Slashdot Mirror
How Computer Science Education Got Practical (Again)
jfruh writes: In the 1980s and 1990s, thousands of young people who had grown up tinkering with PCs hit college and dove into curricula designed around the vague notion that they might want to "do something with computers." Today, computer science education is a lot more practical — though in many ways that's just going back to the discipline's roots. As Christopher Mims put it in the Wall Street Journal, "we've entered an age in which demanding that every programmer has a degree is like asking every bricklayer to have a background in architectural engineering."
Sure, but you can't ask a team of bricklayers to assemble a livable house. In fact in this analogy it's so obvious that you also need an architect, a plumber, etc, that there's no need to even mention it. But when it comes to programmers and (corporate) management it's a whole different story. They will get a team of 'bricklayers' together and tell them to build the next Youtube - or a bit close to home, the next corporate content distribution platform - and then be utterly dumbfounded when that blows up in their face.
It seems like a commonplace that not every line-of-business java slinger is going to make use of the more elegant mathematics being worked out on the edges of 'computer science'; but isn't this issue already addressed by the fact that things like 'software engineering' are distinct courses of study, with a different emphasis?
Also, why do we care what a former biologist, now sci/tech article writer for the WSJ has to say about technology-related education? Is there some connection that I'm missing?
Maybe you should fire your HR people?
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
We have hired, and let go, 3 "computer science" majors who didn't know how to calculate a range of IPs given a single IP and a netmask.
CS != IT. This makes as much sense as complaining that your car mechanic knows nothing about plumbing. If you want a sysadmin, then hire a sysadmin. But that is not what a CS grad is, or should be.
You should also change your hiring practices. If there are basic skills that you require, you should test for that during the interview process. By failing to do that, you are wasting your time and theirs. Letting one slip through may be excusable, but three in a row is a sign of serious dysfunction.
though only if you identify the scope of the work. You need a bricklayer to build the house, but he needs to be educated if he's going to be the GC / project lead. Don't hire unskilled labor for a skilled position.
But it totally makes sense to hire basic codemonkeys for the grind work. You don't need a CS degree to maintain your site's javascript or write queries all day long.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Computer science is a wide field, and you can't expect everyone to know everything. Just like many computer scientists would have to take some time to familiarize themselves with MS Office (because they probably wrote their thesis using LaTeX), many aren't familiar with aspects that are not in their area of interest. Hardly anyone configures hosts manually anymore, and home routers come with reasonable default network configurations. If you're not "into networking", why would you know what a netmask is? Maybe they run circles around you in database design or image processing. I'd expect anyone with a computer science degree to understand a short explanation and then do the calculations though. (If you, dear reader, know what a netmask is and feel the urge to proclaim thusly, please refrain. I know what a netmask is. Many other people know what a netmask is. That still doesn't mean someone who doesn't know is undeserving of a CS degree, necessarily.)
The link is paywalled, but programmers are not bricklayers. So just based on that one quote I can tell the article is stupid.
Indeed. TFA equates programming with bricklaying, and implies neither needs to be educated like an architect. But writing a program is much more like architecture than it is like bricklaying.
I have worked as a bricklayer. The first day, the foreman told me to pull the wall down and try again. The second day it was "good enough". By the end of the week, I could work as well (but not as fast) as the guys with years of experience. A programmer with a week of experience can not come close to someone with years of experience, and likely can't write a working program at all.
we've entered an age in which demanding that every programmer has a degree is like asking every architectural engineering to have a background in structural engineering
Fixed.
"The idea of programming as a semiskilled task, practiced by people with a few months' training, is dangerous. We wouldn't tolerate plumbers or accountants that poorly educated. We don't have as an aim that architecture (of buildings) and engineering (of bridges and trains) should become more accessible to people with progressively less training. Indeed, one serious problem is that currently, too many software developers are undereducated and undertrained. Obviously, we don't want our tools--including our programming languages--to be more complex than necessary. But one aim should be to make tools that will serve skilled professionals--not to lower the level of expressiveness to serve people who can hardly understand the problems, let alone express solutions. We can and do build tools that make simple tasks simple for more people, but let's not let most people loose on the infrastructure of our technical civilization or force the professionals to use only tools designed for amateurs." - Bjarne Stroustrup.
No sig today...
Problem 1. computer programming has nothing to do with networking.
Problem 2. If they are new grads you are supposed to teach them.
Problem 3. A lot of Programers do not start till college. So they lose years of general knowledge.
I beg to differ. You're way below quota for my penis size. Why are you discriminating against big dicks?
I think you are arguing against yourself. For bricklaying, it seems like experience was much more important than years of formal education. And you are saying the same is true for programming - that experience writing programs is what is important. You don't need multivariate calculus or OS design to write programs, it takes 6 months to a year to learn the basics. But definitely not 4 years of university.
Support microSD: in a post 9/11 world, it is unwise to carry your data on media that you cannot comfortably swallow.
With a CS degree, you should know damn near everything. My cousin had a CS degree and based on required classes, he had to know how to write compilers, kernels, network stacks, design CPUs, 3D game engines. He did not have a lot of practical work in any of those, but he had to learn the theory, data structures, and understand how and why the were designed the way they were, then implement simple versions of what he learned.
He came from a Uni that is a world leader in Bio Engineering, and CS was considered a harder subject because CS is very hard. If it's not hard, you're not doing CS.
Nowadays, anything that specific that you don't know, you just google it. I have a master's degree in CS and 30 years experience, don't have a clue what that subnet mask thingy does either, but I can find out in five minutes. Maybe your problem is you're hiring dumb people?
Have you read my blog lately?
You might not need multivariate calculus, but I find the method used for proving things, are very useful when analysing software behaviour.
But you absolutely need "OS design" because you need to know about things as processes and threads. Virtual and physical memory, semaphores and so on.
And while I don't think I will ever have to write a compiler myself, the compiler writing course is still the best way to learn to work on recursive datas tructures which is useful, and in fact the thing I do for a living right now.
I graduated with a CS degree and spent the first half of my 20+ year career as a software engineer. These days, I'm a sysadmin. Becoming a sysadmin was considered a step up from writing code - it was a responsibility given to the senior engineers who had a more in-depth knowledge of the OS and hardware.
But I guess these days some folks think of us as IT janitors...
CS != IT. This makes as much sense as complaining that your car mechanic knows nothing about plumbing. If you want a sysadmin, then hire a sysadmin. But that is not what a CS grad is, or should be.
Fail.
A decent car mechanic might not know the building code by heart but he's probably unblocked a drain or two in his time simply because he's the sort of person that enjoys using tools to do stuff. If my mechanic could only do cars then I'd be suspicious of him.
If nothing else a potential employee should be interested in the job he's applying for. If you've got "CS grad" who don't know what an IP mask is then they clearly have no personal interest in computers and only took the degree because they thought it "might lead to a career". You can bet that sort of person will be in management within a couple of months (maybe at another company) and you'll be looking for yet another programmer to fill their place.
No sig today...
I think the problem is we need both. In most cases programs are not like buildings they don't fall down and kill people if they are implemented badly. Now if that program is controlling your nuclear reactor or your medical implant, flying your plane its a different story.
Look at your accounts. Sure we don't let just anyone do the books at public company. Someone with a CPA at least needs to supervise the preparation of those SEC filings. On the other hand we don't need the guy at the HR Block kiosk running TaxCut for you while you shop at Wall-Mart to have an accounting degree or a CPA either (not to say some of them don't).
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Only the very lowest levels of programming as a profession are so simple that you can get away with being a completely untrained bricklayer. Once you actually get to the point of building anything remotely interesting, ideas you would have been exposed to in academia quickly become relevant.
Even in the more interesting skilled skilled trades you can't get away from "academic" instruction of some kind.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
A cs major might not be able to "calculate a range of IPs given a single IP and a netmask" on the spot, but if a cs major can't google what a netmask is, and then write a program which gives you the min and max ip for the range included in the same network as the given ip/netmask he is useless as a software developer.
It can be done in under 10 lines of code, and should not even take an hour to do. It is basic bit operations and a cs major should know how a number is represented on a modern cpu.
And now imagine an agile team of bricklayers "doing" an Empire state, sprint after damned sprint, under time pressure. Led by some MBA suit.
That sure looks like a recipe for success...
I have this image in my head of a skyscraper where every few courses, the bricklaying changes its appearance.
That's what Agile was supposed to promote, wasn't it? Adapting to user feedback as the code is developed?
Yeah. it's a bit like one of those 'lazy' people who drive everywhere, and you think, "Hey it would have been easier walking to the end of the drive and back".
The most dangerous drug
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If you are hiring a bricklayer to do the work of an architect, or vice versa, you probably have the wrong person for the job.
If you are hiring a script kiddie to doe the work of a software engineer, or vice versa, you probably have the wrong person for the job.
Just keep in mind that in many areas, using an unlicensed engineer on certain projects is illegal. When is software engineering going to finally step up to the plate?
Hey, C students need jobs too!
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
It depends on the school's curriculum. I had to take an assembly language programming course (VAX!) when I was in college 10+ years ago. Pretty sure nobody had a class on hardware performance. The only time I was exposed to multi-threading was in an operating system theory class (mostly the concept of critical sections and semaphores). Linked lists usually appear in a second semester data structures programming course along with heaps, trees, queues, and stacks. I was first exposed to them in high school in AP Computer Science class. The same teacher also taught object oriented programming even though it wasn't required for the AP test.
Still despite all this, I know people who graduated with a Comp Sci degree that really didn't know how to program.
"The idea of programming as a semiskilled task, practiced by people with a few months' training, is dangerous.
Maybe. But, commercially, it's even more dangerous to deny ordinary workers the opportunity to 'program' after a fashion.
Excel is essentially a functional programming language, and advanced Excel users are essentially analyst/programmers. End user computing and analysis tools constructed in Excel undoubtedly present many risks relating to quality control, key staff dependencies, change management, data integrity, confidentiality and the like. That's why IT staff sneer, snigger and upvote slashdot posts that criticise Excel. But, for all the sneering, if you ripped Excel out of many businesses, the commercial consequences would be so great that there would be no cash left to pay the 'real' programmers.
Errr...
IME it's usually the product owner (thinking of Scrum here) that gives feedback and changes the direction of the coding process. There is a tradeoff (if you do it right); the product owner gets to see something very quickly, even if it isn't feature complete, and the coders get better instructions and the knowledge that the fact that the product owner is changing spec means that there is a cost in development time.
Of course, most of the time Scrum is implemented as "the product owner (who is generally a walking haircut MBA moron) gets to do whatever the fuck they want and the developers are never given enough time to do a decent job". Under this implementation, the product owner gets all the benefit and all the power, and is not constrained by silly things like "resource limitations" or "number of hours in the day". Also, without the cost pressure, there is no incentive to provide good initial specs, as you can just cram more and more work down the developers' throats as the process continues, and no pressure to be thoughtful and efficient with change requests. The specs can change all they want; the deadlines remain the same.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Your analogy is almost as bad as the articles.
CS != IT. This makes as much sense as complaining that your car mechanic knows nothing about engines.
Except I didn't say that. You edited what I said, presented it as a direct quote, and then complained that it was a bad analogy. That is dishonest and stupid.
What we need is 10% CS, 30% Software Engineering, and 60% ITT. Biggest problem are managers that don't consider productivity or quality impacting the final dollars per result.
The fact that most CS grads (under most current programs) can't program their way out of a wet paper bag is a symptom of a larger issue. Too many students spend four years (and $100,000 or more) learning all kinds of "theory" and learning how to learn, and graduate with a useless piece of paper and no marketable skills. Time was when employers recognized that the theory and learning skills meant the graduate was easily trainable and would not need a whole lot of background to become useful to them. But, nowadays, since most employers would rather cut their arm off with a butter knife than provide training for their employees ("But but but if we train them they might take those new skills to another employer!" Then make them want to stay by not treating them like walking cost centers that you despise having to pay), a graduate who can't "hit the ground running" or has no real-world experience past their internships (witness the plethora of "entry-level" jobs that require 3 years' experience) is unhireable. Companies whine about not being able to find people to hire (usually so they can get H1-Bs to do the job for 60% of the pay) but don't realize that employee development pays off in spades, and if everyone says "let someone else train them" then nobody gets any training.
A bachelor's degree used to mean something when you were trying to get that first job. Nowadays, a bachelor's is basically the new high school diploma, since the lack of a degree is used as the first criteria when culling the pile of resumes submitted for an open gig. Someone without the obscene debt that comes along with a degree will find it easier to quit when they get treated like crap by their employer, because they don't have a student loan payment that's half their take-home pay.
(Yes, paying H1-Bs less than market value is illegal. But, what do you think happens to H1-B visa holders that complain? They get fired and sent back to their home country. So, they don't complain, and employers save money on salaries.)
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
LMOL - yes it is like brick laying in that you don't need a degree in computer science to be a programmer like you don't need a degree architectural engineering to do brick laying. *Your* assumption is that brick laying is an unskilled and not requiring much intelligence compared to programming. The fault is your own if you think it's easy to be a brick layer and that programming is some kind of hyper-intelligent endeavor. Get over yourself.
The quote was apt - one does not need a degree in computer science to be a programmer.
I've more or less moved out of programming now but I did it for 30 odd years in the finance industry across various projects. I've used something like 8-10 operating systems and 20+ languages. My code is pretty robust, during dev maybe 1-2 bugs a year were raised against my code and post go live I'm aware of 1 bug that turned out to be me and that was a fairly trivial one. 90% of what I did was donkey work, read a message from IBM MQ, parse it, dump it out to a db, make a few decisions, call a stored proc etc. Mostly C and Unix. It was all commented to hell and back and very clearly structured and I also enjoy documenting, which I do in spades. However, I wouldn't have a clue on writing a compiler, doing any graphical work, etc although I'd know where to look should the need arise. Key point though is, I'm entirely self taught and have zero college. I went from school straight into my first job based on a 30 minute interview and the fact I programmed some 6502 on an Atari 800. The message being, a lot of programming doesn't need super skilled people, anyone with a bit of common sense, a logical mind, a chunk of curiosity and hopefully a good quality threshold can do it.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Really? Maybe s/he was too busy following the latest developments on LLVM to care about how exactly routing takes place. At my uni we spent perhaps 20 min talking about this before moving on to other subjects. I can easily see someone not remembering it.
What you want is someone with a solid theoretical foundation that can google IP mask and understand it in 5 min.
The thing is, doing them WELL requires the equivalent of multiple PhD's"
Or being interested in them. The GP was arguing that netmasks are not something CS may know. I was getting after that CS should know a lot of everything, including routing. How could someone who understands how routing works not understand netmasks?
I forgot who said it, but there is a quote that goes something like "In every sufficiently large Excel spreadsheet, there is a half-assed implementation of a Lisp interpreter." So I agree that the problem isn't semi-skilled people doing programming (loosely defined), but rather, people semi-skilled in the wrong tool.
Many of those large spreadsheets would be much better off as a database and a little bit of scripting language like Python. But most of these business analysts have only ever had exposure to Excel and VBA, and they would have been much better served with some technical training in the right tool for the job.
I would not expect a standard CS curriculum to have a class on the TCP/IP stack. A networking class, maybe, but more theoretical than on IP implementation details.
If you need somebody that knows the ins and outs of IP, then I suggest your organization look for such things during the hiring process, instead of going through the incredibly expensive process of hiring somebody only to let them go months later.
It sounds like you are a bunch of morons there that have managed to (consistently!) confuse CS and IT.
Many of those large spreadsheets would be much better off as a database and a little bit of scripting language like Python. But most of these business analysts have only ever had exposure to Excel and VBA, and they would have been much better served with some technical training in the right tool for the job.
I agree with you, but, in my experience, the biggest single obstacle to deploying better tools is the IT department.
I'm an accountant, not a programmer (although my degree was a Computer Science joint honours 25 years ago) and I find that while Excel is great for some things, I prefer to us R for most data and financial analysis. But my IT department gets jumpy about R: We don't understand it! We can't support it! We don't understand its dependencies! If it stops working one day, we won't be able to help! Where will we find skilled resources if you leave the business?
"Fine," I say. "Give me C# or Python; I'll use those instead." But then I'm told I'm not allowed those tools because they're too dangerous and restricted to IT staff to maintain proper control. This hasn't just happened in one company - it's the normal response in my experience.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What this author is trying to say is computer programming can be a trade of a learned skill set, much like a brick layer is a learned skill set; albeit a crude example. If companies are bemoaning about the lack of computer programmers and the skill sets in the market, then they need to realize that mandating a college degree is not needed.
When I read the comments, in here, and the general attitude in the outside world, it always comes down to some form of this:
"We know exactly what a student will need for their career, nothing more need be taught."
Or some other such truism, focused on the job as it presently exists. One thing for certain, is that if you train a student in the fully practical, the student will know how ot do exactly one thing, and will become redundant rather quickly.
A programmer knowing what a netmask is? Hell yes.
I have found through personal experience and general logic, that a person who knows more about what they are doing knows more about what they are doing. A programmer that can answer questions that do not relate 100 percent to his narrow job description is more valuable than one who cannot. KNowing bout more things can lead to nifty stuff like promotions, raises and the like.
My extraneous and supposedly non-relevant knowledge has over the years served me quite well, as relevant solutions are often found outside the normal solution set. In addition, I can never tell where a solution might pop up from.
disclaimer: I read Wikipedia for fun.
But if you want to teach someone off the street the programming language du jour, and set him or her in a cubicle raking in that minimum wage, then yeah, you can teach that in short order. That isn't worth much more than minimum wage, as you are producing an almost valueless throwaway employee.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Jeez I learned that stuff in my networks classes, but I don't remember the stuff about netmasks, does not mean am I a bad programmer? It does mean at least that if I am faced with a problem that requires that knowledge I would be able to study it to complete the task.
Good point - you are exactly the kind of person that I am thinking about. Rather than merely restricting my comment to "technical training" I really meant "institutional backing" in a broad sense which would include training, support, and generally advocating for programming technologies other than Excel.
I can't really blame IT for their stance, though, because if anything did ever go wrong it would be their problem and they would catch the blame. So the push has to come from management, who recognize that telling analysts that they can't use, say, R, is just making them do whatever they are trying to do in an operationally risky, non-auditable excel spreadsheet.
"Like nursing or welding, it's something in which a person can develop at least a basic proficiency within weeks or months."
I do not want to be treated in a hospital where the nurses have just a basic proficiency which they achieved within weeks or months.
There is a gulf difference between what I consider Computer Science and Computer Programming.
Actually, a good CS degree is built upon a knowledge of computer programming. And the latter should be a prerequisite for the former.
It's like asking an architect to prepare a design for a building who cannot read blueprints. I don't expect the CS to have the same experience or productivity as the bricklayer. But I do expect them to understand the process and advantages or limitations of the materials selected.
Have gnu, will travel.
I am a recently retired software developer who specialized in scientific, engineering, and image processing applications. I must have been considered pretty good because I kept getting significant raises and I retired with a net worth of over a million dollars. I do not know what a netmask is.
Computer Science can be entirely theoretical. When I was working at my university as a system administrator we were replacing the 10base2 cabling with 10baseT. A CS professor took me out to lunch. He published many papers on networks in peer reviewed journals. I was explaining the advantages of 10baseT over 10base2 and was shocked when he asked me how ethernet coordinated different hosts transmissions. I explained how ethernet used collision detection and waited an increasing and partially random length of time before retransmission to avoid subsequent collisions (remember, this was when half-duplex routed rather than switched networks were the norm). Learning this he started explaining a mathematical model of how throughput would be impacted as congestion increased. I found it interesting that he knew all about networks at a theoretical level but didn't know how the network he used every day worked. Another CS professor claimed to have multiple chemical sensitivities and maintained that anything electronic gives off fumes that make him ill. I think he was a full-blown hypochondriac but he still taught computer science even though he hadn't been near a terminal or computer in years. Personally I like a mix of theoretical and practical.
This makes as much sense as complaining that your car mechanic knows nothing about plumbing.
Bullshit. There's absolutely no excuse for someone with a CS degree not being able to figure out, on the spot, how to calculate the range of IPs for a given network, none whatsoever.
I wish people would stop making analogies.
Why? Do you expect us all to drive around in last year's analogy?
Have gnu, will travel.
I'm sure IT would be happy to allow and support R if management would commit to providing training, staff time for support and budget to handle the related costs. That won't happen though so basically you're trying to make your job easier at the cost of making their job harder.
Most people do not have photographic memories. I've learned and forgotten netmasks countless times. If I don't do something for a few months, I can't remember it off the top of my head. Expecting "CS" people to remember endless trivia is stupid and counterproductive. You'll only hire the people who remember trivia, not the people who can create new things from scratch.
I'm sure IT would be happy to allow and support R if management would commit to providing training, staff time for support and budget to handle the related costs. That won't happen though so basically you're trying to make your job easier at the cost of making their job harder.
I'm not sure how you're so sure that you know what happens in companies with which you have no connection. When I suggested to a senior member of our IT team that resources could be made available to support R, he told me (this is a direct quote), "I and my team have no interest in learning or supporting R."
I'm a director of the business; my offer of resources was serious and within my power to grant. They don't want to engage, so we will support our analytics environment outwith the IT department.
A skilled bricklayer is worth more than you can afford if you make the mistake of hiring an unskilled person to put a brick façade on your house. People undervalue skilled tradespersons by thinking they are uneducated dolts.
I know what a netmask is, and I'm still far away from reaching that million. :-)
Retired sysadmin, in transition to developer.
They are closer than ever. Sure you can be the type of sysadmin that goes in and just reboots the server when things don't work, but there are plenty of sysadmin jobs where you're basically a programmer. I recently left such a job where I was definitely more of a programmer, I just programmed in Puppet instead of something like Java.
If you by "figure out" means "google it" then sure, we definitely need more software engineers that tackle each problem they get with "let's ask google and cut and paste the first solution that compiles."
We should try to make complex things easy with better tools. We should not discourage people from attempting to program by making it more complex than it needs to be. The part about "forcing professionals to use only tools designed for amateurs" is a non sequitur. Nobody is "forcing" professionals to use amateur tools.
I think Stroustrup's main problem is he doesn't know how to make the complex simple but rather than simply admit this he lashes out at the entire concept.
"Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it's worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains." -Steve Jobs
I found GUI programming with Angular & Javascript substantially more opaque, odd and unpredictable, than anything else I've worked on.
In reality, success in college and further degrees are 'g' (what psychologists call 'IQ' in the academic literature) filters. Software systems are complex and difficult and only some have the mental capacity to succeed well in them.
The study topics in computer science and other technical degrees at a significant school is generally difficult all-around in many cognitive areas similar to the tasks necessary in industry. Graduate school and academic scientific research is more intellectually difficult than industry programming.
| We have hired, and let go, 3 "computer science" majors who didn't know how to calculate a range of IPs given a single IP and a netmask. Two of them didn't even know what the netmask DID!
Were they still incompetent after googling "What is IP netmask", and most importantly, be able to read and understand the results?
And believe it or now the computer industry has cylic slowdowns, like after dot.bust and just before the Web.
If you by "figure out" means "google it" then sure, we definitely need more software engineers that tackle each problem they get with "let's ask google and cut and paste the first solution that compiles."
What I meant was that even if he had to be reminded of what w.x.y.z/m means, that from there he could figure it out on his own. After all, if you never work with networking, you could possibly forget which bits the /m applies to...
If resources were offered and refused then either they didn't believe you or you have the wrong IT staff.
Meh. When I was an undergrad, you really needed to understand netmasks if you wanted to set up a network for multiplayer games. Now, it's much easier (although Windows makes it stupidly hard to create an ad-hoc WiFi network. No idea how people think it's ready for the desktop), and you can do a lot without caring. I can't remember the last time I needed to know about them.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Problem 1. computer programming has nothing to do with networking.
Well, Computer Programming has little to do with networking - that is until you start writing network oriented applications, but networking has everything to do with Computer Programming.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
Today, computer science education is a lot more practical
One can easily learn to hire a H1B Head. "Do you like apples?"
From what I vaguely remember netmasks are stuff to make sub-networks
a netmask of 255.255.255.0 will create a sub-network with ips ranging from X.Y.Z.0 to X.Y.Z.255 (it is a binary AND of the main network ip address and the netmask). This is what I remember from head, I did not look it up on wikipedia.
But then again I graduated only 3 years ago. I will probably completely forget this in 5 years.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Modern VBA is modern Visual Basic, which is C# without the curly braces, right? With either language you have full access to the .NET runtime and libraries, including LINQ. Excel has an OLEDB connector to let you use a spreadsheet as a (slow, single-user) DB. You can put all these pieces together to do "real programming" under the covers of Excel (at least for single-user use cases).
In fact, the open source Linq to Excel project does it all for you, or at least it's recommended by Stack Overflow. Might be worth a look.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
There are architects that draw pretty pictures of un-buildable things. They suck.
But some are actually trained and skillful. Didn't come from a pure art background.
The old joke is: 'A building designed by and Architect might fall down, but a building designed by an Engineer should be torn down.'
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
They told you it was a step up and you believed them?
I sysadmined until I proved my chops as a programmer. At that point I was too valuable to keep around as an IT janitor.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
We had an excel VBA that ran our production lines. Talked to Oracle, talked to the hardware test at the end of the line. VBA was responsible for millions of dollars of product going out the door on time.
Because that's what tools the people that designed it had available. It was either that or Matlab but everyone already had Excel and it was 'free' to use.
Now I would love to see something redone in Python.
I'm a Mechanical Engineer and could tell you nothing about how to fix your car. I could tell you how your car worked, theoretically. I couldn't tell you what was wrong with it.
I work with PhD'd engineers that can barely tie their own shoe, but could tell you more about fluid boundary layer conditions than any other human I know.
If you wanted people that knew how to calculate IP ranges maybe you should have hired someone that took some sort of vocational IT training not someone with an advanced degree.
A decent car mechanic might not know the building code by heart but he's probably unblocked a drain or two in his time simply because he's the sort of person that enjoys using tools to do stuff.
You'd be wrong. Car Mechanics have become specialized enough that some of them only work on certain brands of cars. I wouldn't hire a plumber that did residential installs to plumb a hospital. The codes and requirements are completely different.
I'm a mechanical engineer. I could tell you ideas behind how your car works but I wouldn't go near trying to repair it.
What does a CS major specializing in compiler theory need to know about net masks?
Bricklayer is a bad analogy. If they wanted to give an example of a skilled trade, a stonemason would make more sense. A bricklayer is the guy you hire to build a patio, BBQ, fireplace, or facade of a house which does require skill, but it lacks the depth required. A stonemason can have skills in a broad range from building a small monument or mausoleum to an entire cathedral depending on skill. We need people who can turn architectural design plans into reality and do so with accuracy and technical mastery at least within the scope of the tasks they are assigned and are capable of completing. We need them to be able to see when there is problem and be capable of adapting. If the wall as designed will not stand, you wouldn't build it, you take the needed steps to ensure it will stand now and also stand the test of time. A stonemason better suggests the need to execute with integrity in every detail. Masonry also much like programing can be learned through study and apprenticeship despite the depth of skill required to be a master of the craft.
It's the Engineer who's responsible for making sure the design of the building will be structurally sound and meet applicable building codes (eg: held liable if it were to collapse and kill people).
Someone with mod points doesn't understand Boole's algebra.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
We traded a significant fraction of the power in North America, Western Europe and Australia on an Access database that shelled to a FORTRAN simulation engine for forecasts...
Top that horror story.
To web enable it. I showed them how to call 'new Access.application("shitstorm.mdb")' from ASP. I will go to hell for that.
I guess I just topped my own horror story.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
What year is this?
Why would you hire a bricklayer to glue fake bricks to the front of your house?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Modern VBA is still derived from VB6, not VB.Net
Then I stand over the code and whip up assembly like the protocol say. No seriously though, I wonder if you need education to write for the Wall Street Journal.
Since when is CS and coder the same thing?
Thank you, exactly this.
I don't know what the OP actually did, but presumably this was not an interview question (since OP said they hired them), and part of actual assigned work. I would expect any even mildly-decent developer to be able to learn about IPs, netmasks and figure out how to do calculations with them in a couple of hours, even with no prior knowledge (I say this knowing much about it myself). One of the most important skills of a developer is to be able to learn. This is not just learning new languages, libraries, techniques and patterns, but also the new (to you) business domains, user needs, and "why" behind requirements/features/stories.
On the other hand, expecting any random dev to know this off the top of their head would be asinine. If they were fired for this, then the OP did them a favour because it's probably an awful place to work. And if all three were hired with the explicit expectation of being an expert in networking but don't know what a netmask is, well holy crap, the OP needed to learn how to better screen candidates at least two hires ago.
Speak before you think
Competent CS is a superset of coder. Being CS and not knowing how to code is like being a lawyer and not knowing how to lie.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
That product owner also gets a steaming pile of code. So it doesn't exactly work out for him/her.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The product owner doesn't know good code from bad. They just know what it looks like, and while bad code can work, it costs a lot in the long run.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
By calling it Computer Science we tend to think that it's all about programming the computer while it's actually not. Programming is of course part of it but it certainly isn't what it's all about. I'm a big fan of the alternative names like Computing Science or Datalogy. You should visit an automata conference and ask the people there if they consider themselves programmers. Sure some of them will but you'll soon realize that the brightest people in CS are not necessarily into the computer part of it, and hardly ever programs at all.
The point is if he/she truly owned the product they would be FUBAR.
In the real world deck chairs are rearranged often enough that the failing project usually lands in someone else's lap.
If the deck chair rearranging stopped their behavior would change (or they would be made examples of so the behavior of others would change).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I've known a few CS people that don't code/never coded. They are far from the brightest. I'd go so far as to say the dimmest.
They are the best bullshitters though, and that counts for a lot.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
And how many of them publish academic papers in theoretical computing science journals? I never said that being a lousy programmer means you're bright. What I said was that if you look at the people that do the really advanced theoretical computing science you will find that most of them are not the typical programmer type.
Well if they didn't rearrange the deck chairs, how would they ever escape responsibility? Be rational.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.