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Johnny Can So Program
theodp writes "In Johnny Can So Program, CS Prof Norm Matloff calls BS on CNET stories like Can Johnny Still Program? and Can the U.S. Still Compete?, saying it's a shame that CNET fails to cover the real threat to American technological competitiveness, the hidden agendas of Chicken Littles like Jim Foley of the Computing Research Association, David Patterson of the ACM and former Intel CEO Craig Barrett, all of whose organizations have a vested interest in playing the education card."
I went to UCDavis, and all the students I knew loved Norm Matloff. He speaks Chinese, he was one of the first to do heavy research on supporting Chinese characters in software, and if I recall correctly, his wife is Chinese (I couldn't find it anywhere on his webpage to back that part up).
Here's his Chinese software page:
http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/chinese.html
I hate to use the classic "but I have lots of black friends!" anti-racist argument here, but I think he has earned it. I think the reason your friends don't want him as their advisor is because he is one of the toughest Prof's at Davis, and he isn't going to give out a free ride through grad school.
Of course, you have been modded up, and no one is going to read my reply, so the false prejudiced accusation is what people will see. But again, this IS slashdot. The first to respond is always right!
As an aside, he was also a big reason that Intel Corp. in Sacramento changed their stance on G.P.A. being the major deciding factor in hiring a student. They used to throw out all resumes that were under a 4.0 G.P.A. (they had THAT many applying). Dr. Matloff basically showed them that the students that could REALLY program weren't the ones getting A's. He has a paper somewhere on his site, but again, no one is going to read this reply anyway!
"We need a fourth law of Robotics: Stop Fingering My Wife"
I guess I should have RTFA better the first time. Support for the "his wife is Chinese" is here:
"as someone who married into a Shanghai family, I congratulate the bright, dedicated members of the winning Jiaoda team, which also took first place in 2002"
"We need a fourth law of Robotics: Stop Fingering My Wife"
So my question to Norm Matloff is. . .
"Is your own house in order?"
Are you, a CS professor, teaching real computer science, or are you teaching programming and calling it computer science at the behest of Intel?
This question is downright ridiculous. He is without a doubt the best professor I've known. He is notorious (feared?) in his department for teaching real Computer Science. Prof. Matloff's students rip out their hair solving his problems, but nearly every student of his will give a glowing review of his courses.
There are some instructors who are easy, there are some instructors who are difficult for the sake of being difficult, and then there are those who enrich. Prof. Matloff certainly enriches his students.
-Former Student of Prof. Matloff