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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."
The US education problems are not in computer science, but in the general level of education in history, geography and world affairs ourside of local US issues and what Fox and similar "News" organizations deem rating-worthy.
Only on Mondays.
The rest of the week it's fine.
The way I see it outsourcing is the best thing that ever happened to guys like me. A cheap app gets developed over seas, then the company gets a cheap app back, when they never wanted a cheap app in the first place. The app then gets redeveloped, and it usually ends up on my desk at some point. I've done quite a few of projects like that over the last few years.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
...go read the article! The author has hit the nail on the head about H1-Bs and outsourcing. He never stoops to blaming Indians for either issue, but rather points out that it's a side effect of corporations and universities trying to build tiny little empires. Then in the same breath, he points out how this sort of empire building is slowly leading the higher education system into ruins and dragging all of America's great talent with it!
I think I need to print this one out and post it somewhere...
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I just love seeing stories where business leaders "fret" over the lack of education in science and technology in this country today.
Of course, then they go and layoff large numbers of technical workers and send their jobs to another country. The message is getting through loud and clear to the younger generations in this country. All the while the business leaders are lamenting the education available here they are shouting at the top of their lungs by their businsess practices - "WHY THE HELL ARE YOU GOING INTO SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, WE DON'T HIRE THOSE KIND OF PEOPLE HERE!!!!"
The kids get it. As the one article states programming isn't glamorous like football. But, even more the kids going to college now look at business and see no need for technical people, because they're sending it all away.
Kids are smarter than people think, they see the writing on the wall. Why go to school for 4-5 years only to find a job market with no room for you. So all the best and brightest kids end up going to law school, which is in and of itself a terrifying thought.
There's really nothing wrong with that. People like to watch TV and movies but don't want to be producers and directors. People like to view art, but don't have the patience to be artists. People like to read books and newspapers but don't want to be editors and writers. If every kid that liked video games became a programmer, we wouldn't have enough people doing all the other things in this society that need to get done.
...are just as threatened by new technology as deep/wide music and movie distribution. There are whole industries of accreditation and many pensions of teachers threatened. The internet allows anyone to do research and does nothing to stop anyone from "just doing it" without waiting on degrees and accreditation. You can go directly from provider of information and services to the paying industry without going through all that crap. Many of us have made great livings without going the college route. Self-study and building a network of customers you have proven yourself to is all one needs. The educational-industrial complex hates this.
while we think its our divine right to be No.1, a Chinese individual who doesn't have that perception just works a lot harder than your average American, add to that the sense of having to achieve and beat the No.1 and you get a will that is tougher than steel to win this thing (and any other situation)
We are "Slipping" because we got too comfy in our No.1 spot; not because our education is worse. Its human nature.
Still wrong. The article basically says Johny ended up Licken zi Dicken because there is no political will in the USA to actually make sure that the US teams stay on top in such competitions.
But TFA says it has nothing to do with the ability of a given Johny to program. Well duh, but the fact still remains - the policy makers in the US don't give a shit and why should they with so many tech jobs being outsorced to India/wherever anyway. It's not in their best interest now to actually have Johny winning. It's in their best interest to 'show' that Johny can't compete and that it is a valid argument for outsorcing (I am not from the US.)
You can't handle the truth.
Executives want more cheap labor and are doing everything they can to get it. Labor wants higher and higher salaries, particularly if they feel the barriers to entry in their career are high. People are fighting it out, spin doctors are out in force.
I don't know what the right answer is, but it seems to me H1-Bs are far, far better than wholesale outsourcing. My favorite form of this is my own companies current push to hire employees and open it's own design centers in Singapore, Shang-hai, Bangalore and Taiwan. This way they get full benefits of Asian labor, without pesky contracting problems, yet get to live in mansions in the nicer parts of the US.
But Norm's article was good, I just think no one is going to listen to him that doesn't already understand the problem.
A good way to get kids interested in programming is to open up the possibility of them creating their OWN games. Even if the games are simple, doesn't matter. Suddenly they'll want to know how to get x,y, and z done in their code.
"Is this just useless, or is it expensive as well?"
FTFA :
News.com didn't tell you that the number of teams competing has grown nearly sevenfold from 1994 through 2005. In other words, for a team to finish at, say, third place, in 1994 would be equivalent to finishing 21st this year.
Yeah. It seems he's confusing rank with notation scale. Like if the skills of both the first and the last didn't change.
Norm Matloff, Computer science professor
When professors are making that poor argumentation, no wonder education level is falling.
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
Did you expect them to say, "We loved that integer thingy! We can't wait to find out what an array is!"
People learn faster and more effectively when the topic interests them. If I believed that all I ever had to look forward to was writing banking software or parsing obscure log files, I never would have lasted.
Why not modify your lesson plan to start with coding a few simple games and work your way up through that?
Matloff is an American hero who will no doubt be honored in the distant future. Whereas Bush, Clinton and 90% of Congress and the rest of the globalizers who sent our jobs overseas and who import cheap scab labor are traitors who ought to be tried for High Treason in a court of law.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Yup, High School is like that; but don't think that all of American society is like that. For college, I ended up going to a very good high tech university and the problem switched to "What sucks is the lack of women"
so why is this a problem?
The guy who stays and wants to code is the one we want. It is perfectly normal, IMHO, that in a group of decent size only few actually can program. Our educational system should be designed in a way to identify those precious few and make sure they can go as high as they can.
It is silly to assume that Indian (Chinese, Russian, etc.) person in general is better programmer than an American one or that there are more programmers born there per 1000 population. It is simply those education systems were (for a while) better tuned to identify and pull up those selected ones.
Get over yourself. Sports are important in pratically every country and always get more attention then scientific achievment. Travel anywhere in the world and you will see the local sports hero in the news not the scientists. This is not just a condition to the U.S. lest you forget David Beckham's world popularity. You can find a Beckham jersey in pratically every country in the world. Especially in Asian countries.
Johnny can program, but he can't read or write a lick. In my spare time (/sarcasm) I teach high school history. Reading their papers is like dentistry sans novicaine. Trust me on this, if they can't program, or for that matter, graduate high school thinking a cd-rom is the drink holder, they'll be okay. If they graduate and read and write at their present level, we're doomed.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
Why would they want that? If they are just going to be hiring visa'd employees, why would they want to increase the number of capable usa workers?
Very easy : economics 101 : The more offer, the lower the price.
So they try to increase the offer as much as possible, by increasing "imports" (H1B) and local "production" (education). So that they can lower IT salaries even more.
Even if the H1B works cheaper, he has heigher administration costs than the usa worker. So increasing the number of usa workers might get them usa worker willing to accept the same salary as an H1B, without the overhead administration cost.
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof for my post which this sig is too small to contain.
Tsk tsk... nationalistic attacks are very unbecoming in todays global society.
Apps developed whether in India or in US have more or less similar problems.
And what did the gf post say that indicated otherwise?
Your company wanted a cheap solution and they found outside but may be just may be they failed to communicate the requirements correctly?
Probably thats true, but those are the types that seek to outsource development. The reason outsourced apps suck is not because they are from India or Elbonia, it is because they are a logical consequence of management seeking the cheap solution. If management expresses an interest in quality and long term maintainability, they will not outsource to some company in who-knows-where, they will bring high caliber people on site that can answer to things when the shit hits the fan.
It's a serious problem. I now do cross-border technology transfers, and much of the US commercial technologies I get to assess are almost trivially irrelevant to the rest of the planet, because the US has no idea what is going on outside its own borders. China will sweep it aside in the next 3 decades, and the US will become a strange sports-mad backwater.
Here parents pray their kids end up on the school/college football teams for both bragging rights as well as the potential for a lot of moolah in the future (mostly I think its bragging rights). Jocks get limelighted every step, every game, gets the hotter looking babe and scrapes through academics yet has no trouble getting in to college due to his sports background.
Aren't we a little jealous! So the jock got the girl. Most parents know their kids strengths and weaknesses. As a parent with two kids in college. I can say with all certainty that all a parent wants is their child to be successful, happy and not make the same mistakes they did. And with the rising cost of health care, a doctor in the family would be something to brag about.
I don't think that extrapolating from programming contest results to a nation's programmers' general ability to code is valid. Matloff points out excellent reasons why this doesn't work, but he pays attention mainly to statistics of the rankings and varying amount of training time.
Simply, I don't think that being good at these contests necessarily is the same at being good at producing software in industry or even research. I don't like solving problems under strict time constraints, so I've never volunteered to take part in math or programming competitions. It's simply not fun for me. I like problem solving when I'm free to take the time to explore the design space and maybe go off on tangents that might eventually prove worthwhile (but often don't). Some people enjoy solving problems under strict time constraints; I'm just not one of them. I enjoy other activities that others do not. It's just personal preference.
In the end, we always have time constraints - projects have deadlines, research papers have submission dates - but measuring the amount of time in hours vs. days, weeks or months make a very big difference in how much freedom you have to explore the problem.
You don't get given a place at a University here (UK) just for being able to play football (the game with your foot and a ball, I mean) though.
Anyone who's seen Beckham being interviewed can see that he barely got any primary education, let alone higher education.
As soon as you set foot on a college campus, the guys who get the chicks will be the pre-med, pre-business, etc. majors. Sure, the athletes will still get chicks, but that will change after their NCAA eligibility is used up.
After college, those athletes will become washed-up athletes and will get zero pussy. Hopefully they payed at least a little attention in college, or else they will be the ones picking up my garbage twice a week.
You know, it's funny. All I hear about is how China and India are going to "beat us", whatever that means. They study harder, there is more emphasis on academics, an blahdy blah blah. If that's the case, how come the best and brightest Chinese and Indians all seem to wind up in the US? Yeah, sure, I know a lot of really smart Chinese and Indians. I work with them every day.
In Virginia.
By the way, I have no problem with the H1B program. If foreigners want to come here and compete with me for jobs right here on my turf with my cost of living, I say let 'em. They better be prepared to lose, though. I am one extremely competitive motherfucker.
Must have been all those years of high school sports.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
And we could use a few more doctors and stuff. An auto mechanic with more than half a brain cell would be a pleasant thing to run into now and again as well. Who the hell decided that being a moron was actually one of the desirable qualities of someone who has to perform complex diagnostics and then fix the problem?
.
Parents like to decide what their kids are "going to be" when they're about minus 5 years old. This makes growing up hell on the poor kid who wants to be a concert violinst, but whose parents have him down to be a doctor, balanced by a kid who loves biology, but is forced to practice the hateful violin 6 hours a day.
The process is so pervasive that even kids who "grow up and make their own decision" often don't really, because they aren't actually taught how to make decisions of that nature in the first place.
Quite frankly, the one thing we're up to arses in is apps programers, and, ironically, the one thing in the computer field we're desperately short of right now is computer scientists.
And it's the universities getting into bed with companies like Microsoft and Intel that have resulted in computer science being mistaken for apps programming.
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?
You're right. The competition isn't a valid measure of where the US stands in the tech world. It stands in the fact that we are no longer the number one nation for publishing original computer science papers. We aren't even number two anymore. Japanese kids aren't coming to Boston and Berkeley anymore for the CS educations, they're going to Bejing.
Word is out. We've lost it. We're on the way down The rats started abondoning the ship years ago, but as Van Loon noted when talking about the Roman Empire, empires that have been fallen for hundreds of years are rarely aware of the fact.
I too, like the grandparent, teach privately. I do not, however, take just anybody. Beyond a certain point I'll only work with people, both kids and adults, who I believe are personally involved in the subject. Not who's parents have decided that computer "science" is a good job field for them because they see a lot of ads for Java programmers in the papers.
I do not piss and moan if a kid isn't interested in programming. I try my damndest to find that out, and then direct them to something they are interested in. As it happens, I teach violin too. It's better for everybody that way, and not just the kid.
Because one kid who lives for computer science is worth more than an entire university full of kids who are there because it's a good job field. We are falling behind in the sciences because we no longer focus on that one kid and give him the training and facilities he needs to do brilliant work, but we crank out less than worthless Java apps programmers to satisfy the commercial concerns (yes, that may well mean you, even if you find the concept insulting) by the bucketful.
And one kid who lives to play the violin, but isn't very technically proficient, is going to make more music worth listening to than a whole symphony orchestra full of technically perfect, but bored out of their skulls, orchestra pit monkeys.
Tell ya what, give me 12 kids who have been properly trained as computer scientists and love the field, six theorists and six empiricists, none of whom know a lick of "practical" programming, and just enough capital to set up shop with workbenchs from Sears and computers cobbled together from odd parts, but not enough to hand out free Ferraris to everybody, and in five years the 13 of us will knock all of China on its arse.
But I can't tell you in advance what our output is going to be, because I haven't a frickin' clue and that's the bloody point.
Not that anyone around here would care anyway. Build a better mousetrap, give it away for free; and they'll still buy the latest braindead clusterfuck from Oracle.
I think maybe I'll take another crack at learning Portuguese.
KFG
Are you kidding? Obviously the companies want the least educated person they can find because they tend to be the cheapest.
Nice attempt at getting your little Fox News troll to be on-topic, though.
I can't remember the original source for the quote, but it comes to mind:
Character is when you are willing to finish the task once the sparkle of new is gone.
It seems to apply, and I would think this is true for American's or non-Americans. It is not that 95% of Americans are not willing to finish a task, it is that 95% of all people are not willing to finish a task.
I am old enough to remember how the Japanese were going to make all US auto makers obsolete, and how we could not compete in the 70s and 80s, yet we have done more than fine, even improving BECAUSE of the competition. We can't sit idle and wish for more success (wishing is, afterall, passivity) but I would be hard pressed to believe that America is going to hell in a hand basket due to our "underacheiving kids". We have been there, we have done that, and many more people are wanting to move here than move away. As someone who was once one of those kids who was "lazy, underacheiving and a C- student" I can attest that many get over it.
I, for one, do not fear any new outsourced overlords, nor believe they are coming.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
American education is slipping, not just slipping, its in free fall. Our society doesn't value education, it values vanity. We pay professional athletes millions of dollars, the Paris Hiltons of the world millions of dollars, and for what? Vanity and entertainment. When it comes to education, we just say, "well, suck it up"...its complete BS.
/. is the same way. Sure I still like to work in the tech field, but if I bought into materialism I certainly wouldn't be here, and if I had a family, I know I wouldn't be here, because I'd demand enough money to feed my family and put a roof over their heads, which would be an issue.
So what if "Johnny Can So Program" his job will be sent offshore because "Johnny Demands a Livable Wage". There's very few niche markets where "Johnny" can still get a livable tech wage in America. Can you really blame "Johnny" if instead of studying science and math and learning about technology he blows it off, parties his life away through college, and becomes a business major so he can move on up to a clueless management position and cut jobs and make a decent wage?
Everything I learned about computers in high school, and a lot of my time in college, was learned on my own. I'd say a good portion of
I'm not against outsourcing. I'd say we should be encouraging it, but the kicker being we have to do it responsibly, which corporate America doesn't quite understand.
"But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong" - Dennis Miller
Your experience may be atypical (I say to be polite), because presumably you graduated near the top of your class at IIT and came to CalTech for a Ph.D. You're smart. We get that.
But what about the bosons back in India who are working for 1/20 of what an American makes? They do a seriously fucking shitty job. But just as you point out, it's not like socks. You can make top-quality socks anywhere in the world -- which is why there is a city in China that literally specializes in sock-making. Almost every sock in the world is made in that city because of economies of scale. Programming takes talent.
But how programming is like sock-making is that the decrease in quality simply doesn't matter. If someone makes 1/20 as much money, unless they're 20 times less productive it's better to hire them. See? It doesn't matter if you're the best.
In short, by focusing on MP and neglecting MC, you fail economics. Way to be condescending and wrong at the same time, jackass. Please find some real-world experience before dispensing more of your golden wisdom.
I am all for the smartest people in the world coming to work here. America is founded on immigrant labor: people who are willing to move across an ocean for economic opportunity are always smarter, tougher, and harder working than their peers who stay in their homelands.
H1Bs don't take our jobs at gunpoint. If you lost your job to an H1B it is because they were smarter or willing to work harder for less money. Being born in the USA does not entitle you to a free lunch. If you don't like it, too bad. Maybe if you spent less time complaining on slashdot and more time being productive, you would be getting paid more.
> An auto mechanic with more than half a brain cell would be a pleasant thing to run into now and again as well.
I was a mechanic for several years before running off to college. The fact is, the pay for intelligent, thoughtful mechanics is nowhere near the pay for engineers. I got really sick of people that were grossing five times my pay bitching endlessly about the cost of a job well done.
Sure, I complain when someone does poor quality work, but when someone charges me for a job well done, I am happy to pay the bill.
Trust me, if you knew how mechanics were treated, and I mean good mechanics, you would not have made that statement. It takes only a few short years of abuse when you have 'more than half a brain cell' to realize that you are near the bottom of the economic food chain, and the only way up is out.
It is equally important to have a base of good jobs available to encourage them to pursue these high goals, too. Right now, the USA is simply not doing that. There needs to be a balance; you don't want to have too many jobs wanting people, and you don't want to have too many people wanting jobs. But that balance can't be achieved if the jobs that want people only want people who will accept a level of pay that is substandard in our society.
That's the real problem: US corporations want to pay only substandard wages ... they want people, but only those willing to accept substandard wages. They can get people for these substandard wages in places like India, because as dollars are exchanged for rupees, the result is a pay level that is premium in India. The catch is that they need to do this in order to be competitive in a world market. The real culprit is not that the USA is, or is not, better or smarter technologically ... the real culprit is the exchange rate for the dollar is so slanted against the USA being competitive in the world. The extremely high trade deficit the USA has right now is proof of this. It's cheaper to buy from other countries (whether it is cheap plastic toys or application coding services) than from the USA.
It's all about the same. India has about 3.653 times the population of the United States. If they had as vast an eduational system, they could easily produce 3.653 times as many programmers. It will still be years, maybe even decades, before they get to that point. But in the mean time, the very best will be educated and available ... cheap.
The ultimate solution for the USA is to work this economically. Instead of trying to keep the value of the dollar high, let it fall (it natually will as the trade deficit rises). This will be hard to do, though, because this also results in raising the cost of oil (since so much of it is imported). To lessen the impact of that, the USA needs to impose a much better energy policy that reduces the demand for oil, and allows shifting of domestic energy (such as coal) into areas where oil was used as much as can be done. One idea is to require all companies doing any business with the government to allow telecommuting for as many job functions as can be done, and give them all a tax incentive. That will reduce the vehicular traffic and its energy consumption. Many other things can be done as well.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Can you Liberals *hear* yourselves, when you talk?
Remove the artificial barrier to removing incompetent teachers (the all-powerful teacher's unions), and you would improve education.
Remove the artificial barrier to starting competitive K-12 education (the union's rejection of voucher programs, *forcing* people to pay taxes to a union-only make-work program called Public Education), and you would improve education.
I was beaten silly in High School because I was a nerd, in plain sight of wonderful "union" teachers. But, I've been programming since I was 16 (I'm now 37) -- conservatively averaging 50 hours a week in front of a computer for the last 21 years (far, far more while I was in University for 5 years -- 100% borrowed money, which I paid back over a 9 year period; my family was on the rocks at the time, after we lost our farm).
I was out of work for a short time, so I fell back on my ability to work my ass off -- literally cleaning up garbage in a stadium.
There were people far worse off than me -- but I out-worked them. Within one week, half of them had quit. Perhaps if someone had "protected" them, by preventing "Un-American" people like me from working my ass off, then they would have stayed at the job?
ANY art -- programming, music, mechanics, physics -- (not the "crafts" they teach in public school, which are the equivalents of making shit out of egg cartons), requires fanatical dedication. By both the teacher AND the student. These people neither need nor desire your "help" or "protection" from outsourcing!
If you don't want to apply fanatical dedication, and you think "protecting" those who don't from competition (such as outsourcing) will fix the problem, well... I just don't know what to say to you... Perhaps:
"Welcome To My Planet"?
-- -pjk Perry Kundert perry@kundert.ca http://kundert.2y.net
Trust me, if you knew how mechanics were treated, and I mean good mechanics, you would not have made that statement.
I have worked as a mechanic. In fact I worked my way through college as a mechanic (well, not exactly through college, as I was on a full scholarship, including books, but I have always enjoyed working and making my own money), although I think of myself as a craftsman. I no longer work as a mechanic except for a few personal customers, because it is impossible to be a craftsman in the mainline commercial way of doing things.
How this fact in any way contradicts my assertion that auto mechanics ought to have a few brain cells is beyond my few braincells to fathom.
KFG
Well, maybe his teaching methods and/or the concepts he's teaching are too abstract for the kids at their stage of intellectual development. You don't teach kids to program by handing them a copy of Knuth and challenging them to prove that Quicksort is O(N log N). You teach kids to program by letting them decide whether they want to write their own version of Hangman or Missile Command. The ones who stick with it can always pick up the abstract stuff later.
A classical-CS approach isn't going to attract the next Carmack or Torvalds.
Quite frankly, the one thing we're up to arses in is apps programers, and, ironically, the one thing in the computer field we're desperately short of right now is computer scientists.
We are up to our "arses" in computer apps programmers for a very good reason. Companies make money by producing goods and services. They do not make money by having a gaggle of employees sitting around discussing computer concepts. So those types of people are not hired. Those who know computer science must apply their skills in a manner that is of interest to an employer. This usually translates to apps writers. So, with that said, many of those apps writers you speak poorly of are actually computer scientists.
I do not piss and moan if a kid isn't interested in programming. I try my damndest to find that out, and then direct them to something they are interested in.
Well, I guess it's good that you have taken a personal agenda to weed out those that are not interested in programming. But I am completely mystified to what institution you are teaching from. Teachers in public and private schools in the United States do not "pick and choose" who they teach and do not teach courses to. If you tried to remove a student from your class you'll end up getting removed yourself. This only leaves private teaching. Since most companies only hire employees who have received degrees from credited institutions, I find it unlikely you will ever get students. This is a sharp contrast from violin players who, in truth, do not have such a high requirement on having college degrees. To summarize, I find it hard to believe your claim that you are a teacher.
Companies make money by producing goods and services.
This is completely and naively incorrect. Companies make money by selling goods and services at a profit.
Electronic dowsing rod companies and companies that sell magic as medicine often make very good profits, although the quality of the "goods and services" are not only not science, they are a disgrace to humanity.
Profit is a null concept in science.
So, with that said, many of those apps writers you speak poorly of are actually computer scientists.
You need to review the definition of science.
This is a sharp contrast from violin players who, in truth, do not have such a high requirement on having college degrees.
You need to review the hiring practices of those who employ violinists.
I find it hard to believe your claim that you are a teacher.
You need to review the definition of teacher.
Teachers in public and private schools in the United States do not "pick and choose" who they teach and do not teach courses to.
You need to review the practices of schools.
If you tried to remove a student from your class you'll end up getting removed yourself.This only leaves private teaching.
When my sixth grade French teacher tried to remove me, permanantly, from her class, I was removed. She was not. It worked out best, for her, for me, and most particularly for the class.
This only leaves private teaching.
You need to review the very post to which you are responding.
In short, I think you need to review your education. It seems to have left some holes.
Q.E.D.
You may, of course, choose to deal with this by vigorously defending the quality of your education, but if you're smart (and I have no reason to believe you are not just because you have been let down by your educators) you will instead choose to deal with it by fixing your education.
KFG
Personally I think it is kind of sad that my fellow students wouldn't know what a web server, or a mail server, or a router was if it bit them in the ass(on any operating system even).
Contrariwise to the impression some might get from my above post there is a reason why we make students take physics labs, other than annoying them by making them right lab papers.
You don't really understand something until you have touched it with your own hands. That's why there are so many "interpretations" of quantum physics. Everybody understands the results of the experiments, they're really pretty simple and straightforward, but nobody really knows what they "mean" because you can't touch it.
I have no particular love for ivory tower academics either, which is why I choose to teach privately.
KFG
If I ever had my say, I would definitely support using Python (or Ruby, from what little I've seen) for teaching introductory programming. There's plenty of things that are hard enough for most people to understand in programming, the language itself doesn't need to make it even harder.sure makes more sense to a young budding programmer thanThere's nothing wrong with learning C++, but I can definitely attest that at least in my case, it wasn't conducive to a rapid learnign experience. Discovering Python literally renewed my interest in programming because it made it so accessible.
-Jay
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Did anyone actually bother to read to the fucking article? Y'all are yammering on about the very diversion that news.com engaged in: that the educational process is to blame. Didn't the 'whooshing' sound over your head clue you in to the fact that perhaps you missed the point?
The problem isn't education, as the article pointed out. The problem is the simultaneous importation of cheap, skilled foreign labor (H-1B work visas) and the exportation of the tech industry overseas. The whole 'education shtick' is nothing more than a campaign of hype used to convince Congress that H-1Bs and overseas outsourcing are Great Things(TM) for the American economy. When in fact they're sucking the life out of the tech industry and are directly responsible for the ability of other countries to compete with the U.S. in the market. First we train their workers up to the expert standards of American workers, then we ship the jobs overseas...great national economic strategy, that.
So cut the crap about education being to blame. You've been hoodwinked just as easily as Congress and news.com have. Try rubbing a few brain cells together, think a few seconds over H1-Bs, overseas outsourcing, and the joblessness in the American tech sector, and see if you can actually zero in on the real problems here.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
If you would REALLY like to accelerate the shift of jobs overseas, make sure you get some good foreigners trained in US universities with a whole lot of internship contacts in American companies, then refuse to give them a work visa.
They'll go back to their home country, where developers probably get paid half as much, and use their contacts to start a code farming business, taking away American jobs.
The best way to keep jobs in America is to have the best and brightest from around the world COME to America and build their industries HERE. Sending them home, in the long run, sends the jobs with them.
E pluribus unum
OMG, it's not fair, they trained harder! Well hello! Is it cheating to produce programmers who can actually solve problems and write code?
He doesn't say it isn't fair. He says it is not fair to take the results of the contest and extend them to "American CS students can't compete." Have you really done these programming contests? Are you seriously implying that dynamic programming with memoization is something you are even remotely likely to need in the average IT software project? Bipartite matching? Prime factorization?
He's pointing out that some schools spend incredible amounts of time training for the contest... not training to be better programmers, but training to be better in programming contests, which is a very different thing.
I was a H1-B worker - I made great rates (thanks very much) and so did all the other H1-B's I know. It's convenient for Norm's flawed argument to repeat this myth, propagated by programmers who think they should have had my job because it was their birthright, not because they could have done it better.
Um, excuse me but we are citizens of this country and you are not. You would not even get to come here and work if it were not for a flawed relationship between labor and politics. Is it your birthright to go to any country you wish and work, or is it a courtesy extended by the government of that country?
When Chinese (or Indian, or anyone else) programmers turn out to cost less AND be better programmers we'll be able to thank guys like Norm, who wanted to deny there was ever a problem.
The opinions I'm hearing from various places doing outsourcing is that the programmers are not better, but they are a lot cheaper. I've yet to read anything credible suggesting outsourced work was both cheaper and better.
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
This does not answer the original question, ridiculous as it may be. It would be quite conceivable for him to be the best programming professor you had ever known. But the answer to grandparent's question would still be "programming, not CS". I commend him for being an excellent professor, there are far too few of those, but the question still stands:
[Is he], a CS professor, teaching real computer science, or [is he] teaching programming and calling it computer science at the behest of Intel?
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
If you review my past posts you will find me railing against the use of "value" and "price" as if they are synonyms.
It ain't my fault we live in a culture that is so business oriented that the language no longer has a clear way to make such fine distinctions without linguistic machinations and the intended meaning was clear in the context of "make money" supplied to me by the post to which I was responding.
I am making an assumption from your closing sentence that this is the concept at which you are driving, as your opening sentence makes little sense on its own.
However, yes, I would argue that profit is a null concept in science, other than the profit of personal discovery. Any practical use is irrelevant to the process, including cures for cancer, most of which research is being conducted in the hopes of making a fucking killing in the marketplace.
And it's entirely likely, in fact even probable, that the cure for cancer will come not out of the cancer research labs, but from some totally unexpected corner of biological research done entirely to scratch someone's personal itch. I have no idea whether that research will be done in a lab, on the back of a cocktail napkin, or come in a flash of insight inspired by a Jackson Pollack painting.
The itch scratching is the profit. The cure is incidental, although certain individuals, and perhaps society as a whole, may well coincidentally profit from it. That is the way of science.
Here's an idea to chew on though. It is possible that the end result of cancer research will be a proof that there is no cure for cancer in the strictest technical sense of the word.
And that discovery would be a profit.
KFG