Don't forget that RTFM only works when a definitive (or at least high-quality) M exists, and it's hard for that to happen when dealing with humans. If we had the M, we would have a much better idea of how to model human thought processing in AI systems. While I'm also a strong RTFM supporter especially because it helps one be thorough in many cases, there are definitely limitations.
Too bad these developers don't know how to write good unit tests... This could have been avoided..
That's unfair. I'm all about unit tests and they do help find bugs, but a unit test isn't going to find a precisely-crafted piece of malicious input.
Yes, it could if you're talking about fuzzers. Having made fuzzers for a few programs, it really is amazing how many bugs they catch, how many crashes they cause, and how often they suggest the ability to control execution based on matching up the data in registers with data in the fuzzed input file.
There should definitely be some fuzz testing done. I never really thought about it in the context of open-source software-- anybody know what practices are for different projects or where they would get compute time?
I am currently finishing up an undergrad in CS at a "major research university", and take classes with the masters students. I have also done "research" at the "graduate" level, and it was an easier A than almost any other 3-credit endeavor, even though I ended up putting more time into it because I did enjoy it a bit.
The claim that professors at research universities don't focus on education is, in my case, completely wrong even if correct in general. I have lunch with my professors, they go out of their way to make sure people understand issues, and they are generally amiable people (although occasionally distracted by research deadlines of course). During employment this past summer I was appreciated for leveraging information I had gathered from various classes--some say that school is just for the degree, but if you try hard enough you can get the practical experience from people who care.
Experience has taught me that high-school dropouts with a passion for programming are generally LIGHT YEARS beyond people who aren't passionate that scraped through a BA in Computer Science.
Yes, but those with passion and a good education are better yet. There is a lot that can be learned in a class that allows for quicker and more thorough education than someone who is completely self-taught. How many people who teach themselves go out of their way to do things like understand the apriori algorithm or look into advanced dynamic programming techniques and distributed locking protocols?
Quite honestly, drop-outs aren't all that special. I'm a high school drop-out, but only so I could start college early. Seriously. People can put effort into their assignments, add functionality, focus on clean code and even write test suites for the more complex ones (and yes, it helps quite a bit because they're typically much more complete than what the underpaid TA uses).
And finally, "doing it the hard way" is typically the uneducated way. There's a reason the slogan for google scholar is "stand on the shoulders of giants"--learning from others' advances is the way to go. Unless, of course, you're convinced you can sort stuff in faster than O(n) time and figure out if an arbitrary program will halt; then you have something, or maybe just never had the educated prompting required to realize they are horribly futile.
But you are definitely right that CS education has a problem. I was absolutely floored when a co-worker couldn't write a recursive algorithm, and just wondered how he ever got past his data structures class!
I definitely hear that a lot from interviewers, but have also heard that a strong interest in advanced classes combined with something above a 3.0 helps a good deal
I am graduating in May and happen to be able to second your opinion that NYC is a great place for tech employment. I had multiple offers around the city--as long as one is willing to consider "applied" CS jobs as well as the pure tech like Microsoft/Google, etc. there are definitely options out there for people who are flexible and entry-level.
This is just more evidence of what is already widely known: people are generally lax about security matters. What we really need is some way of getting the point across that things like reasonable passwords are turning into a necessity of every-day life.
Both the twitter and Palin e-mail "hackers" just guessed passwords or researched PII to get in. This also shows we definitely need some better form of authentication, and that authorization policies inside organizations should be more paranoid. Of course I'm still lost as to alternatives to passwords, so perhaps people will just have to suck it up and put a bit of effort into it.
There are always the trade-offs between effort and the value of what one is protecting. If the public finds these data breaches unacceptable, why not make the consequences more serious so that from a business standpoint it is more worthwhile to spend on security? This may lead to corporations developing an atmosphere of security awareness, which will keep people actively thinking about important steps to take in typical day-to-day activities.
I think "computer literacy" is more in order. In fact, just the other day I helped yet another person who didn't understand that documents written with a specific program didn't live exclusively inside that program. Understanding fundamentals like this are necessary to interact in a competent manner with computers, which are becoming a necessary tool for more and more fields.
Without these basics, "Computer Science" is somewhat hopeless; I would rather have these basics be required. One thing that needs to be improved is the ability for people inclined towards computer science ideas to be exposed to advanced concepts . . . but it should not be compulsory. I am a CS major, but had my first programming class my 2nd semester and thought I was really computer-savvy specifically because I knew that files were independent of the program that created them. However, I was interested in programming for a while before that and just never had the opportunity to explore it.
I'd assume what he's asking is: in modern systems where the amount of physical RAM is considerably larger than what most people's programs in total use
The last time I checked the total amount of virtual memory used on my system, it was FAR greater than my actual available RAM . . . but if you want to use up your physical RAM, just fire up eclipse -- it is getting super-fat *grumble*
As long as American Idol is still playing, and Walmart is still selling clothes for cheap, the vast majority of the American people seem unwilling to risk their own comfortable lives over things like the contitution, their rights or more particularly, the rights of others.
Funny, all the arguments I get that support the war in Iraq focus on freeing the Iraqis from evil and terror. I think the main issue is they don't protect their own rights, but before that is addressed people have to know their rights and elect people that know what rights need protection.
Re:You could at least explain what you mean
on
Tech Vs. Business?
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· Score: 1
I worked for a financial firm this summer, and after throwing myself head-first into the fray I feel I was actually relied upon and had people who recognized what I did even for a summer position. I've heard a few stories from techs who work right with the traders, but it seemed like where I was did a good job of matching up the mathematical modelers with sufficient tech with the traders, and appropriately leveraged backbone IT when necessary . . .
Perhaps I'm just lucky, but it was actually a great experience in tech/finance. People also get bonuses in IT (in better economic states than the current), but since there is no way to personally attribute a +$1 million trade to someone, it's generally more spread out.
I also found that finance's complete dependence on tech in many areas makes the tech guys indispensable, and people know it.
Even networking would be more about routing algorithms and packet handling etc.
I actually just took a great networking class that was reasonably thorough both conceptually and hands-on.
You can teach someone who's strong with fundamentals a programming language quite easily
I personally feel that belief in this statement is what caused more than half the class to drop out - the professor gave extensions on projects and everything but people just couldn't code the reasonably large hands-on assignments.
Furthermore, one that is well-versed in various programming tools and paradigms will be much more apt at using a programming language effectively, and that is what will help with
good design skills and designing appropriate algorithms and the like
As for the physicists . . .
Anyone can be a programmer - hell, even physicists program.
I will vouch that they can program, but ask them about the pros and cons of lazy evaluation, referential transparency, or even sometimes the difference between pass-by-value/pass-by-reference semantics and they will be utterly lost (with an exception being of my applied physics friend who will be my partner in a software engineering class).
A little programming is fine, but I'd be loath to respect any CS degree that focussed on programming.
I resent this statement (probably more than others as I enjoy exploring new programming methodologies), because both the theory and practice of computer languages is required in order to effectively program a computer at increasingly high levels of abstraction.
I am a CS major that has the best of both worlds through a joint program between my liberal arts school and the tech school. I definitely think that the liberal arts school developed a more diverse skill set, but it did hold me back insomuch as that I was unable to:
1. Take as many CS courses as I could
2. Take CS courses from lead researchers in the field of study
Perhaps either of those are non-issues if you attend a larger liberal arts school than I did, but keep it in mind.
I cannot necessarily say that this is attributed to the new school, but I have gotten FAR more responses from potential employers by having a well-known engineering school on my resume -- I have to say that since I came hear last year my responses have at least doubled.
Finally, I would say that as long as you are motivated and go out and teach yourself as much as possible you will be the best candidate for a job hands-down (that's what I've been told in a few interviews). This, however, requires actually meeting people in person and networking. In my opinion, this is THE MOST important part of getting a job. I asked one person if they would have interviewed me just from my resume and they said "probably not" (I guess all my work at career services and obsessively re-writing my resume didn't help as much as I had hoped) -- they did make me a job offer after meeting me in person.
And honestly, the vast majority of engineering majors seem to have greatly exaggerated notions of their own brilliance; engineering profs do give out As, if you're not making them maybe you're not quite as smart as you think you are I have been through various viewpoints through my time up to now in engineering school for CS, and I must say I associate with a lot of the things and one of them would be a more fair balance of grades in other majors as well. As an engineering student I found it easy to get very strong As in classes others found hard in liberal arts that involved long research papers, etc.
In the end, it seems to end up that every year all the theater majors graduate summa cum laude while almost none of the engineering students do.
This suggests that it is not that if one doesn't get an A they are not smart, but rather that there is a disparity in the discretion of handing out high grades between various areas; I would instead say the problem is not that engineering schools don't give enough As, but rather that general expectations are inflated by too many As outside engineering disciplines. My GPA would definitely be lower if I didn't have the seminars, foreign language and photography padding it a bit (yes, engineers can be artsy and put in some obsessive time in the darkroom as well).
I am getting out of school soon and have received multiple offers-- what really attracts me is getting to talk to about 5 people that actually work at the company. If I see that the people I talk to aren't confrontational but cooperative as well as 7337 as well, then it's a great indication that I will go for that company regardless of (within reason) how much money is offered elsewhere.
The biggest turn-off is not being treated like a social peer because of age, and that is a HUGE barrier to making myself home in a team. I recognize that I lack the experience of everybody else around, but without genial inspiration to keep writing awesome code I feel a bit lost.
Finally, recognize that if people have some problems with group work in school it doesn't necessarily mean they will on the job -- use the personality and interactions with other employees for that. I had one interviewer tell me they almost wrote me off because I didn't like some groups I have worked in until he finally asked me for an explanation.
One alternative that has popped up is DatingDNA that aims to be a free service that allows for easy integration with various social apps: http://www.datingdna.com/, but it still has to reach critical mass before being useful and it doesn't yet allow for matching by proximity all that well.
One can also look for places with a "free trial", and only activate it once it says somebody's interested.
I have to agree with this. I worked in IT for a few years as just a helpdesk person and because people trusted me they gave me passwords for tons of things -- even if I didn't use them, I think there was a horrible breach of security in giving me the information and that it may be tempting for some to abuse it for exactly the three bullets above. I actually had a discussion about this with another helpdesk employee, and the "anonymity" argument came out of him pretty frequently as being a tempting reason to poke around. While it wasn't horribly malicious, it's still enough to cause some trouble.
So I would add that in some cases a lack of tight physical security makes it possible for these influences to come into play more than otherwise because the opportunities arise more easily.
Low level systems programming along with database work has been what I have grown the most with as a fellow student. I have a few internship offers, and many stem from well-roundedness in terms of programming paradigms and concepts. If you can get a good handle on functional programming, make a small web-database application, learn a scripting language like Perl (or dabble in its OO features), and tinker with the linux kernel then I think doors will open up.
From a strictly job-search prospective, I must also sadly say that ASP/.NET experience seems to be in reasonably high demand, but job and internship postings typically also include *nix experience and C programming.
I'm just waiting for somebody who didn't learn the foundations and theory to claim they have a solution to the halting problem . . . now how many people would buy their product? Probably way too many.
That's interesting-- the other fellow computer science person around me aside from lazy graduate students is a physics major. I am currently in an engineering program . . . for computer science. I agree that a strong mathematical background should be given in Computer Science, and appreciate the requirements forcing me to understand the computational issues of linear algebra and its friends like theory, etc.
To be honest, I wish I were better at physics as well as good at computer science because it seems there is a lack of liaisons between computation and physics (my physics professors couldn't program worth a dime in anything but fortran and didn't understand the fundamentals of programming).
SIFT is ok even for occluded objects, but is horrid in 3-d because SIFT features cannot match up for a significantly rotated scene. There are better algorithms that can recover both the shape of the scene as in the article and even produce the location of the camera as a by-product.
In terms of object recognition, there has been great work done by treating an "nxn" pixel image as a point in n^2 space, and then reducing the computation space and projecting a given image onto that new, lower-dimensional approximation of the original object, and finding a match via a nearest-neighbor search through recognized objects.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't forget that RTFM only works when a definitive (or at least high-quality) M exists, and it's hard for that to happen when dealing with humans. If we had the M, we would have a much better idea of how to model human thought processing in AI systems. While I'm also a strong RTFM supporter especially because it helps one be thorough in many cases, there are definitely limitations.
Too bad these developers don't know how to write good unit tests... This could have been avoided..
That's unfair. I'm all about unit tests and they do help find bugs, but a unit test isn't going to find a precisely-crafted piece of malicious input.
Yes, it could if you're talking about fuzzers. Having made fuzzers for a few programs, it really is amazing how many bugs they catch, how many crashes they cause, and how often they suggest the ability to control execution based on matching up the data in registers with data in the fuzzed input file. There should definitely be some fuzz testing done. I never really thought about it in the context of open-source software-- anybody know what practices are for different projects or where they would get compute time?
I am currently finishing up an undergrad in CS at a "major research university", and take classes with the masters students. I have also done "research" at the "graduate" level, and it was an easier A than almost any other 3-credit endeavor, even though I ended up putting more time into it because I did enjoy it a bit.
The claim that professors at research universities don't focus on education is, in my case, completely wrong even if correct in general. I have lunch with my professors, they go out of their way to make sure people understand issues, and they are generally amiable people (although occasionally distracted by research deadlines of course). During employment this past summer I was appreciated for leveraging information I had gathered from various classes--some say that school is just for the degree, but if you try hard enough you can get the practical experience from people who care.
Experience has taught me that high-school dropouts with a passion for programming are generally LIGHT YEARS beyond people who aren't passionate that scraped through a BA in Computer Science.
Yes, but those with passion and a good education are better yet. There is a lot that can be learned in a class that allows for quicker and more thorough education than someone who is completely self-taught. How many people who teach themselves go out of their way to do things like understand the apriori algorithm or look into advanced dynamic programming techniques and distributed locking protocols?
Quite honestly, drop-outs aren't all that special. I'm a high school drop-out, but only so I could start college early. Seriously. People can put effort into their assignments, add functionality, focus on clean code and even write test suites for the more complex ones (and yes, it helps quite a bit because they're typically much more complete than what the underpaid TA uses).
And finally, "doing it the hard way" is typically the uneducated way. There's a reason the slogan for google scholar is "stand on the shoulders of giants"--learning from others' advances is the way to go. Unless, of course, you're convinced you can sort stuff in faster than O(n) time and figure out if an arbitrary program will halt; then you have something, or maybe just never had the educated prompting required to realize they are horribly futile.
But you are definitely right that CS education has a problem. I was absolutely floored when a co-worker couldn't write a recursive algorithm, and just wondered how he ever got past his data structures class!
I definitely hear that a lot from interviewers, but have also heard that a strong interest in advanced classes combined with something above a 3.0 helps a good deal
I am graduating in May and happen to be able to second your opinion that NYC is a great place for tech employment. I had multiple offers around the city--as long as one is willing to consider "applied" CS jobs as well as the pure tech like Microsoft/Google, etc. there are definitely options out there for people who are flexible and entry-level.
This is just more evidence of what is already widely known: people are generally lax about security matters. What we really need is some way of getting the point across that things like reasonable passwords are turning into a necessity of every-day life.
Both the twitter and Palin e-mail "hackers" just guessed passwords or researched PII to get in. This also shows we definitely need some better form of authentication, and that authorization policies inside organizations should be more paranoid. Of course I'm still lost as to alternatives to passwords, so perhaps people will just have to suck it up and put a bit of effort into it.
There are always the trade-offs between effort and the value of what one is protecting. If the public finds these data breaches unacceptable, why not make the consequences more serious so that from a business standpoint it is more worthwhile to spend on security? This may lead to corporations developing an atmosphere of security awareness, which will keep people actively thinking about important steps to take in typical day-to-day activities.
I think "computer literacy" is more in order. In fact, just the other day I helped yet another person who didn't understand that documents written with a specific program didn't live exclusively inside that program. Understanding fundamentals like this are necessary to interact in a competent manner with computers, which are becoming a necessary tool for more and more fields.
Without these basics, "Computer Science" is somewhat hopeless; I would rather have these basics be required. One thing that needs to be improved is the ability for people inclined towards computer science ideas to be exposed to advanced concepts . . . but it should not be compulsory. I am a CS major, but had my first programming class my 2nd semester and thought I was really computer-savvy specifically because I knew that files were independent of the program that created them. However, I was interested in programming for a while before that and just never had the opportunity to explore it.
I'd assume what he's asking is: in modern systems where the amount of physical RAM is considerably larger than what most people's programs in total use
The last time I checked the total amount of virtual memory used on my system, it was FAR greater than my actual available RAM . . . but if you want to use up your physical RAM, just fire up eclipse -- it is getting super-fat *grumble*
As long as American Idol is still playing, and Walmart is still selling clothes for cheap, the vast majority of the American people seem unwilling to risk their own comfortable lives over things like the contitution, their rights or more particularly, the rights of others.
Funny, all the arguments I get that support the war in Iraq focus on freeing the Iraqis from evil and terror. I think the main issue is they don't protect their own rights, but before that is addressed people have to know their rights and elect people that know what rights need protection.
I worked for a financial firm this summer, and after throwing myself head-first into the fray I feel I was actually relied upon and had people who recognized what I did even for a summer position. I've heard a few stories from techs who work right with the traders, but it seemed like where I was did a good job of matching up the mathematical modelers with sufficient tech with the traders, and appropriately leveraged backbone IT when necessary . . .
Perhaps I'm just lucky, but it was actually a great experience in tech/finance. People also get bonuses in IT (in better economic states than the current), but since there is no way to personally attribute a +$1 million trade to someone, it's generally more spread out.
I also found that finance's complete dependence on tech in many areas makes the tech guys indispensable, and people know it.
Even networking would be more about routing algorithms and packet handling etc.
I actually just took a great networking class that was reasonably thorough both conceptually and hands-on.
You can teach someone who's strong with fundamentals a programming language quite easily
I personally feel that belief in this statement is what caused more than half the class to drop out - the professor gave extensions on projects and everything but people just couldn't code the reasonably large hands-on assignments. Furthermore, one that is well-versed in various programming tools and paradigms will be much more apt at using a programming language effectively, and that is what will help with
good design skills and designing appropriate algorithms and the like
As for the physicists . . .
Anyone can be a programmer - hell, even physicists program.
I will vouch that they can program, but ask them about the pros and cons of lazy evaluation, referential transparency, or even sometimes the difference between pass-by-value/pass-by-reference semantics and they will be utterly lost (with an exception being of my applied physics friend who will be my partner in a software engineering class).
A little programming is fine, but I'd be loath to respect any CS degree that focussed on programming.
I resent this statement (probably more than others as I enjoy exploring new programming methodologies), because both the theory and practice of computer languages is required in order to effectively program a computer at increasingly high levels of abstraction.
Didn't anybody watch the last episode of Big Bang Theory? Times are changing - the geeks are on their way up (just give it time)!
I am a CS major that has the best of both worlds through a joint program between my liberal arts school and the tech school. I definitely think that the liberal arts school developed a more diverse skill set, but it did hold me back insomuch as that I was unable to:
1. Take as many CS courses as I could
2. Take CS courses from lead researchers in the field of study
Perhaps either of those are non-issues if you attend a larger liberal arts school than I did, but keep it in mind.
I cannot necessarily say that this is attributed to the new school, but I have gotten FAR more responses from potential employers by having a well-known engineering school on my resume -- I have to say that since I came hear last year my responses have at least doubled.
Finally, I would say that as long as you are motivated and go out and teach yourself as much as possible you will be the best candidate for a job hands-down (that's what I've been told in a few interviews). This, however, requires actually meeting people in person and networking. In my opinion, this is THE MOST important part of getting a job. I asked one person if they would have interviewed me just from my resume and they said "probably not" (I guess all my work at career services and obsessively re-writing my resume didn't help as much as I had hoped) -- they did make me a job offer after meeting me in person.
In the end, it seems to end up that every year all the theater majors graduate summa cum laude while almost none of the engineering students do.
This suggests that it is not that if one doesn't get an A they are not smart, but rather that there is a disparity in the discretion of handing out high grades between various areas; I would instead say the problem is not that engineering schools don't give enough As, but rather that general expectations are inflated by too many As outside engineering disciplines. My GPA would definitely be lower if I didn't have the seminars, foreign language and photography padding it a bit (yes, engineers can be artsy and put in some obsessive time in the darkroom as well).
I am getting out of school soon and have received multiple offers-- what really attracts me is getting to talk to about 5 people that actually work at the company. If I see that the people I talk to aren't confrontational but cooperative as well as 7337 as well, then it's a great indication that I will go for that company regardless of (within reason) how much money is offered elsewhere.
The biggest turn-off is not being treated like a social peer because of age, and that is a HUGE barrier to making myself home in a team. I recognize that I lack the experience of everybody else around, but without genial inspiration to keep writing awesome code I feel a bit lost.
Finally, recognize that if people have some problems with group work in school it doesn't necessarily mean they will on the job -- use the personality and interactions with other employees for that. I had one interviewer tell me they almost wrote me off because I didn't like some groups I have worked in until he finally asked me for an explanation.
One alternative that has popped up is DatingDNA that aims to be a free service that allows for easy integration with various social apps: http://www.datingdna.com/, but it still has to reach critical mass before being useful and it doesn't yet allow for matching by proximity all that well.
One can also look for places with a "free trial", and only activate it once it says somebody's interested.
I have to agree with this. I worked in IT for a few years as just a helpdesk person and because people trusted me they gave me passwords for tons of things -- even if I didn't use them, I think there was a horrible breach of security in giving me the information and that it may be tempting for some to abuse it for exactly the three bullets above. I actually had a discussion about this with another helpdesk employee, and the "anonymity" argument came out of him pretty frequently as being a tempting reason to poke around. While it wasn't horribly malicious, it's still enough to cause some trouble. So I would add that in some cases a lack of tight physical security makes it possible for these influences to come into play more than otherwise because the opportunities arise more easily.
Low level systems programming along with database work has been what I have grown the most with as a fellow student. I have a few internship offers, and many stem from well-roundedness in terms of programming paradigms and concepts. If you can get a good handle on functional programming, make a small web-database application, learn a scripting language like Perl (or dabble in its OO features), and tinker with the linux kernel then I think doors will open up.
From a strictly job-search prospective, I must also sadly say that ASP/.NET experience seems to be in reasonably high demand, but job and internship postings typically also include *nix experience and C programming.
I'm just waiting for somebody who didn't learn the foundations and theory to claim they have a solution to the halting problem . . . now how many people would buy their product? Probably way too many.
SIFT is ok even for occluded objects, but is horrid in 3-d because SIFT features cannot match up for a significantly rotated scene. There are better algorithms that can recover both the shape of the scene as in the article and even produce the location of the camera as a by-product.
In terms of object recognition, there has been great work done by treating an "nxn" pixel image as a point in n^2 space, and then reducing the computation space and projecting a given image onto that new, lower-dimensional approximation of the original object, and finding a match via a nearest-neighbor search through recognized objects.
There is also good work being done in terms of getting a detailed 3-d model using structured light methods: http://www.prip.tuwien.ac.at/research/research-areas/3d-vision/structured-light
There is good literature out there, but sometimes the math gets over my head =P