To be safe, you have to either follow the Java Language Specification exactly (no subsets or supersets),
Not quite. Supersets are allowed, but only if they do not add anything in the java namespace.
In that case, it is not a superset (as per defined by the Java license), but a 3rd party library which is fine and allowed by the Java license. I know what you are trying to mean and I agree with you, but you are using the wrong term.
>>>we have what amounts to a protest over the cost of the original book...
Bullshit. It's theft of another person's labor. Equivalent to if you spend a year of your life as an engineer, but you only get half the pay. The other half gets distributed among thieves claiming credit for your work, even though they didn't do a damn thing. They are parasites... nothing more.
No, the parasites are the ones who change the edition of the book every 6-12 months, making the used book market nonexistant and allowing for inflation like this (usually in the realm of kickbacks to teachers/schools to "encourage" them to cycle out the editions on command).
Does this apply to the author being plagiarized and who is the one mentioned in TFA? I agree with you, but that argument is non-sequitur regarding the plagiarizing of Steward's work.
You and I define fair price a lot differently I think.
That you define something different from others doesn' t mean anything, not unless you can demonstrate clearly that your new definition prevails logically or as de-facto. Otherwise, it's just another opinion, and opinions are not fact.
I like writing software. In fact, I revel in it. However, one thing has always kept me back from being able to write the best software I possibly can: testing.
It is part of your job... testing that is. Just do it. Not every part of your job is supposed to be tantalizing or pleasant. If it were, it wouldn't be a job. It's just part of what a job is. And doing those things that are necessary (even if they suck) is part of being professional. Testing does suck balls sometimes, but hey, if something sucks, do it more until it stops sucking (either because you became proficient or numb.)
I consider testing to be the absolute bane of my existence.
Your outlook on things certainly won't help in making things better, will it?
It is so boring and un-stimulating that I usually skip it entirely, pass the testing off to someone else, or even worse, if I absolutely have to test, I do a very poor job at it.
In that case, please do the world a favor and stop writing code. People who do this kind of shit is the type of people who say "done" even though all they have done is to check if their code compile and works with the happy cases. People like that are the bane of proper software engineering. By not doing this crucial part of your job, you are being unprofessional and unethical, and you should return a fraction of every paycheck proportional to the time you should have invested in testing.
Before looking for making things interesting, you should try having some work ethics.
Google came to be because there was an opportunity in the market, and a very large one at that.
Oh really?
Do you remember the internet around that time?
Just because there were a bunch of search engines at the time, that doesn't mean that there wasn't a large opportunity on the search space that none one else did to the extend they did: For one, most of the contenders at the time were embedding their search engines in portals. Google did not. Secondly, and most importantly, the great opportunity that no one exploited until Google's time was the ranking of pages for the purpose of searching as opposed to textual indexing (be it with inverted or forward indexes.) The PageRank (tm) algorithm exploited a market opportunity that was there for the taking.
A market opportunity is not something that occurs because there aren't any competitors. It is *that* which is not done or not done well by your competitors, even if they exist by the millions.
'If anyone at Yahoo considered the idea that they should be a technology company, the next thought would have been that Microsoft would crush them.' This in part led to hiring bad programmers
Did anyone else read this as, they hired lousy programmers so they could compete with Microsoft?
No. Only you did. In other words, your reading comprehension skills are a sad indictment of our education system.
For fanboyist, logically empty, rhetorical reasons;) The fact that such a comment was rated "insightful" gives you a sad glimpse of the logical depth exhibited by many/. posters.
Laugh all you want, but Solaris is as far beyond Linux in stability as Linux is beyond Windows.
And there's no file system on earth faster than Sun/Oracle's QFS/SAMFS. Nothing open-source is even on the same planet. The only competition for it is IBM's GPFS.
That's all true and dandy, but newsflash to you: it's irrelevant. Oracle bought Sun primarily for Java and next for the hardware. The OS has already been comoditized (sp).
The US did not fund the Taliban to fight the Russians. The Taliban was not even around during that conflict.
You're right that the Taliban formed after the Russians gave up on Afghanistan.
However, the US was arming the people who became the Taliban, the mujaheddin. They just weren't called the Taliban yet. WHen the vacuum came the guys we armed stepped up (with the arms the US gave them) and took over as the Taliban.
So yes, the Taliban was armed by the US and we did it (at the time) as a counter to Russia.
Wrong. Only a fraction of the mujaheddin became the Taliban, with the bulk of their troops being children by the time of the Soviet pullout (and many of them actually having been born in Pakistan as refugees.)
Many Mujaheddin were based on Herat, others were up north under Dostum's command, others grouped into ethnic armies (like the Hazaras) or like the predominately Tajik Northern Alliance under Massoud' leadership.
Only a portion of the Pashtun mujaheddin (in combination with Pashtun born in Pakistan as refugees) becoming the Taliban. There, some historical clarifications for ya.
Maybe because a lot of those you quote-and-quote call innocent people actually prefer not to have the Taliban back in power? For fucks' sake, if an Afghan chooses to aid the Americans fight in in his own country against a group like the Taliban, who the hell are you to question that?
One man's freedom fighter is another man's collaborator...
In cases like these, you then use your intelligence and judge whether the Taliban are of sufficient moral character so as to give credence to their branding of someone as collaborator.
How can you say that for sure, when that "innocent" person you speak of most likely aided the criminal US occupation?
Maybe because a lot of those you quote-and-quote call innocent people actually prefer not to have the Taliban back in power? For fucks' sake, if an Afghan chooses to aid the Americans fight in in his own country against a group like the Taliban, who the hell are you to question that?
Really, did the crash hit you that hard or are you bored? I don't know if you understand the employment situation for programmers these days.
Depends on the programmer. Seriously. Not to make up shit, but I'm getting an average of 2 calls every week from headhunters I know for well-paid positions, calling me if I'm interested or if I know people that might fit the bill. I'm happily employed, and the only people I'd trust enough to recommend are employed. People I know that I wouldn't even trust to code a "hello world", those are the ones that are continuously having a hard time getting a job. Maybe for other people, who are truly qualified, they have a harder reality, but from where I'm sitting, if you have the chops, you get the job.
And I'm not even in a place that is known for its plethora of IT/software jobs. And yet, 1) I know people who are continuously getting the gigs, and 2) I know that a lot of positions are being unfilled.
And it's not as if companies aren't willing to pay. It's just that there isn't enough qualified software engineers. There is a shitload of cookie cutter programmers out there, you know, the type who never gets the basics, like why he needs to close a database connection or avoid Java string concatenation. For them, obviously, there aren't enough jobs. But there are jobs out there, companies are willing to pay good for filling them... and they have a hard time filling them in with qualified people.
That there is a problem with the economy is one thing. That there aren't enough jobs for the cookie-cutter programming masses, that's another. You have the skills and you have been intelligent enough to cultivate your professional network, you get the job. Period.
You're going to be old in an industry noted for it's ageism
Cliche. I work with developers who have been working with software for 25 years if not more, people well into their late 50's. I'm not making that up.
behind the curve technologically,
This you might have a point, and the person in question might have to start in an entry level position, but that's his call. But consider this.
Most people that are working with software NOW are already behind the curve. You see people out there that have been doing, say, Java for 10 years and still don't understand why fine-granularity web services are a bad idea. Since the dot-com (and thanks to it) our software industry is inundated with people who can't program for shit, and who expect to get paid $70K out of school just because they know how to code a JSP/ASP page.
I'd rather have a veteran programmer starting up with Java and C# in a junior position over the junior developers we have know. And I know for a fact of employers who think that way as well.
and depending on where you do find a job, you're likely to be paid terribly for long hours and work under a clueless asshole boss.
Isn't that how it for most us anyways? This is how it was 30 years ago, it is what it is now, and that's how it is going to be? The people who work 9-5 are those who work on an assembly line connecting piece A with piece B non-stop. You want to work with software, with finance, with medicine, with law, expect to work long hours.
As for having an asshole boss, you'll get one now matter where you work or what you do. It's life. It's a 50/50.
I mean, fucking seriously, are we really to believe that it likely to get an asshole boss, with likely meaning the majority of times? Are we really that cliche and gullible? One thing I know is that the more people focus (and believe) that this is the case, the more that it is simply a matter of projection, of projecting their own assholery.
Yes, sometimes we get an asshole boss. But other times it is not. It's called LIFE!!! And when you repeatedly hear someone always complaining about asshole bosses, they are actually saying "I'm an arrogant, pr
Note: if your teacher is using chalk in a room equipped with a large whiteboard, it may be a good time to double check their technological competence.
Does technological competency (which in/. means "computer gadget competency") matter if the subject is statistics, calculus, physics, or even algorithm analysis or theory of automata?
Shit, even in Computer Science/Software Engineering, I wouldn't care if my professor hasn't programmed in, say, the latest JEE stack or what not. For subjects like distributed computing, algorithms, or networks, it really doesn't matter.
Gimme a good old' school professor with chalk dust all over his head any day of the week!
You know, the schools people come to attend from across the globe? Or perhaps you had a different country in mind?
Harvard University Cambridge, MA,
Princeton University Princeton, NJ,
Yale University New Haven, CT,
California Institute of Technology Pasadena, CA
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, MA,
Stanford University Stanford, CA,
University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA,
Columbia University New York, NY,
University of Chicago Chicago, IL,
Duke University Durham,
Dartmouth College Hanover, NH,
Northwestern University Evanston, IL,
Washington University in St. Louis St. Louis, MO,
Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, MD,
Cornell University Ithaca, NY, Brown University Providence, RI, Emory University Atlanta, GA, Rice University Houston, TX,
Vanderbilt University Nashville, TN,
University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, IN,
University of California--Berkeley Berkeley, CA,
Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA,
Georgetown University Washington, DC, University of California--Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA, University of Virginia Charlottesville, VA
You call that a citation? You actually think that list validates the point you previously made?
While it is possible simply to attend a local school in person, I would much prefer an online environment as it seems to be a more natural medium considering the content of my studies. I am interested specifically in Information Security programs.
Uh, it is with that nature of the program that you might want direct interaction with people. That is, unless you already have work experience in software/IT and experience in a real-life, brick-and-mortar school settings. I'm back in grad school, and doing it all online. It is good, but I don't think I could get as much juice of it if I didn't already have a learning experience in a real classroom (both grad and undergrad.) I'm a big proponent of quality online education, but I do acknowledge there are limits to what you can do with it.
I took two undergrad classes online, Intro to Political Science (my major) and Business Writing. All course materials were posted on Blackboard, and I do not recall any classroom time. My grades in those classes were atrocious, partially because the distraction of the Internet while trying to do the coursework was too much as a 20-something year old student. Obviously, YMMV, but I don't think you can beat having an actual live instructor teach you the material (even something as dull as a writing course).
Depends. I took an intro course on AVR-based embedded systems with UC Berkeley, all online just a few months ago. I had to drop the class since I'm also doing a MS in Computer and Electrical Eng, plus work... and a baby. But the material was good, lectures and discussions were all on a blackboard which we just have to follow while working with the required hardware we bought and had at home for the course. A great deal depends on what we put in, but it also counts the subject and the school.
A good professor will make any class venue (including smoke signals) work. A shitty professor will make your life suck, even if in a typical brick-and-mortar setting.
You will experience the same problems with other types of educations. You only study to get the paper, if you want to learn stuffs do it by yourself.
Speak for yourself brother.
It all depends on the value of the paper and the effort you put in. I'm currently doing a MS in Computer and Electrical Engineering with Worcester Polytechnic Institute (a reputable engineering school up in MA), all online, and I'm certainly getting an education. The professors I've had all have years of industrial and DoD experience and the teaching material and lectures do show it. Things we have had to learn included developing testing plans for artillery equipment, cryptography (including an analysis of new commercial ciphers), and case studies with real meat on them. I'm sure I could have picked up the barebones material by self-study, but it does pay to have a good professor that knows his stuff backed with a typical brick-and-mortar university with a strong engineering focus.
I don't know about you, but I'm going to school for the paper on the condition that paper is getting me something. As of right now, it certainly does.
Same when I was doing a MS in Computer Science 10 years ago. I can only think of one class that really didn't have an immediate impact in my work (Semantics of Programming Languages). But every other course (Software Architecture, Networks, Algorithms, Compilers, etc) plus the graduate research I did (performance and security characteristics in distributed systems), in cooperation with a real brick-and-mortar business that was participating in the research (a health care related business to be specific), all that has certainly helped me.
Five of the jobs I've had (including the one I have right now), I got because of the research work I did 10 years ago. I've actually used what I've learned in grad school. I consider myself an intelligent, driven person, but there is no way I could have learned what I learned without having gone to school and be under the teaching of experienced people. If someone can do that all by himself with self-teaching, I tip my hat to him, he's a genius.
I'm not, and neither are most of the people. Many of us need a structured approach to learn something. Better yet if we get someone who knows it well. So you have as the only recourse to work it for the paper. And here is where due diligence pays. If you only go for the paper, then you are simply going to the motions. And it is fine if you know this a priori (say you need a piece of paper to help you get a promotion.)
But if you really think the paper is all there is, that's you. Not the education. You. In education, be it in a classroom or online, you get what you put in... and I'm not taking money. I'm talking intention.
Despite their underlying simple syntax (which it is) C++ is complex as a whole. Same with Java. Any hack can program to their heart (read paychecks) content, but not everyone knows how to actually use these languages well and appropriately.
You got modded flamebait because you dared question the less is more crowd that wants higher level languages that do
most of the lower level work for them.
The ppl that coded closer to the metal as you say mostly have grey hair now, and are looked at as legacy coders
by the new breed that want all that lower level coding done for them by the language.
As for it being complex, sure it is complex for most ppl, but for a college trained Comp Sci. major it should
be bread and butter and tools of the trade.
Ppl have declared we are giving a dumbed down education and I think this is a fair indicator of it.
Unfortunately, this is not the case. Those being trained in CS now get pampered with Java, never seeing a pointer until probably when they take their OS class (if they are lucky.) As a Computer Scientist and Software Engineer, I'm saddened to say I trust more a Computer Engineer or Electrical Engineer to know/use C/C++ better than a Computer Scientist nowadays.
Absolute nonsense. There is plenty of research (and R&D) in the industry (specially telecommunications and bio-informatics) and government/defense sectors. This is specially true if you are a software developer with a background in EE (or biology in the case of bio-informatics or mathematics if you go NSA).
If you work in a research environment your standing lacking a PhD will be about the same as a janitor despite your expertise in software.Why not just go for the degree?
That is only true if you limit research environment to academia to the exclusion of private and government R&D programs. Once you include those, then that statement is pretty much bullcrap.
But think about CUSTOMER(CUST_ID, NAME, STREET_LINE_1, STREET_LINE_2, CITY, STATE, ZIP). Is it really in 1NF? Sure, if you're printing on envelopes. But maybe you need the customer's first name for a personalized letter.
For your CUSTOMER example, I'd say this. It is 1NF for printing envelopes. It is not for customized personalized letters.
Maybe you need the house number and street separated for a GPS application.
Then your example is not 1NF for this requirement. Apples and oranges.
Or maybe you need the ZIP and ZIP+4 broken out separately for your postage software
Ditto here. These are four different sets of requirements, each requiring a different relational model AND application software model.
In other words, it depends on your domain (which is true with anything built with software). What does a "name" means in your business domain, in your requirements? To normalize, you have do define (or at least manage) your requirements first.
Ultimately, your functional requirements drive how you normalize your conceptual model. Then your operational requirements will drive how you actually implement it on hardware.
I don't have an answer, it's just not fair.:-(
That's why they pay us the big bucks:) I can understand your point, though. Over analyzing is also a mistake.
Slashdot Mirror
To be safe, you have to either follow the Java Language Specification exactly (no subsets or supersets),
Not quite. Supersets are allowed, but only if they do not add anything in the java namespace.
In that case, it is not a superset (as per defined by the Java license), but a 3rd party library which is fine and allowed by the Java license. I know what you are trying to mean and I agree with you, but you are using the wrong term.
>>>we have what amounts to a protest over the cost of the original book...
Bullshit. It's theft of another person's labor. Equivalent to if you spend a year of your life as an engineer, but you only get half the pay. The other half gets distributed among thieves claiming credit for your work, even though they didn't do a damn thing. They are parasites... nothing more.
No, the parasites are the ones who change the edition of the book every 6-12 months, making the used book market nonexistant and allowing for inflation like this (usually in the realm of kickbacks to teachers/schools to "encourage" them to cycle out the editions on command).
Does this apply to the author being plagiarized and who is the one mentioned in TFA? I agree with you, but that argument is non-sequitur regarding the plagiarizing of Steward's work.
...
You and I define fair price a lot differently I think.
That you define something different from others doesn' t mean anything, not unless you can demonstrate clearly that your new definition prevails logically or as de-facto. Otherwise, it's just another opinion, and opinions are not fact.
I like writing software. In fact, I revel in it. However, one thing has always kept me back from being able to write the best software I possibly can: testing.
It is part of your job... testing that is. Just do it. Not every part of your job is supposed to be tantalizing or pleasant. If it were, it wouldn't be a job. It's just part of what a job is. And doing those things that are necessary (even if they suck) is part of being professional. Testing does suck balls sometimes, but hey, if something sucks, do it more until it stops sucking (either because you became proficient or numb.)
I consider testing to be the absolute bane of my existence.
Your outlook on things certainly won't help in making things better, will it?
It is so boring and un-stimulating that I usually skip it entirely, pass the testing off to someone else, or even worse, if I absolutely have to test, I do a very poor job at it.
In that case, please do the world a favor and stop writing code. People who do this kind of shit is the type of people who say "done" even though all they have done is to check if their code compile and works with the happy cases. People like that are the bane of proper software engineering. By not doing this crucial part of your job, you are being unprofessional and unethical, and you should return a fraction of every paycheck proportional to the time you should have invested in testing.
Before looking for making things interesting, you should try having some work ethics.
Oh really?
Do you remember the internet around that time?
Just because there were a bunch of search engines at the time, that doesn't mean that there wasn't a large opportunity on the search space that none one else did to the extend they did: For one, most of the contenders at the time were embedding their search engines in portals. Google did not. Secondly, and most importantly, the great opportunity that no one exploited until Google's time was the ranking of pages for the purpose of searching as opposed to textual indexing (be it with inverted or forward indexes.) The PageRank (tm) algorithm exploited a market opportunity that was there for the taking.
A market opportunity is not something that occurs because there aren't any competitors. It is *that* which is not done or not done well by your competitors, even if they exist by the millions.
'If anyone at Yahoo considered the idea that they should be a technology company, the next thought would have been that Microsoft would crush them.' This in part led to hiring bad programmers
Did anyone else read this as, they hired lousy programmers so they could compete with Microsoft?
No. Only you did. In other words, your reading comprehension skills are a sad indictment of our education system.
Why exactly?
For fanboyist, logically empty, rhetorical reasons ;) The fact that such a comment was rated "insightful" gives you a sad glimpse of the logical depth exhibited by many /. posters.
Why do you think Oracle bought Sun?
For Solaris?
Laugh all you want, but Solaris is as far beyond Linux in stability as Linux is beyond Windows.
And there's no file system on earth faster than Sun/Oracle's QFS/SAMFS. Nothing open-source is even on the same planet. The only competition for it is IBM's GPFS.
That's all true and dandy, but newsflash to you: it's irrelevant. Oracle bought Sun primarily for Java and next for the hardware. The OS has already been comoditized (sp).
You're right that the Taliban formed after the Russians gave up on Afghanistan.
However, the US was arming the people who became the Taliban, the mujaheddin. They just weren't called the Taliban yet. WHen the vacuum came the guys we armed stepped up (with the arms the US gave them) and took over as the Taliban.
So yes, the Taliban was armed by the US and we did it (at the time) as a counter to Russia.
Wrong. Only a fraction of the mujaheddin became the Taliban, with the bulk of their troops being children by the time of the Soviet pullout (and many of them actually having been born in Pakistan as refugees.)
Many Mujaheddin were based on Herat, others were up north under Dostum's command, others grouped into ethnic armies (like the Hazaras) or like the predominately Tajik Northern Alliance under Massoud' leadership.
Only a portion of the Pashtun mujaheddin (in combination with Pashtun born in Pakistan as refugees) becoming the Taliban. There, some historical clarifications for ya.
For all its defects, when the market is working properly it is remarkably efficient.
I'll have to take your word for it, because I've never heard of a time when the market was working properly.
Really? It never worked properly?
I'm one to question that because my tax dollars are essentially being used to murder innocent people and enrich the military industrial complex.
Because ideological cliches and simplifications are excellent means by which to analyze complex geopolitical situations.
Maybe because a lot of those you quote-and-quote call innocent people actually prefer not to have the Taliban back in power? For fucks' sake, if an Afghan chooses to aid the Americans fight in in his own country against a group like the Taliban, who the hell are you to question that?
One man's freedom fighter is another man's collaborator...
In cases like these, you then use your intelligence and judge whether the Taliban are of sufficient moral character so as to give credence to their branding of someone as collaborator.
How can you say that for sure, when that "innocent" person you speak of most likely aided the criminal US occupation?
Maybe because a lot of those you quote-and-quote call innocent people actually prefer not to have the Taliban back in power? For fucks' sake, if an Afghan chooses to aid the Americans fight in in his own country against a group like the Taliban, who the hell are you to question that?
Really, did the crash hit you that hard or are you bored? I don't know if you understand the employment situation for programmers these days.
Depends on the programmer. Seriously. Not to make up shit, but I'm getting an average of 2 calls every week from headhunters I know for well-paid positions, calling me if I'm interested or if I know people that might fit the bill. I'm happily employed, and the only people I'd trust enough to recommend are employed. People I know that I wouldn't even trust to code a "hello world", those are the ones that are continuously having a hard time getting a job. Maybe for other people, who are truly qualified, they have a harder reality, but from where I'm sitting, if you have the chops, you get the job.
And I'm not even in a place that is known for its plethora of IT/software jobs. And yet, 1) I know people who are continuously getting the gigs, and 2) I know that a lot of positions are being unfilled.
And it's not as if companies aren't willing to pay. It's just that there isn't enough qualified software engineers. There is a shitload of cookie cutter programmers out there, you know, the type who never gets the basics, like why he needs to close a database connection or avoid Java string concatenation. For them, obviously, there aren't enough jobs. But there are jobs out there, companies are willing to pay good for filling them... and they have a hard time filling them in with qualified people.
That there is a problem with the economy is one thing. That there aren't enough jobs for the cookie-cutter programming masses, that's another. You have the skills and you have been intelligent enough to cultivate your professional network, you get the job. Period.
You're going to be old in an industry noted for it's ageism
Cliche. I work with developers who have been working with software for 25 years if not more, people well into their late 50's. I'm not making that up.
behind the curve technologically,
This you might have a point, and the person in question might have to start in an entry level position, but that's his call. But consider this.
Most people that are working with software NOW are already behind the curve. You see people out there that have been doing, say, Java for 10 years and still don't understand why fine-granularity web services are a bad idea. Since the dot-com (and thanks to it) our software industry is inundated with people who can't program for shit, and who expect to get paid $70K out of school just because they know how to code a JSP/ASP page.
I'd rather have a veteran programmer starting up with Java and C# in a junior position over the junior developers we have know. And I know for a fact of employers who think that way as well.
and depending on where you do find a job, you're likely to be paid terribly for long hours and work under a clueless asshole boss.
Isn't that how it for most us anyways? This is how it was 30 years ago, it is what it is now, and that's how it is going to be? The people who work 9-5 are those who work on an assembly line connecting piece A with piece B non-stop. You want to work with software, with finance, with medicine, with law, expect to work long hours.
As for having an asshole boss, you'll get one now matter where you work or what you do. It's life. It's a 50/50.
I mean, fucking seriously, are we really to believe that it likely to get an asshole boss, with likely meaning the majority of times? Are we really that cliche and gullible? One thing I know is that the more people focus (and believe) that this is the case, the more that it is simply a matter of projection, of projecting their own assholery.
Yes, sometimes we get an asshole boss. But other times it is not. It's called LIFE!!! And when you repeatedly hear someone always complaining about asshole bosses, they are actually saying "I'm an arrogant, pr
Note: if your teacher is using chalk in a room equipped with a large whiteboard, it may be a good time to double check their technological competence.
Does technological competency (which in /. means "computer gadget competency") matter if the subject is statistics, calculus, physics, or even algorithm analysis or theory of automata?
Shit, even in Computer Science/Software Engineering, I wouldn't care if my professor hasn't programmed in, say, the latest JEE stack or what not. For subjects like distributed computing, algorithms, or networks, it really doesn't matter.
Gimme a good old' school professor with chalk dust all over his head any day of the week!
You know, the schools people come to attend from across the globe? Or perhaps you had a different country in mind? Harvard University Cambridge, MA, Princeton University Princeton, NJ, Yale University New Haven, CT, California Institute of Technology Pasadena, CA Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, MA, Stanford University Stanford, CA, University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA, Columbia University New York, NY, University of Chicago Chicago, IL, Duke University Durham, Dartmouth College Hanover, NH, Northwestern University Evanston, IL, Washington University in St. Louis St. Louis, MO, Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, MD, Cornell University Ithaca, NY, Brown University Providence, RI, Emory University Atlanta, GA, Rice University Houston, TX, Vanderbilt University Nashville, TN, University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, IN, University of California--Berkeley Berkeley, CA, Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA, Georgetown University Washington, DC, University of California--Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA, University of Virginia Charlottesville, VA
You call that a citation? You actually think that list validates the point you previously made?
While it is possible simply to attend a local school in person, I would much prefer an online environment as it seems to be a more natural medium considering the content of my studies. I am interested specifically in Information Security programs.
Uh, it is with that nature of the program that you might want direct interaction with people. That is, unless you already have work experience in software/IT and experience in a real-life, brick-and-mortar school settings. I'm back in grad school, and doing it all online. It is good, but I don't think I could get as much juice of it if I didn't already have a learning experience in a real classroom (both grad and undergrad.) I'm a big proponent of quality online education, but I do acknowledge there are limits to what you can do with it.
I took two undergrad classes online, Intro to Political Science (my major) and Business Writing. All course materials were posted on Blackboard, and I do not recall any classroom time. My grades in those classes were atrocious, partially because the distraction of the Internet while trying to do the coursework was too much as a 20-something year old student. Obviously, YMMV, but I don't think you can beat having an actual live instructor teach you the material (even something as dull as a writing course).
Depends. I took an intro course on AVR-based embedded systems with UC Berkeley, all online just a few months ago. I had to drop the class since I'm also doing a MS in Computer and Electrical Eng, plus work... and a baby. But the material was good, lectures and discussions were all on a blackboard which we just have to follow while working with the required hardware we bought and had at home for the course. A great deal depends on what we put in, but it also counts the subject and the school.
A good professor will make any class venue (including smoke signals) work. A shitty professor will make your life suck, even if in a typical brick-and-mortar setting.
You will experience the same problems with other types of educations. You only study to get the paper, if you want to learn stuffs do it by yourself.
Speak for yourself brother.
It all depends on the value of the paper and the effort you put in. I'm currently doing a MS in Computer and Electrical Engineering with Worcester Polytechnic Institute (a reputable engineering school up in MA), all online, and I'm certainly getting an education. The professors I've had all have years of industrial and DoD experience and the teaching material and lectures do show it. Things we have had to learn included developing testing plans for artillery equipment, cryptography (including an analysis of new commercial ciphers), and case studies with real meat on them. I'm sure I could have picked up the barebones material by self-study, but it does pay to have a good professor that knows his stuff backed with a typical brick-and-mortar university with a strong engineering focus.
I don't know about you, but I'm going to school for the paper on the condition that paper is getting me something. As of right now, it certainly does.
Same when I was doing a MS in Computer Science 10 years ago. I can only think of one class that really didn't have an immediate impact in my work (Semantics of Programming Languages). But every other course (Software Architecture, Networks, Algorithms, Compilers, etc) plus the graduate research I did (performance and security characteristics in distributed systems), in cooperation with a real brick-and-mortar business that was participating in the research (a health care related business to be specific), all that has certainly helped me.
Five of the jobs I've had (including the one I have right now), I got because of the research work I did 10 years ago. I've actually used what I've learned in grad school. I consider myself an intelligent, driven person, but there is no way I could have learned what I learned without having gone to school and be under the teaching of experienced people. If someone can do that all by himself with self-teaching, I tip my hat to him, he's a genius.
I'm not, and neither are most of the people. Many of us need a structured approach to learn something. Better yet if we get someone who knows it well. So you have as the only recourse to work it for the paper. And here is where due diligence pays. If you only go for the paper, then you are simply going to the motions. And it is fine if you know this a priori (say you need a piece of paper to help you get a promotion.)
But if you really think the paper is all there is, that's you. Not the education. You. In education, be it in a classroom or online, you get what you put in... and I'm not taking money. I'm talking intention.
Segmentation Fault
Despite their underlying simple syntax (which it is) C++ is complex as a whole. Same with Java. Any hack can program to their heart (read paychecks) content, but not everyone knows how to actually use these languages well and appropriately.
You got modded flamebait because you dared question the less is more crowd that wants higher level languages that do most of the lower level work for them.
The ppl that coded closer to the metal as you say mostly have grey hair now, and are looked at as legacy coders by the new breed that want all that lower level coding done for them by the language.
As for it being complex, sure it is complex for most ppl, but for a college trained Comp Sci. major it should be bread and butter and tools of the trade.
Ppl have declared we are giving a dumbed down education and I think this is a fair indicator of it.
Unfortunately, this is not the case. Those being trained in CS now get pampered with Java, never seeing a pointer until probably when they take their OS class (if they are lucky.) As a Computer Scientist and Software Engineer, I'm saddened to say I trust more a Computer Engineer or Electrical Engineer to know/use C/C++ better than a Computer Scientist nowadays.
Absolute nonsense. There is plenty of research (and R&D) in the industry (specially telecommunications and bio-informatics) and government/defense sectors. This is specially true if you are a software developer with a background in EE (or biology in the case of bio-informatics or mathematics if you go NSA).
If you work in a research environment your standing lacking a PhD will be about the same as a janitor despite your expertise in software.Why not just go for the degree?
That is only true if you limit research environment to academia to the exclusion of private and government R&D programs. Once you include those, then that statement is pretty much bullcrap.
I mean,really :)
But think about CUSTOMER(CUST_ID, NAME, STREET_LINE_1, STREET_LINE_2, CITY, STATE, ZIP). Is it really in 1NF? Sure, if you're printing on envelopes. But maybe you need the customer's first name for a personalized letter.
For your CUSTOMER example, I'd say this. It is 1NF for printing envelopes. It is not for customized personalized letters.
Maybe you need the house number and street separated for a GPS application.
Then your example is not 1NF for this requirement. Apples and oranges.
Or maybe you need the ZIP and ZIP+4 broken out separately for your postage software
Ditto here. These are four different sets of requirements, each requiring a different relational model AND application software model.
In other words, it depends on your domain (which is true with anything built with software). What does a "name" means in your business domain, in your requirements? To normalize, you have do define (or at least manage) your requirements first.
Ultimately, your functional requirements drive how you normalize your conceptual model. Then your operational requirements will drive how you actually implement it on hardware.
I don't have an answer, it's just not fair. :-(
That's why they pay us the big bucks :) I can understand your point, though. Over analyzing is also a mistake.