I don't understand this. First Obama says kids in the USA don't get enough schooling. Then the article says kids in the USA do get more than most and STILL don't do well in international testing.
Surely the conclusion is not the quantity is wrong, but the quality.
You know, if there's one thing I'd like to change about school - it's homework. There is too much of it, and it's far, far too boring.
My daughter (14) has been leaning about trigonometry. Well, actually she hasn't, she's been learning to use sines and cosines (looked up on a calculator) to solve simple trig problems. But she isn't leaning why it works, what it means, and what really cool things you can do with it. No, it's boring rote work. And she hates it.
There's that crucial word - boring.
Learning isn't boring. It's brilliant. Learning new stuff is hard, but often the most wonderful thing in life. How hard must the teachers has struggled to make it boring. Maybe it's the administrators, those destroyers of joy in life...
Makes me sad. Maths - boring rote work?... when e raised to the power of i time pi is minus 1... what happened there? Boring? sigh
I finished my degree in 1976. (Yes Timothy, there WERE computers then). It covered countless languages and taught concepts well. (Thanks Essex University, you served me well).
Since then I've worked in a wide variety of environments and languages.
But I am having no fun trying to get a job in the current (miserable) environment - yes I know that was bad timing on my part. (I'm in Sydney Australia, where we are not suffering especially badly with the GFC in general). Employers seek a check list of experience in very specific areas - their ads specifically state things like "must have 5 years in J2EE", "must have 3 years JavaScript" and so on.
And if you do not, then they skip your resume and go on to the next - they even have little pop quizzes to see if you remember stupidly obscure syntactic tricks. None of them seem interested to find if you can actually think. Only "experience" - not ability. It's weird. And dispiriting.
Perhaps it is different hiring graduate students (if indeed, any are being hired at the moment) - but I doubt it.
I despair a little - it's a bit like judging peoples work performance on how many hours they work... seems logical (and would probably work for shovelling coal, say), but is utterly wrong in this industry.
Oh, and if anyone in Sydney want an architect/analyst/programmer who can think - and is familiar with a dozen languages - I'm available.
I have done too much of this. Far too much. I need to get back to a group... over a year away from a company, some years away from a team. My sanity is fading a bit.
You get the following problems:
You get lonely
You have nobody to talk over a problem or a design with - and that's bad. You can get stuck on a stupid problem, and if you talked to someone else they'd have said "You idiot, you just need to use this widget".. and they'd be right. This is probably the worst one
You get very jaded. There's no competition, nor does anyone say "Well done Fred. Nice work"
If you are working at home - the fridge is far, far too close. Nasty
Your designs get corrupt because there's nobody charged with keeping the design and structure in shape. It's far too easy to cheat - you wrote the code, after all, why do I need encapsulation?
What to do?
The fridge problem takes self control, the corrupt design problem is tough, and the loneliness problem is very difficult. Take some external sport, maybe - perhaps some sort of team sport (I skate - in a team. Embarrassing for a geek perhaps, but nice to talk to people completely outside your field). But you do need some interaction with your peers - Slashdot is not a good way. Too introspective.
You need a friend network, for the occasional geek chat, kick in the head, and the odd war story. Oh, and beer.
Personally I am trying to leap back into the arm of an organisation, with teams. A difficult change, especially in the current climate, but essential for my sanity.
So I wish you luck. You might try studying a completely new environment - Ruby or something, in an attempt to reinspire the child-like wonder that got you into this area. It's still there. Go for it!
This sounds good - let's pay them in imaginary money. Hmm, what is the square root of -1.92 million dollars?
Actually, I get the impression the entire legal system operates in an imaginary world. One where language has not changed since the 18th century, clothing much the same, and nobody else's time matters.
Thanks for the explanation. I feel better. I admit the rice and Texas thing was a little weird.
Mind you, it WAS the '60s. (And they say if you remember the 60s, you weren't really there... and I wasn't, I was rather little - actually about 7 when he made that speech, just 14 years old when they stepped onto the moon - now I'm 54 and nobody's been back for 40 years. I am sad. Where are your dreams, oh Americans? Must you be out dreamed by the Chinese? The Japanese? New Zealand maybe? Come ON!)
(A note arrived one day, asking me to tick a box for what kind of degree I wanted, BA or BSc, and the default was BA - I like defaults, so I stuck that. Or maybe I was a bit too, I don't know, stoned? After all, what were punched cards for? And if you don't know, clearly you missed some good times)
Working in Holland, I once went to a bar (actually, I went to a lot of bars) where a band was playing. Singing, in fact - in English.
But as you listened, you gradually realised that, despite the fact they were singing English - they didn't speak it. It was weird. The intonation was ever so slightly off.
I understand your point on parroting - indeed, a disturbing amount of modern life is about parroting - the modern computing idiom requires a ridiculous amount of parroted knowledge (Java frameworks,.net calls, ludicrous XML structures) and relatively little understanding. Or so I see it - I'm really bad at remembering things, but really good at understanding them - and so not that good at passing their dopey tests. Annoying.
I am sorry to hear you attended a daft education system - I went in the UK, which was less obsessed with parroting and more interested in understanding, but I may have been lucky. (And they did make me learn Latin for a while, which I assure you, is punishment enough for anyone).
Sponges - not very strong, and if pressed, get all wet. Hmm.
You know, I did a computing degree in Computer Science. I graduated in 1976. I reckon I used most of it. Yup, even COBOL.
But what I learned, most essentially, was nothing about computing, as such.
I learned how to solve problems. I learned how to learn new things. I learned how to find things from book and people (no Internet then) and use that.
I learned how to - learn.
And it sounds like you did too. From your parents, your friends, your school teachers, your university education you learned how to find out about your world and solve problems.
On the way, you probably picked up a stack of things you might not think useful - the capital of France, the name of the highest mountain in the world, the currency used in Germany (oops, that's changed - are you keeping up?.. I suspect you are). And you learned to stay up to date. This is good. You are a much more interesting person to talk to than someone who knows none of those things (not necessarily nicer, but probably more interesting).
Not educating people has been tried - it doesn't go well. In general, the countries that give the best education to the highest proportion of its citizens tend to be at the top of the human development index - and that that do badly end up at the bottom. Coincidence? No, I don't think so. (USA is not at the top - 15th - sad, isn't it? [Disclaimer - I live in Australia, at 4th position, so I'm biased])
Learning for a reason - perhaps not. No. I mean, there just aren't that many people that speak Latin, for example, but it is still fairly widely learned. Again, what is learning about? If you learn just one thing you are going to do badly. When I studied my degree, the logical thing to do would have been to learn COBOL. Just COBOL. That's not what happened - and my life is far richer than it would have been.
So, keep learning. Don't decry your past learning - you are a student all your life.
So what will they do about Scotland? It seems to be full of bitter, sad people. I didn't know it was a mental condition, I thought it was just how Scottish people were.
Mind you if I lived somewhere where it was cold wet and windy and they made me wear a skirt with nothing under it, I'd be bitter too.
And then there's the beer. Oh, and haggis... and bagpipes...
Yup - they are called monks or nuns, depending on their gender. Your description is just about spot on, really. Not much food, no talking, certainly no sex, give up all their money. Some even blow themselves up for their god. I reckon MMO addiction is lightweight compared with that.
(Not as bad as the related folk who cruise the world preying on the weak to make more addicts - Scientologists and Jehovah's Witnesses spring to mind. Other religions prefer to grow their own, even banning contraception... sorry, did I just mention Roman Catholics?.. sorry, drifted off)
I used to live in northern Holland, and I can confirm it is flat, very flat. However I do not remember it as being especially windy (and as a bit of a sailor and one-time keen flier, you'd expect me to recall that). Maybe I had drunk too much Heinekin all the time. Or maybe other things. Yeah, that'd be it.
Ironically though, I was working on a nuclear reactor at the time...
>> Any reasonably trained goon can write software (not necessarily good software, but something that gets the job done)
Er, not in my experience. How many times have you watched a room full of software developers produce... nothing? Ok, so perhaps you are not a developer, maybe you haven't.
But I have. Countless times.
Writing software is hard. Writing good software is really, really hard.
Having "anybody" write software has been tried again and again... FORTRAN, COBOL, BASIC, Visual Basic... all were attempts at making software writing accessible to "the masses". And the results - not so great, really.
To write software that solve problems of any complexity requires discipline, knowledge and ability. Not resources in common supply, sadly.
And "reasonable training" for a "goon" is not going to change things.
Slashdot Mirror
And your sense of humour shows this
I don't understand this.
First Obama says kids in the USA don't get enough schooling. Then the article says kids in the USA do get more than most and STILL don't do well in international testing.
Surely the conclusion is not the quantity is wrong, but the quality.
You know, if there's one thing I'd like to change about school - it's homework. There is too much of it, and it's far, far too boring.
My daughter (14) has been leaning about trigonometry. Well, actually she hasn't, she's been learning to use sines and cosines (looked up on a calculator) to solve simple trig problems. But she isn't leaning why it works, what it means, and what really cool things you can do with it. No, it's boring rote work. And she hates it.
There's that crucial word - boring.
Learning isn't boring. It's brilliant. Learning new stuff is hard, but often the most wonderful thing in life. How hard must the teachers has struggled to make it boring. Maybe it's the administrators, those destroyers of joy in life ...
Makes me sad. Maths - boring rote work? ... when e raised to the power of i time pi is minus 1 ... what happened there? Boring? sigh
1/0 maybe ......... that takes a while. It used to completely blow up my Sinclair Scientific
So there ...
You can't replicate historical data. Unless your name is Dr Who. (And he doesn't seem terribly interested in such things).
From the FA ... a version of the robot with the correct human ratio was very prone to falling over
I have just the same problem.
Ah, if only that were true.
I finished my degree in 1976. (Yes Timothy, there WERE computers then). It covered countless languages and taught concepts well. (Thanks Essex University, you served me well).
Since then I've worked in a wide variety of environments and languages.
But I am having no fun trying to get a job in the current (miserable) environment - yes I know that was bad timing on my part. (I'm in Sydney Australia, where we are not suffering especially badly with the GFC in general).
Employers seek a check list of experience in very specific areas - their ads specifically state things like "must have 5 years in J2EE", "must have 3 years JavaScript" and so on.
And if you do not, then they skip your resume and go on to the next - they even have little pop quizzes to see if you remember stupidly obscure syntactic tricks.
None of them seem interested to find if you can actually think.
Only "experience" - not ability. It's weird. And dispiriting.
Perhaps it is different hiring graduate students (if indeed, any are being hired at the moment) - but I doubt it.
I despair a little - it's a bit like judging peoples work performance on how many hours they work ... seems logical (and would probably work for shovelling coal, say), but is utterly wrong in this industry.
Oh, and if anyone in Sydney want an architect/analyst/programmer who can think - and is familiar with a dozen languages - I'm available.
"for the average user to grow a pair " ... over half the "average users" are female you insensitive clod!
Doing it by yourself is, indeed, hard.
I have done too much of this. Far too much. I need to get back to a group ... over a year away from a company, some years away from a team. My sanity is fading a bit.
You get the following problems:
You get lonely
You have nobody to talk over a problem or a design with - and that's bad. You can get stuck on a stupid problem, and if you talked to someone else they'd have said "You idiot, you just need to use this widget" .. and they'd be right. This is probably the worst one
You get very jaded. There's no competition, nor does anyone say "Well done Fred. Nice work"
If you are working at home - the fridge is far, far too close. Nasty
Your designs get corrupt because there's nobody charged with keeping the design and structure in shape. It's far too easy to cheat - you wrote the code, after all, why do I need encapsulation?
What to do?
The fridge problem takes self control, the corrupt design problem is tough, and the loneliness problem is very difficult. Take some external sport, maybe - perhaps some sort of team sport (I skate - in a team. Embarrassing for a geek perhaps, but nice to talk to people completely outside your field).
But you do need some interaction with your peers - Slashdot is not a good way. Too introspective.
You need a friend network, for the occasional geek chat, kick in the head, and the odd war story. Oh, and beer.
Personally I am trying to leap back into the arm of an organisation, with teams. A difficult change, especially in the current climate, but essential for my sanity.
So I wish you luck.
You might try studying a completely new environment - Ruby or something, in an attempt to reinspire the child-like wonder that got you into this area. It's still there. Go for it!
Nonsense. Every engineer will tell you the square root of minus one is j, not i.
This sounds good - let's pay them in imaginary money. Hmm, what is the square root of -1.92 million dollars?
Actually, I get the impression the entire legal system operates in an imaginary world. One where language has not changed since the 18th century, clothing much the same, and nobody else's time matters.
Thanks for the explanation. I feel better. I admit the rice and Texas thing was a little weird.
Mind you, it WAS the '60s. (And they say if you remember the 60s, you weren't really there ... and I wasn't, I was rather little - actually about 7 when he made that speech, just 14 years old when they stepped onto the moon - now I'm 54 and nobody's been back for 40 years. I am sad. Where are your dreams, oh Americans? Must you be out dreamed by the Chinese? The Japanese? New Zealand maybe? Come ON!)
Does anyone know what "the other things" were?
I've always wondered.
I read that as "capable of hitting a Canadian moose at 400 mph..." and I thought - that thing'll never fly
There are almost 7 billion people in the world. Not surprising there's quite a lot of information been gathered over time.
"End of [your] studies" - pah!
Ok, ok - mind you it *was* a Batchelor of Arts.
Yes, I have a BA in Computer Science.
(A note arrived one day, asking me to tick a box for what kind of degree I wanted, BA or BSc, and the default was BA - I like defaults, so I stuck that. Or maybe I was a bit too, I don't know, stoned? After all, what were punched cards for? And if you don't know, clearly you missed some good times)
Working in Holland, I once went to a bar (actually, I went to a lot of bars) where a band was playing. Singing, in fact - in English.
But as you listened, you gradually realised that, despite the fact they were singing English - they didn't speak it. It was weird. The intonation was ever so slightly off.
I understand your point on parroting - indeed, a disturbing amount of modern life is about parroting - the modern computing idiom requires a ridiculous amount of parroted knowledge (Java frameworks, .net calls, ludicrous XML structures) and relatively little understanding. Or so I see it - I'm really bad at remembering things, but really good at understanding them - and so not that good at passing their dopey tests. Annoying.
I am sorry to hear you attended a daft education system - I went in the UK, which was less obsessed with parroting and more interested in understanding, but I may have been lucky. (And they did make me learn Latin for a while, which I assure you, is punishment enough for anyone).
Sponges - not very strong, and if pressed, get all wet. Hmm.
95% of what you learned in school was worthless?
So sad.
You know, I did a computing degree in Computer Science. I graduated in 1976.
I reckon I used most of it. Yup, even COBOL.
But what I learned, most essentially, was nothing about computing, as such.
I learned how to solve problems.
I learned how to learn new things.
I learned how to find things from book and people (no Internet then) and use that.
I learned how to - learn.
And it sounds like you did too.
From your parents, your friends, your school teachers, your university education you learned how to find out about your world and solve problems.
On the way, you probably picked up a stack of things you might not think useful - the capital of France, the name of the highest mountain in the world, the currency used in Germany (oops, that's changed - are you keeping up? .. I suspect you are). And you learned to stay up to date. This is good. You are a much more interesting person to talk to than someone who knows none of those things (not necessarily nicer, but probably more interesting).
Not educating people has been tried - it doesn't go well. In general, the countries that give the best education to the highest proportion of its citizens tend to be at the top of the human development index - and that that do badly end up at the bottom. Coincidence? No, I don't think so. (USA is not at the top - 15th - sad, isn't it? [Disclaimer - I live in Australia, at 4th position, so I'm biased])
Learning for a reason - perhaps not. No. I mean, there just aren't that many people that speak Latin, for example, but it is still fairly widely learned.
Again, what is learning about? If you learn just one thing you are going to do badly. When I studied my degree, the logical thing to do would have been to learn COBOL. Just COBOL. That's not what happened - and my life is far richer than it would have been.
So, keep learning. Don't decry your past learning - you are a student all your life.
I think an associate's degree at age 11 is just about the right time for something horrible to happen that will corrupt him into turning evil.
He will discover girls.
Hang on, I thought farting was accelerating the warming trend ...
Oh, sorry, you mean just stick your bottom out the window - and not fart? Where's the fun in that?
So what will they do about Scotland? It seems to be full of bitter, sad people. I didn't know it was a mental condition, I thought it was just how Scottish people were.
Mind you if I lived somewhere where it was cold wet and windy and they made me wear a skirt with nothing under it, I'd be bitter too.
And then there's the beer. Oh, and haggis ... and bagpipes ...
>> most real crimes are rare and occur mostly in uninhabited or lower-class areas
occur mostly in lower-class areas ... hmm, might be true numerically, but I bet a heck of a lot more money is stolen in "higher-class" areas.
"You can steal a lot more money with a briefcase and a pen, than you ever could with a knife and a gun" (anon, possibly me)
Yup - they are called monks or nuns, depending on their gender. Your description is just about spot on, really. Not much food, no talking, certainly no sex, give up all their money. Some even blow themselves up for their god. I reckon MMO addiction is lightweight compared with that.
(Not as bad as the related folk who cruise the world preying on the weak to make more addicts - Scientologists and Jehovah's Witnesses spring to mind. Other religions prefer to grow their own, even banning contraception ... sorry, did I just mention Roman Catholics? .. sorry, drifted off)
I used to live in northern Holland, and I can confirm it is flat, very flat.
However I do not remember it as being especially windy (and as a bit of a sailor and one-time keen flier, you'd expect me to recall that).
Maybe I had drunk too much Heinekin all the time. Or maybe other things.
Yeah, that'd be it.
Ironically though, I was working on a nuclear reactor at the time ...
>> Any reasonably trained goon can write software (not necessarily good software, but something that gets the job done)
Er, not in my experience. ... nothing? Ok, so perhaps you are not a developer, maybe you haven't.
How many times have you watched a room full of software developers produce
But I have. Countless times.
Writing software is hard. Writing good software is really, really hard.
Having "anybody" write software has been tried again and again ... FORTRAN, COBOL, BASIC, Visual Basic ... all were attempts at making software writing accessible to "the masses".
And the results - not so great, really.
To write software that solve problems of any complexity requires discipline, knowledge and ability. Not resources in common supply, sadly.
And "reasonable training" for a "goon" is not going to change things.