teach me all the wrong things. Instead I read the classics and learned about things I wasn't aware of. No teacher did this for me. A teacher's greatest job is to identify what a student is interested in and point them in that direction.
So why is it a surprise that the US has 6% of the engineers in the world? That seems about right...
I wish I could slap some moderators.
You can't inherit an academic degree, that is obtained based on your persona effort and abaility.
A nobility title gives you a position in society irrespective of whatever you have done (good or bad) in life.
No wonder people with democratic instincts hated so much such monstruosities (not enough to get rid of their own slaves some of them, but that is another history).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Another point I read somewhere else once:
Back In The Day, as a kid, I programmed in TI99/4a basic, then appleII basic, then IBM Basic. What did I make? Stupid programs that did things I thought were cool, and dumb little games.
I could sit down, read a book, and do a basic program, and it was easy to understand, easy to see how line numbers worked, easy to put a pixel on the screen, and it all came with the computer.
Nowadays, you need visual studio installed to do any programming. You need a much higher level of expertise to write even a simple visual basic program. And games? Forget it. Its hundreds of lines of code to put a white square on the screen using directx.
Oh well. I'm sure people 10 years older than me are saying the same thing about programmers not having to build their own computers, and in 20 years we'll hear programmers upset that kids nowadays never had to go without brain implants.
The sad truth is that all science and engineering jobs that can be will be sent overseas. It's a major strategic problem for our country as a whole, and IMHO it could lead to us losing our world status. However, if anyone's complaining, they're not doing so loudly enough. It's very hard for CEOs to resist the temptation of 90% labor cost savings.
One thing I remember hearing a year or so ago is that "Americans will have two jobs in the future, CEO or janitor." Otherwise smart people are being forced into management as the only choice to move up in an organization. I'd much rather use my brain all day long instead of writing e-mails and having endless conference calls.
If I were president, I'd do something similar to what Kennedy did in the 60s. He set a deadline for a mission to the moon, and backed it up with federal resources. Imagine what would happen if whoever ends up running things in November mandates that we end our dependence on foriegn oil in 10 to 15 years. Instant end to the middle east problem, and a great boom for science!
In the 11 years since I graduated college I've been a technology project manager, a programmer, a manager of internet development, a system administrator, and a systems analyst.
And to think, people used to give me weird looks when I told them I was getting a degree in English and Philosophy.
Read any good sonnets lately?
"Apparently you didn't read everything I wrote."
Really? Here is what you wrote, in toto:
"Unless you are retard, what do you expect with 30 YEARS MORE life experience than your class mates?
I would hope that after 30 years you can do college in a breeze and would know more than some of your professors in some subjects."
I note with interest that you are presuming there was a difference between me and the others in my classes. I went at night with a bunch of other middle-aged folks. Everyone had 20-30 years experience over entry-level students. I don't recall mentioning the level of the other students *at all*, just the sad level of the cirriculum and instructors. I do not believe that all but three constitutes "some".
Remember, the parent to this thread said "...where they teach you how to think, and focus on wisdom, rather than straight up knowledge...go to a university". I do not believe this to be any more than wishful thinking. I found the material and the instructors to be "dumbed down", and I mean for the courses they were, not for me. There is no excuse for that.
To answer your reflections:
"Why do you think you know more about a subject than the instructor?"
Because I was correcting them (mostly not in front of class). Also, I was bringing them current information pertinent to their field that they did not know existed, and they were also unable to follow some of the discussions I had with them.
"You may...didn't know more."
I made Dean's list each and every semester. It was not a question of my not knowing.
"But I usually explained what was wrong..."
Had that happened, I would not have the opinion I do. It did not happen (except with those three I mentioned, oddly enough), much the pity.
"Maybe your instructors..."
I didn't and don't just complain. I laid out their mistakes in b/w and gave them the corrections with references. I too, have taught before.
"It doesn't mean they aren't knowledgable in their subject area."
When they are incapable of discussing their subject area in depth and with current information, yes it does.
"You may have just gone to a crap school."
Well, that would have been my initial point, wouldn't it? Reading other posts on this topic, it seems I was nowhere near alone.
I knew lots of *amazing* programmers and IT professionals who had non-IT degrees
I knew lots of *amazing* programmers and IT professionals who had NO degrees
I knew lots of *amazing* programmers and IT professionals who had IT degrees.
What's the point?
I know they're out there. I just didn't expect them to acomplish nuthin, that's all. ... think any of 'em might be engineerin neu-ku-lar weapons?
At least we still lead the world in whoopass production.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Otherwise they "think" they know what they're doing but they don't. Why get a Biology degree and then look for a job in computers? You picked the major so go find a job in it, sheesh.
To have certainty of a person's competence you need something other than a "life-time certification" from a bunch of guys who themselves have a "life-time certification".
Seastead this.
Rather than rant (again). I'll just borrow from Samantha"The above is not "informative". It is the old blame the victim and assume we the employed are so much better than that. It assumes that having a job is some kind of statement of moral worth or software savvy." This attitude not only blinds us to reality, but it prolongs the hurt, and prevents the healing the IT sector needs. We're our own worst enemies, and will continue to be as long as the "holier than thou" attitude persists.
uhh just to point out here, the AC also wrote: "I would hope that after 30 years you can do college in a breeze and would know more than some of your professors in some subjects."
but anyway. I'm going to agree with AC, that you likely went to a crap school then. Most major universities dont have many night courses you can earn a non-associates degree from. *shrug*
But whatever. Your posts make you look like an ass at least 30 years younger than you claim.
-
http://cims.clayton.edu/jpreston/Readings/denning_ 07_04.pdf
Aside from the theory of computers, people should not have to be educated formally to be able to do advanced work with computers. Even programming should be somewhat doable by novices.
..."
Computers are products of our intellect. We control how well computers can be made usable.
Now, people should realize how fascinating computers really are and get some advanced education about them.
Regarding how many people are enrolled, the education system should migrate to a computerized teaching system where anyone can learn right now how to do something. One day we should be able to say "Tank I need to
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
What's needed is something like a controversy metric that is the degree to which ratings conflict.
Those are the messages I want to read because they are the places where the most conflicts of interest manifest -- and conflicts of interest are more important than "informative" messages since by seeing conflicts of interest clearly we can look directly at what ethicists might call the foundation for public discourse.
Seastead this.
computer scientists aren't engineers. engineers don't necessarily have to be IT people. we've seen this same topic posted on /. over and over again, yet people still make the same kind of mistake.
yeah yeah yeah, people dont deserve to be in the field arent in the field blah blah. same comments, same waste of time.
I'd be curious if anyone thinks this is a worthwhile analogy: People with technical degrees are akin to cowboys whereas people with collegiate degrees are akin to horse doctors. A horse doctor knows all about the THEORY of horses, and has a huge leg up on handling horse X, but the cowboy knows his own horse far better than the doctor does. The doctor can cure the horse's stomache-ache far better than cowboy can, and the cowboy can ride the horse far better than the doctor can. It's the classic duality of theory/practicality, or how vs why. i beleive 'why' is more impressive, but 'how' has a better success rate ^_- -g
"What really woke me up was their statement that only 6% of the worlds engineers are educated in the USA."
Why is that suprising? The US represents only about 4% of the world's population. What percentage of the world's engineering supply should we generate?
In the US, we value money and power. We absolutely despise knowledge and intellect. This is why academic research in CS is 5-30+ years ahead of the industry. Why can't we do a better job programming? Because people refuse to learn why things went/go wrong and what can be done to prevent them in the future. Those are social factors that will end up causing the US to sink to the bottom. We may have invented this profession, but if we continually fail to properly educate people, we will end up the lowest cost workers in the world.
You will see dozens of anecdotes here claiming that the best programmer at their shop never got a degree. As a result, everyone in the industry ends up reinventing the wheel. The plural of anecdote is NOT data. Yes, there are some smart people who never got edumacated; they would have been even better people if they had been. You wouldn't go to a self-taught doctor. Why would you trust your business to a self-taught IT worker?
"If you want a well-rounded education where they teach you how to think, and focus on wisdom, rather than straight up knowledge which will be obsolete on graduation day anyway, go to a university."
"Insightful" my Grandma's fanny. It's straight-up bigotry, with a dash of snobbery. One "wisdom" comes from the "school of hard knocks", not any damn university. Second a lot of the people who go to places like ITT/Devry already know how to think, and have wisdom. They're usually going to get something they're missing i.e. brushing-up, degree capping life experience. And aren't fresh face, fell off the boat which you assume, although there's nothing wrong with that. At least one thing can be said. I wouldn't recommend university if it's going to be a breeding ground for the kind of attitude you just displayed.
Let me draw an analogy here. Consider chemical lab monkey. Their job is mixing things to make stuff, and performing any one of a batch of analysis techniques.
The most important skill for them to have is good lab procedure - keeping thing clean, labeled, and not spilling things. Also, knowing what to do if one of the above is not true.
This does not need a degree in chemistry (and I say that as a chamietry graduate). The depth of understanding required isn't that great - once you know how to do a titration, you look up the precise set of reagents to use to perform a specifc test. Compare this to a programmer, whose is much the same situation - know the basic principles for a set of techniques, and then looks up the specifics if needed.
Chemistry is very slightly older than programing / computer science. So, if you look at how the split between laboratry workers and the hardline theorists worked out, that might give some insight into how the programming field might develop, right?
Well, there are no seperate qualifications for laboratory work. The nearest thing is stopping the path to a degree before graduauation - be it after highschool, or with something that's equivelent to the first year or two of a bachelors.
Most places, however, when they want some to work thats mostly turning the handle reactions or analysis look for a degree.
For good or ill, then, I suspect that trying to split off programming and CS will come to nothing.
The article headline used the word "fewer" instead of "less" ... and they were right to do so!
:P
Usually, people use those two words as synonyms and they're not. Where are our grammar nazis? You should tell people when they get things right, or they might not realize it
I think we're a little ahead of the curve for robitics technician but maybe not for industrial processes.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I knew a guy I worked with on an internship who had a BA in History and an MS in CS. He just decided he wanted to do CS stuff.
t io n.html
Its a little bit of a learning curve but definetly possible to do. You'd have to take a couple of undergrad courses to catch up but that shouldn't be to big of a deal.
I've got a BS in CS and I think the experience was definetly worthwhile.
http://www.cs.mtu.edu/html/grad/semesters/Proba
Information from my school about getting an MS in CS without CS as an undergrad degree. In your first year and a half you would definetly get all of the stuff you described above in your education.
M.S. Course Requirements Probationary Students
From the website:
For students who do not have a bachelor's degree in computer science or a closely related discipline, we allow admission to the MS program on a probationary basis. Each application for such an admission will be reviewed separately by the Graduate Committee. The assumption is that students have at least one programming course, preferably using Java, and will follow the course plan below.
Good luck!
I graduated CompSci in 2002. GPA 3.92. I worked my ass off at school while working full-time as a graphic designer. As my graduation approached, I networked and went to interviews. I was humble and professional.
My degree, GPA, and all that hard work didn't mean shit. All anyone wanted was experience, and lots of it. I interviewed for entry-level positions, only to find out they wanted 6-10 years of programming (java) experience! Everyone wanted enterprise level experience, which you don't really get in labs.
Am I bitter? You're fucking right I am! I've got $50k in student loans to pay and I'm still stuck doing graphic design work for less than half of what I could be making in IT. Worst, while I like graphic work, I would much rather work in IT.
Then again, maybe it's just been my unfortunate luck.
The vast majority of people fleeing CS at the moment are doing so because they have no interest in the subject matter other than fiscal.
Lets hope so.
A couple friends and I had a term for these people when we were CS undergrads from 1997 through 2000:
CS Mercenaries.
The goal of these folks was to gain a degree so that they could make lots of money. They generally did as little work as possible to get through. They were not interested in writing good code (or any at all for that matter), or gaining knowledge and insight into how a computer works.
This attitude struck us as very similar to that of someone who would kill for the highest bidder. They were simply trying to find the program that paid the highest starting salaries that they thought they could actually graduate in.
Lets hope that those who have a true love for computing are the folks that are still majoring in computer science. I certainly will not shed any tears over the lack of CS Mercenaries enrolling in (leeching) CS programs.
// harborpirate
// Slashbots off the starboard bow!
I have to agree with Oli. Here's the core required courses for UW:
*CSE 142 Computer Programming I (4) -- NOPE
*CSE 143 Computer Programming II (5) -- NOPE
CSE 321 Discrete Structures (4) -- MAYBE
CSE 322 Intro to Formal Models (3) -- MAYBE
CSE 326 Data Structures (4) -- NOPE
CSE 341 Programming Languages (4) -- NOPE
CSE 370 Intro to Digital Design (4) -- NOPE
CSE 378 Machine Org & Assembly Lang. (4) -- NOPE
Now, if you've been doing it for 30 years, which of these courses is going to be interesting?
Data structures? Nope. Please -- probably implemented modified versions of everything the instructor's going to teach.
Programming languages? Nope. -- Probably knows lisp, haskell, scheme, etc. on top of all the production languages.
Digital Design? Nope. Probably fiddled enough to have a leg up.
Assembly Language? Nope. With 30 years of experience probably done *A LOT* of production assembly.
Notice there's no required algorithms course. That's CSE 373 Data Structures And Algorithms.
So, if you look at this the required curriculum it is 20% interesting. That sucks. Would I want to go spend 4/5s of my time being bored? No way. That's why I chose to go back in math -- at least that way I can feel challenged every day.
Now, I grant you the University of Washington is not MIT but it's a respected school.
I wouldn't call Oli a liar. I might call him a brick shy of a load for choosing to do a CS degree after 30 years in industry. There are other options (AMATH springs to mind). BTW, in the interest of full disclosure I have about 16 years in the industryw without a degree.
You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake -- but you could be if you got off your ass.
Personally, I've got a BS, in Molecular Biology. I did minor in CS, but it was a bare minimum of CS type knowledge. To this day, I still find I need some CS concepts explained to me that people learned in college.
I worked as a tech support staffer at first and I was hired because of my bio degree (same area my boss had his degree in). I've moved to programming via certficiations.
I went into Lotus Notes, getting certified, and then getting a job. Then moved to from there to other software packages and more core programming (Microsoft and Java). My last few jobs I've gotten all via job experience, but at this job, I did need a Bachelors of some sort.
One of my best friends and a top techinical guy in not only a few companies we've both worked at, but in his area too, doesn't have a Bachelor's. It hasn't stopped him. He gets the occasional hurdle, but the company trying to hire him always jumps it.
Years ago, the high school diploma became a requirement for many jobs. We've taken it for granted now, because few people fail to get one, or a GED.
Now, we're seeing some sort of college degree starting to become a requirement. Certainly, if considering someone for a job where the experience is similar, the degree can be the difference. However, if the experience is exceptional, I think most companies will make exceptions. The only time it might be a problem, is on a gov't contract or something, that states worker minimums of degrees or something.
Back when I was conducting interviews from time to time, the degree was always a part of my decision, but I always focused on the experience.
A lot also depended on the company. If I was hiring for more hard core CS work, I'd tend towards people with a CS degree and similar work. Not someone with an IT degree.
However, when working for a consulting company, I found that sometimes, the best engineers, were the worst consultants.
I recall interviewing 3 college hires once. One was an IT person, with basic computing skills. One was a IT person with poor computing skills, and one a CS person with great skills. I recommended the first IT person, if the job would entail a mix of consulting, management, and not heavy CS work. The CS person was perfect for the programming, and had the personality for consulting too. They did choose the CS person, but a lot of that was because of the job.
At that company, I rose into a techincal lead position over several people with CS degrees because of my experience, etc. However, I've always had to explain the Bio degree in any interview and except in the rare case, it has always been either a negative or simply neutral.
I think a CS degree is the best bet for someone, especially today, looking to start out. For someone in the job market, it will be all about your certs and experience, but the degree is one more thing to set you and the other applicants apart.
Also, the mass of MCSEs, etc out there is diluting the strength of such certifications. That college that focuses on certs, etc will turn out people that might get hired quicker than someone with just a degree and college experience, but those people will not move ahead as quick with showing something exceptional, while someone with more than just certifications should.
I would have pursued a MS in CS, or should have, not long after college, but at this point, my years of experience is enough of an equivelant to make the cost and time to get a Masters not worth it. However, I will probably loose out some day to the person with a MS an similar experience.
For me, a Masters with a science BS would've been a good combination. What I don't get are the people with a BS in CS who go on for a Masters while also working. They take 5 years to get the MS and end up with job experience that is pretty much an equivalent. I'd rather pursue a MBA or something that I can't get in job experience, which could be more useful to me in moving up at a company now.
In a few years, (3, when I graduate), since there are fewer people going into CS and CE now, will there be a need for them then?
I'm assuming that in 3 years, plenty of the old guys will retire, and with less people to replace them, there will be a demand for Computer Science (or my major, Game Design & computer Engineering Technology). Several of my teachers have explained this theory to me, and said to stay in the major since there will a demand by the time I graduate.
Does anyone else agree with this, or is it bunk?
It's sad to see that people believe students choose a career path based on the financial results of such a career. It is true that it is hard to live without money, but it is even harder and sometimes impossible to live without happiness.
Forget about getting a state or federal technical job without a degree. Most require a degree to "weed people out." And the higher the degree, the more you earn, regardless of actual job duties. That's been my experience.
I think the problem here on slashdot is that everyone is looking at a CS degree as an end in itself - it's not. I have a B.S. and an M.S. in computer science. The smartest programmers don't stay programmers. This is what everyone is missing. The smartest people with CS degrees move to where the "dumber" (technology-wise) people are - the business side. Consider the dilemma: You are an engineer coding away and you make 50-80k / year in the bay area, perhaps more if you are a lead developer. Well, a starting Sales Engineer or Product Manager makes over 100k, and with commissions, the SE can top out at 150k or more. Further, when you walk over to the business side with a CS degree, you are treated like a God because you know the technology COLD. The fact of the matter is almost every position on the "revenue generating" side of a company makes a crapload more dough than pure engineering. You can still code on the weekends.
Funny, that's why I went into CompSci, because I wanted to write programs. Hell, even work up from codemonkey. Closest I came was a 2 month stint, and they made me work in VB6 (blech!). Meanwhile, the guy who dropped (ahem, failed) out because he couldn't pass even when I was tutoring him, is working in a datacenter. He has no degree, no certs I know of. He's just glad-handed and smarmy, and thinks windows is-the-neatest-thing-ever.
And this makes me HAPPY! (as long as I take my antidepressants). PS: My resume is on my website, in case you want to hire (or laugh at) me.
Okay, I got my degree, now I'm ready to sell my soul. Hellooo? is this thing on? Oh, it is on? That's even more depressing.
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
I will grant that someone with the degree is likely to be more qualified then someone without the degree. Even after a great deal of experience, the university degree provides a much stronger platform of theory to build off of.
But it is far from necessary that every given software job out there requires such a degree. Like all education, you typically learn alot more then your likely to use. You dont need to be able to quote shakespeare to read and write in english. Also, education does not replace talent. And having a degree is no guarantee of skill. It is simply a guarantee that you have obtained a set of knowledge, not a guarantee that you will have any idea how to apply the knowledge.
I reccommend only getting as much education as you need to be able to do what you want. University level education is pretty damn expensive, and learning how to do what you want is not the same as doing what you want.
My opinion on this may be different if it were possible to obtain degrees without being required to take courses you have less intrest in. Especially while incurring huge debts without a guarantee of actually getting a job you want that can repay those debts.
END COMMUNICATION
only 6% of the worlds engineers are educated in the USA. Since the USA only has 5% of the worlds population, I'd say US engineers are overrepresented, not underrepresented.
I heard that a popular Ivy League IT certification program had a drop in enrollement from 2000+ to a little more than 100 students - outsourcing and the drop in IT work is said to be a fault.
Neither Bill Gates nor Larry Elison ever got a degree, and their each worth almost $50 billion. Oh yeah, stay in school... that will really increase your earning potential!
It appears from the comments that few, if any, differentiate between merely science and the merely technical; The difference between a scientist and a technician, for instance.
Someone with a 4 year CS or CE degree probably won't make a good system/network administrator/manager, and likely didn't get his or her degree for that reason. I'd like to think that people enter into a field of science to expand the discipline into as yet undefined areas of applied knowledge and study. Whereas someone acquiring technician skills are doing so for more narrow and defined purposes - Applying the known state of the science as a vocation.
How many scientists does a culture need in a given discipline? More important to the topic, in my opinion, is the quality of innovation graduating CS/CE majors bring to technology frontiers.
Mod me troll, if you must, I can't help it.
Good!
which does make a 3 line minimum.
ip access-list extended httponly
permit tcp any host 1.2.3.4 eq www
permit tcp host 1.2.3.4 established
apply that to your inbound interface and then you've got nothing but webserving allowed thru along with return established http connections.
See my other responses regarding the problems with life-time "cerfication".
Seastead this.
all too true
I guess he was talking about McDonalds' university.
Employer: "Got a degree?"
Stoont: "I even gots a special course in deep fryin' "
Computers innards/logic should not be touched by people who don't "get it."
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
if the US wants to keep having the standard of living its got today, 5% isn't going to cut it.
What's different is that now people aren't flooding into the field because it's "booming" and "a high paying career". Now that it's hard to get a job in IT, the posers (some of them) are going somewhere else, leaving more jobs to real, intelligent professionals.
As usual the problem is lack of understanding of the phrase "for life" in the original post.
Doctors are required to undergo periodic recertifications -- which is one of the few reasons their credentials mean anything other than a life-time peerage.
Seastead this.
With all the APIs and IDEs out there today, plus all the free open-source tools available, programming today is much easier than it used to be 20 years ago. Any clever person can do it now, most people will be able to do it soon. The further away our interfaces move from machine code, the less training and in-depth understanding one needs to in order to work with machines. In a few years, Computer Science and Electrical Engineering degrees will only be useful in R&D (and paid accordingly - peanuts here in Europe, compared to e.g. marketing)
The value of any product, service or idea follows a classic introduction - growth - maturity - commoditisation lifecycle. Today, this process is very rapid. As the technologies in which we train become commoditised, so do our degrees. I expect this trend to continue. CS and Electrical Engineering will be increasingly less profitable and hence less appealing. "coming through an impasse, change; having changed, you can get through" - the i ching
When the tech market first started tanking, we saw a 33% decline in enrollment in CS classes here at Stanford, if I remember my numbers correctly. What this tells me is that at least 1 in 3 people were taking CS just for the money. I've gotta say, if you like CS, it can be a really fun thing to do, but if you don't like it, I'd imagine it would be some of the worst drudgery. And frankly, people who don't like CS don't do very well in it anyway. While numbers of CS majors may go down, I believe this causes quality of code and quality of life to go up.
Why??? (and I wasn't a CS major by the way)
:-))
I am/was sick of people telling 18-year old NON-geeks that "Technology is the future. You need to study a technical-related field and work in it, because that is where the money is at."
Too many people in the late 90's and early 00's went into CS/Engineering/MIS because the "money" was there, although they had no interest in computer science before that. That used to tick me off. It was pathetic to see some freshman "CS" majors who had to take bogus classes like "Intro to Computers"...and they were CS MAJORS!!!!!
Thank god the CS field will be left to the geeks who, by age 10, write simple programs in BASIC, by age 15, write simple C/C++ programs, and by age 22 (CS grad) can whip out almost anything in any comp lang (Except assembly, that's machine lang for morons
At some of the companies where I worked, we had to explain to our very qualified (but degreeless) software architects, implementation consultants, and project managers that they needed to get some sort of degree. (Some of them had them, but many were in their 40s and had come from the time when programming was more of a trade.)
A lot of companies use their employees' educational backgrounds as bragging rights. But it also seems it's important to the clients making the decision to purchase a major system. Many decision-makers and key influencers on the client side have no background in IT. So they don't understand work histories or results. Yet a degree gives them a strong signal...regardless of whether it's relevant or not.
-- SYS 64738 --
The no child left behind act was Ted Kennedy's baby. Bush just co-signed and endorsed it. Funny how you retards seem to forget that little fact.
That's probably true that the ones who are getting CS degrees are doing it because they love it. I don't think that the average American was ever going for the CS degree anyway. When I was in school in the early 90's, I was surrounded by foreign students.
;)
Remember when the dot-com bubble burst? A lot of those folks were here on H1B visas. When their companies disappeared, so did their visas -- and they had to go back home. Suddenly there's this big shift to outsourcing. I wonder if there's a connection?
Right now, the startup I work for can't find qualified engineers. We'll hire anyone who's qualified. Not only are we not finding qualified citizens, we can't even find qualified permanent residents. We HAVE to sponsor people's visas, because INS is battening down the hatches -- hey, one of these engineers might be a terrorist! Right. One of these atheist Chinese engineers might be an Islamic extremist. Riiiiiight....
Anyway, sorry for the rant. Stressed out at work BECAUSE WE CAN'T FIND FUCKING QUALIFIED HELP...
I, for one, truly appreciate the frank advice.
... take your comment, s/Nursing/Programming/g, and you have my opinion of the IT industry. :)
However
(OK, there are a couple of other little tweaks, but materially, they are the same)
It doesn't really sound any worse than what I am used to.
Much better, in fact, if I get to shitcan my pager
Tuition _does_ matter. Just because some school in India is harder to get into does not mean it has the best to offer. I would not compare IIM-A with HBS, Dartmouth Stanford etc. Or the IITs with the top ten here. So it is the education in _many_ cases.Especially for those interested in higher ed. And "high fornication (and fertility) rate" of the "past few generations" is a crude/cheap shot, if you mean the cliches of overpopulation. Most "non-resident aliens" in the US schools are in the engg. departments...many of these guys could have gotten admissions in one of India's gazillion engg. schools...it is just that a(n) sci/engg. education holds out greater promise here...how many Indians go on to do their Masters in India? What is that worth?
GOOD! Now maybe I can get a job. About a year ago, I applied for a job, along with a guy who I knew from college. 3 years ago I left college, decided to take a break, he went on to grad with a BS CS, I got my AS CS instead. This company decided to hire him instead of me because of his degree, even tho I had more experience. Now they're stuck with the guy who can't program, can't design, has no idea how to connect to an Access Database using Visual Basic. Oh, and they locked him into a 5 year contract for $100K/yr.
I would have worked for pizza, beer, and college credit.
Anyway, I grad with my BS CS this semester, and tho I don't think the $100K/yr offers will be comming, I have no problems taking an entry level job. All I need to do is get my foot in the door right?
btw, that guy keeps asking me to help him with his work (dude, pick up a friggen book!). Of course the mean spirited spiteful a-hole that I am, i say "GO TO HELL YOU JOB STEALING TWIT!"
Maybe you went to the wrong college?
What's needed is something like a controversy metric that is the degree to which ratings conflict.
Those are the messages I want to read because they are the places where the most conflicts of interest manifest -- and conflicts of interest are more important than "informative" messages since by seeing conflicts of interest clearly we can look directly at what ethicists might call the foundation for public discourse.
I certainly wouldn't consider this post as flamebait. Nor would I claim it as informative. Hell, I don't even agree with it all that much. But it qualifies as 'interesting', IMO. Not in the 'Let's raise his Karma' interesting, like it's generally used. But rather that he had a different outlook on things, and provided enough support to get a discussion going.
God forbid us Slashdotters see a different view of things every once in a while. There's absolutely no reason that disagreement with a post should result in it getting modded as flamebait or trolling.
--LordPixie
20 years ago travelling in the US I would tell someone I was from Canada. Often as not they'd really have no idea where that was.
Look at a map of the US. There is a huge (1000's of miles / kilometers) long straight line (ok it's curved because of the earth) across the top of the country. I could never figure out what they thought that was.
Of course here in Canada we had the opposite problem with little sense of national identity. I was amazed to learn that kids in the US took courses in "American History" instead of just "History". No doubt kids in Germany and Japan take courses specifically in German and Japanese history.
Yeah, I know, nothing ever happens in Canada so there's not history to study. True.
Anyhow that was then, things seem to be improving on both fronts lately. Our American cousins are becoming more generally aware of the rest of the world and Canadians are becoming more secure and proud of their country.
One of these atheist Chinese engineers might be an Islamic extremist. Riiiiiight....
_ 3842900.html?place=home01
Actually there are muslims in China.
http://www.npr.org/display_pages/features/feature
"...government's effort to raise western China's standard of living. The aim is to make the Muslim minorities less likely to revolt."
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
I find that most people think CompSci is a major where someone learned how to do everything and anything with a computer.
:)
I have seen companies that want someone to create web page layouts and graphics, and then they require a CS degree. Or people think if there computer is broken the CS major can fix it.
I have also seen people say that Computer Science is Lame major and that you can learn everything you need by getting MS certs and Unix Certs. Those people dont even know what CS is and are filling jobs that have nothing to do with CS. And if they are getting programming jobs they are responsible for the crap code that is out there. They are the ones that do not understand the danger of "nested loops," and they also have no idea what a basic quick sort is or binary searches.
The biggest problem is the people interviewing the potential new employees because they have no idea of what to ask or how to find out what the person really knows.
well there is my rant, no comments of grammer or spelling please, I am a programmer with CS degree not a 3ngli5h major.
How's that New American Century workin' out for ya?
=)
I think that your option number 2 is not just the most common problem with non-cs programmers, but is one of the most common problems with anyone.
I have bad karma....
Open source is heavenly, Microsoft is the devil, SCO is going to hell
So, I'm an American living in the UK. On many occations, I've been in a pub, and someone would ask if I was Canadian. I'd say, no, I'm from the US. And they would say something along the lines of "Well, I alway guess Canandian, because if I ask an American if they are Canadian they kind of smile, but if I ask a Canandian if the are American, they get really pissed off".
Ernest MacDougal Campbell III
geek ramblings
Mark Twain
I don't hold any papers but I certainly have a lot of code running to back up my abilities. As many said, books and the internet usually provide better education at the pace of many programmers.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
I think Guy Steele came up with that one -- if I recall correctly it's in the preface to SICP.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
does less interest in disco lead to better disco dancers?
Ok kid, let's deal with your assumptions. First, you're assuming that when "you" are put out of work due to outsourcing to wherever, the person holding "your" former job will make more efficient use of capital, and "you" will eventually either find or create a position that economically justifies your income (be it more or less than before). No argument there.
Americans are sold this idea with the stated understanding that when they are forced to find or create new opportunities, it will improve their lives... they'll make more because of their superior entrepreneurial abilities. Therefore, this is good for the country as a whole.
While this has in general been true, the past isn't indicative of future performance. Read the prospectus. What you're missing is that the difusion of technology and business practices from the OECD to the rest of the world means that entrepeneurial breakthroughs are not the sole provence of the US. India and China are rapidly reaching the point where they don't need to buy anything from the US to grow their economies. So if a US company relocates their value added activities overseas, much - if not most - of that value stays overseas. The stockholders and/or CEO may realise additional profits, but the rest of the capital has been transfered overseas, and to a large extent stays there. And the reinvestment of profits seems to be going there too, since the perception is that the returns are higher.
The net result is that the upper 1% of the economy are fattening their own portfolos in exchange for transfering large wads of the remaining value out of the US on a scale we've never seen before. You can hope that this will help the US as a whole, but the fact is that this is unexplored territory. If you're a patriot, THAT ought to concern you.
Luke, help me take this mask off
In french, computer science is 'informatique'. I like that name better. I think 'informatics' would be a nicer name for the field, i.e. the science of information. but it's not like we can change that now...
FWIW, there are a few computer scientists out there that can barely, if at all, program.
And there are plenty of programmers that have only the barest rudiments of computer science.
That being said, people that understand one field well often do well in the other, because their knowledge is handy.-
Deciding whether you like CS, IT, or programming/software development is easy. Read a bunch of research papers on topics that you've poked at -- routing algorithms, image recognition algorithms, that sort of thing. If you get excited about the algorithm design, and would like to write papers like that research paper for a living, computer science is the way to go. If you get a CS degree, it won't hurt you if you end up programming, but you'll spend time learning a lot of things that you'll never use (like formal proofs of correctness and the like).
If you like writing software, you probably like programming.
If you like setting up and maintaining computers, you probably like IT.
Frankly, I think that most people like some mix of the above, and that the field breakdown is very artificial, but that's the way life is.
May we never see th
If you work with formally trained engineers (mechanical, electrical, civil, chemical, aerospace...) and see how the good ones in those fields go about their daily work, you will find that the truly good software engineers work much more like them than the people who just code. In the end, Engineering is a process. The good ones, in any field, work and produce similarly. That's not to say formal engineering training automatically makes you great. But, you do get more exposure to relevant technical issues.
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
Hey, all of you hard core programmers with non-CS degrees, this guy is going to be your boss in a couple of years. You were warned. ;-)
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
And anything beyond a few PRINT and GOTO in a QBasic program was a big effort.
A kid who wants to build a game can start with RPG Maker, or Dark Basic or anything like that. They don't need to *start* with opengl API calls! Anyway, game engines makes the API calls now. In fact, very few programmers are needed to make a game now IMO. All the work is artistic (3d models, animations, sound, storyline).
Anyway, people having trouble to assimilate the programming concepts should just walk away (And that's what they do.)
perception is reality
Suddenly with the IT Boom there were all these snotty little wannabe-yuppies who got into computing because they smelt $$$, but didn't know the front of the PC from the back.
Well, f* em. I hope these punks find the unemployment queues enjoyable. Let them return to Real Estate or Law.
That company is _heavily_ dependent upon illegal immigration to staff its operation--so much that it is questionable that company would exist if it had to pay for the costs of government services associated with its employees.
"The numbers don't lie. Average hiring salary went up last year."
Numbers may not lie, but the interpretation and presention of them often does.
To quote Disraeli "There are three kinds of lies: lies; damn lies, and statistics."
The average can mean many things - it could also easily mean that there are FEWER jobs, but that the ones that are left pay more, on average.
(How to Lie with Statistics)
Okay, the US probably does have about 4.5% of the world's population, (check out census.gov's popclock), but I have to take issue with the rest of your thinking.
America is probably best known internationally for its long line of fine engineers. We're famous for going to the moon (or faking it), inventing the modern systems of telephony and a few other 'basic' engineering feats that are pretty well all over the world. Even the worst place I've ever been knows that cars come from America, and that our missiles can go all over the world, ask for directions and then blow up.
At the same time, 6% of the world's engineers doesn't mean much. For example, in the United Kingdom, a Certified Aircraft Engineer is somebody who fixes airplanes. Not what Americans mean at all. In Turkey, something like 60% of the students get an engineering degree, mostly in Civil, and --i live there and this is tongue in cheek-- look what happens when there is an earthquake. I have friends from the Center of Near Eastern Studies in USSR moscow who have 'political engineering' degrees.
The question i'd ask is: how do we do against other countries that are known for inventing things (netherlands, UK, germany, recent japan,...) in terms of a similar level of education?
I'd match your money that the US produces as many engineers as France and Germany combined. Have you been to either of those countries in the past ten years? Everybody there is studying basket weaving!
I am considering changing from CIS to some health-related or physics-related field, because those are more consistent. Sure, that's one of the thrills of IT: the suspense of it being different tomorrow. However, there comes a point in time where you have had enough games, enough migration to a new product, and enough headache. I suppose the best way out of it would be to become a monk, but eh... There are certain "sinful" things in life that I enjoy way too much.
Considering how we don't allow kids to fail at school anymore (heaven forbid if little Johnny's parents found out), are we breeding a society of people who will take the easy way out of everything, because they believe that someone else will take care of things for them?
Linking this to IT, what will these people do if they pursue an IT career, then find it isn't as easy as it seems? I graduated in 2002 with an IS degree, and have not worked a single day in IT, and would kill to get into the industry, yet I believe I'm being kept out by those who have no interest in IT, but can't afford to quit because of the money they earn.
I'm not saying the BSCS *should* be a joke, I'm saying that in the job market, it is a joke.
I've worked in IT for 24 years, I purused thousands of job ads. Ads that even ask for a BSCS are extrememly rare. And what few job ads that do mention a BSCS, always say "or equivilent."
So why get a BSCS, when for the same nickle, you could a worthwhile degree like a BSEE?
A BSEEs can call themselves real "engineers" and demand the pay and prestidge that comes with the title. BSEEs can go into software development or systems administration just as easially as a BSCS. But a BSCS certainly isn't considerd a real engineer.
May not be fair, may not make sense, but that's the way it is.
Disclosure: I got my degree in math, then went to work in IT. Now I've forgot all my math, and the IT field is dead.
There are virtually no entry level IT jobs anymore. The market has disapeared. When you have a shrinking number of jobs who needs entry level people? So why get a degree in a discipline where you will not get a job. I do not think the IT market will expand any time soon. Too many jobs are going overseas. Even if it does, people still will not want entry level people. They will do what they did in the 1990s and import workers. I work in the Washington, DC area and 80% of Software Engineers and Database Specialists(Oracle, SQL Server, etc...) are non-US citizens. I know this because I do defense contracting and the government requires US citizenship. I am also seeing alot of 'onshoring'. Companies getting H-1B and L-1 Visas, bringing over people from India and contracting them for less than they can pay Americans. Why should people study Computer Science under these conditions. Do something else. BTW, I make quite a bit of money and am rather comfortable with my project.
There is something sort of like this online now called the eigentaste algorithm which supports the Jester joke recommender.
Seastead this.
you hear that sound? it's all the CCIE's in the world laughing at you.
I believe that, I'm just bitter because I'm in debt up to my eyeballs because of colleges, I could have spent $100 for all the For Dummies books I needed to have the same salary...
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
...I've seen the references before on /. as a medium sarcasm "I would like to subscribe to your newsletter" etc, so let's say I am not baited. If I am posting too much...eh, so what? Maybe I'll tone it down. In my defense, I'm not around a lot of humans here where I live,my girlfriend and I got talked out years ago, heh, so I don't get to talk much, so I compensate with the web. If you are serious, thanks, but all I do now is post on a few forums,and I post more here than any place else, so what you see is what you get. If at some time I go back to writing more...what's a good word... "officially"... which I might.. I'll post the details of it in my journal, which is virgin so far, BTW.
it could also easily mean that there are FEWER jobs,
No. It couldn't easily mean that. That is a potential explanation, as another would be that everybody but one person got paid one buck a year, and that that lucky beginner earned a billion dollars, thus bringing the average to where it had been in the past.
Those events while possible, are unlikely. Occam's razor says that we should take the simplest, likeliest interpretation until proven otherwise.
Lastly, a tell tale sign of some one losing an argument on the facts is to quote the "damn lies" saying.
It looks like your listing requirements for an undergrad degreee. It would be ridiculous for someone with 30 years in the field to take one of those, a grad program is the only thing that makes sense. In which case it's his own damn fault if he didn't get anything out of it since the profs in the grad programs I've been in have always been helpful and encouraging of research and digging into the material.
I read this as being about an undergrad. That's why I said:
I wouldn't call Oli a liar. I might call him a brick shy of a load for choosing to do a CS degree after 30 years in industry.
You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake -- but you could be if you got off your ass.
actually, the reason for the comment was because you quoted the man who wrote the SPF algorithm and slagged cisco certs in the same post. also, if you think you can pass the CCIE with a routing for dummies book you are sadly misinformed. the CCIE is the most highly respected cert because you have to perform complex network builds hands on under a tight time constraint. the skills involved are non trivial.
If you're conducting interviews for anything more than a tech-support job, Computer Science majors are a waste of your time, statistically-speaking. I've always been much more impressed with people with real science and engineering backgrounds (Physics, Mathematics, Electrical Engineering, etc) than CS majors.
I have no degree in Computer science (Education is meaningless).
I do have 18+ years of hands-on experience writing computer software.
After months of online research, thought, and programming, I came up with this which will save businesses lots of money if they use it (Cash grab is important).
Bryan Taylor
iamcf13@hotpop.com
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What I did while looking for another computer programming job:
1) Find a problem.
2) Solve the problem.
3) Benefit from the solution.
4) Cite the solution on your resume.
Bryan Taylor
iamcf13@hotpop.com
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Outstanding post! A breakdown/elaboration of blanks's points:
What do you expect from a country where education and intelligence is not a "High priority"? "? Education is competition, meaning tomorrow's educated students, who become business men could be your next big competitor.
The end result of the 'pass the failures' attitude toward pre-college scholastic achievement. The USA has, in the broadest of terms, a populace that can barely read the newspaper, don't know their way around a map of the world, can't remember the facts for key moments in world history, and watches inane sitcoms on television paid for by often inane commercials that constantly interrupt them at every carefully crafted plot point cliffhanger!
And as everyone knows in the USA people don't matter, Big business does.
Here are the two best examples I can come up with to support this assertion:
Even the USA government couldn't get Microsoft broken up into smaller companies during its antitrust suit with the software giant. Maybe, deep down inside, if they were successful, they would have screwed up the world economy as a result--part of which provides their operating funds. Hence, in the end, nothing happened. Microsoft is still in one piece and business is conducted as usual....
Look at the bipartisan political system in the USA: two sides of the same corporate-funded coin. Essentially, if you are not a 'Republicrat', you don't matter in the USA political process--your 'wasted votes' for third/alternate parties do little more than to motivate the two dominate political parties to fine-tune their platform and message in order to get the votes lost to dissent at the next election.
Yes business's would not be around if people couldn't buy their products, so they (we) get paid just enough to buy their products. And for those who can't afford it, that's what credit cards are for.
John Kerry wants to raise the minimum wage in the USA to $7.00 an hour. I am sure big business will fight against this to keep their labor costs low and their profit margins high as they have been since the last minimum wage hike in 1997. What 'burns me up' is how it is legal for restaurants to pay its waitstaff LESS than the minimum wage with the diners subsidising the waitstaff's wages with their tip monies to make up the difference--a process ripe for deception and uncertainty. Years ago, I used to work as a dishwasher at a now defunct restaurant chain so I've personally heard some of the 'horror stories' that revolve around tipping. I fully expect that if Kerry's minimum wage hike is passed into law, big business will simply raise their prices to get that money back as they have in the past ('passing the added costs on to the consumer')--a simple case of greed and inflation at work. A much better idea would be for the working poor who earn poverty level wages to be exempt from all forms of taxation except maybe monies paid into the Social Security system....
Because of years of greed and inflation, we now have a proliferation of credit card and home equity loan offers by mail, TV, and radio and 'payday advance' firms 'everywhere' that will loan you money for a short time at usurious interest rates.
We are losing a battle, not just with the rest of the world dealing with education, business, ethics(?) but a battle of bettering ourselves and giving our children a chance to survive in the future.
The USA, for the most part, is a 'microwave' society. Only matters of national policy, national defense, or college level education are planned out more than three months in advance--if that! Everything else is temporary and subject to change at a moment's notice due to societal and market forces within its borders. As a result, we now have:
- poorly educate
The Mayor (6048) wrote:
I've had to write LOTS of complicated mission-critical source code in the past with the help of the lead software designer. It was hectic and stressful with everchanging goals. How did I accomplish this? Simple.
I wrote the software as a 'sea' of short, simple, single purpose functions that were called from larger more complicated 'control functions'.
For the most part, to make a tiny but critical change in the application, all I had to do was to find and make a change in the proper single purpose function.
To even write such complicated software in the first place required breaking down the task algorithmically to something analagous to the single CPU instruction level. For an actual (demo) example, suppose I had gather information stored in variables into a line of text to save to a log file in Microsoft Visual C++....
--BEGIN CODE FRAGMENT --
CString str, fld, fnam;
int op1, op2, sum;
op1 = 2;
op2 = 3;
sum = op1 + op2;
str = "";
fld.Format("%d",op1);
str += fld;
str += " + ";
fld.Format("%d",op2);
str += fld;
str += " = ";
fld.Format("%d",sum);
str += fld;
str += "\n";
fnam = ".\\sumans.txt";
AppendStringToFile(fnam,str);
-- END CODE FRAGMENT --
See how painfully verbose everything is laid out.
Sure, I could have used a single CString.Format member function call (analgous to printf) but that would make it difficult and tedious to change this type of code around instead of the way it is. If I wanted to add another operand to the sum and its textual representation, I would have to make a copy of 3 lines of code and change a bit of the new text and a bit of the existing text to make the new version.
This type of software writing is painstaking and ridiculously over-detailed but it keeps everything in as obvious a form as possible and makes the process of making changes much easier.
PS: You also have to have the discipline to format the code with proper indentation and group blocks of statements together in a cluster to make the larger algorithmic sections of the code more apparent as what I did with the demo code above.
clambrac (722059): You need a degree to become a paid, hired code monkey for a company.
I don't have a degree.
I was ultimately hired as a computer programmer years ago due to what computer related information I knew at the time and this old MS-DOS program.
Today, I still don't have a degree now yet I wrote the two freeware/shareware programs on this page that solve a major problem that has been plaguing the Internet since May 1, 1978 or March 5, 1994 depending on who is doing the counting.
Now then, what is really more important when hiring your next computer programmer?
A degree and no real-world experience.
or
No degree and lots of real-world experience.
Bryan Taylor
iamcf13@hotpop.com
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smilheim (804292): I personally feel that working your way up from the bottom and attaining the knowledge on your own is much more valuable.
I am an example of this.
This shows that you are in your chosen field of expertise for the right reasons and have the real-life experience that may be more valuable than four years of college-level book learning, classroom instruction, and homework.
Bryan Taylor
iamcf13@hotpop.com
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This describes people like me who have the experience, have it listed on their resume, but don't have a college degree to show for their efforts.
People like me who love to do this type of work are all but shut out from the 'big leagues' because we have no degree when we may have done more in the real world than the freshly-minted college graduate has.
So what do people like me do? The choices appear to be either self-employment doing something we love and find challenging or a monotonous 'easy' job working for someone else--likely some big impersonal corporation in the service sector where all you are to the executive staff is just another cog in the corporate profitmaking machine....
A lot of the people, like myself, who rushed into CS undergrad program during the dot-com heyday were certainly pumped up by the hype from the Valley. Even still, the $-eyed opportunists at my school were the ones who dropped out in the first year. The rest of us who enjoyed the creative process of designing and writing code were the ones that endured, because CS classes are too difficult to get through without having a passion for the subject matter.
Although, since I graduated in '01, I've been completely and totally discouraged by my experiences with this industry. Of very the small percentage of my friends that actually graduated with the CS degree - so many dropped out of along the way - even fewer were actually able to find work programming. This is despite the fact that we graduated from an engineering school that was ranked in the top 20, nationally.
When moved to the Bay Area in 2001, I refused to work for free at a dying startup, in the defense industry, or to take a non-programming job after graduating. As a result, I worked at the mall folding clothing for about 9 months, before I finally decided to enroll in an MS programm at some sub-par software engineering school that doles out degrees like they were the equivalent of a green card. My strategy was to become eligible for internships, since no one would/could hire me for full-time positions at software house in the private sector.
The strategy worked. For the past 18 months, I've work as an intern doing Software Engineering work at this International company that sells Business Machines, software, etc.
The first thing that I noticed was that the engineers here were not all well-respected. This was a disheartening realization for me, since I felt that I had worked so hard to get to that point. For the most part, the Software Engineers that I've met here are either super cynical, burnout, or itching to leave their current job when the market turns around. Plus, the work that I was doing was so mundane compared to the problems that I worked on in my undergrad years. All of this struggle just to have the priviledge of writing some Java. I don't see it.
Furthermore, I know so few employees that even own their own home. Most of the 30 something engineers just do not make enough money to afford a house in the Bay Area. Those who do live on the outskirts of town and must commute 1-2 hours in each direction.
I realize that much of my negative experiences are a result of the dot-bomb fallout, but I can't shake the notion that engineers are treated like expendable garbage by this industry. Plus, this talk of offshoring only exacerbates the situation.
So, I'm not surprised that CS enrollments are declining. I just don't see why anyone in their right mind would want to enter into this type of working arrangement after pouring so much effort into the pursuit of a degree in CS.
Can you blame me for wanting to take my knowledge and apply it to a career in IP law or enter into the business side of things. I mean I love technology but as a young person, just staring out, I don't see how I could have a career as a Software Engineer and still make enough money to be able to afford my own home and raise a family.
I'm sorry if I come across as overly negative, but can you blame me for feeling bitter? I'd love to hear some positive things from people, because I've definitely lost hope in Software Engineering as a career path.
Political engineering, aka bombings and assasinations?