Your post is so horribly idiotic I can't help but reply. Just so you know: - this is not a troll - people like you are the reason many programmers get outsourced to India.
Computer Science is great and all, and I'm enjoying it, but I know that a lot of what I'm being taught is pretty useless.
Computer science is a SCIENCE, not a "learn-how-to-program-in-just-4-short-years" trade school course. If all you want to know is how to program, read a book or go to a trade school. Sure, you won't ever get a job that pays more than $25K. And that's about how much a crappy programmer is worth these days.
OS Design? Fascinating, but ultimately irrelevant for 99% of coders.
Calculus? Fascinating, but ultimately irrelevant for 99% of auto mechanics.
Look, if you want to be a "coder", don't go into CS. You won't like it, and you will flunk. Pick up one of those nice C++ in 24 hours books, and learn it.
If anything you shouldn't roll your own, as it'll make your code less readable, more bloated and probably slower.
That would simply mean you are a crappy programmer who should not be employed. A good programmer should be able to easily write a good hashtable implementation if he or she needs to. In fact, that's a great job interview question.
Besides, the proper term for a programmer that does not know how to implement a hashtable is "incompetent".
Where are the lectures on writing internationalized code (think character encodings, flippable UI design etc).
This is not related to CS, and is easily learned by reading an appropriate book.
Where are the lectures on writing code with low startup overhead?
Where are the lectures that teach you how to write word processors? What about lectures for writing code for vending machines? How about teaching students to service automotive brakes?
A CS degree should give you enough fundamental knowledge to go read a specialized book and solve a problem by yourself. It's not supposed to teach you everything there is to know.
What about teaching people the merits of various toolkits?
Look, buddy, a degree is supposed to last for a lot more than 1 or 2 years. Do you think CS graduates in the 1970s learned the merits of various punchcard systems and the intricacies of programming daisy-wheel line printers? Teaching skills with a shelf life of 2 years is simply stupid.
Version control theory?
Are you pulling these out of your ass? READ the DOCUMENTATION and you will know how to use a version control system. If you are looking for a management perspective, get a degree in MIS or take some courses in software engineering.
It's possible for a student to come out of a CompSci course and be unable to explain why a containment-based widget toolkit is better than a positional one, yet can talk about VM swapping algorithms and implementing the fastest hashtable probing all day.
What the hell are you talking about? Why in the world should CS graduates know some random obscure stuff about some GUI toolkit (that will probably cease to exist within 5 years)? That kind of knowledge comes from reading subject-specific books and experience. It certainly should not be part of any CS cirriculum.
You are saying that knowing obscure, specialized facts with a shelf life of 1 or 2 years is somehow more important than knowing the fundamental theory behind CS. I certainly suggest you think long and hard about where you are going with your education. This attitude will certainly not get you hired as a programmer by any serious firm. Just so you know, many of them actually ask you to talk about VM swapping algorithms and hashtable probing. They will probably not be impressed by your l33t version control skillz, and by your extensive knowledge of the merits of various toolkits if you obviously don't know any of the fundamentals.
You could say that, but I am pretty tired of people equating computer science with computer programming as a trade. CS is largely a theoretical field, and much of it is quite abstract. It is certainly not about writing web applications and ensuring browser compatibliity like the grandparent claimed.
Again, look at my analogy of electrical engineer versus electrician. One of them designs complex electrical or electronic systems that require fairly deep theoretical knowledge. The other runs cables and installs breaker boxes, outlets, and switches. Both require skills and training, and the main difference is the depth of theoretical knowledge required. It's the same thing with programmers versus code monkeys.
That is NOT computer science, simply because writing a frontend to a database requires minimal applications of that stuff. A nice litmus test for codemonkey versus computer scientist is whether you will have to create or use a single algorithm that is not in the standard library. Web applications do not require that 99% of the time, so they can be developed almost completely by codemonkeys.
If you can publish something you developed in a scientific peer-reviewed journal, it's computer science. If you simply put together something from prefab pieces, it is NOT computer science.
Anyway, saying that you need to know computer science to program a frontend to a database is like saying you need a degree in electrical engineering to wire up a house. The truth is, there are way too many people with CS degrees and not enough CS positions. But don't mix CS with coding. They are very far apart.
First, AMD is still the only company to offer a 64-bit x86-compatible CPU. That is a HUGE achievement, and they have definitely gained a foothold in the server market with the Opteron (while intel is playing catch-up). AMD delivers a lot of bang for the buck compared to Intel, so I wouldn't say people buy them just because they are cheap.
Come on people, either you don't know what a workstation is, or you haven't used OS X. Compared to Solaris, it's a fisher-price toy. Besides, how many, say, EDA tools have OS X ports? Oh, that's right, zero. And if Sun does go under, where will they get ported? That's right, Microsoft Windows.
Not sure if that's a good approach. If you want simplicity, you might as well teach BASIC. The advantage of C++ is that it's fairly high level and at the same time fairly close to the hardware. Not being responsible for memory allocation and such just makes people sloppy, and Java encourages that. Besides, anyone who knows C++ can learn Java pretty damn quickly. Vice versa is not really true.
Nobody gives a shit about security when evaluating products. Practically every manager/executive will think primarily of the cost and the features that the technology provides. Security is usually an afterthought. Outlook is full of security holes, which routinely get exploited, and people just continue to use it. The same applies for ActiveX and such.
Even if the technology is obviously full of security holes, that will not stop or slow adoption. On the other hand, if the security features interfere with the functionality, that product will die off. Just look at Java applets -- all the ridiculous security restrictions have made them pretty much useless, and everyone just uses ActiveX these days.
Ummm... Because most Linux users don't really like Apple much (the ones that did already switched over) and because most linux users have no use for overpriced radio-quality tracks (128 Kbps? come on).
MUTE is a piece of shit made by a complete idiot. Have you even tried using it? My top speed on it was 500 BYTES per second. The retard who programmed it used a text-based protocol that wastes an incredible amount of usable bandwidth (and there isn't that much to begin with because the protocol is inefficient). In short: good idea, incredibly bad implementation.
What distro are you using? My copy of Mandrake 10 comes with a shitload of precompiled packages and includes a nice graphical package app to manage and install them. Also, newbies should NEVER have to compile source code. That's what binaries are for. What we really do need is something like an extension of the LSB that would provide a standard binary API that is consistent across versions and distributions.
Does it still have a crappy low-res screen? If it doesn't, then I may very well buy it sometime in the near future. It's relatively cheap and seems to the most powerful graphing calc to date.
I own a pair of Grado SR-60 headphones that are open-air. If you listen to them at a reasonable volume, nobody except you will be able hear them, especially on a bus. Of course, you won't be able to hear anything either, hence the need for active noise-canceling.
The only good calculator that TI makes is the 89. The rest are shit. The 89 is faster than the HP 48/49 and has a much, much nicer screen. It is also considerably easier to use and is less expensive.
That just means that your physics class was extremely shitty. At my school, the only thing you will know after doing the physics homework is that similar questions will not be asked on the test. They give you a complete list of formulas, so a calculator will not help you the least bit.
Here's an idea. Don't listen so damn loud! Moderate to high volumes on headphones == rapid hearing loss. Unless you plan on listening to music with a hearing aid in a few years, turn it down. If the environment is too noisy, you may want to invest in some noise-cancelling equipment.
All you need to do is stop being a cheap-ass corporate bastard and design in adequate CPU & memory to handle the job correctly.
It's almost certainly not as simple as "installing a more powerful CPU". Are you an electrical engineer that designs these things? Do you know what chips are available and for what price? Can you make any specific suggestions as to the implementation? If not, SHUT THE FUCK UP. I'm sure that the people who design something as sophisticated as a plasma display are smarter than you are.
At least at my school, ResLife runs its operations on its own separate financial account. Therefore, all of that bandwidth is paid for directly out of the pockets of those who live in the res halls. Therefore, they have absolutely no right to bitch about how that bandwidth is being used. I suspect the situation is exactly the same at your school, too, and the department is just trying to be greedy.
Am I supposed to copy and paste your entire comment to not be selective?
I'm sorry, I thought we were talking about about clones of iTunes & iPhoto.
No, we were talking about innovation in free software.
Things like a pervasive metadata led high performance filesystem.
Which means it was buzzword compliant? What tangible, useful features did the BeOS filesystem enable?
Like high performance multimedia even on limited hardware through excellent SMP & threading.
Linux 2.6 has excellent multimedia support, especially if you use an optimized kernel. But again, what tangible features did this enable in BeOS that Linux cannot do?
How do you know that the OSS development model just doesn't work well with the wide ranging desktop development problem?
As a matter of fact, I think it has been shown that it works very well. There is no "problem". For instance, the KDE project has produced a usable and quite advanced desktop environment that is quite comparable to any other OS on the market today, in just a few years with zero external funding. Now, it does have its issues as far as integration with the underlying system, but to say that the Linux desktop is a failure is simply incorrect. It is quite usable even today if you know what you are doing. It is lightyears ahead of any commercial UNIX offering (such as Solaris, Irix, and so on).
And what makes you think that IBM is interested in pouring money into Linux on the desktop?
Did I ever say that? Or are you putting words in my mouth? It doesn't have to be IBM. It could be Novell, Wal-mart, Intel, Dell, or any large company that buys or sells large quantities of inexpensive desktop computers. After all, hardware prices tend to decrease over time, and I see a problem when your $100 computer needs a $140 operating system.
I personally believe that BeOS as it stands is more advanced than Linux
That just means you don't know jack shit about Linux. What's so impressive about BeOS? Does it have the same kind of enterprise features? Can it run a huge, powerful server? Hell no. It's just a fairly crappy desktop OS. Read about IBM's contributions sometime. Linux, as it is today, pretty much spanks established systems like Solaris as far as price AND performance goes.
If you are talking about the desktop side of things -- nobody invested any money in that yet, unlike the server side of things. Once someone does invest, you can expect it to surpass Windows and OS X pretty quickly.
If you thought there were WMDs in Iraq, a country that had been under decades of sanctions (and had no reason whatsoever to have WMDs), you were an idiot to begin with. The WMD thing seemed to be a pretty obvious lie when it was first brought up.
Two words: hardware support. If that isn't a criterion, you might as well skip the operating system and just write code that runs on the bare hardware. Besides, what would be the goddamn point? That is one of the stupidest ideas I have ever heard.
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Your post is so horribly idiotic I can't help but reply. Just so you know:
- this is not a troll
- people like you are the reason many programmers get outsourced to India.
Computer Science is great and all, and I'm enjoying it, but I know that a lot of what I'm being taught is pretty useless.
Computer science is a SCIENCE, not a "learn-how-to-program-in-just-4-short-years" trade school course. If all you want to know is how to program, read a book or go to a trade school. Sure, you won't ever get a job that pays more than $25K. And that's about how much a crappy programmer is worth these days.
OS Design? Fascinating, but ultimately irrelevant for 99% of coders.
Calculus? Fascinating, but ultimately irrelevant for 99% of auto mechanics.
Look, if you want to be a "coder", don't go into CS. You won't like it, and you will flunk. Pick up one of those nice C++ in 24 hours books, and learn it.
If anything you shouldn't roll your own, as it'll make your code less readable, more bloated and probably slower.
That would simply mean you are a crappy programmer who should not be employed. A good programmer should be able to easily write a good hashtable implementation if he or she needs to. In fact, that's a great job interview question.
Besides, the proper term for a programmer that does not know how to implement a hashtable is "incompetent".
Where are the lectures on writing internationalized code (think character encodings, flippable UI design etc).
This is not related to CS, and is easily learned by reading an appropriate book.
Where are the lectures on writing code with low startup overhead?
Where are the lectures that teach you how to write word processors? What about lectures for writing code for vending machines? How about teaching students to service automotive brakes?
A CS degree should give you enough fundamental knowledge to go read a specialized book and solve a problem by yourself. It's not supposed to teach you everything there is to know.
What about teaching people the merits of various toolkits?
Look, buddy, a degree is supposed to last for a lot more than 1 or 2 years. Do you think CS graduates in the 1970s learned the merits of various punchcard systems and the intricacies of programming daisy-wheel line printers? Teaching skills with a shelf life of 2 years is simply stupid.
Version control theory?
Are you pulling these out of your ass? READ the DOCUMENTATION and you will know how to use a version control system. If you are looking for a management perspective, get a degree in MIS or take some courses in software engineering.
It's possible for a student to come out of a CompSci course and be unable to explain why a containment-based widget toolkit is better than a positional one, yet can talk about VM swapping algorithms and implementing the fastest hashtable probing all day.
What the hell are you talking about? Why in the world should CS graduates know some random obscure stuff about some GUI toolkit (that will probably cease to exist within 5 years)? That kind of knowledge comes from reading subject-specific books and experience. It certainly should not be part of any CS cirriculum.
You are saying that knowing obscure, specialized facts with a shelf life of 1 or 2 years is somehow more important than knowing the fundamental theory behind CS. I certainly suggest you think long and hard about where you are going with your education. This attitude will certainly not get you hired as a programmer by any serious firm. Just so you know, many of them actually ask you to talk about VM swapping algorithms and hashtable probing. They will probably not be impressed by your l33t version control skillz, and by your extensive knowledge of the merits of various toolkits if you obviously don't know any of the fundamentals.
You could say that, but I am pretty tired of people equating computer science with computer programming as a trade. CS is largely a theoretical field, and much of it is quite abstract. It is certainly not about writing web applications and ensuring browser compatibliity like the grandparent claimed.
Again, look at my analogy of electrical engineer versus electrician. One of them designs complex electrical or electronic systems that require fairly deep theoretical knowledge. The other runs cables and installs breaker boxes, outlets, and switches. Both require skills and training, and the main difference is the depth of theoretical knowledge required. It's the same thing with programmers versus code monkeys.
That is NOT computer science, simply because writing a frontend to a database requires minimal applications of that stuff. A nice litmus test for codemonkey versus computer scientist is whether you will have to create or use a single algorithm that is not in the standard library. Web applications do not require that 99% of the time, so they can be developed almost completely by codemonkeys.
If you can publish something you developed in a scientific peer-reviewed journal, it's computer science. If you simply put together something from prefab pieces, it is NOT computer science.
Anyway, saying that you need to know computer science to program a frontend to a database is like saying you need a degree in electrical engineering to wire up a house. The truth is, there are way too many people with CS degrees and not enough CS positions. But don't mix CS with coding. They are very far apart.
First, AMD is still the only company to offer a 64-bit x86-compatible CPU. That is a HUGE achievement, and they have definitely gained a foothold in the server market with the Opteron (while intel is playing catch-up). AMD delivers a lot of bang for the buck compared to Intel, so I wouldn't say people buy them just because they are cheap.
Come on people, either you don't know what a workstation is, or you haven't used OS X. Compared to Solaris, it's a fisher-price toy. Besides, how many, say, EDA tools have OS X ports? Oh, that's right, zero. And if Sun does go under, where will they get ported? That's right, Microsoft Windows.
Not sure if that's a good approach. If you want simplicity, you might as well teach BASIC. The advantage of C++ is that it's fairly high level and at the same time fairly close to the hardware. Not being responsible for memory allocation and such just makes people sloppy, and Java encourages that. Besides, anyone who knows C++ can learn Java pretty damn quickly. Vice versa is not really true.
"It's okay if it happens to your finger. Yes, you can prick your finger, but don't finger your prick. No, no."
Nobody gives a shit about security when evaluating products. Practically every manager/executive will think primarily of the cost and the features that the technology provides. Security is usually an afterthought. Outlook is full of security holes, which routinely get exploited, and people just continue to use it. The same applies for ActiveX and such.
Even if the technology is obviously full of security holes, that will not stop or slow adoption. On the other hand, if the security features interfere with the functionality, that product will die off. Just look at Java applets -- all the ridiculous security restrictions have made them pretty much useless, and everyone just uses ActiveX these days.
Ummm... Because most Linux users don't really like Apple much (the ones that did already switched over) and because most linux users have no use for overpriced radio-quality tracks (128 Kbps? come on).
MUTE is a piece of shit made by a complete idiot. Have you even tried using it? My top speed on it was 500 BYTES per second. The retard who programmed it used a text-based protocol that wastes an incredible amount of usable bandwidth (and there isn't that much to begin with because the protocol is inefficient). In short: good idea, incredibly bad implementation.
Ummm... they are not idiots, unlike you.
What distro are you using? My copy of Mandrake 10 comes with a shitload of precompiled packages and includes a nice graphical package app to manage and install them. Also, newbies should NEVER have to compile source code. That's what binaries are for. What we really do need is something like an extension of the LSB that would provide a standard binary API that is consistent across versions and distributions.
Does it still have a crappy low-res screen? If it doesn't, then I may very well buy it sometime in the near future. It's relatively cheap and seems to the most powerful graphing calc to date.
I own a pair of Grado SR-60 headphones that are open-air. If you listen to them at a reasonable volume, nobody except you will be able hear them, especially on a bus. Of course, you won't be able to hear anything either, hence the need for active noise-canceling.
The only good calculator that TI makes is the 89. The rest are shit. The 89 is faster than the HP 48/49 and has a much, much nicer screen. It is also considerably easier to use and is less expensive.
That just means that your physics class was extremely shitty. At my school, the only thing you will know after doing the physics homework is that similar questions will not be asked on the test. They give you a complete list of formulas, so a calculator will not help you the least bit.
Yeah, yeah, whatever. Real engineers hardly ever use calculators, considering there are things like Matlab around.
Here's an idea. Don't listen so damn loud! Moderate to high volumes on headphones == rapid hearing loss. Unless you plan on listening to music with a hearing aid in a few years, turn it down. If the environment is too noisy, you may want to invest in some noise-cancelling equipment.
All you need to do is stop being a cheap-ass corporate bastard and design in adequate CPU & memory to handle the job correctly.
It's almost certainly not as simple as "installing a more powerful CPU". Are you an electrical engineer that designs these things? Do you know what chips are available and for what price? Can you make any specific suggestions as to the implementation? If not, SHUT THE FUCK UP. I'm sure that the people who design something as sophisticated as a plasma display are smarter than you are.
If you are so goddamn smart, why don't you make a better display? Oh wait, it's because you aren't. So STFU please.
At least at my school, ResLife runs its operations on its own separate financial account. Therefore, all of that bandwidth is paid for directly out of the pockets of those who live in the res halls. Therefore, they have absolutely no right to bitch about how that bandwidth is being used. I suspect the situation is exactly the same at your school, too, and the department is just trying to be greedy.
Nice selective quoting there.
Am I supposed to copy and paste your entire comment to not be selective?
I'm sorry, I thought we were talking about about clones of iTunes & iPhoto.
No, we were talking about innovation in free software.
Things like a pervasive metadata led high performance filesystem.
Which means it was buzzword compliant? What tangible, useful features did the BeOS filesystem enable?
Like high performance multimedia even on limited hardware through excellent SMP & threading.
Linux 2.6 has excellent multimedia support, especially if you use an optimized kernel. But again, what tangible features did this enable in BeOS that Linux cannot do?
How do you know that the OSS development model just doesn't work well with the wide ranging desktop development problem?
As a matter of fact, I think it has been shown that it works very well. There is no "problem". For instance, the KDE project has produced a usable and quite advanced desktop environment that is quite comparable to any other OS on the market today, in just a few years with zero external funding. Now, it does have its issues as far as integration with the underlying system, but to say that the Linux desktop is a failure is simply incorrect. It is quite usable even today if you know what you are doing. It is lightyears ahead of any commercial UNIX offering (such as Solaris, Irix, and so on).
And what makes you think that IBM is interested in pouring money into Linux on the desktop?
Did I ever say that? Or are you putting words in my mouth? It doesn't have to be IBM. It could be Novell, Wal-mart, Intel, Dell, or any large company that buys or sells large quantities of inexpensive desktop computers. After all, hardware prices tend to decrease over time, and I see a problem when your $100 computer needs a $140 operating system.
I personally believe that BeOS as it stands is more advanced than Linux
That just means you don't know jack shit about Linux. What's so impressive about BeOS? Does it have the same kind of enterprise features? Can it run a huge, powerful server? Hell no. It's just a fairly crappy desktop OS. Read about IBM's contributions sometime. Linux, as it is today, pretty much spanks established systems like Solaris as far as price AND performance goes.
If you are talking about the desktop side of things -- nobody invested any money in that yet, unlike the server side of things. Once someone does invest, you can expect it to surpass Windows and OS X pretty quickly.
If you thought there were WMDs in Iraq, a country that had been under decades of sanctions (and had no reason whatsoever to have WMDs), you were an idiot to begin with. The WMD thing seemed to be a pretty obvious lie when it was first brought up.
Two words: hardware support. If that isn't a criterion, you might as well skip the operating system and just write code that runs on the bare hardware. Besides, what would be the goddamn point? That is one of the stupidest ideas I have ever heard.