"Caching and TLBs need to be covered in your data structures and algorithms classes. Here you should learn ways to avoid touching memory that isn't already in the cache on your local CPU. Performance today is all about avoiding cache misses; the old measures of computational work (math ops especially) are quite useless. This really changes the way you analyse an algorithm; locality is key.
Pure computer science doesn't deal with this. At best, memory access is seen as being free. At worst, the fictional Turing machine is used. Pure computer science deals with simplified hardware models and highly mathematical studies of the very nature of computability. "
I'm curious. Did you attend a school that taught "pure computer science"? As far as Berkeley goes, we didnt' just deal with "simplified hardware models and highly mathematical studies". We learned how to do real caching and TLB lookups because we wrote our own OS.. "wrote" meaning "coded". It was all in C++.
So I'm not sure what you're really speaking of when you depict "pure cs" in schools as those that never do any coding projects.
Well, for one, I admit my post was anecdotal. But guess what? I meant for it to be that way. I wasn't speaking about massive statistics that applied across the state; I wanted to provide a real-life story to someone who simply says "the job loss is not real, everything is ok".
With that said, I'll repeat two remarks I've posted to people who've responded similar to you:
"Oh yeah, one thing I wanted to write that I forgot to was the number of vacancies (both in business spaces and residential housing) in Sillicon Valley is not, in my opinion, simply a coincidence."
Yes, I dind't do any statisticaly analysis but when you take the combination of 1) the number of vacancies you see, 2) the amount rent has fallen (which is a good market indicator), 3) the amount salaries have fallen (yes, it might be a small smaple that you look it but this too is a market indicator) along with your personal experience, it's hard to deny what's really going on.
So there I've provided a bit more anecdotal experiences but they are of my experiences viewing indicators of larger significance that indicate something about our economy (rental prices, availability, job wages, and other strong economic indicators). I simply didn't write this in the first place because it wasn't my intention.
No, 90% of the population isn't out of work. The thing I perhaps should've also pointed out was that all my friends are new grads like me and new grads are feeling it the worst. I also pointed out that many were rehired somewhere else in my original post, I didnt' say they were personally out of a job. But, in saying that, I should also add the the jobs people moved to were seen as downward movement in terms of job quality and salary.
It probably isn't even 10% of the working age population.
Maybe not, but are we still talking within tech or are you looking at the greater Sillicon Valley society? Actually I think there are some good statistics out there and at the worst point in time I don't think it's incredible to think that 10% of IT workers were unemployed.
Yes, this does stir emotions, but it also gives a real view; it's something you won't get from an article that simply puts out statistics. I should also mention that I graduated in 2000 as a CS major from Berkeley to provide a bit of context.
Finally, this wasn't argument for or against free trade. I was simply a bit annoyed that the original poster acted like no on in Sillicon Valley had lost a job and this whole idea of "unemployment" was merely a sham.
There is a big difference. Just think about the overhead that it takes to hire an overseas contractor. There are the legal hurdles, the tax hurdles and also the language barrier. Not only that, you also need some project management on their end if you're going to be doing any serious project. I suppose, though, that some small shops employ contractors that they never have to meet but I think most contracting requires at least the people speak the same language.
With that said, statistics show that small business, for the past 10 years, have been providing most of the new jobs. We should also note the amount of exporting that is done by big companies. The only way I really see small companies outsourcing is if they employ a third-party service that does the outsourcing for them.
I went to Berkeley and all we learned was theory and CS (not SE) unless you took a class that was specifically called Software Engineering.
I had another friend who attended the "CS" program at Harvey Mudd and from the sounds of it (he told me what he learned) a good portion of it was actually software engineering rather than cs. I think he still leraned some cs though (but it definitely sounded more SE oriented because he was throwing around all these enterprise buzzwords).
They get LISP, but nothing about
optimizing data structures for cache layout and
avoiding TLB misses. In computer science, a binary
tree is faster than a multi-way tree. In software
engineering, dealing with real hardware, this is
not usually the case.
This will happen if you only take the first class in CS and that's it. We had lisp for one semester and the point of it was to learn about programming, which I think it did well. We did learn about caching and TLBs later on in operating systems (which was done in C++, not LISP). Nowadays teh data structures classes are done in Java. Lisp is still reserved for the first 2 introductory classes (the absolute first one being optional).
HOnestly, I've never attended ITT so I dont' know the quality of their education. Yes, you're right in that it would be cool if you could learn more about developing large projects.
My point is that you can't knock "higher tier" schools for teaching theory. "Software engineering", you have to admit, is more about code application than code theory. I was simply saying that code application and the practicalities of it can be taught anywhere, whereas the higher-end schools are better suited for teachign theory.
Yes, it is anecdotal, and I realize that. I thought I would give my anecdoate in response to this guys post. I also forgot to post this, which I responded to someone else with:
"Oh yeah, one thing I wanted to write that I forgot to was the number of vacancies (both in business spaces and residential housing) in Sillicon Valley is not, in my opinion, simply a coincidence."
Yes, I dind't do any statisticaly analysis but when you take the combination of 1) the number of vacancies you see, 2) the amount rent has fallen (which is a good market indicator), 3) the amount salaries have fallen (yes, it might be a small smaple that you look it but this too is a market indicator) along with your personal experience, it's hard to deny what's really going on.
I knew a bunch of really smart coders who got hit by the dot-com crash. There was a sudden glut of skilled workers and, therefore, the competition for jobs not outsourced was really high. The result was that wages were pushed way down.
Also, it was very tough for inexperience and new hires. I came from a good school but I coudlnt' compete with others when all the job opportunities asked for 5+ years experience. The result of the glut wasn't that just wages went down, but that companies could get better skilled workers for much cheaper. So suddenly 3 years experience people were being hired for what used ot be starting salaries and 7 yaers experienced people were being paid at a 3-5 years experience level.
But my friends, their friends, and their friends of friends all had similar experience.
Oh yeah, one thing I wanted to write that I forgot to was the number of vacancies (both in business spaces and residential housing) in Sillicon Valley is not, in my opinion, simply a coincidence.
That's not an insult. It's true. If you want to learn a specific trade, then you go to a trade school, like ITT tech. I'm being very serious here.
Why would you pay insane amounts in college tuition to learn from uber-intelligent professors about specific technologies when you could do that at a trade school? You go to those universities to learn theory, that's what you're paying for. Because being taught that stuff and learning that stuff is NOT something you can get at a trade school.
Your analogy regarding physics and mech eng is a poor one.
They don't have a dept for software engineering because that's more of a job title than it is an areas of study or science (at least as of now). They do, however, offer classes on software engineering.
Because of the overhead in doing so. I think it really only benefits larger companies, that have larger projects and pay a lot in terms of support and development.
Smaller companies, as I see it, are usually more service oriented and need projects to be closer for those reasons. Also, smaller companies are less stable and require constant redirection which is not possible if your code is on the other side of the planet.
"Kazmierczak acknowledged that AeA members are all business owners, not employees, but says this had no effect on the report's findings.
"Yes, we do represent the interests of businesses," said Kazmierczak. "However, we believe our report is a fair and balanced look at the entire scope and context of the offshore-outsourcing issue.
Riiight. So the fact that the report was written by a bunch of business owners who are probably outsourcing wouldn't make me suspicious just one bit.
Uh huh... yeah.. and I'm Bill Gates. Last I checked unemployment in the US, the country with the most skilled workers on this planet, still have pretty high unemployment (especially in tech).
Here's an interesting perspective though: I think that most people would agree that tech is only going to grow and that we are only now truly using IT to its real strength. Take a look at much of the internet hype and it's becoming real, but just a much slower pace than people anticipated (i.e. ecommerce).
Yes, outsourcing is real but I'm still going to bet that the tech industry will grow. This, in conjunction that most new jobs created in teh past several years are the result of small-businesses (which are less able and likely to outsource compared to big companies) also gives me hope.
It just won't be a wild orgy like it was during the dot-com days.
True that. What year were you? I graduated in 2000 and had the same feelings as you did. That's not to say, though, that I also got caught up in the dot-com hype. I definitely did EECS, though, because I liked what I was doing (declared when I started Berkeley when there wasn't really a hype).
The numbers aren't hocus pocus. I majored in CS and graduated several years ago. Just from personal experience, the unemployment rate is very real. The loss of jobs is very real. When I graduated in 2000, 100% of my friends had steady jobs. After the crash, 90% had lost their jobs and some had gotten new jobs. This not an exaggeration.
I guess you can't exactly say these job losses were caused by outsourcing as it was the dot-com crash. That said, jobs are being created but not much in tech.
The other problem is that most of what is taught in comp-sci these days is not so great. There is a tendency to focus on algorithms (get them out of a book) rather than how to contribute to building large projects that work.
Personally, I think this is what distinguishes the second-tier from the higher-tier schools. The lower tier schools will always teach you a certain technology. The higher tier schools will always teach you the theory and expect you to teach yourself the specific technology.
I mean if you're just going to school to learn how to work on big project or learn X technology, then why not simply go to a technical trade school like ITT tech?
In the case of the missiles, it seems obvious (off a skimming from an article) that the design parameters were different than the actual use parameters.
Actually, in war, this kind of thing should be expected with a certain percentage. Technology used in wars are very often have little or no testing (like radar in WW2 and the unmanned planes used in Afghanistan). Technology with little or not testing or technology used out of the bounds of design are destined to have higher degrees of error. (Think of it like "just-in-time" software.)
I wouldn't say that software killed those soldiers. It was the scud. No piece of software is 100% bug free (especially when used in situations it's not made for).
Here's a short little anecdote that I didn't learn about until recently.
My cheapy workplace gave me a bad monitor with a not-so good video card. After several weeks of use I started getting massive headaches, dizziness, and general nausea. I thought maybe I was sick or I was working too hard. I thought maybe I was stressing out too much. I think I was stressing but it was because of all the ill feelings I was get due to the hardware.
Eventualy I got so stressed my hair started falling out.. literally. I guess there's this condition where this can happen if you face times of continuous high stress (mind you I had these ill feelings everyday).
I learned several things at the optometrist. 1) I was using my glasses wrong (needed for far viewing not close viewing.. ergo i was making my eyes work extra hard. 2) had low refresh freq monitor replaced with nice laptop monitor. 3) blinking and eye resting is very important. If you don't it's easy for your eyes to dry out because you're constantly staring at code. This can be more lethal than you think as dry eyes make it more difficult for you eyes to focus and this constant pressure can also lead to headaches/migranes as I've experienced.
The thing that sucked about it was that I had no real idea what was going on. Back in college I had issues with a monitor that ran low refresh rate and that too gave me headaches. I thought I was just using the comptuer too much but I was using my glasses incorrectly then as well. Who knew?
Would anybody buy this? We're increasingly reading about the lack and declining interest in PDAs and more of a move to cellphones. So the question is what woudl one do with this? I find it hard to thing anybody would be doing any serious work on it and the cellphone is replacing much of the core functionality provided by PDAs. The only place I see there being a demand for this is in some niche market.
The point is is that in the Internet world, if there is no lock-in, if there's no overhead to switching, if it's painless, then the best product/option/service will win-out hands down.
Is that why IE has 95% of the market?
That's a case of lock-in (more specifically the monopolistic properties of integrating it into the OS). Where've you been for the past 6 years while Microsoft has been in court because of this?
Slashdot Mirror
"Caching and TLBs need to be covered in your data structures and algorithms classes. Here you should learn ways to avoid touching memory that isn't already in the cache on your local CPU. Performance today is all about avoiding cache misses; the old measures of computational work (math ops especially) are quite useless. This really changes the way you analyse an algorithm; locality is key. Pure computer science doesn't deal with this. At best, memory access is seen as being free. At worst, the fictional Turing machine is used. Pure computer science deals with simplified hardware models and highly mathematical studies of the very nature of computability. "
I'm curious. Did you attend a school that taught "pure computer science"? As far as Berkeley goes, we didnt' just deal with "simplified hardware models and highly mathematical studies". We learned how to do real caching and TLB lookups because we wrote our own OS.. "wrote" meaning "coded". It was all in C++.
So I'm not sure what you're really speaking of when you depict "pure cs" in schools as those that never do any coding projects.
Well, for one, I admit my post was anecdotal. But guess what? I meant for it to be that way. I wasn't speaking about massive statistics that applied across the state; I wanted to provide a real-life story to someone who simply says "the job loss is not real, everything is ok".
With that said, I'll repeat two remarks I've posted to people who've responded similar to you:
"Oh yeah, one thing I wanted to write that I forgot to was the number of vacancies (both in business spaces and residential housing) in Sillicon Valley is not, in my opinion, simply a coincidence."
Yes, I dind't do any statisticaly analysis but when you take the combination of 1) the number of vacancies you see, 2) the amount rent has fallen (which is a good market indicator), 3) the amount salaries have fallen (yes, it might be a small smaple that you look it but this too is a market indicator) along with your personal experience, it's hard to deny what's really going on.
So there I've provided a bit more anecdotal experiences but they are of my experiences viewing indicators of larger significance that indicate something about our economy (rental prices, availability, job wages, and other strong economic indicators). I simply didn't write this in the first place because it wasn't my intention.
No, 90% of the population isn't out of work. The thing I perhaps should've also pointed out was that all my friends are new grads like me and new grads are feeling it the worst. I also pointed out that many were rehired somewhere else in my original post, I didnt' say they were personally out of a job. But, in saying that, I should also add the the jobs people moved to were seen as downward movement in terms of job quality and salary.
It probably isn't even 10% of the working age population.
Maybe not, but are we still talking within tech or are you looking at the greater Sillicon Valley society? Actually I think there are some good statistics out there and at the worst point in time I don't think it's incredible to think that 10% of IT workers were unemployed.
Yes, this does stir emotions, but it also gives a real view; it's something you won't get from an article that simply puts out statistics. I should also mention that I graduated in 2000 as a CS major from Berkeley to provide a bit of context.
Finally, this wasn't argument for or against free trade. I was simply a bit annoyed that the original poster acted like no on in Sillicon Valley had lost a job and this whole idea of "unemployment" was merely a sham.
There is a big difference. Just think about the overhead that it takes to hire an overseas contractor. There are the legal hurdles, the tax hurdles and also the language barrier. Not only that, you also need some project management on their end if you're going to be doing any serious project. I suppose, though, that some small shops employ contractors that they never have to meet but I think most contracting requires at least the people speak the same language.
With that said, statistics show that small business, for the past 10 years, have been providing most of the new jobs. We should also note the amount of exporting that is done by big companies. The only way I really see small companies outsourcing is if they employ a third-party service that does the outsourcing for them.
Actually it depends on what school you go to.
I went to Berkeley and all we learned was theory and CS (not SE) unless you took a class that was specifically called Software Engineering.
I had another friend who attended the "CS" program at Harvey Mudd and from the sounds of it (he told me what he learned) a good portion of it was actually software engineering rather than cs. I think he still leraned some cs though (but it definitely sounded more SE oriented because he was throwing around all these enterprise buzzwords).
I'm honestly not trying to be condescending.
They get LISP, but nothing about optimizing data structures for cache layout and avoiding TLB misses. In computer science, a binary tree is faster than a multi-way tree. In software engineering, dealing with real hardware, this is not usually the case.
This will happen if you only take the first class in CS and that's it. We had lisp for one semester and the point of it was to learn about programming, which I think it did well. We did learn about caching and TLBs later on in operating systems (which was done in C++, not LISP). Nowadays teh data structures classes are done in Java. Lisp is still reserved for the first 2 introductory classes (the absolute first one being optional).
HOnestly, I've never attended ITT so I dont' know the quality of their education. Yes, you're right in that it would be cool if you could learn more about developing large projects.
My point is that you can't knock "higher tier" schools for teaching theory. "Software engineering", you have to admit, is more about code application than code theory. I was simply saying that code application and the practicalities of it can be taught anywhere, whereas the higher-end schools are better suited for teachign theory.
Which school?
Yes, it is anecdotal, and I realize that. I thought I would give my anecdoate in response to this guys post. I also forgot to post this, which I responded to someone else with:
"Oh yeah, one thing I wanted to write that I forgot to was the number of vacancies (both in business spaces and residential housing) in Sillicon Valley is not, in my opinion, simply a coincidence."
Yes, I dind't do any statisticaly analysis but when you take the combination of 1) the number of vacancies you see, 2) the amount rent has fallen (which is a good market indicator), 3) the amount salaries have fallen (yes, it might be a small smaple that you look it but this too is a market indicator) along with your personal experience, it's hard to deny what's really going on.
Well, not exactly.
I knew a bunch of really smart coders who got hit by the dot-com crash. There was a sudden glut of skilled workers and, therefore, the competition for jobs not outsourced was really high. The result was that wages were pushed way down.
Also, it was very tough for inexperience and new hires. I came from a good school but I coudlnt' compete with others when all the job opportunities asked for 5+ years experience. The result of the glut wasn't that just wages went down, but that companies could get better skilled workers for much cheaper. So suddenly 3 years experience people were being hired for what used ot be starting salaries and 7 yaers experienced people were being paid at a 3-5 years experience level.
In their defense, I think the American way has always been about how hard you try and how much effort you put in as opposed to raw intelligence.
Very true.
But my friends, their friends, and their friends of friends all had similar experience.
Oh yeah, one thing I wanted to write that I forgot to was the number of vacancies (both in business spaces and residential housing) in Sillicon Valley is not, in my opinion, simply a coincidence.
?
That's not an insult. It's true. If you want to learn a specific trade, then you go to a trade school, like ITT tech. I'm being very serious here.
Why would you pay insane amounts in college tuition to learn from uber-intelligent professors about specific technologies when you could do that at a trade school? You go to those universities to learn theory, that's what you're paying for. Because being taught that stuff and learning that stuff is NOT something you can get at a trade school.
Your analogy regarding physics and mech eng is a poor one.
They don't have a dept for software engineering because that's more of a job title than it is an areas of study or science (at least as of now). They do, however, offer classes on software engineering.
Damn straight. This is the story of my life.
Because of the overhead in doing so. I think it really only benefits larger companies, that have larger projects and pay a lot in terms of support and development.
Smaller companies, as I see it, are usually more service oriented and need projects to be closer for those reasons. Also, smaller companies are less stable and require constant redirection which is not possible if your code is on the other side of the planet.
Or maybe it was the elephant in the room, the dot-com crash.
Oh please:
"Kazmierczak acknowledged that AeA members are all business owners, not employees, but says this had no effect on the report's findings. "Yes, we do represent the interests of businesses," said Kazmierczak. "However, we believe our report is a fair and balanced look at the entire scope and context of the offshore-outsourcing issue.
Riiight. So the fact that the report was written by a bunch of business owners who are probably outsourcing wouldn't make me suspicious just one bit.
Uh huh... yeah.. and I'm Bill Gates. Last I checked unemployment in the US, the country with the most skilled workers on this planet, still have pretty high unemployment (especially in tech).
I definitely agree with you.
Here's an interesting perspective though: I think that most people would agree that tech is only going to grow and that we are only now truly using IT to its real strength. Take a look at much of the internet hype and it's becoming real, but just a much slower pace than people anticipated (i.e. ecommerce).
Yes, outsourcing is real but I'm still going to bet that the tech industry will grow. This, in conjunction that most new jobs created in teh past several years are the result of small-businesses (which are less able and likely to outsource compared to big companies) also gives me hope.
It just won't be a wild orgy like it was during the dot-com days.
True that. What year were you? I graduated in 2000 and had the same feelings as you did. That's not to say, though, that I also got caught up in the dot-com hype. I definitely did EECS, though, because I liked what I was doing (declared when I started Berkeley when there wasn't really a hype).
My point of view...
The numbers aren't hocus pocus. I majored in CS and graduated several years ago. Just from personal experience, the unemployment rate is very real. The loss of jobs is very real. When I graduated in 2000, 100% of my friends had steady jobs. After the crash, 90% had lost their jobs and some had gotten new jobs. This not an exaggeration.
I guess you can't exactly say these job losses were caused by outsourcing as it was the dot-com crash. That said, jobs are being created but not much in tech.
The other problem is that most of what is taught in comp-sci these days is not so great. There is a tendency to focus on algorithms (get them out of a book) rather than how to contribute to building large projects that work.
Personally, I think this is what distinguishes the second-tier from the higher-tier schools. The lower tier schools will always teach you a certain technology. The higher tier schools will always teach you the theory and expect you to teach yourself the specific technology.
I mean if you're just going to school to learn how to work on big project or learn X technology, then why not simply go to a technical trade school like ITT tech?
It's not justice, it's politics.
Think about it: Who has more political clout, some random individual or Google? SCO or some open source hippies?
Software doesn't kill people.
People kill people.
In the case of the missiles, it seems obvious (off a skimming from an article) that the design parameters were different than the actual use parameters.
Actually, in war, this kind of thing should be expected with a certain percentage. Technology used in wars are very often have little or no testing (like radar in WW2 and the unmanned planes used in Afghanistan). Technology with little or not testing or technology used out of the bounds of design are destined to have higher degrees of error. (Think of it like "just-in-time" software.)
I wouldn't say that software killed those soldiers. It was the scud. No piece of software is 100% bug free (especially when used in situations it's not made for).
Here's a short little anecdote that I didn't learn about until recently.
My cheapy workplace gave me a bad monitor with a not-so good video card. After several weeks of use I started getting massive headaches, dizziness, and general nausea. I thought maybe I was sick or I was working too hard. I thought maybe I was stressing out too much. I think I was stressing but it was because of all the ill feelings I was get due to the hardware.
Eventualy I got so stressed my hair started falling out.. literally. I guess there's this condition where this can happen if you face times of continuous high stress (mind you I had these ill feelings everyday).
I learned several things at the optometrist. 1) I was using my glasses wrong (needed for far viewing not close viewing.. ergo i was making my eyes work extra hard. 2) had low refresh freq monitor replaced with nice laptop monitor. 3) blinking and eye resting is very important. If you don't it's easy for your eyes to dry out because you're constantly staring at code. This can be more lethal than you think as dry eyes make it more difficult for you eyes to focus and this constant pressure can also lead to headaches/migranes as I've experienced.
The thing that sucked about it was that I had no real idea what was going on. Back in college I had issues with a monitor that ran low refresh rate and that too gave me headaches. I thought I was just using the comptuer too much but I was using my glasses incorrectly then as well. Who knew?
Biggest Waste of Money: Gym equipment for computer nerds.
Oh c'mon! No wonder why they went out of business. Idiots.
Would anybody buy this? We're increasingly reading about the lack and declining interest in PDAs and more of a move to cellphones. So the question is what woudl one do with this? I find it hard to thing anybody would be doing any serious work on it and the cellphone is replacing much of the core functionality provided by PDAs. The only place I see there being a demand for this is in some niche market.
The point is is that in the Internet world, if there is no lock-in, if there's no overhead to switching, if it's painless, then the best product/option/service will win-out hands down.
Is that why IE has 95% of the market?
That's a case of lock-in (more specifically the monopolistic properties of integrating it into the OS). Where've you been for the past 6 years while Microsoft has been in court because of this?