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Gates On Future of CS Education
lilrowdy18 writes "In an interesting article from Eweek, Microsoft chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates talks about how the lack of spending in research and development is 'kind of a crime'. He also talks about future problems that are facing the computer industry including outsourcing and the speed of upcoming processors." From the article: "Microsoft taps both native-born talent and foreign talent, but Gates said he is frustrated that more U.S. students are not going into computer science. 'The fastest growing major is physical education,' he said. 'The Chinese are going to wake up and say we missed this opportunity,' he joked."
It wasn't mentioned in the article, but Bill also donated 2 million copies of Visual Basic .NET to all universities in US, more copies are available on request.
The software shall help easing both the finance and skill shortage.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
when every other news article talks about jobs being outsourced and the layoffs that are happening all over the place, most recently at HP.
Maybe that's because Microsoft has demonstrated that a technology company doesn't have to engage in any original work at all in order to be wildly successful, at least in the current US legal climate...
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
The lack of spending in windows [security/stability/logo's and icons/etc] R&D
Zing!
I thought Gates was a University dropout....
...how the same corporations that complain taxes are too high also whine about the government not spending taxes to help their industry.
Let's see here:
1) Four years of one of the most time intensive majors in colleges
2) Going through Microsoft's dehumanizing interview process
3) Getting free soda in exchange for 80 hour work weeks at minimum wage
4) Getting fired at age 28 for being too old
versus...
Well, anything actually.
One correction, Mr. Gates.
It is we in North America who are asleep, and who will one day wake up and have to admit that we missed the opportunity.
The Chinese are wide awake.
When academics and computer scientists create "standards" as a result of substantive research, MSFT chooses to ignore them. If MSFT hasn't come up with something themselves, or hasn't had a key role in financing/advising the development, then they don't use the standard. If they don't use the standard, then it never actually becomes a de facto standard, due to their monopolistic hold in the computing world.
Who wants to produce research that is dead before it's ever published? Especially for those who see research as a way of improving the world in some (even small) way, it seems that CS research in many directions may not be the way to go...
Sounds like an excuse for outsourcing. It has been my experience that more people (in the US) go into CS than can obtain a career in CS. I think it is incorrect that we are missing the boat. The boat has already sailed for cheaper employment waters.
if he's complaining about the lack of CS students, then perhaps he should pay graduates more, stop outsourcing to India and relying on H1b visas... then people might just believe there's a future in CS... he and several others like him are the root cause of the problem...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Why get a degree in a field that already has an oversupply of workers, and in addition is continuing to outsource even more of those jobs that are left?
American high schoolers might be stupid, but they're not that stupid.
Is because we believe/afraid that we wont have a job when we get out of college due to all the out sourcing going on in IT. People don't want to spend all their money on a great education, to not have chance at a job when they graduate. So they look into other majors, while possibly doing some code on the side. Simple as that.
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Ladies and gentlemen, he might finally have a good point. At my current school, one that has approximately 2000 students, the minimum requirement of 12 students per class to keep it active was not met for ANY computer class (web/graphic design excluded), so they will ALL be canceled next year. This WILL (excluding the debt, corruption, etc) be the reason for the US becoming a second or third world nation, unless this trend is reversed.
+1 funny, -2 overrated. Life isn't fair.
... perhaps it is because the modern CS students have just spent three years learning about operating systems by using open source operating systems?
Once upon a time you could make real money by working for a startup Microsoft. Today, it's just another job and all the cool ideas are coming out of Google.
The Chinese aren't being left behind in the obesity wars either..
(Anyone else reminded of Thunder from Big Trouble in Little China?)
Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it!
Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.
Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.
Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.
Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.
Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.
Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.
Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.
Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.
Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.
In the USA, they're not only laying off IT and CS staff, they're even letting H1-B visas go unused, not that that's keeping Bill and others from lobbying to raise the H1-B cap anyway.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
The answer is simple, people saw the .com bust and young people are leary. I think that and the technology sector's woes since are just keeping them at bay.
Gee, this is like the pot calling the kettle black, how many jobs as Mr. Gates company outsourced I wonder?
The guy is just playing the governments of the world off one another to benefit his own company. Not really news.
How many of your Comp. Sci. peers got jobs before graduating from college? I know that only two of my fellow students did. How many business, accounting, education, and other students get jobs? Again, I don't know about your experience, but all my friends who chose not to major in Comp. Sci. did quite well and landed nice jobs BEFORE they got their diplomas.
Supply and demand. This is a no-fucking-brainer for students who go to college in order to get jobs and move on with their careers. Last time I checked, nobody wants to spend -- or waste -- for years of school in order to end up unemployed. There are tons of articles that describe newly minted CEOS who decide to hire and developm in India or China because it is cheaper. Kids read that and decide not to fall into the same hole as the previous generation.
Sorry Bill, not every students gets to be one of the wealthiest people on the planet. Software was hot in 80s. Now it is a freaking commodity. Let's move on.
In this article from USA Today Gates seems disappointed that kids and students using the technology don't seem more interested in it. And I don't blame him. I don't know about many other Slashdotters around here, but every time I used to get a new gadget or toy, I wanted to know how it worked.
Oh, and Maria Klawe seems like a qualified lady to be talking about this subject.
I'd like to know where the numbers for this came from, and if it includes medical majors such as physical and occupational therapy.
It's very believable though. At the rate a lot of us are becoming "super sized", a physical education degree may give you access to a larger job market than a CS degree.
It's about time somebody with his resources stepped up. Maybe now I don't have to worry about getting stupid newbies the next time I want to play a round...
"Common sense will be the death of us all"
This is one behind the corporate effort to keep software toys out of the hands of the users(students and more). He cannot even see that the ones that "Cannot Play" with his toys do not gain interest in creating his toys under his watchful eye.
Hmm..
Maybe it is not sinking in. I give it five more years and 50% fewer employees.
Come On! How can there be R & D without the legal ability to "DO" R & D?
"I've done work in university CS research and I just constantly saw MS and their reps doing stuff that just reeked of trying to bribe people into doing work on .NET or other Microsoft platforms instead of the open platforms that academics naturally tend to gravitate toward."
.NET these days.
If you think that's bad, then try doing a tally of all the government offices (local, State, and Federal) that are "programming" using
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Gates talking about the problems facing the computer industry is like listening to Dom Deluise talk about the benefits of dieting.
If this is true, I am truly apalled.
Business Administration or Marketing I can take, but P.E. ?!?
Mother of God, we are doomed...
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
Microsoft taps both native-born talent and foreign talent
They've probably got a "one-tap" patent.
And yet for all this talent that MS taps, and all this research that MS does... they've STILL to come up with one major IT break-through.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Why not lead by example then? Have you sponsored a Summer of Code? How about releasing even some source code to everyone so they can learn about your software, make improvements and become an integral part of the process?
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
If I had mod points I'd mod you up because I agree with you. Gates is probably the man who says the most bullshits a day, but you know he is rich he has somewhat the power. He is admired by a lot of people; most of them don't read Slashdot, but some do ...
And what is more, M$ bashing is one of the favourite subjects here. So lots of people will click on the story so Slashdot team will earn money from ad revenues. It's all about money in this world ...
Just my 2 cents
from a dropout?
If it's not Consolidated Lint, It's just fuzz!
From TFA:
Microsoft taps both native-born talent and foreign talent, but Gates said he is frustrated that more U.S. students are not going into computer science.
This is the same Bill Gates that wants to completely eliminate H-1B quotas (that is, allow an unlimited number of foreign software developers in). This is the same Bill Gates that is constructing a huge, sprawling Microsoft Campus in India.
You want more students going into Computer Science, Bill? Then quit telling American students, through your actions, that there won't be any software development jobs left for them in America by the time they graduate!
He's just another F'ing "I want cheap labor at the expense of American workers" prick. Excuse my French.
With the current unemployment rate in CS, the US can limp along for a few years with zero new admissions to CS schools...
Oh well, what the hell...
ah but you must remember that Microsoft is just starting on it's latest multi 100 million dollar marketing campaign and this is close to free advertising. Have you noticed all the MSFT ads showing on the Tele and in online press?
I've noticed all the gates-isms over the lasts 2 weeks or so and figured it was all part of their new marketing push. You know, they have to keep the interest away from GNU/Linux and OSS, or atleast at bay, so that they can start drumming up MS Longhorn interest. I expect to see more articles on that over the next year also.
I'm with you, who needs to listen to these guys anymore since they have proven over and over that they don't know the truth or refuse to tell it and all that comes out of their mouths is MS-speak.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I think that our lack of investment in the humanities is a greater crime. While our nation focuses like a laser beam on computer technology, funding for other important aspects of life declines. Many students in all levels of education know how to operate computers (and some receive advanced training, as is the thrust of the article) but cannot express themselves musically or write down their thoughts coherently or interact in a meaningful way with their communities. So here we are producing the most technologically advanced nation in the world which consequently has no culture. Of course I cannot blame Bill Gates for this per se (his foundation does make investments in the humanities, and it is his business after all).
Still, I would much rather spend "R&D" money on music, art, and drama than on computers, genetics, and the art of war.
Microsoft was a company which put emphasis on developers and development.
.Net is a great plattform but who praises it. customers hate Ms products because of the bugs and securtiy flaws. Anti-MS is mainstream. Microsoft has huge corporate affairs problems.
But this year I saw Microsoft lobbying in Brussels. Unintelligent Braggarts of different flavours. Joanthan Zuck fo ACT, Hugo Lueders of CompTIA. Microsoft did an intellectual insult on developers by their lobbying scum. Microsoft even hired right wing radicals such as TechCentralStation.
Microsoft was once a high IQ charm company, now intelligent people are offended.
Lobbying for software patents means neglecting developers, developers, developers.
Microsoft is not "sexy" anymore. who wants to work there? Who is inspired by their products?
Bill Gates can talk a lot but the relationship is broken. And they do everything they can to make it worse. No happiness in slavery anymore.
1) Four years of one of the most time intensive majors in colleges
Well, at least 10 years ago, the degree was meaningless. I knew a guy who was a highschool drop out, over 40 years old with a shitty work history. His wife was the breadwinner, he stayed home fucking around with the computers. He lied to everyone about having a home buisness, some years he would get lucky and set up a network for an office and make $20,000, the next year he would make $0.
When the MSCE was first offered, he did nothing. When a family friend got a $75 an hour temp job, he started studying and passed all 5 exams in under 6 months.
He got a temp job making $80 an hour. And he milked the timesheet, there was no week where he did not charge 20 hours or more for overtime. I saw some weekly checks that were over $6,000. His crappy $12,000 car that did 35 miles per gallon was replaced with a $40,000 SUV that did 14 miles per gallon.
And here is the kicker. Is everyone ready?
He would work it so the contracts lasted 6 or 7 or 8 months. One lasted a year. But as soon as his contract was up, he would go and file for unemployment. There is a requirement that says people on unemployment must look for work and keep a log. So he used monster, to look for CIO jobs, knowing none would hire him, but he would email a resume, and write it on his log so if the state asked, he could say he was looking for work. As soon as unemployment was up, he would get another job with a temp agency.
This all ended many years ago, when the $80 an hour jobs went down to $25, then dissapeared. Funny thing is he would not take the $25 an hour. Now it is back to the old way. His wife is working, he is home fucking around with computers. And if she ever bitches for him to get a $12.50 an hour job at some local factory, he will remind her of the $80 an hour he got, how his home buisness is hit or miss, and how she has to now ride out through the lows.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
is because kids nowadays are taught that wishing makes it so, that you can never be 100% right about anything, that there's no way to really know reality, that nobody has any control over anything, and that public opinion is more important than facts.
Faced with this, why NOT go into some soft social science, where you can graduate, and go work for some policy making body, who can govern the skeleton of America's scientific establishment
? Take the short-cut!
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I watched the video of the interview with Maria Klawe when he said this and made so little sense that I followed up. Gates said (and I played it back several times) that the fastest growing major is physical education.
Klawe countered that she thought it was economics.
Googling shows that Klawe may have seen a Wall Street Journal article last week claiming that econ was the fastest growing major, but that article was very short on comparison data with other disciplines. It reported on a survey done by an economist for an economics journal and said little about the past, and little about other disciplines. The conclusion of fast growth needs support from the past and needs to be put in context of the number of students in other majors and all majors combined. A fabulous new Klingon language major can be shown to experience a phenomenal growth rate with few actual participants, if growth is simply reported as a ratio between new Klingon majors and old Klingon majors.
Gates was FAR worse than Klawe, though. His remarks on PE, which were presented in an offensive manner, by the way, were probably based on Bureau of Labor statistics. Recently, it has been shown that the growth rate for JOBS for PE majors is extremely high. This is completely different from saying that the growth of the major is extremely high. It also doesn't take too much digging to find out the reason for this: the graying of America and the rapidly growing health problems due to obesity are requiring some kind of response.
The other majors experience fast JOB growth rate are nursing and elementary school teaching. These, like the PE related jobs, are underpaid and undervalued. We need more of them because we don't deal with the root problems (the low value we as a society place on nurses and elementary school teachers). One reason we don't deal with the problem is because billionaire shithead college dropouts (who are perceived as somehow wise because they are good at making money) set a bad example.
The people who are going into the field for the paycheck are smart enough to realize that they'll be the first ones cut to reduce costs (and their jobs shipped off to India/China).
The ones going into the field because they love it are trying for Google because that's where you'll be on the cutting edge.
The sad thing is that we are losing the CS majors because they will be off-shored.
The next time someone calls Gates a technical genius, remember this quote.
Who gets paid millions of dollars to play games?
Athletes and coaches
Who gets put on the covers of countless magazines?
Athletes and coaches
Who gets multimillion dollar contract buy-outs when they fail to perform?
Athletes and coaches
Who gets invited on Leno and Letterman?
Athletes and coaches
Who gets multimillion dollar endorsement deals?
Athletes and coaches
Who gets put on posters and tacked to the walls of thousands of teenagers?
Athletes and coaches
Who gets worshipped and forgiven for all sins for being successful?
Athletes and coaches
Who gets teased mercilessly throughout their school years?
Science geeks and nerds
Who gets fired to raise stock prices even after successful work?
Science geeks and nerds
Who gets taunted and degraded by society at large?
Science geeks and nerds
Who gets underpaid for long hours and little security?
Science geeks and nerds
Who gets to spend 4-8 years in school in a difficult, demanding major with perceived diminishing job opportunities?
Science geeks and nerds
The perception is that you have to be born with certain talents and abilities to become a great athlete, but you can be trained to be a coach (even a mediocre one) and at least be in that field, so something fun, and bask in the reflected glory of the truly talented. Plus, we're not outsourcing football yet.
Yeah, I can't imagine why so many people are choosing PE over CS.
I'd say lack of spending on primary education is an even bigger crime. Also, the shortfall the VA has had is something that borders on the criminal. But, of course, more spending in those areas wouldn't benefit Microsoft...
-- dR.fuZZo
Anyone can have his cake and eat it, too. Perhaps you mean "eat his cake and have it, too" (which can't be done; once you eat your cake, it is gone and you therefore can no longer have it).
I was. I am still planning on getting that degree. :( Its a good thing I enjoy programming so much, because otherwise I'd be bored in unemployment...
Here's to internships giving me a false hope of a career once I finish school!
Gravity Sucks
I think this has to do with the fact that "offshoring" is seen as a really serious issue in the field. I heard someone the other day call Software Engineering the manual labor of the computer world. This, I think, coupled with the fact that you don't necessarily need a tough engineering degree to work with computers, makes a lot of people not go the Computer Science route at the university.
1) Four years of one of the most time intensive majors in colleges
I actually thought my CS classes were the easy ones. It was that damn Lit class that gave me hell.
2) Going through Microsoft's dehumanizing interview process
There are (e-gahds!) other companies to work for you know. You don't HAVE to be evil.
3) Getting free soda in exchange for 80 hour work weeks at minimum wage I don't get free soda, and I only put in 5 hours of overtime a week to run nightly processes. I get paid a good deal more then minimum wage.
4) Getting fired at age 28 for being too old
I'm only 26, so I can't say for sure, but my Boss (a former mainframe coder) is in his 50s, my team lead is in his late 30s and another developer on the team is in his mid 40s.
Just wanted to shed some light on the ACTUAL life.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
He's just another F'ing "I want cheap labor at the expense of American workers" prick.
Well I would have put it a little nicer, but that's not a bad description of it.
There's a shortage of workers. And a high demand for those workers, so you've gotta pay them a premium (or someone else will).
Bill can't get his cheap worker bees unless the supply grows, so that they're a dime a dozen. The less he has to pay his programmers and computer scientists, the more he can line his and other shareholders' pockets with cash.
They're hiring in China and in the States. I know someone who got a job there recently (went with the darkside ... oh well). Their standards are very high though, so a person who doesn't get an interview with them might inadvertently conclude that they're not hiring.
The Raven
you called it correctly and we've seen it posted a few times here in /. but we all know that they are NOT A TECHNOLOGY COMPANY don't we? Therefore, the way the buy off researchers and university departments has nothing to do with technology or innovation. It's also why, when word gets out of the contracts they're signing, they are hounded by the students, and others, for not having the students or education in their best interests.
The internet is preventing, or atleast slowing, Microsofts use of the same tactics they used to stop OS/2 in the early 1990's. Bullshit in in the press and bullshit in backroom eventually gets brought to light and publicized for what they really are.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Have you seen what sort of money is spent at universities for R&D? It's quite a bit. The *real* crime is the sort of results that come out of R&D. I'm not talking failed projects; that's something to expect, since if the outcome were already known it wouldn't be "research".
What I'm talking about is handing over money and having NO follow-up on what's going on with the projects. I've seen projects that are nothing more than slush funds for professors, and that's the sort of thing that needs to stop. Quit paying people that are using money like that, redirect it to other folks, and you'd go a long way to solving the problem.
This is the same Bill Gates that wants to completely eliminate H-1B quotas (that is, allow an unlimited number of foreign software developers in). This is the same Bill Gates that is constructing a huge, sprawling Microsoft Campus in India.
Does Bill Gates want to do that? I'd have thought that was a corporate decision from Microsoft for the benfit of the shreholders. Bill Gates may have a decent chunk of the pie, but by no means does he have a controlling interest.
So maybe we'll be dethroned as having The most overweight teens because of the global obesity problem
well, what would you rather have a country of obese programmers who die of heart disease at age 40? or some of our smarter more talented people going into teaching kids how to exercise and diet properly, so they can lead longer heathier lives.
I guess gates would rather have the former... and rely on computers to design the medical technology to replace a 'frail' human cardiovascular system ith a 'easily replacable' mechanical system..
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
1. Wait for decline in CS enrollment
2. Get a CS degree at nation's all time low for CS students
3. Become the best programmer in the US (the only one left)
4. Get the best programming job in the US
5. Profit!!!
The Chinese are going to wake up and say we missed this opportunity
Bill Gates knows they will say this because he works so closely with them, censoring their internet content and all.
DEMOCRACY
ooops i said a bad word....
i don't care
One of the causes of this is simple -- to earn a CS degree, to be eligible for CS-related jobs, and to qualify yourself to be recognized as a professional CS individual, you have to teach yourself more than what you are taught. Almost every other discipline you can take at school teaches you what you need to know, but CS does not.
Want to become an accountant? We'll show you how.
Want to become a doctor? We'll show you how.
Want to become a computer scientist? We'll show you fundamental principles of CS, examine the primitive roots of CS and (formerly) popular programming languages, but the rest is up to you!
Two years into my CS degree, I came to the conclusion that I needed to teach myself to be useful post-University. I've done just that. Now I preach to my friends that they should be spending more time researching and learning the things they really need to know (new technologies, new programming languages) that will qualify them for jobs when they get out, rather than dedicate all their time to their to outdated cirriculms (and some professors).
Improve and update the typical CS cirriculum, and I'm sure more individuals will be attracted to the programs, knowing that, with confidence, they will be qualified after they are handed their degree.
For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.
Gates says "The fastest growing major is physical education" but we all know that it isn't CS majors jumping ship to do jumping jacks.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
Is it national "more headlines for the Gates boy" month or is it just the sommer?
/.?
I mean really, this one is the most ridiculous one. Gates repeats what pretty much everyone who wrote about the topic for the past two years has said, including the China reference (minus the actual numbers, such as IT students, which are frightening), and it makes
Time to update my filter settings.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Gates seems to be complaining about the lack of people who can do R&D, not about a lack of programmers.
Sure, programming and systems administration get outsourced. What about R&D or consultancy? I am sorry (actually not) but the field of CS is broader than most slashdotters seem to acknowledge.
F* You Gates, you greedy bastard. Your empire is in decline, mirroring the decline of the anglo-american empire.
Remember how Babylon was conquered? They left the gates unlocked. Damn You All!
Bypass Compulsory Web Registration -- http://bugmenot.com/
You know, I wasted a year trying to get into CS or CE at UW Seattle and they wouldn't let me into the program because I only got a 2.8 GPA in their first year Physics wash-out classes that were taught by uninterested, sadistic professors who couldn't speak English (despite getting 3.9 GPAs in the intro to EE class and the CS class that teaches C++). If Bill wants more CS majors, he should be whining at the schools that he pays to name buildings after his mother instead of at the students.
UW tried to pressure me into do EE or some stupid applied math program, so I ended up going to a private University instead. It cost more but got me the same job in the end -- not at Microsoft, but rather somewhere where I am doing more interesting stuff for comparable pay and benefits.
He should also be trying harder to pressure the industry to make more domestic CS jobs available to recent graduates - I had to work at Taco Bell for a year (while most of my classmates went back and got Master's degrees in CS) before I finally got the entry-level software engineering job that I have now.
Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
Gates can blame himself. People look at the roadkill Microsoft has left behind, companies like Netscape, Go, NeXT, DEC, and even companies like Sun, IBM, and Apple, and they wonder: what's the point? If I do anything interesting, Microsoft is either going to kill me or buy me, and then they are just going to continue shipping their own stuff. Should someone get a CS degree just to become an Microsoft certified virus remover?
In terms of the shortage of CS grads, I wonder, did he factor in those of us who bailed because the only stupid jobs we were being offered were stinkin' M$FT technology jobs?
Over the past five years a fair number of university educated IT professionals in their 30's and 40's got fed up, myself included, and found work in other industries where our talents are valued, the work is interesting and the business environment is competitive (not monopoly ruled).
I have a good chuckle when I hear the blather about CS grad shortages.
Bill makes a point here of bemoaning the future of U.S. Programmers but then he has made a profit off of outsourcing. Microsoft, along with HP has been among the big name tech firms pushing for laws to ease both outsourcing and the introduction of non-american workers in the U.S. In the 90's microsoft joined with HP and Intel in pushing for more guest worker visas that would enable them to bring in programmers from other countries on the condition that they a) are exempt from some U.S. laws (e.g. maximum work hours) and b) that they are dependent upon the goodwill of their employer to remain in the country. This used to be called "Bond Slavery" back when it was legal.
While I'm all for investment in research and education in the U.S. I get a little tired of people like Bill who have actively promoted some of the key problems now bemoaning them.
I'm about to graduate with a degree in CIS, and I will say this much.. We don't need any more people at my school majoring in computers. Period. So many of the majors we have came in not even knowing about open source software, or even how to add RAM to their machine. Our department, because of this, has a "special" (more like Speshule) system of grading; They base your grade on how much you improve, as opposed to how viable you will be in the real world.
So, you have guys like me, who have been doing hobbyist and freelance tech work for years before going to college, being held back by students who just plain don't know which end of the RAM goes up. I actually have taught classes (mostly regarding Linux and computer/network security) because the teacher can't be bothered (or doesn't have the capability) to learn these things. The latter is the case in my dept; I spent 2 years trying to teach the head of our dept Linux, UNIX, and BSD, and she just doesn't get it. Same with MySQL.
Plus, thanks to this grading system, I have a harder time getting As and Bs than my peers because I have to go to extreme lengths to learn new, obscure things to impress the teacher with.
A note to potential students: If your school has this sort of grading system for your CIS/CS dept, lie. Don't let them know that you are actually intelligent - ESPECIALLY if the instructors aren't knowledgable themselves. You'll end up paying a buttload to do their work.
/* This has been a rant about a crappy CIS dept at a crappy school */
"Better to be vulgar than non-existent" -Bev Henson
"Gates offered his views on the decline in government funding for computer science research, hiring in the industry, solving hard problems and bringing more women into the field, among other issues." Perhaps if the slashdot crowd would stop trying to show these poor women their own hard problem, we'd be able to keep them in our industry. :-)
I've got karma to burn so here goes...
>The job market really isn't as bad as folks are >saying.
Everyone has a different experience in this economy. Yours, for whatever reason has not been bad. Assinine comments like this make you look like a windbag.
>When I was a junior in college I landed an >internship that paid me 15 bucks an hour.
And that job was at your Dad's company was it? Maybe your Mom/Dad was a Veep or something? Maybe parent's friend? Who/What was the connection there? What was the college, hmm? Not some second-tier state school I'm sure.
>Finding a job is not difficult if you're into it >enough that you're a cut above the rest.
So you've just described the other 90+% of people in your field. You are far too cavalier to suggest you are anything else but a well-connected, pompous, ass.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Anyone can spend money, and I'm quite aware of the many things that they're supposedly working on, but why aren't we seeing any real benefit in the Microsoft products that we're actually using on a day-to-day basis?
It's one thing to work on pie-in-the-sky research (and I have no problem with that), but quite another to do that while also continuing to maintain one of the most problematic computing platforms in history in an almost unchanged state for over a decade.
Some of the money might be better spent researching things like Linux Capabilities, a feature that the mainframe OSes I play^H^H^H^Hwork on for a living have had for a number of decades now.
I mean, UNIVAC boxes and VAXen both had the concept of a permissions bitmask down over 20 years ago, so what the heck is Microsoft's problem? Too expensive to implement? I think not...
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Microsoft pays incoming graduates very well. Say what you will about the company, but getting $55-$70 (common) right from college is a sweet deal.
(caveat: I graduated from the CS dept at UW, which sends dozens of students to Microsoft every year)
Bill Gates knows they will say this because he (if I may cut you off here) is trying to get whatever profit he can from the country while those evil Communist psychos still let them operate in China in the first place. After all, what semi-sane company wants to disrespect a belligerent, nuke-brandishing government who wants to blow up their corporate country of origin, nevermind extinguish all free speech in their own spaces?
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
the big I word
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Don't laugh at Physical Education Mr. Gates. With our obesity rates skyrocketing and diabetes II coming already to teenagers, this epidemic will be much more costly than simply having a few less Microsoft Certifieds around.
In highschool, my gym teacher Mr. Brynard taught a better nutrition (more practical and teenage oriented) than the middle school's dietician and also was instrumental in deciding to that the vending machines in school serve no soda. I'm not saying that this is the case everytime - but the ones I met were generally very well self-motivated.
I think they'll do more good than an extra programmer or two.
And Mr. Gates also falls into the trap thinking that more programmers = more productivy. I can't really envision Mr. Brynard as the type of guy sitting down and programming for eight hours a day just because it bought more money. How happy and productive are those people who do it for the money anyway?
There's more to the world than computers - let's remember that.
I'm guessing we'd see a few more results out here in the real computing world...
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Sure there are a lot of people majoring in physical education, it is a required course in a lot of high schools. Computer programming is rarely a required course in high school. Perhaps it should be. If it were, it might spark a lot of interest and talent developement in a lot of people before they even go to college and think about choosing a major.
The big problem with teaching computer science in high school (or a lot of other things) is that teachers make a lot less money than computer programmers. Most people who are qualified enough to teach computer science would find they can make a whole lot more money doing something other than teaching.
So until you can pay for good CS high school teachers, you aren't going to find a lot of people entering college with an interest in CS. Especially if all their computer experiences have been with a dumb Windows computer.
Here's what Bill actually meant:
"I just CAN'T understand why more highschool students don't get CS degrees so they can have the priviledge of working for Microsoft. I mean who wouldn't want to do that? Free soda - what else do you need as a motivator? I mean if we don't get an oversupply of CS majors soon, I'll actually have to start paying a decent salary. Ok, sure I'll probably send your job to India in a couple of years, but at least you will have had the experience. Hey, it's your duty to support free trade. And if you make it to age 40 at Microsoft - well we'll give you a nice going-away party. Hey, why would you want to go into something stable and boring like Law or Medicine when you can ride the exciting roller coaster of IT?"
And that CS degrees is just one of many fields in which the USA is underinvesting.
Not only that, but they think that China does get it, and is kicking sand in our faces.
Gates, of course, cares mostly about his area of expertise.
However, even though we as a society need way more higher education, I don't believe we need a Tablet [as Gates says all students do in the article] nor do I agree that the xBox or xBox 360 is sexy - my first degree was in Marketing/Sales and I'm a geek who owns an xBox and a GameCube.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Who gets multimillion dollar contract buy-outs when they fail to perform? ...and CEOs.
Athletes and coaches
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
Yeah, I'm surprised the science geeks and nerds haven't started a war...
Don't trust any concentration of power.
I learned computer programming when I was young, toying around with BASIC that came with the operating system. It was a neat toy back then. The few commands and ease of the language was perfect for a beginner, and at a time when games and applications were also simple. You could aspire to write a game that's comparable to the games you played every day.
Today, there is no software compiler bundled with MS operating systems. Sure, you can run VB script. But the difficulty of actually doing something interesting on a novice level is discouraging. Having a free-use IDE (in whatever language) where simple drawing and user interaction is accomplishable at a novice level would boost interest a great deal, where currently the only viable solution to begin learning is to pirate an IDE and fiddle. Software and books on the subjects of computer programming have become so costly that no novice, whether ignorant or keenly aware of potential, can afford to purchase them.
Microsoft's fierce opposition to open-source software is another stumbling block. Open-source software was one of the greatest learning tools for me.
Many third-world countries don't enforce copyright protection. You can buy pirated copies of just about any major piece of software at very low costs. Foriegners have the upper-hand on the middle class and lower class in the US when it comes to affording an education in CS.
Computer programming today is comparable to rocket science yesterday, but you can't acquire a model rocket for less than $500.
Go check out a copy of The Peter Principle (copyright 1969 -- pick up a used copy from Amazon) to confirm that the current decrepit state of our managerial skilz is nothing new.
When the nation's leaders stop rewarding managerial ineptitude and punishing technical workers, we might have a chance of turning this around. You can count on other nations (China, anyone?) not making this particular blunder.
If it offers hope to anyone, in today's WSJ (subscription required) there is a piece advocating outsourcing of our outrageously overpaid top management to bring excessive top management compensation under control. It's the 7th most-emailed article today. But it will take a long time after such practices begin (assuming they ever begin) before they filter down through the corporate structure and clueless incompetence is no longer rewarded.
Well - to a certain extent (all the way up to being found guilty and sentenced, that is), it worked for Bernie Ebbers, didn't it...?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
I'm dead serious!
(Okay, maybe not completely.)
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
The fact is that if you are a good programmer, you can get an entry level programmer position without a CS degree. If you're good at math, and want to be a programmer you're much better off taking a job doing tech support at an IT company straight out of high school than going to college. In that tech support role, you'll learn from real programmers doing real programming and in a couple years get a job as an entry level programmer. By your 2nd - 3rd year of programming, you'll be a tech lead at about the same time your fellow high school alums graduate from college. If you spend the 4-5 years to get a CS degree, you'll end up 2-3 years behind the technophiles who go straight into IT from high school. At some point, a degree may be desireable to move into mgmt at larger corps, but you can pick that up (without debt) part time with company paid benefits in you first 7-8 years of employment. Of course, you'll miss out on all the non-career benefitting activities of college... Added to this is the "betrayal" of 2003-2004... In the late 1990s all the software advocates were scurrying around high school campuses expounding to the good math students what a great life they would have if they went of to college and got their CS degree. So four years later, those kids started saying, "Okay, I've got my CS degree, where's my kewl job?", but industry was saying,"Oh, well, we're in a recession and we've found some nice Indians and Chinese who'll do our software dev. Have a nice life." You could almost hear the stampede of upperclassmen rushing to their advisor to switch out of CS and into econ, and engineering in 2002 as word circulated about the software dev outsourcing trend in industry. As for the gender bias, the fact is that programming is generally a male field. Not because men are inherently better programmers, but because men (generally) program more. For most successful male programmers, programming is not just their chosen profession, it is their primary hobby in one form or another as well. I appreciate that there *exists* women who program 9 hrs a day professionally, and then go home and tinker on their linux box, or personal webserver for another 4-5 hrs over their Chinese takeout, but such women are the *exception*, whereas *every* male programmer I've ever met leaves their daytime programming job and go home (or some wireless hotspot) to putter around on their own personal software projects. Frankly, I believe women have a healthier attitude toward software development, but my opinion doesn't change the facts. So when a hiring manager is looking at a male candidate who is two years out of college, and a female candidate for the same job, that male candidate almost certainly has 2500+ more hours of programming experience than the female. And that extra programming shows up in technical interviews. Right out of college they're probably closer to parity, but career path-wise men generally out program women because men program more than women. My experience has been that when a woman is programming as much as her male counterparts (and I've know a handful who did) their is no appreciable difference between their careers. If *anything* those women do better than their male counterparts because management finds it so refreshing to have a woman who has programming as her hobby as well as her profession.
Jocks vs Nerds? have fun in the locker, buddy!
I, for one, welcome are new Jock overlords...
Then we'd all be able to get something done. If we actually had a machine that allowed us to be productive..........
These two actions aren't neccessarily contradictory. He may also be hiring Indians due to the lack of good programmers in the US. I am not saying this is true but it is a possibility.
I thought too that the US were a long way ahead in technology. I came for a conference in Austin, TX last November, and on the way back I stayed for a week in NY. I was disappointed in some ways:
Ok, ok, I have to compensate with some positive points...
Anyway, back to the point: the US are not as advanced as many, Americans and not, think they are. At least not in the level of technology the citizens are exposed to, I have definitely seen enough to deem it unlikely that I was victim of a long series of unlucky coincidences.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
Install Linux while the gettin's good! He is kind of biased towards tech. He contradicted himself by saying the government should filter all of this money for his tech programs while (His MCAD doesn't support C++ anymore by the way so what's that!) the Health sector is taking up the slack. We don't want all kinds of money put into tech and I really don't think the personal market wants 20 gig chips although there is the Cell processor that is pretty fast. Bill, it's not programmers who are going to invent this stuff it's the phycicists who are going to use Blue Gene with Linux installed who will. Also, why is a degree in CS so importent? The only people that get degrees and put anything out of use are managers who do the paperwork. You can't manage if you don't have the hardcore programmer who doesn't need the degree. Too much managed stuff. Should Bill go back and get the degree?
"The fastest growing major is physical education"
.. you can make more money telling little fat high school kids to do some yoga...
The behaviour of majors shifting away from CS and towards PE, may be because there is more money to be made in the other industry... hence capitalistic free society.
if americans have created a larger (no pun) industry in physical education due to it's historically high obesity rates, then well
-judging another only defines yourself
of his own success!!! While at Columbia, *ONLY* MS certified courses were supported, while a completely furnished NeXTSTEP laboratory served duty as email terminals to student accounts.
The argument was *anything* other than MS CS related courses was useless, and a waste of students education since there only existed MS related jobs after graduation. So bought-in to the MS monopoly was CU that they saw it as their duty to the Corporate customers who fund its programs to turnout a ready pool of qualified talent that meets their needs, and salary requirements. NYC was a fileLOCK by 1990.
Welcome Bill Gates to YourWorld. You created it. So if you don't like it, look at your own sorry assine monopoly.
You forgot the most important one:
Who gets all the hottest girls?
I don't think I even have to answer that one =P
" Maybe that's because Microsoft has demonstrated that a technology company doesn't have to engage in any original work at all in order to be wildly successful, at least in the current US legal climate..."
Yes, MS demonstrated that all some company has to do is claim they were working on product x, but couldn't compete because of the MS monopoly, and collect a big paycheck at MS's expense. That's the American way.
Vote for Pedro
Just what we need, another CS related crime. Next thing you know, you'll need an MS license to accesess the internet.
On the other hand, he and his minions have been pushing hard for corporate tax cuts and credits. In other words, we want better employee fodder, and we want (the rest of) you to pay for it.
Luke, help me take this mask off
The H1B Visa situation has been misrepresented.
h ives.jhtml?articleId=163101217
There was a cap of 195,000 H1B Visas; in October of 2003 (after the "dot bomb"), this was dropped to 65,000.
As of about June of this year, an additional 20,000 have been allocated, but so far very few people are actually filing for these additional Visas: the US is no longer seen as such a desirable place to work, after all.
Note that the H1B criteria for these Visas is an MS from a U.S. school, or a BS and 5 years work experience prior to the filing.
Here's a CRN article that also quotes Bill gates:
http://www.crn.com/sections/breakingnews/dailyarc
This one's a little out of date regarding what actually happened: the article headline claims "U.S. Expects 20,000 H1B Visas To Go Quickly", but in fact hardly any of them have gone anywhere.
I think the real issue here is that during the "dot com gold rush", a lot of U.S. students left college before graduating, or graduated with a BS and left for the money, to be a warm body in a V.C.-funded cubicle far, and didn't pursue a post-graduate degree.
From that perspective, Mr. Gates is right: there's a serious lack of available talent; if an MS is the same as a BS + 5 years experience, then many of the people who at least got their BS still have ~2 years on average to "ripen".
Another problem, more or less one he brought on himself, is that it's a common Microsoft practice to get students fresh out of graduating college, and make them over in their own image. From that perspective, Mr. Gates is also right, that there's a serious lack of available talent - that he's willling to hire. The issue here is more complicated, but it boils down to to the staza from the song about social unrest in Algerian Muslims, post WWI: "How are you going to keep them down on the farm, once they've seen Paree?". Working 5 years in the real world would probably sour someone on working for Microsoft at an entry level position.
It's an untenable position to be sure, but it's mostly of his own making.
-- Terry
I wouldn't encourage the next generation to study anything that can possibly be moved offshore, because sooner or later, it will be. This definitely includes CS, but probably extends to just about any sort of office/information work. Stick to hands-on, local professions or expect to compete with equally-skilled people willing to work in their country for a tenth of USA living wages.
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Isn't that a bit like asking Ronald McDonald on the future of Gourmet Restaurant education?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
When I read things like how China is watching us miss this opportunity, I get kind of angry. Basically, his concern is not for the state of the US industry, but of course, for Microsoft. Bill and co. want to see more CS majors not so that the US can stay on top, but so that they can get American worker productivity while having a market so glutted that they can get the labor willing to work at much lower wages.
What?
All true programmers develop in assembler.
You don't happen to be familiar with the Demoscene are you? I'm curious that in all this time I've been reading Slashdot, I have never seen it mentioned. I've only heard about it recently, though I forgot how I came across it on the web. I Found some sites about it, googling around, and I'm a little bit curious. I've been wondering if others on Slashdot are from the Demoscene.
..who wants to be a programmer? When it takes MS 6 years to produce new versions of their OS, how does that serve as a good-sell opportunity?
Next time the bubble grows, let's leave the investment bankers by the side of the road. Maybe rationality in the process would help preserve the integrity of the industry.
Who is out of a career at 35, no matter how successful they are?
:)
The majority of athletes and coaches. Think about it, if all athletes went on to be successful coaches, universities would have 1-1 tuition in PE and major clubs would have at least one coach per player.
What are several of the richest men in the world?
Science geeks and nerds.
Of course on the gripping hand, John Madden managed to succesfully cross from PE to computers without ever having a successful sports career
The Chinese are going to wake up and see that they've been assimilated! Resistance is futile.
I just had a look at the MS careers site. They have about 1000 software job openings. If they can't find people, despite the high jobless rate in the SW field, they have to consider that maybe people don't want to work for them. Clearly, if programmers will work for free on other projects, yet don't want to be PAID to work for MS, then it must eventually give them some pause...
Oh well, what the hell...
The same sort of daft point could be made about actors, a few are very, very successful, some get by and the rest are waiters.
And that job was at your Dad's company was it?
Didja know that some companies pay interns entry-level wages? $50-$60k/yr is pretty nice when you're an intern.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Seriously, I'm wondering.... Did any of you who graduated with a Comp. Sci. degree actually feel like the majority of courses you took helped you do your job better once you found one? Or was it more a matter of just wanting the degree so it looked good on a resume/unlocked the gates of H.R. depts.?
When I was in college (back around '91 - '93), I started out thinking I should work towards a major in computers, because that had been my interest since I was a kid. I quickly discovered that my only real options were "data processing" (glorified typist, basically), or "Computer Science", which was very heavy on math courses and didn't seem to cover much about computing itself at all. I ended up just taking general, basic required courses and then went for an A.D. in Communication Arts. After that, I had enough of college and started working as a tech. for a computer store a buddy was just starting up, and I haven't really looked back since then.
I see lots of jobs out there today that I'm pretty sure I could do just fine if they hired me, but (especially in the cases of the larger corporations) they won't, because I don't have a "Bachelors in Comp. Sci." or equivalent degree. But again, that seems to just be a "tool" to make it easy to cut back on the number of resumes they have to go through. Throw in a "filter" of that type so H.R. can throw away half the submissions up-front.... It strikes me as rather sad if I'm expected to spend all that money on courses and learn relatively useless information (for my field, at least), just to get that "line item" on a resume....
Prove me wrong here. Really!
Post a current advertisement for an internship paying that much.
If it exists, I want my kid to know about it. She's on the right track (unlike her father at that age) and I want to be sure she stays on it.
Please do it for the children!!!
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
>Now Gates and others bitch about how few people are going into CS
Some simple suggestions for those companies:
1. Hire people in the USA
2. Don't import 3rd world wage workers into the USA and expect the same quality you get from USA workers
3. Don't offshore thousands of jobs to the 3rd world and expect USA workers to enter the IT labor force or remain in the IT labor force
4. Don't make 'we value our employees' statements and then shift work offshore since the two actions are a contradiction.
OMG I only read your excerpts, which basically told me why waste time reading the article. If Bill is so unhappy about what's happening in the business, why doesnt he just change MS's policy. After all, they are the business, or have pretentions of being.
Except you'd be talking out of your ass, because Steve Jobs isn't exhorting people to go an major in CS. Quite the contrary: he advised people to do whatever.
(From a recent speech to Stanford University grads)
Though math is also fine (maybe better), for grad school. Grad school's where it's really at though.
/do/ for-hire coding - just be decently smart. I'd say mostly what you get from the degree is practice! (and maybe knowledge of DBs & graphics or whatever).
My BS CS was kind of straight-laced and boring - I could see how someone, faced with the same kind of thing, could think it's not worth it. But the really interesting material comes at the higher levels, and if you go to a school with a graduate component you can get in on the research, which is the juice.
If you think knowing how to use stacks, queues, and databases is all there is though, you haven't seen what's out there, or what it takes.
But as for your main point, no, it's true, you don't need a CS degree to
Someday we'll all be negroes
The 2 points I always make about these sorts of articles are:
1) Good riddance. I hope this shakes out some of the riff-raff that jumped on the band wagon in the late 90's, the "I've got l337 VB skillz u owe me 72k/yr." crowd. Only people who are serious about their profession and passionate about it need apply.
2) The entire focus of technology is automation. If you need a huge army of programmers and IT people to support your software, your software is crap. billg does not seem to get this. His is attacking a cost center, like most managers, by looking for a cheap source of commodity resources (code monkeys, sysapes). Rather than building a product which requires minimal support. I twigged on this in the 90's when M$ announced that they wanted to produce 100k newly minted MC*E's. Rather than improve the software, reduce the cost of supporting it.
This is a harsh opinion, I know.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
except that slash doesn't allow no text.
Someday we'll all be negroes
For a moment, I was wondering why is Gates worried about educating noobs on Counter Strike...
I suppose the arguments against this would be:
- If we don't pay him x bucks, company B will (a sort of defensive logic, probably more common in "bubble" times when the figures don't make realistic sense
:-)
- Our guy is so good, we have to pay him x bucks (this tends to be aimed at rival companies and potential investors)
- It's a very responsible position (won't argue with that but shouldn't this mean that someone who has wilfully made a decision that unnecessarily damaged the quality of life of another should be held entirely responsible for the decision, rather than given a golden handshake? And how do such people get given the same kind of job again?)
- Trade Secrets
The last item may make it very difficult to convince a company to outsource management positionsIt's a wonderful idea, though, and until (ever the optimist!) businesses can be comfortable enough with what they are doing to pay an employee what they are worth, it will be difficult to implement...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/storyv
Absolute 100% security? Not many. Better than IT? Take your pick.
Medicine is a protected field - you have to have a license, and the governing bodies will only issue so many licenses each year.
A nurse with a two year degree can have his/her choice of jobs with $15K sign-on bonuses, and $35/hour - if don't mind working nights (my sister is a nurse).
Ever talk to a doctor? To a doctor the very idea of having to face a job glut is incomprehensible.
How about lawyers? I predict that within 20 years, all Americans will make their living by suing each other.
Engineers may not have the kind of security that they used to have; but engineers don't have to scrape and beg for every nickle and dime like computer pros.
According to Microsoft, "innovation" and "R&D" are all about training CS students to use Microsoft software instead of all of those old-fashioned languages and operating systems.
0 03Aug24
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A40000-2
At least *some* of the universities had the foresight to turn down Microsoft's bribe.
Case in point:
In my high school, the football team had only had one winning season in the past ten years. During my three years in high school (sophomore thru senior there), the team's records were 1-9, 1-9, 0-10. To my knowledge, no one from any of those teams received a college football scholarship at any level.
During the same period, the band consistently won region, state, and national competitions. Scores of band members were selected for all-region and all-state bands, and several even tried out (and were accepted) for national honor bands. Out of my graduating class, the one before mine, and the one after mine (the only ones I have direct knowledge of) every single band member who went to college and played in the college band had a band scholarship of some sort. That's about 25 out of 30.
25 of 30 for the band compared to 0 of 50 for the football team.
Yet guess which group got more financial support from the school and community. Guess which group got charter buses to go to state competitions. Guess which group got a brand new practice facility.
Guess which group had to hawk over-priced candy and hold countless carwashes to buy uniforms. Guess which group rode school buses 500+ miles to a competition. Guess which group has to split up into three smaller groups to practice because they no longer fit in their current facility.
Replace "band" with "science major" and "football" with "business major" or "PE major" and nearly everything still holds at different levels. American society not only holds thinkers and researchers and scientists and engineers in less admiration than celebrities and athletes and managers, but it increasingly seems to be actively punishing people in those fields.
Me, bitter? Nah! ;-)
Since I'm working at McDonalds this summer, I've noticed that the managers only get paid ~$10 an hour. I belive that it's ~$13 an hour for the store manager (who got to that position after working there for ~7 years). Somehow, any entry level office job seems better. Similar (if not better) pay, less experience required, and much more comfortable working conditions. (you get a airconditioning and a chair for starters)
Stop calling him that.
Start calling him "Chief Thief" or maybe "Chief Pickpocket" or maybe "Chief Con Man."
When was the last time that asshole "architected" anything other than dodging a bullet on a Federal antitrust suit? The original Microsoft BASIC? Or was that Paul Allen, as I recall?
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
"how the lack of spending in research and development is 'kind of a crime'."
Which kind of crime is that, Bill?
When you dump tens of billions on a one-time stock prop scheme instead of investing it in R&D?
When you donate $20 billion to a "foundation" so your father can use it to control companies you can't because the SEC won't let you?
When you use your monopoly influence to attract development partners than walk off with their code and try to drive them into bankruptcy like you did that cell phone software company?
When you threaten to fire 8,000 people in a country that doesn't support your software patents initiative?
Read my lips, Bill.
Fuck you.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I do agree that it would be nice if books on the subject were less expensive. Paying $60 or more for a book is a little prohibitive.
What about the R&D activities that are being criminalized (DMCA) at the request of big business?
Well perhaps that's also his own fault. Back in the 80s, it was normal for every home computer to have some sort of development enviroment comming with them. Typically a variant of Microsoft BASIC.
Today, you only have a shell which is 30 years behind progress. It's hard to get into programming as you have to learn C (a really ugly language IMHO) or something like Visual Basic (yuck!). In all cases you need to buy/download some software (often extremely expensive) and then write a whole programm, which is often really difficult to do. Just think of how many lines of code it takes just to get something equivalent to the graphics mode of old computers and draw a line.
My tip for Microsoft ist this: Build a new shell, one that can execute all your normal commands and programms, supports piping and stuff, but also all the tradional BASIC stuff.
For example, I want to be able to just type "ls" to get a directory listing, but I want to type "100 ls" to write ls into "line 100". When I thin type run, ls will be executed. Also include somekind of graphics mode where commands like "line" work. And, most important, make it interactive. It's a lot better to make people interrested, when all you need to do is enter a command and you get an instant reaction.
I know, goto is considered harmfull, but for small things, it's OK. It's great for understanding how computers work.
It's amazing that writing a small programm is now just as difficult as it was with the Imsai. Back then you had to toggle in your programm byte by byte into RAM, today you need to click around for ages, and/or write lots of dull lines of code which are always the same.
I want a system I can turn on, wait a bit, and immediately code whatever I want. Microsoft has brought as far away as reasonably possibly from that goal. They even removed the macro-recorder that came with Windows 3.x, thus removing any kind of simple programmability.
... when the Microsoft Research Center in Cambridge is known as the "Black Hole of Research". Good scientists go in, and no one ever hears from them again.
BTW no mention of payment anywhere on Amazon's Intern page. Well genius where is it?
Yeah, like any company is going to publish that for the world to see. What Isay is true, and if you don't believe me, then too bad. We want smart people and we pay them well. After all, they have to live on the money we pay in seattle.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
"The problem the comp sci students are going to face is the same problem the auto workers are facing. Companies don't give a crap about americans, even though the companies started in the USA, the CEO and board of directors are American, and they sell their product to Americans. They will move their factories and tech support and anything they can to Mexico or India or anywhere they can find cheap labor. The CEO's are pretty much trators and they are crapping on the USA."
Move to France. Well, I suppose that is difficult as their immigration policies are a real bitch, but you would feel at home there. You could sit around be pissed off that there are other humans in the world willing to work and declare anyone of the same nationality who doesn't give out jobs based upon nationality is an ass hole. They have dozens of political parties that argue for sealing up the borders from both the left and the right of the argument such that I am sure you could feel at home.
The world is vastly unequal. Some places in this world are richer then others. In some places, $10,000 a year makes you rich; in others it puts you in relative poverty. What is changing is that the inequality between nations is vanishing. Indians, Chinese, and people all over the world can compete against Americans when before they stood no chance. Today, an Indian can get a technical education and get a job in America or at home fulfilling a job that only Americans, European, and Japanese used to be able to fulfill and get paid more then the traditional sweatshop jobs of their native nations.
What exactly are you proposing? Bar immigrants from entering a nation of immigrants, denying them the privilege that your ancestors seemed to have enjoyed so much? Enact some policy to keep these rising nations too poor produce technically minded people to protect American jobs?
The wheels of globalization are turning and they are not going to stop. These nations are rising and they WILL reach higher standards of living. They likely will not surpass American or Western European standards any time soon, but the gap is going to start to close. There are two ways you can look at this. You can bitch and moan that others in the world are rising to your level, or you can look on it as an opportunity. It is opportunity to strike out further ahead and do what Americans have always done. See the next wave coming and ride it before everyone else. Abandon agriculture for industry, industry for miniaturization, and miniaturization for information. That, or you can recognize that the amount of people in the world spending like Americans is rocketing up and that you can reap profit from their demand. An Indian without power has no effect on anyone's economy. An Indian with a power outlet and need for software and electronics DOES effect the economy.
Finally, recognize what you have. Last time I checked, Americans are not dying of starvation. In fact, last time I checked poor Americans are more likely to die of a heart attack from eating too much fatty food then anything resembling starvation. When the poor of your nation are more likely to die from being overfed... it is time a get a grip on reality and recognize how much you have.
I was about to post a great comment about how the parent was too focused on money and how I am perfectly happy making what I make because I am intrinsically motivatived and enjoy what I do.... and then you blow my whole argument out of the water...
damn you!
--
In particular, Gates said finding recruits who have project management skills is difficult. Management overall is an area of need, he said. Indeed Gates said he welcomes students coming out of engineering management career tracks.
I've got to agree with Bill here there is no real training in IT project management offered by most CS degrees. There could be a good gap in the market for some smart uni here.
There are four sorts of people in the world: fools, lunatics, idiots and morons. - Umberto Eco, Foucaut's pendulum.
Not me :(
What an interesting bunch of comments. Here's my take.....first off...fuck off Bill...quit sending jobs overseas and give young Americans a reason to go into CS....and maybe develop something cool that people would be interested in developing...and BTW...thanks a hell of a lot for ASP.NET...and C# and VB.NET....blah I've been in IT for 20 years now and am doing rather well. I do it because I love.
You could argue Columine was the beginning of that...
Up against the wall, motherfucking football player!
These are the essential elements that would keep anyone from going into a CS degree in the states. There is no crime here. It's the same Free Market forces at work that Gates and Bush say will allow free innovation of software and solve global warming.
Now here's the interesting twist that I see.
Microsoft software licensing and version incompatability forcing hardware upgrades remove a very considerable sum of money from the corporate coffers from being available for IT wages and salary related expenses. Because the money isn't available, there is even less opportunity for a local CS employment to be cost effective against the current cost of living expenses in this country.
To be honest, even if the software costs were removed, the companies would very likely continue following the lowest price options regardless of the availability of funds for wages and salary. This is not a silver bullet.
Until corporations recognize the value of having CS related employees to have improved skills like:
- Communication proficiency.
- Experience. A lot of people who I run into who do CS work have no practical field experience and quite frankly write really bad code. But they are the cheapest bidder.
- There is a disconnect between the business philosopy, thinking, methods of the US companies and the non-US software developers. You cannot develop a business solution software product without some understanding of the business.
things aren't going to change. We will, as a nation, fall into a non-leadership role in the field.>Replace "band" with "science major" and "football"
;-)
>with "business major" or "PE major" and nearly
>everything still holds at different levels.
>American society not only holds thinkers and
>researchers and scientists and engineers in less
>admiration than celebrities and athletes and
>managers, but it increasingly seems to be actively
>punishing people in those fields.
Yep.
> Me, bitter? Nah!
I'm right there with you (although our band sucked as bad as out football team). But I think you are really onto something. The values of American societry run completely counter to those required to compete in the 21st century. We don't elect intelligent people who propose large complicated solutions.... we elect a guy we would be comfortable 'having a beer with'.
And this is the same reason that no matter what politician does what our education system will continue its downward spiral. Because at our heart America doesn't give a rat's ass about education. Technology is 'for those wierdo's who never get laid'; sadly we even echo this non-stop in these forums (although it is complete and total crap). Somehow it passes for humour when the upshot is that we American's are screwing [no pun intended] ourselves.
Using "Common Sense" is being either to arrogant or to ignorant to ask people who know more about something than you.
".... kind of a crime."
Like being a convicted monopolist.
a man, a plan, a canal, panama
It doesn't help that many highschools are canceling their CS programs. I know of two local schools that have done so this year. (Mine being one of them) reason? Budget cuts. Come on Gates, you want to see more interest in CS? Sponsor some schools across the country, paying for their CS programs. (im talking about highschools, because getting interested in something early is important.)
I am sure the fact that there is a strong bit of Anti-intellectualism in the United States has nothing to do with this.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
If you want more CS graduates, then why don't you do what the Army does? In high school, the Army will guarantee a prospective student a job upon graduation. This motivates the student to complete the course of study (ROTC or whatever) and graduate, knowing there is security for the future. The same could be done for CS students - after 1 or 2 years of a 4 year CS program, you pretty much know who "has it" and who doesn't. Guarantee the people who have it a job. They'll stick with it. But wait, MS just wants to skim a few people off the top and flush the rest, don't they?
Putting the article in perspective is good reporting. The article conflicts with what Gates is telling you. It puts this rich persons dreams next to a bit of reality that everyone can understand. And that's the right thing to do.
As if the US is much different? Have you seen the debt figures recently? (Closing on $8,000,000,000,000, more than $25,000 per citizen.)
The average American has better than $8000 in credit card debt alone. I don't think that there should be a required company pension, but I don't trust the average American to actually save enough money for next week, much less post retirement. I'd rather not go back to the day when everyone worked until the day the died either though.
Be glad life is unfair, otherwise we'd deserve all this.
I don't know, I know a lot of people who majored in counter-strike in college.
There is only one Windows. It is full of faults. It gets viruses. It costs money. It is closed source. It only runs on x86 (no, itanic doesn't count and neither do archaic implementations on Alpha and MIPS). It is not well implemented. For research it is of little value.
Sour grapes, Mr Gates?
Stick Men
Sorry, no factual errors. These are my experiences. I might have had especially bad luck, though that would defy statistics.
In Europe, there is a 900/1800 MHz dual band, in North America 850/1900 MHz. My phone is a tri-band (900, 1800 and 1900), one of those you pay more for to be able to go to the US and use them.
<coupdegrace>Well, American chemical engineers. At ECOS2003 in Copenhagen we had a whole room with Debian machines. Eheh.
That's bullshit, no way a million people can fit in there. I was at a rally in September 2002 in Rome, and we were about 800,000 to one million. You have never seen one million people. They could never, ever fit in Times square. Not even 100,000 for that sake. I would expect it to be closer to 10,000 at maximum. Look at the pictures: this is St. John's square in Laterano: as a general rule, the square from the church on the west side all the way to the east limit of the picture can contain 300,000 people. Times square is nowhere that size.
That might surprise you, but we are not aiming at one language. I for one am for Esperanto as a bridge language and everybody with his mother language, but the current policy is "translate everything". And for that sake half the advertisement in New York is in Spanish.
Which ones, and with which certificates? Really, I'm curious. Chile has not exactly many borders with non-Spanish-speaking countries, are you counting argentinian as a language, che? That would not even be that incorrect.
I thought America used to be about deserving one's honours, and not inheriting them. GWB is not FDR. By the way, I did not say "they were Nazi", I said "the closest thing to a Nazi rally" I had experienced. At some point, the speaker said "We did a lot of good things in Vietnam! We built orphanages!", and my buddy Olaf started laughing. That's when I got scared. Olaf ikke le. Ikke nå, ikke her, for fandens skyld!
So what, the GSM standard (the one that did not work for me in the US) was invented in 1 km's radius from my workplace.
I almost feel bad, but in the link you provided my country is directly above yours. Sorry.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
The physical fitness of Americans has never been worse. Visitors to America always notice this even if they are too polite to actually bring it up in conversation. Physical Education is a good thing, but like many other professions, they don't always get to do the job they are trained for and want to do. The job should be about helping people get into the right habits and learn how to exercise and take pleasure in it. Unfortunately the stresses manifest themselves in terms of pushing people towards raising the performance of the elite ahteletes in a school. Thats a problem with schools you need to deal with, not a problem with Phys Ed. itself, although I guess most Slashdotters are too embittered to be able to consider that perspective.
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
Sure, workers have 401ks that follow them from job to job and IRAs that aren't tied to any company. This is a great thing for workers, given the latest trends against lifetime employment at a single company.
Unfortunately, people are morons. They see their 401k contributions being removed from their paychecks along with taxes and think, "Hey. I can stop contributing to my 401k and get a new bigscreen!" And they do. Next it's a new SUV. Then a new truck.
Instead of funding their retirements that will happen in the distant future, they fund their current insatiable appetites for toys. I'm not saying 401ks are bad. I definitely prefer my 401k to a pension, personally. When I worked at a company I maxed out my 401k contribuation and when I started my own company, I was able to roll over my 401k into a SEP-IRA with my new company and now I max out my contribution to my SEP. Under the pension model, I would have been out that 401k money when I left my job to go out on my own.
I'm just saying that there is bad with the new system because people are no longer forced to contribute. They roll the dice with their retirements and the dirty little secret is that most baby boomers have little or no savings for retirement. When I was in high school I was required to take courses on English literature, but I was never required to take a class on personal finance (or even math at all!). This is a big mistake. To this day only a few states actually require such a course.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
Well, this long scar on my medulla oblongata is from the first time I tried to use the help files supplied with VB6. The big burn on my occipital lobe is from subclassing the Windows API in a document control app I was playing with, the oozing sore on my hypothalamus...
No wonder why you suffered brain damage, you learned VB not Basic. I started programming in Basic on Trash80s, er TRS80s, and Apple IIs. Well, and IMB mainframes, the 360 series 60.
FalconShould there be a Law?