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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 taught a computer class for a large group of home school students and private school kids this year. They were, at the beginning, interested in learning to program. However, when it came down to actually doing it, and learning to code, they all, except for one, said "We're just more interested in playing games." The sad part about this is that some of the parents were just fine with that as long as they did their other work.
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
We need more women in CS... Seems like when I went to school 5 years ago, the male:female ratio in CS classes was something like 99:1. We were all very depressed males. If society could somehow be more accepting of women in CS then all us CS guys wouldn't be as depressed/apathetic in college. It/s a win/win situation. It might even attract more guys to CS... The real question is - how? How do we get more women to go into science/computer science?
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I have seen some god-awful code out of domestic individuals. (I have even had the pleasure of writting some.) But my experience with outsourced source is that the quality is as dictated. If you include a coding standard as part of an acceptance criteria it will be adhered too. Its just important to take the time to qualify what is good code for your application.
Do you know what foreign grad students at UC Davis think of this particular gentleman? I have many close friends who are either masters or doctoral students in EE & CS at UC Davis. They tell me no foreign stundent wants him to be their advisor or they want him to be on their committee. The popular perception there is that he sometimes comes off as prejudiced, especially towards Chinese & Indian students. It is not that he says or does things which can automatically be seen.. But he deals with foreign grad students with a sense of superiority & condescending attitude for them.
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Maybe my friends are wrong. Maybe he's not like that. But why don't you ask some foreign student in the university of their opinion on him? I know I'll be marked as a troll as it goes against the popular perception on
clearly you were not here in the 90's tech boom when being a geek was actually quite cool. remember that? then there was the crash and fewer people started going to CS. When the bio tech industry has its boom (and you know is coming) then everyone will be interested in that. Before us there was a whole generation obsessed with space. It comes and goes. Notice how the US still dominates tech research and everyone comes to the Us becasue that is where the money is. The fact that the gov spends so much on research should show how important it is seen to be.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Really, there are kids who can code. Most, however, will use the computer for entertainment. Not everyone can be a rocket scientist. It is probably viewed as most distressing on a site like slashdot because for the most part, this is a computing-centric group. We want to see "our kind" doing what we're good at. Things like programming apps, writing innovative code and not getting laid. Someone has to go to the future when we are old and our code is creaky.
I think though, this is no different than the notion that not all kids are good at math. A lot aren't, but you don't get quite the same reaction when scores are released show US kids faltering there. We're used to that now, but computing was supposed to be "our game".
As far as the rest of the world catching up, there is no stopping that. Will the US dry up as a source of good code? Unlikely, but expect to see some very sharp stuff coming out in the rest of the world. Don't be threatened by it. Frankly, it is getting wearisome to see that every time another nation puts up something great, the US reaction is peppered with a goodly amount of paranoia.
If he meets with the founders are some succesful startup- or other tech gurus- they will all be smarter than he.
Maybe this is why he doesn't give them an invitation to the White House.
Cute little ditty. Made me grin. Until I remembered the girl in first year chemistry who liked the feel of water running through her fingers. Out of habit, she poured a beaker of H2SO4 into the sink through her fingers. No one knew who left it there, as there were several guilty parties, but we all felt responsble.
You mean these contests are get harder when there are more contestants? I agree with most of this essay, but here he's trying to prop up BS with useless statistics. 3rd place, 11 years ago does not equal 21st place this year. It equals 3rd place.
It certainly doesn't mean the same level of quality was required of a third place contestant 11 years ago is required today. Logically, it stands to reason that it would be easier (with seven times fewer contestants) to get 3rd place 11 years ago. The bottom line is, if we're so good, why haven't we won in the last 8 years?
Or will "American industry" have become an oxymoron?
In a recent Pulpit, Robert X. Cringely asserts that the problem isn't the compter industry going away, it's that venture capitalists haven't been funding the possible technologies that that should be coming in taking their place as the new "engines of growth" in the US. He cites things like nanotech that should be much further along, and blames venture capitalists for being lazy and not doing their jobs. In the past, they would fund 10 things, with 7 strike-outs, 2 base-hits, and 1 home run, and call that a good track record. Cringely says that today they're all waiting around trying to find the home-run, and fund only that one. But that takes a crystal ball, so they're stuck in a chicken/egg loop.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Thanks for the reply, very instructive. I have another question.
So, in the politics of office life (or academic life) prestige and importance are ranked by number of workers rather than by work done? That's odd. How is allowing that sort of practice helping anyone? Wouldn't it be more effective business practice to promote efficiency?
C
Part of the problem is how poorly american culture has adapted to the modern world of computing. Despite the fact that people use computers nearly every day in dozens of capacities, it's still considered an esoteric and specialist degree.
.com crash), or because they could get an associates degree at ITT (better than flipping burgers), or maybe they made some fast money making cheap ameturish webpages and now they think they can do anything (classic townie wannabe).
For example, look at how late in our educational system the process of programming education begins. Most "good" programmers I know were fooling around with code long before their schools ever even dreamed of introducing them to such concepts (usually around or before age 10, even!) Remember the Smalltalk project at PARC? They had children making animations, programs, games, and even simple applications. Obviously, children can understand it if you present it correctly.
Between this delay and the general American stigma against intellectualism, many of the programmers we produce are not terribly good at the job. Maybe they did it for the money (before the
What we need to do is teach kids to program at an earlier age. We also need to stop being so concerned about teaching them a "low" level language first. Let's start with Python or Ruby. Let's have them doing things instead of wasting time making for loops or calcualting array medians. Start making network-enabled applications, making interactive websites, etc.
Then, let's combine that with their math courses. As they learn math, they can learn the corresponding ways to do it on a computer (when feasible).
That way, they'll already know if they like programing or not, and they'll be able to make intelligent and informed decisions about what direction to steer their life. I can't tell you how many people I watched drop out of our CS Pre-major in college because they didn't realize what CS really was.
Also, why don't we see more vocational programs for cheap coding work? Not to offend web designers, but there's an example of a career that could be considered for vocational schools.
America is having problems keeping up with their demand because our entire society is shaped to ostracise young people who are interested in the subject, and discourage them. Only the most persistant and passionate people make it through, leading to a vast gulf between a "good" software engineer produced in America and a "bad" wage-slave class coder.
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a) the USA is widely seen by the rest of the world as the embodiment of the ultimate faith in the market economy.
So, for example, when Hollywood makes a new version of the Japanese movie "Shall we dance", and that new version is successful, it's OK. When local movie industries around the world are put out of business by the US entertainment industry, it's fair, because, well, they are better, they compete, they win. Hail the market.
But... when the world "hits back" by getting better at something else, say... programming for example... ooops, that's a problem, all these H1B visas, offshore outsourcing etc., oh no! we can't let that happen!
(It's a very strange "us vs. them" attitude. Why don't you make the same analysis comparing two different US states for example? Maybe there are better programmers in Palo Alto than in New Jersey. Is that a big deal? The pay will adjust according to supply and demand, people and companies will move from New Jersey to Palo Alto or the other way around. I suppose if you live in New Jersey and you don't know much about these strange Palo Alto people, it can be quite scary for you... Just like all these HB1 visas can seem scary... but ultimately these guys are just human like you... and if they are better, they deserve to win. If they are not better, well, time will tell, and you will shine in comparison, command a better salary etc. Good luck.)
b) What is happening to the software industry is the same thing that happened to factory work a couple of decades ago.
You know, all these blue collar workers, so prompt to form unions, even sometimes going on strike to defend their privileges etc. ? Well...
Johnny is one of them now! His screwdriver is a C++ or a java compiler, but what's the difference? Soon he will be lobbying for quotas, etc. to protect his current status... during that time, fellow human beings are learning Python in Bangalore. May the best of us take the lead and show the rest of us the way...
Wish I'd heard that when I started college :)
Something else we're not talking about here is cultural differences amongst programmers. I dont know many Indian folk, but I've dealt with *A LOT* of chinese programmers, and they are very single minded and narrowly educated.
Most programmers will have 1 or 2 strong languages and APIs, and dabble in a few other languages and platforms. All the Chinese programmers I've ever met, know *1* language. They know it like nobodys business, but the only know that langauge, same with their Math skills, they know linear algebra *VERY* well. They don't know databases, they don't know html, they don't know matlab, basic, php, python, perl, anything. Just their one langauge (usually C/C++). Now when you need a C++ coder these are the guys to go to, but when you need an *ENGINEER* stay the hell away.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
From the article:
Congress, openly admitting that it was responding to industry campaign donations rather than the popular will, complied by increasing the H-1B cap in 1998 and 2000, the latter action coming at the time the mass layoffs began. This past December, despite a continuing abysmal tech labor market, Congress enacted another expansion of the program.
The facts:
The H1B cap (which covers not only computer professionals, but also foreign workers in a wide variety of fields, including sports, and fashion model) was 65,000/year. For those who remember the situation in the IT market in 1997-1998, it was clear that there was a shortage of qualified computer specialists, especially in areas away from the major IT centers like the Silicon Valley, New York City, Boston, etc. The raise of the H1B cap, if I remember correctly, was done only once - in 1998. It was temporary, and in two stages, with initial raise to 120,000, then to 195,000 (in 2000), and then it went back to 65,000 in 2004, with the additional rule that the number is not for the visas issued, but for the visa applications - i.e., if a company applied improperly for an H1B visa, they used one of the allotted numbers even though they were refused the visa. This is far from the implied continuous expansion that Norm Matloff wants you to believe.
While the cap was up there, close to 200K a year, the supply and demand equilibrium was achieved and not all available visas were used (obviously the bubble burst had a great impact on that). In the fiscal 2004 (Oct. 2003 to Sept. 2004), the 65,000 visa application were exhausted in about 4-5 months. In the fiscal 2005, all 65,000 applications were submitted in a single day (Oct. 1, 2004) since that number included the applications filed in fiscal 2004 after the cap was reached. This meant that high-tech companies had to wait for an year to offer a job to a non-citizen, regardless of their qualifications. This is why there were an additional 20,000 H1B visas allocated in December, restricted to MS and PhD holders from US universities.
Quote:
Government data show, for instance, that Intel, which claims that its H-1Bs have master's degrees and Ph.D.s, pays them far less than the national medians for engineers with these degrees.
The H1B visa regulation require that the salary of the visa holder is comparable to the local level of compensation, and not to the national median, and for a very good reason. The IT and CS professionals in California are probably skewing the average and median values nationally to such an extent, that companies in Tennessee or Alabama, for example, would have a hard time hiring someone at or above these levels of compensation, since it will make their local costs too high, and make them less competitive in their local markets.
If Norm Matloff (or anybody else) has credible evidence that Intel, or anyone else, is paying their H1B employees less than their US counterparts, he should file a lawsuit - it will bring them the gratitude of current and future H1B employees around the country. BTW, HP tried this in the late 80's - early 90's, and got slapped very hard with fines. I haven't heard of anything comparable from a large corporation since then.
Quote:
Contrary to these parties' putative goal of maintaining American technological competitiveness, H-1B has brought great harm.
What "great harm"? The scandals at Enron and WorldCom? The Internet bubble? In my opinion, clueless and arrogant executives, who believe that they are above the law, or that they can manage in areas about which they have no understanding have brought much greater harm to the US economy than a million H1B workers will ever do.
Of cour
Not at all. Even basic skills in programming give people tremendous advantages in modern society. While I agree that it'd be great to teach kinds more fundamental stuff like analytical skills, that's outside the scope of this discussion. I think we both agree that the education system needs to be reformed.
But, simply put, there are many opportunities that a programmer has in life that a non programmer doesn't even realize. The number of such opportunities goes up as the overall computer usage in society goes up. This is not like using a hammer. Most people do not use a hammer every day, because a hammer is a relatively specialized tool compared to a computer.
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