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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.
Will slashdot help to identify responsible, long-term thinking candidates/policies, or does the second word of this sentence inform its answer?
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
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
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.
For Johnny is no more,
For what he thought was H2O,
Was H2SO4.
If only he had gone into CS instead of Chem...
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
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.
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.
(and isn't Davis all aggies anyway?)
From the article:
"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. So a hypothetical team that News.com would have lauded in 1994 would now be dismissed as having badly "slipped" in 2005, even though it would be of the same quality."
From this I guess the author means that it's OK to be at the same level they were eight years ago. It doesn't matter that the American teams didn't improve at the same rate at the rest of the world. And in his statistical argument he ignores that although team numbers might have increased so did the number of American teams.
Next comes my absolute favorite argument:
"Long before Olympic athletes from all countries became quasiprofessionals, the Eastern European countries were seeing to it that training for the Games was their athletes' full-time job, giving them a major advantage over other nations' athletes."
OMG, it's not fair, they trained harder! Well hello! Is it cheating to produce programmers who can actually solve problems and write code? What exactly is coursework for if it isn't preparation for the kinds of problems you solve in programming contests? I've done a couple - it's the same thing, you just have to be faster and more accurate, compared to a programming assignment.
"the hidden agenda behind the shrill shortage claims was to push Congress to increase the yearly cap on the H-1B work visa program, which enabled industry to import cut-rate engineers from abroad."
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.
"How can American engineers compete with cheap, imported labor?"
Too much time in academia Norm. If you can't do the job right it really doesn't matter how cheap you come. The way to compete is to be the best, there is no other way. Shopping for programmers is not like shopping for socks. Remember, computer-related thingys are digital. At the end of the day it is usually pretty obvious whether they work or do not work. "Almost works" is not good enough for anyone, except perhaps a professor who grades CS101 papers.
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.
What's Norm's issue with devoting more to education - is it just that he wants to be able to say "It wasn't MY fault?"
The opinion expressed by you makes it seem like you are a little young (apologies if I am making the wrong assumption).
The reason I see that is because you are thinking with an 18 year old mentality. Priorities shift drastically the older you get. When you get into college, the playing field is quite different. You slowly grow to understand that noone gives a rats ass about sports, and the professors will just as soon kick you out of school than they would smile at you (the beauty of tenure).
But see, college is just different. People actually have to pay to go to school, for one thing, as opposed to being crammed in with hundreds of other walking hormones. You actually have to work to stay there.
I'm not sure about your high school, but mine gave far more scholorships to the students that had the highest grades (coupled with SATs). Think about it, it is in the college's best interest to give scholarships to students that will actually be able to *pass* their classes and not get kicked out.
I don't know, I may be ranting, but seriously... your post really does sound like a jealous high school kid. College is an entirely different setting, with the priority to succeed outweighing pretty much everything else...
oh, and getting laid. Thats important too.
...and drunk...you know, because you are away from home for the first time, and stuff.
*long pause*
Did I just prove his point?
++Om
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"
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