I'm repeating something that also happens to be in some of the comments on TFA, but: Since when does use of "we" instead of "I" indicate spin or deception? If that's your standard, the guy who thinks in terms of a movement, who sees the country as a grand collaboration, is always going to come out as dishonest. And the guy who talks about rugged individualism is going to look like a straight shooter, even if his statements on policy are self-contradicting nonsense.
How is "Yes we can!" so much worse than "I won't raise your taxes"?
Yup, that's what the interviewer was telling me. Really understanding stuff like JOIN and GROUP BY--in the sense of knowing what they do and when they are needed, and having a pretty good idea of the syntax in your head--puts you ahead of 90% of the candidates out there.
If you're a client-side developer, knowing about the database in addition makes you a superstar. Amazing.
I had a screening test once where the manager asked me to write a simple SQL JOIN without saying so directly. On paper. He said look, I don't care if the syntax isn't perfect, I just want to know if you basically know how to do it.
I think I got to the word "JOIN" and he said yeah, you know, 90% of the people I interview can't do that.
So that's why they have those tests: 90% of "SQL Developer" candidates don't know about JOIN.
Nixon was so obviously guilty that bringing him to justice would have been a mistake.
I'm really failing to see the logic in that. Would it have been okay to try Nixon if he'd been just kinda-sorta-somewhat guilty of lesser crimes instead?
But it's not the "social networking" aspect that does it. The same sort of leakage can occur with a blog, on an ordinary personal page, or via a much-forwarded email message. The article doesn't say anything at all that would indicate a special risk inherent to social networking sites.
Background checks that go back 30 or 40 years are pretty expensive (as noted in the article) and unusual. If you did your crime in the 70s I'm guaranteed not to find it.
I knew an older gentleman who sued the public agency he worked for (in Ohio actually) for race discrimination that occurred in the 1980s. During the trial, the agency's attorney attempted to discredit my friend by asking questions about his armed robbery conviction from the 1930s.
My friend's attorney objected as quickly as you could imagine, and the judge got all over the agency's attorney, probably threatened a contempt finding, for pulling such a stunt.
I had no idea this fellow had ever been in trouble with the law. He said yeah, it really happened, it was the Depression, everyone was broke and verging on starvation, he got a gun and there was this gas station that had cash... obviously the wrong thing to do, but he was as shocked as I that it was being used against him fifty years later.
I still don't know how they found out about the conviction.
Harvard seems to offer only one course that would cover SQL and RDBMS. It's Comp Sci 165, "Information Management," and seems to be relatively theoretical in the sense that banging out SQL isn't the real focus. To wit,
Covers the fundamental concepts of database and information management. Data models: relational, object-oriented, and other; implementation techniques of database management systems, such as indexing structures, concurrency control, recovery, and query processing; management of unstructured data; terabyte-scale databases.
Upon reading the syllabus I see that two class sessions (of about 40) cover SQL specifically.
While I can't find the official list of requirements to complete the Comp Sci major there, I did spot a form that seemed to indicate that 165 is optional.
So as far as I can tell, it seems that you can complete a bachelor's in Comp Sci from Harvard without taking a database class at all. And the one and only undergraduate class on databases seems to be heavy on the sort of knowledge you'd need to implement your own server software--not so much on ordinary business applications that run on SQL.
I haven't given you an example of an Ivy that has no SQL or RDBMS on its curriculum at all. But I think I've illustrated a prestigious Comp Sci program that one could graduate from without much everyday practical knowledge of SQL.
My own background, I majored in pure mathematics at a near-Ivy while dabbling on Comp Sci. The Comp Sci major didn't exist until I was near graduation already, but ISTR that the CS program of the time didn't include SQL. Then again, it was the 1980s and industry was still pretty heavily into ISAM on mainframes. We had an "Exotic Programming Languages Study Group" that was going to do COBOL one semester--because to us, that was considered exotic. Comp Sci was Pascal and B-trees, combinatorial theory, computational complexity, stuff like that. Pretty darned theoretical if what you wanted was a programming job, but still quite useful.
Only that a computer science degree isn't wholly theoretical, as the grandparent poster seemed to think (even if had a bizarre interpretation of the term "computer science").
Grandparent poster here.
Call it bizarre if you like, but I've observed that if you want hands-on practical techniques, you're better served in "information technology" or "information systems." For a more thorough understanding of how things actually work, consider anything with the word "engineering" in it. And if you prefer more theory, "computer science" is probably your bag.
Of course the lines are somewhat fuzzy. Of course you will learn some directly useful things in CS, and you can't avoid all theory in an IT curriculum. But I just don't see the point in griping about too much theory, not enough practical stuff--from someone who chose to major in CS.
Software Engineering stopped being all about batch processing in the 1970ies.
True. But Computer Science is intended to be the more theoretical field. You'll probably learn databases, and maybe enough to use in a commercial job, but that's not the point. The point is to build a background for research, or to inform at a theoretical level.
Expecting a CS degree program to teach you how to write corporate application software is unrealistic. That's not what it's for.
I don't know why college never bothered teaching us SQL and Database? I spend a hell of a lot of my day working on that.
I do know why. It's because you (and presumably your friend) majored in Computer Science, not software engineering.
What I don't understand is why you sought a degree in Computer Science if you just wanted the skills to write corporate database applications. That's not what Computer Science is.
If you don't want to be tailed, move the hell over.
Brilliant idea. Works all the time in single-lane construction zones, or when you're trapped in the fast lane, or when you're inexplicably being tailed in the slow lane.
I think it's unwise to assume it's your wife who "gets" to stay home with the baby. Have you considered being the at-home parent and possibly hiring a part-time nanny in the future so you can get some work done?
No, it's not just your wife's decision. Also don't underestimate your ability to cope with a small child. It's a skill that can be learned, rather quickly when necessary.
By January or February of 2007, more american lives will have been lost in Iraq than were killed on September 11th.
Actually, we're almost certainly at that point already.
3,030 people were killed in the 9/11 attacks, including WTC, Pentagon, and Shanksville. Wikipedia says 2,973. In the ballpark anyway.
icasualties.org says 2,885 US military personnel have been lost in the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
What people forget is that those who died at the World Trade Center were not all Americans. Conservatively, 10% of those on the scene must have been foreign business people, consultants, workers on H-class visas, foreign student interns, and international visitors. Wikipedia says about 316 were non-Americans.
I got to visit New York several years ago for a chance to beat Regis, back when the show was still prime time.
One thing the producers hammered into our head was "Regis does not know the answer. He might think he does." The point: ignore the Regis Fake. He probably wants you to win but you might know more than he does.
They also told us that one contestant took about 45 minutes to answer a single question, got it right, and took another 45 minutes on the next one. As another poster said, they're fine with that. It all comes out in the editing.
Actually, Webb hasn't mentioned that incident as far as I know. Not even obliquely. G. Felix Allen is fully capable of ruining his own reputation without any help.
Slashdot Mirror
A political speech is not (supposed to be) a twelve-step meeting.
I'm repeating something that also happens to be in some of the comments on TFA, but: Since when does use of "we" instead of "I" indicate spin or deception? If that's your standard, the guy who thinks in terms of a movement, who sees the country as a grand collaboration, is always going to come out as dishonest. And the guy who talks about rugged individualism is going to look like a straight shooter, even if his statements on policy are self-contradicting nonsense.
How is "Yes we can!" so much worse than "I won't raise your taxes"?
Beginners don't need the FAQ, they need a tutorial.
A-freaking-men. I don't understand why Google keeps ranking their results so high.
Yup, that's what the interviewer was telling me. Really understanding stuff like JOIN and GROUP BY--in the sense of knowing what they do and when they are needed, and having a pretty good idea of the syntax in your head--puts you ahead of 90% of the candidates out there. If you're a client-side developer, knowing about the database in addition makes you a superstar. Amazing.
I had a screening test once where the manager asked me to write a simple SQL JOIN without saying so directly. On paper. He said look, I don't care if the syntax isn't perfect, I just want to know if you basically know how to do it.
I think I got to the word "JOIN" and he said yeah, you know, 90% of the people I interview can't do that.
So that's why they have those tests: 90% of "SQL Developer" candidates don't know about JOIN.
Deuteronomy 23:1.
Seriously.
Windows is worse than Linux because Windows uses a swap file?
Huh?
Nixon was so obviously guilty that bringing him to justice would have been a mistake.
I'm really failing to see the logic in that. Would it have been okay to try Nixon if he'd been just kinda-sorta-somewhat guilty of lesser crimes instead?
But it's not the "social networking" aspect that does it. The same sort of leakage can occur with a blog, on an ordinary personal page, or via a much-forwarded email message. The article doesn't say anything at all that would indicate a special risk inherent to social networking sites.
News flash: If you say dumb things on the Internet, someone might notice.
How this constitutes a hazard unique to "social networks" is neither explained nor hinted at.
The article presents a non-issue wrapped in snark and hype.
I haven't observed that on my account. Are you sure it really does so?
I knew an older gentleman who sued the public agency he worked for (in Ohio actually) for race discrimination that occurred in the 1980s. During the trial, the agency's attorney attempted to discredit my friend by asking questions about his armed robbery conviction from the 1930s.
My friend's attorney objected as quickly as you could imagine, and the judge got all over the agency's attorney, probably threatened a contempt finding, for pulling such a stunt.
I had no idea this fellow had ever been in trouble with the law. He said yeah, it really happened, it was the Depression, everyone was broke and verging on starvation, he got a gun and there was this gas station that had cash... obviously the wrong thing to do, but he was as shocked as I that it was being used against him fifty years later.
I still don't know how they found out about the conviction.
Harvard seems to offer only one course that would cover SQL and RDBMS. It's Comp Sci 165, "Information Management," and seems to be relatively theoretical in the sense that banging out SQL isn't the real focus. To wit,
Upon reading the syllabus I see that two class sessions (of about 40) cover SQL specifically.
While I can't find the official list of requirements to complete the Comp Sci major there, I did spot a form that seemed to indicate that 165 is optional.
So as far as I can tell, it seems that you can complete a bachelor's in Comp Sci from Harvard without taking a database class at all. And the one and only undergraduate class on databases seems to be heavy on the sort of knowledge you'd need to implement your own server software--not so much on ordinary business applications that run on SQL.
I haven't given you an example of an Ivy that has no SQL or RDBMS on its curriculum at all. But I think I've illustrated a prestigious Comp Sci program that one could graduate from without much everyday practical knowledge of SQL.
My own background, I majored in pure mathematics at a near-Ivy while dabbling on Comp Sci. The Comp Sci major didn't exist until I was near graduation already, but ISTR that the CS program of the time didn't include SQL. Then again, it was the 1980s and industry was still pretty heavily into ISAM on mainframes. We had an "Exotic Programming Languages Study Group" that was going to do COBOL one semester--because to us, that was considered exotic. Comp Sci was Pascal and B-trees, combinatorial theory, computational complexity, stuff like that. Pretty darned theoretical if what you wanted was a programming job, but still quite useful.
Grandparent poster here.
Call it bizarre if you like, but I've observed that if you want hands-on practical techniques, you're better served in "information technology" or "information systems." For a more thorough understanding of how things actually work, consider anything with the word "engineering" in it. And if you prefer more theory, "computer science" is probably your bag.
Of course the lines are somewhat fuzzy. Of course you will learn some directly useful things in CS, and you can't avoid all theory in an IT curriculum. But I just don't see the point in griping about too much theory, not enough practical stuff--from someone who chose to major in CS.
True. But Computer Science is intended to be the more theoretical field. You'll probably learn databases, and maybe enough to use in a commercial job, but that's not the point. The point is to build a background for research, or to inform at a theoretical level.
Expecting a CS degree program to teach you how to write corporate application software is unrealistic. That's not what it's for.
That would be why it's Information Systems, not Computer Science.
Tailgating isn't bad because it's distracting.
It's bad because it's a death threat.
Ignoring the two-ton pickup behind you doesn't make it go away.
I do know why. It's because you (and presumably your friend) majored in Computer Science, not software engineering.
What I don't understand is why you sought a degree in Computer Science if you just wanted the skills to write corporate database applications. That's not what Computer Science is.
Brilliant idea. Works all the time in single-lane construction zones, or when you're trapped in the fast lane, or when you're inexplicably being tailed in the slow lane.
I think it's unwise to assume it's your wife who "gets" to stay home with the baby. Have you considered being the at-home parent and possibly hiring a part-time nanny in the future so you can get some work done?
No, it's not just your wife's decision. Also don't underestimate your ability to cope with a small child. It's a skill that can be learned, rather quickly when necessary.
Maybe so, but "future deaths" wasn't the assertion.
Actually, we're almost certainly at that point already.
3,030 people were killed in the 9/11 attacks, including WTC, Pentagon, and Shanksville. Wikipedia says 2,973. In the ballpark anyway.
icasualties.org says 2,885 US military personnel have been lost in the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
What people forget is that those who died at the World Trade Center were not all Americans. Conservatively, 10% of those on the scene must have been foreign business people, consultants, workers on H-class visas, foreign student interns, and international visitors. Wikipedia says about 316 were non-Americans.
So if you're comparing Americans to Americans...
I got to visit New York several years ago for a chance to beat Regis, back when the show was still prime time.
One thing the producers hammered into our head was "Regis does not know the answer. He might think he does." The point: ignore the Regis Fake. He probably wants you to win but you might know more than he does.
They also told us that one contestant took about 45 minutes to answer a single question, got it right, and took another 45 minutes on the next one. As another poster said, they're fine with that. It all comes out in the editing.
Actually, Webb hasn't mentioned that incident as far as I know. Not even obliquely. G. Felix Allen is fully capable of ruining his own reputation without any help.
Res ipsa loquitur, dude.