Maybe you'd like to point out a true communist government somewhere? As far as I can tell all of the modern "communist" countries were socialist where the government owned everything. That's not communism.
In communism the people own everything and everyone works for the good of everyone. The obvious problem is that people are lazy and greedy. If I build houses and you just do gardening, I'm going to expect to make more than you. After all if I don't build a house you don't even have a place to garden. Or I'm lazy, while the rest of you losers work to better society I'm just going to reap the benefits of your work without contributing....
Even a lot of the old tribes had differences in status between certain people. Maybe in the whole garden of Eden thing communism would work but not in a real world.
And socialism, concentrating all the power in the government, seems like an even bigger disaster. For some reason all the socialist governments seem to be ultra corrupt. And somehow many of them seem to be ruled by some kind of monarchy type thing. North Korea seems like a brutal Monarchy. Cuba, it seemed like Fidel Castro had all the power there. But even if it was a "democratic" government like the US that had all the power. Does anyone really thing congress is on the side of the people? Does anyone really think the supreme court is on the side of the people? Does anyone think the president is on the side of the people? Well if you do go get your head examined and also never vote again you idiot. Even if the US government became all powerful (which it seems to be on the way to becoming) it would be a disaster.
Communism = great, best form of government if people are perfect and everyone wants to work to better society, it's a fantasy..
Socialism = give all the power to the government have them in control of everything. Then the corrupt people in the government get the power to run everything, even out the wealth while keeping it for themselves, what a disaster....
"Democracy" = Some sort of elected representation. You just have to win the popularity contest and you can do what you want. Quite often the choice is between a handful of political parties that are held sway to whoever pays them with contributions. In the US it is really easy because there are only 2 parties and mostly they agree except for a few token issues.
Except you won't learn everything in the masters course on your own unless you are very driven. A lot of that material will never be used at all in a job. For a typical corporate job writing front ends for database and some SQL a large portion of even the undergraduate education is unused. There are exceptions where you use a lot more (game development, Google, etc.).
For example, graduate algorithm analysis. Generally the undergrad version teaches the data structures and big O notation (which with a lot of the libraries these days is often not even used...but occasionally I pull out Big O to understand the library implementation when something is going slow and rewrite to use another library implementation with better asymptotic running time..ie Array List into Dictionary, etc..). The graduate version focuses more on proofs of correctness, proofs of running time, etc... In my last two jobs and this one I don't see myself ever using that. But if you are creating your own algorithm to do something, or reading papers on other people's recent discoveries then it is useful to understand their analysis/proof of correctness.
Some Masters Course Topics: Image Processing, Operating System Theory, Networking, Algorithms, Graph Theory, Databases, Data Mining, Pattern Recognition, Computer Vision, Artificial Intelligence, Programming Languages/Compilers, Complexity Theory, Information Retrieval, Cryptography, Parallel/High Performance Computing, etc... The chances of using all these things in a given job are thin. Learning them all on your own would require quite a bit of reading. But do you really learn as much by reading a book as you do by reading the book, listening to the professor, studying the material for an exam, and doing assignments?
For me the masters gets me to read some of the same material in my stack of books that I have been meaning to "get around" to, plus a bunch of additional stuff...
It seemed like the poster was not thinking of a part time program. If you have no experience. Which would you rather, especially in an economic downturn when everyone is cutting costs? Go with the more expensive unknown or the cheaper unknown?
I see a lot of companies trying to hire recent graduates with bachelors degrees (even replacing older workers) to not only get fresh blood, but to save money. Someone just graduating is much cheaper before they get experience.
I would agree it is what you are willing to make out of it. But the average student will not make that much. And it is a huge risk. If your thesis is not super applicable then your chances of getting a research job are much less than if you just did a PhD.
Even as an undergrad you can get internships, dabble into a problem, work with a professor, and land a research job in industry. But that is more rare. It happens (and my school at least throws those stories on their website as testimonials). But for the normal person you go to school and get a Bachelors that lets you get an average job. Then you go and get a masters that maybe gives you a pay raise or if you are just starting out (once you find a job) it lets you start a bit higher on the ladder. With a masters and even a bachelors you can get a research job. But you have to do convincing, even in your example you had to network and then taylor your masters. While a PhD is just a standard card of admission to research jobs. It makes it much easier to be taken seriously and to land one. To pull it off with a masters or less requires much more networking/drive/etc..
That would be the exception then. Most programs I have seen have a PhD like that, but the masters is more class oriented. Even for a thesis you take a general set of core requirements for masters, and then a bunch of electives with a significant portion of those electives being dedicated to a specialization. Then you spend a semester or two writing the thesis.
A lot of PhD programs seem to consider the Masters as a way of getting breadth in order to pass the qualifying examinations and the PhD as a way of getting depth to focus on your one area.
Wrong and right. Masters is "supposed" to be mastering a subject area and learning to function at state of the art.
PhD is supposed to be extending the body of knowledge and becoming a world expert on an area. There are some ways of blurring this with a masters thesis. But mostly, if you're going to go through the trouble of writing a thesis, why get a masters when you can get a PhD? Also with just a masters it is often tough to get a research job. And for a full tenure track college professor job a PhD is generally required.
Almost all programs I've seen have a project. A large portion of them also have a thesis. You specialize in one area, take mostly courses (with a few extra electives in that area) and then spend two classes writing a thesis.
In my school you cannot get a masters if you are funded. And you cannot drop out of the PhD program, then take the credits to the masters program and pay for the extra. If you don't make PhD you get nothing. No pressure:)
Hence why I'm funding my own Masters prior to making a run for a PhD. Then if I opt out, at least I have something....
For government jobs I've heard your pay grade is set by degree. But for most corporate jobs it is set by who you suck up to. And for managing companies a Masters in CS doesn't mean that much to them. An MBA is much more valuable. But it is more business experience rather than technical experience that gets you promoted to things like Directors, Vice Presidents, Managing Directors, etc... And the MBA provides more than a MS in CS.
You can get a Masters at night. It takes 1 year to 1 year and a partial semester to get a CS masters full time. At night it kind of extends it out to about 2.5 years (in my case).
In most companies, who filters the resumes first? HR has a bigger say on the staff than you give them credit for. They are generally negligent on many technologies. They often filter resumes for key words.
Is someone a superstar programmer without a college degree? They will probably filter him/her out.
Did someone get a 4.0 GPA in CS and program in SQL Server/C# on their jobs? Well sorry you asked for a mid level candidate which they put as 5+ years Java experience.
Sure you choose among the candidates whose resumes you get. But HR gets to apply a filter before you even see them generally. Their filter tends to favor people who did the exact same thing as the job you are posting for in their previous jobs. Basically it leads to a lot of bored employees.....
I'm a little confused. "The experience of focusing on one problem and becoming a world expert on" would seem to apply to a PhD program and not a Masters program. The Masters is basically just a bunch of classes generally not that different from undergrad classes except that they tend to have bigger projects in each class.
Then the end game of the program seems to be a project (bigger in scope than undergrad), a thesis (less common but still around), or you just take extra classes (not all places have this).
With no experience a masters may hurt you in a recession though, because who would you rather hire? The undergrad with no experience, or the masters with no experience who will be expecting more money than the undergrad?
I would debate this. In the US at least typical college age is 18-22 so by 25 you only have 3 years experience.
Some people start school a year early or carry enough AP credit to graduate at 21, but it is pretty common to graduate at 22.
Also it is becoming more and more common to graduate college in 5 years. For things like Engineering, at least in the school I went to, it was a 5 year program. I think computer engineering was 4 years because that degree was from the CS department and not the engineering department. But anyway if you figure a real engineering degree than you graduate at 23 and that is only 2 years experience. Anyway I'd say 2 or 3 years experience would be much more common than 4.
I call bullshit on this. In all actuality implementing these things efficiently is tough. Well not so much bubble sort/lists. But a btree is tricky. And a hash table is tricky.
Let's look at the hash table, the hashing function is the most critical part and these are hard to design and require in depth mathematical analysis that most CS students don't learn even at the level of a MS. So sure any idiot can implement a hash function % PRIME TABLE SIZE. But to design an efficient one, that is tough. Generally it is better to use the built in library.
Also to design an efficient quicksort is tough. small seemingly unimportant details could make huge differences in cache hit rates and the speed of the algorithm.
Also doing these things at the drop of a hat is the problem. Many "top programmers" or "gurus" do these things at the drop of a hat and leave bugs in them that don't always show up. In general the libraries are more or less well tested and generally are good fairly efficient implementations.
Are data structures useless? No. Basically you need to understand the library implementation of things. For example someone here was joining two lists of records together doing n^2 operations. He was also looking into a 3rd list for some weird value (in error) causing n^2 * m operations. Anyway I changed it to sort both lists and then merge them together. Each sort was nlogn and the code went from about 15 mins to about 3 (there were other issues too like trips over the network which I changed as well). But basically I didn't implement the sorts, I knew their order. In general that is what you should get from Data Structures. You should know the operations of hash tables, array lists, linked lists, trees, heaps, etc.... And be able to understand their performance and the trade offs. This also helps you when you think "can I do this faster?". Sometimes the line of thought is hmm....maybe if i used a heap...or maybe I can modify binary search to do this....
Also there is some value to understanding the sorting algorithms, but with the libraries available to implement them for most business jobs linking databases to front end screens and maybe some calculations you won't need to use them. But some examples are:
Merge Sort: Understanding the merge algorithm as well as divide and conquer...the merge technique is also used by SQL databases to do joins.
Quick sort: understanding divide and conquer here and the technique of splitting the list. It is also how you can find the median or other kth value by modifying this algorithm.
Bubble Sort: bear with me here. But the bubbling technique is awfully similar to walking up or down a heap. It's a bit of a stretch I know....It can also tell you in O(n) time if a list is sorted or not.
Radix Sort: under utilized. For ASCII characters I would say that if the keys aren't too long this should be the preferred way of sorting a strings. Technically it's bucket sort but anyway....
Well if you can't afford that much usage than don't sell it. Let's say you get 1 Mb/Second transfer speeds. Then basically that is 60 Mb per minute or 3600 Mb per hour or 86400 Mb per day that you could download. Go to MB and you get 10800 MB per day, or 10.5 GB per day.
Assuming the math is right, but the point is even with a 1 MB per second, in a few days you will reach their limit of 44 GB if you download all day.
So the question is if bandwidth is so bad and they can't afford 4 days of downloading at 1 Mb/Sec, why would they be selling 3 Mb/Sec connections and more. It would seem that higher speed connections only encourage people to reach that limit even faster.
Sure and if they start charging for each GB over the limit, I'm sure they will roll out 100 Mb/sec service with a ridiculously small limit. I wish congressman weren't such idiots to fall for their whining. It's pretty clear that the cable companies want to kill video over the internet (unless of course it is their own service, or people like you tube want to pay them for the extra bill). I think some of the quotes were only a few dollars per subscriber to upgrade their network. With their current inflated prices they get more than that, but rather than upgrade they take it as profits. If they were really cash strapped I wouldn't mind an extra 5 dollars per month to upgrade their network, but they won't upgrade they'll book it as profit or use it for something else.
Basically the cable providers are fuckers with outdated business models trying to make a power grab and rip people off as much as possible. They also have a monopoly in a lot of areas.
I suspect they wanted to be caught traffic throttling and saying the internet is going to collapse so that they could try to kill internet video publicly. Then they try to charge, and now they just cut people off. Soon they'll start rolling out their own unlimited video services that will not do bandwidth caps, just watch.
Why did you study CS? For a job? Did you study to learn about Computer Science because you are interested?
What are your future plans? Do you want to run your own company, work at google, be a mid level technical manager at some company?
Without knowing your goals and motivations it is impossible to answer this question. It sounds like maybe you are in CS for a job in which case a Bachelors will get you a job programming (and in fact there are many many programmers who didn't even get a college degree). The MBA will let you play with the company executives and speak their language. In fact there's a good chance that if you get an MBA mostly you will be doing managing, accounting, marketing, etc. with just a side role of IT. With an MBA you are probably going to be first and foremost a business guy leveraging your IT background to communicate between the IT people and the business people. It also opens up roles like CIO/CTO, etc. (although many people without MBAs get those jobs). And it is probably more recession proof (until everyone gets an MBA). Based on the little you've said and how concerned you are about a job, I think this is probably the path for you but I'm not sure. Also with an MBA you will learn a lot about businesses which will be a great help if one day you decide to run your own company.
I am getting an MS in CS and am thinking if I want a PhD. I learned CS because computers seemed interesting and programming seemed fun. For that, I don't want a watered down program (and in fact am complaining that the CS department is not offering some of the harder classes due to lack of interest [ie AI/Compilers/etc.]). I don't think I would enjoy to be CIO or some VP who spends most of his day overseeing budgets and speaking with upper management about the direction of the company and then communicating the goals to the IT grunt workers. The difference between the MS in CS and IT seems to be that IT/IS requires more business courses and is concerned with how to manage technology while CS teaches you more about what it is. There is some overlap between both sets of degrees. In both you are expected to know discrete math, algorithms, how to program, something about computer hardware, and something about networks. Beyond that CS will have more advanced mathematical and theoretical courses while IS will have some business courses. And the PhD seems to be an MS with a few more classes (in my case 3 more) and a thesis (which is the big thing).
I would say if you want to learn about the technology then get the MS in CS like me. If you want a career in research or to extend the body of knowledge and maybe discover something cool, go with a PhD. If management is what you want, then forget about the MS in IS/IT and just go get your MBA. That will make you much more valuable to the business people, and give you a thorough grounding in a lot of the basic operations of companies (accounting, marketing, management, etc.) and it will be very useful if you ever decide to start your own. Also an MBA opens more doors for you in management. With IS/IT you may always be tied to the IT department while with an MBA you are valuable in any area of the business. Also I think an MBA will help you come up with more ideas on what to build and how to add value to the business. I think an IS/IT degree is good for people interested in business without the technical background, but you have the Bachelors already so you have the technical backround. It is more the business background that you need. Also a Masters in CS isn't that much more than a bachelors, even in pure CS it consists of Networking, Databases, Architecture, Algorithms, Operating Systems, and then a bunch of electives. Generally those 5 areas are the core areas with at least a few required and the rest is all optional. In IS generally they require more management and have more an emphasis on databases (since most business applications are using/managing databases). CS is basically how do you data mine, how do you imple
I for one would love it if all those pesky people who like to chat on their cell phones in the middle of the movie can no longer do it due to it being checked in. Basically that is why I don't like to go to movies. If it's not some loud mouth talking on the phone it is some obnoxious kid text messaging his/her friends with a super bright screen that keeps drawing your eyes. I say check the darn things in.
What if amazon goes under? All those ebooks that I may have bought will be gone. If you look at some of the music DRM services, what happens when Amazon decides not to support the format anymore?
I want an e reader because my books are piling up. But I want the same rights I get for paper books and until I get that I will not buy one. I have some books that are older than me. Now I see people with this e-reader or that e-reader and then a year or two later they have a new one and re-buy all their books.
I want all the benefits of paper books but without wasting all the space on books. Also as a society, what happens if in years people dig up our society and just find these e-readers with a proprietary format? All of our knowledge will be lost whereas with books/tablets at least they can get something to try to translate.
you should realize that spending an extra $100 on a Mac is well worth it
Ah my good friend, alas but if it was only an extra $100 then I might consider it. But a good mac computer is way more than $100 more than an equivalent PC with the same hardware. That is my first gripe with Macs, that their hardware is the same as that of a normal PC but they charge you like it is caviar or something.
My second gripe with MACS is that for a lot of the software you have to keep going back to Steve Jobs and that is kind of expensive. Windows has way more freeware/shareware than a MAC. Although now the situation is improved due to the BSD kernel. Nevertheless there are a fair share of apps that don't work on a Mac. An example of this is in the article, the D programming language. The article mentions that porting D wasn't trivial, the guy had to do more than just run make on the BSD box. Plus as has been mentioned Linux is often incompatible with other UNIXlike operating systems as well. So just because your favorite app works in linux is no guarantee of mac compatibility.
Anyway all said I'd love to buy a MAC to experiment around. But everytime I look at a MAC and I think oh that's not that much more expensive than a PC, I realize that the MAC and the PC often are on a different level of Hardware with the PC having more RAM/Better Video Card/Faster Processor. I see that and figure I'll just go with the cheaper PC.
Then why does the government impose import tariffs to protect companies in many cases. If society is built on competition, then american businesses do not need these tariffs to inflate the value of foreign goods.
I would assume some of the 5,000 people that Microsoft laid off were "skilled enough" for the job.
Sorry friend, if there is such a shortage how can Microsoft and the other companies afford to cut all these tech jobs? if there is such a shortage don't they need every tech worker they can get?
Maybe in Mars you can fire a ton of tech workers and then claim a shortage of qualified workers (or in the Capital) but in reality you just fired a bunch of qualified tech workers (they were qualified enough to be hired in the first place). So go figure.
Perl has "shortcomings" depending on taste (for some people it may be perfect and that is fine). Personally I hate Perl's object system. Some of the other languages fix some of the Perl "shortcomings". In particular I like Python's object system. Still I find a lot of things in Python that I preferred in Perl (like the regular expressions, and also I'll take braces over white space or even ruby's end). However for me even with all its flaws (for me) I now prefer Python over Perl.
Perl6 has potential. The new object system seems much better than Perl 5 (to me). If Perl 6 was out I think it would be harder to choose between Python and Perl and there is a good chance I would choose Perl. But as of now Perl 6 is sadly not ready for prime time. And Perl 5 is still Perl 5.
It's not that Perl 5 is broken, it's that other languages are evolving to a new level (in many cases a new level of LISPness:)). Perl 6 is Perl's evolution but it is delayed. So for me, and a bunch of others, we are on the Python/Ruby/Lua/etc. until Perl 6 wagon.
Passing tests is something, but does not in itself equate to completeness.
Look at http://www.perlfoundation.org/perl6/index.cgi?development_dashboard that seems to have some goals. But still "Language Definition" is on the todo list. And "Language Definition" seems a pretty big item to me, as changes in that can change the tests. Not only that, would you write a bunch of code in a language knowing that at any moment it could be invalidated by a few small tweaks? I wouldn't, not production code at least.
They have some other things like the command line (deciding what it is, then implementing it), deciding what the installation package is, etc.. But still until the language design is frozen, you will never be done. And if a major change is made that results totally rebuilding the architecture you could end up throwing a lot of work away.
This todo list seems more like a brainstorm. Really what is needed is someone like Larry Wall to finish his documentation, then someone to write tests based on the Perl 6 language design (In Perl 6) and then passing those tests can become a chart to Perl 6. Although there will still be issues such as installation package, converting modules in CPAN and getting it working with Perl6, etc... But the most important thing is to get the language down. Then people will start playing with it to get a jump on learning Perl 6. And once the language is finalized it can start to be used in some corporate settings as a piece of beta software.
Most likely the real Perl 6 revolution won't come until CPAN (or some other entity like it) is made for Perl 6 and has some of the more useful modules (like DBI among others). Right now a large part of Perl's value is CPAN and the various modules available. That is another project that cannot even really fully start until after the language is finalized.
Don't give up. I graduated in Spring 2002 and found my first job in March 2003. It sucks but even a 3.96 GPA did not help me. It would have been better to party more in college and have fun. Then sweat the job later. The economy in 2002 was tough just like it is now. I think in Spring 2008 it was better than spring 2002 but after fall 2008 I think we started setting new records for awfulness. So it may take you longer to find a job. Maybe try rentacoder.com (I don't think it was around back then) even third world depressed wages and $5/hr are better than nothing.
I'm going to say that another thing missing is direction from the top. The last time I poked around (admittedly 6 or so months ago) it didn't look like there was a clear path laid out to release. More developers won't fix that. Without someone at the top directing things you have chaos. Not only that, but volunteers will lose motivation after a time. Many are goal oriented and want to see that they are making progress towards a goal.
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Maybe you'd like to point out a true communist government somewhere? As far as I can tell all of the modern "communist" countries were socialist where the government owned everything. That's not communism.
In communism the people own everything and everyone works for the good of everyone. The obvious problem is that people are lazy and greedy. If I build houses and you just do gardening, I'm going to expect to make more than you. After all if I don't build a house you don't even have a place to garden. Or I'm lazy, while the rest of you losers work to better society I'm just going to reap the benefits of your work without contributing....
Even a lot of the old tribes had differences in status between certain people. Maybe in the whole garden of Eden thing communism would work but not in a real world.
And socialism, concentrating all the power in the government, seems like an even bigger disaster. For some reason all the socialist governments seem to be ultra corrupt. And somehow many of them seem to be ruled by some kind of monarchy type thing. North Korea seems like a brutal Monarchy. Cuba, it seemed like Fidel Castro had all the power there. But even if it was a "democratic" government like the US that had all the power. Does anyone really thing congress is on the side of the people? Does anyone really think the supreme court is on the side of the people? Does anyone think the president is on the side of the people? Well if you do go get your head examined and also never vote again you idiot. Even if the US government became all powerful (which it seems to be on the way to becoming) it would be a disaster.
Communism = great, best form of government if people are perfect and everyone wants to work to better society, it's a fantasy..
Socialism = give all the power to the government have them in control of everything. Then the corrupt people in the government get the power to run everything, even out the wealth while keeping it for themselves, what a disaster....
"Democracy" = Some sort of elected representation. You just have to win the popularity contest and you can do what you want. Quite often the choice is between a handful of political parties that are held sway to whoever pays them with contributions. In the US it is really easy because there are only 2 parties and mostly they agree except for a few token issues.
Except you won't learn everything in the masters course on your own unless you are very driven. A lot of that material will never be used at all in a job. For a typical corporate job writing front ends for database and some SQL a large portion of even the undergraduate education is unused. There are exceptions where you use a lot more (game development, Google, etc.).
For example, graduate algorithm analysis. Generally the undergrad version teaches the data structures and big O notation (which with a lot of the libraries these days is often not even used...but occasionally I pull out Big O to understand the library implementation when something is going slow and rewrite to use another library implementation with better asymptotic running time..ie Array List into Dictionary, etc..). The graduate version focuses more on proofs of correctness, proofs of running time, etc... In my last two jobs and this one I don't see myself ever using that. But if you are creating your own algorithm to do something, or reading papers on other people's recent discoveries then it is useful to understand their analysis/proof of correctness.
Some Masters Course Topics: Image Processing, Operating System Theory, Networking, Algorithms, Graph Theory, Databases, Data Mining, Pattern Recognition, Computer Vision, Artificial Intelligence, Programming Languages/Compilers, Complexity Theory, Information Retrieval, Cryptography, Parallel/High Performance Computing, etc... The chances of using all these things in a given job are thin. Learning them all on your own would require quite a bit of reading. But do you really learn as much by reading a book as you do by reading the book, listening to the professor, studying the material for an exam, and doing assignments?
For me the masters gets me to read some of the same material in my stack of books that I have been meaning to "get around" to, plus a bunch of additional stuff...
It seemed like the poster was not thinking of a part time program. If you have no experience. Which would you rather, especially in an economic downturn when everyone is cutting costs? Go with the more expensive unknown or the cheaper unknown?
I see a lot of companies trying to hire recent graduates with bachelors degrees (even replacing older workers) to not only get fresh blood, but to save money. Someone just graduating is much cheaper before they get experience.
I would agree it is what you are willing to make out of it. But the average student will not make that much. And it is a huge risk. If your thesis is not super applicable then your chances of getting a research job are much less than if you just did a PhD.
Even as an undergrad you can get internships, dabble into a problem, work with a professor, and land a research job in industry. But that is more rare. It happens (and my school at least throws those stories on their website as testimonials). But for the normal person you go to school and get a Bachelors that lets you get an average job. Then you go and get a masters that maybe gives you a pay raise or if you are just starting out (once you find a job) it lets you start a bit higher on the ladder. With a masters and even a bachelors you can get a research job. But you have to do convincing, even in your example you had to network and then taylor your masters. While a PhD is just a standard card of admission to research jobs. It makes it much easier to be taken seriously and to land one. To pull it off with a masters or less requires much more networking/drive/etc..
That would be the exception then. Most programs I have seen have a PhD like that, but the masters is more class oriented. Even for a thesis you take a general set of core requirements for masters, and then a bunch of electives with a significant portion of those electives being dedicated to a specialization. Then you spend a semester or two writing the thesis.
A lot of PhD programs seem to consider the Masters as a way of getting breadth in order to pass the qualifying examinations and the PhD as a way of getting depth to focus on your one area.
Wrong and right. Masters is "supposed" to be mastering a subject area and learning to function at state of the art.
PhD is supposed to be extending the body of knowledge and becoming a world expert on an area. There are some ways of blurring this with a masters thesis. But mostly, if you're going to go through the trouble of writing a thesis, why get a masters when you can get a PhD? Also with just a masters it is often tough to get a research job. And for a full tenure track college professor job a PhD is generally required.
Almost all programs I've seen have a project. A large portion of them also have a thesis. You specialize in one area, take mostly courses (with a few extra electives in that area) and then spend two classes writing a thesis.
In my school you cannot get a masters if you are funded. And you cannot drop out of the PhD program, then take the credits to the masters program and pay for the extra. If you don't make PhD you get nothing. No pressure :)
Hence why I'm funding my own Masters prior to making a run for a PhD. Then if I opt out, at least I have something....
For government jobs I've heard your pay grade is set by degree. But for most corporate jobs it is set by who you suck up to. And for managing companies a Masters in CS doesn't mean that much to them. An MBA is much more valuable. But it is more business experience rather than technical experience that gets you promoted to things like Directors, Vice Presidents, Managing Directors, etc... And the MBA provides more than a MS in CS.
You can get a Masters at night. It takes 1 year to 1 year and a partial semester to get a CS masters full time. At night it kind of extends it out to about 2.5 years (in my case).
In most companies, who filters the resumes first? HR has a bigger say on the staff than you give them credit for. They are generally negligent on many technologies. They often filter resumes for key words.
Is someone a superstar programmer without a college degree? They will probably filter him/her out.
Did someone get a 4.0 GPA in CS and program in SQL Server/C# on their jobs? Well sorry you asked for a mid level candidate which they put as 5+ years Java experience.
Sure you choose among the candidates whose resumes you get. But HR gets to apply a filter before you even see them generally. Their filter tends to favor people who did the exact same thing as the job you are posting for in their previous jobs. Basically it leads to a lot of bored employees.....
I'm a little confused. "The experience of focusing on one problem and becoming a world expert on" would seem to apply to a PhD program and not a Masters program. The Masters is basically just a bunch of classes generally not that different from undergrad classes except that they tend to have bigger projects in each class.
Then the end game of the program seems to be a project (bigger in scope than undergrad), a thesis (less common but still around), or you just take extra classes (not all places have this).
With no experience a masters may hurt you in a recession though, because who would you rather hire? The undergrad with no experience, or the masters with no experience who will be expecting more money than the undergrad?
I would debate this. In the US at least typical college age is 18-22 so by 25 you only have 3 years experience.
Some people start school a year early or carry enough AP credit to graduate at 21, but it is pretty common to graduate at 22.
Also it is becoming more and more common to graduate college in 5 years. For things like Engineering, at least in the school I went to, it was a 5 year program. I think computer engineering was 4 years because that degree was from the CS department and not the engineering department. But anyway if you figure a real engineering degree than you graduate at 23 and that is only 2 years experience. Anyway I'd say 2 or 3 years experience would be much more common than 4.
I call bullshit on this. In all actuality implementing these things efficiently is tough. Well not so much bubble sort/lists. But a btree is tricky. And a hash table is tricky.
Let's look at the hash table, the hashing function is the most critical part and these are hard to design and require in depth mathematical analysis that most CS students don't learn even at the level of a MS. So sure any idiot can implement a hash function % PRIME TABLE SIZE. But to design an efficient one, that is tough. Generally it is better to use the built in library.
Also to design an efficient quicksort is tough. small seemingly unimportant details could make huge differences in cache hit rates and the speed of the algorithm.
Also doing these things at the drop of a hat is the problem. Many "top programmers" or "gurus" do these things at the drop of a hat and leave bugs in them that don't always show up. In general the libraries are more or less well tested and generally are good fairly efficient implementations.
Are data structures useless? No. Basically you need to understand the library implementation of things. For example someone here was joining two lists of records together doing n^2 operations. He was also looking into a 3rd list for some weird value (in error) causing n^2 * m operations. Anyway I changed it to sort both lists and then merge them together. Each sort was nlogn and the code went from about 15 mins to about 3 (there were other issues too like trips over the network which I changed as well). But basically I didn't implement the sorts, I knew their order. In general that is what you should get from Data Structures. You should know the operations of hash tables, array lists, linked lists, trees, heaps, etc.... And be able to understand their performance and the trade offs. This also helps you when you think "can I do this faster?". Sometimes the line of thought is hmm....maybe if i used a heap...or maybe I can modify binary search to do this....
Also there is some value to understanding the sorting algorithms, but with the libraries available to implement them for most business jobs linking databases to front end screens and maybe some calculations you won't need to use them. But some examples are:
Merge Sort: Understanding the merge algorithm as well as divide and conquer...the merge technique is also used by SQL databases to do joins.
Quick sort: understanding divide and conquer here and the technique of splitting the list. It is also how you can find the median or other kth value by modifying this algorithm.
Bubble Sort: bear with me here. But the bubbling technique is awfully similar to walking up or down a heap. It's a bit of a stretch I know....It can also tell you in O(n) time if a list is sorted or not. Radix Sort: under utilized. For ASCII characters I would say that if the keys aren't too long this should be the preferred way of sorting a strings. Technically it's bucket sort but anyway....
Well if you can't afford that much usage than don't sell it. Let's say you get 1 Mb/Second transfer speeds. Then basically that is 60 Mb per minute or 3600 Mb per hour or 86400 Mb per day that you could download. Go to MB and you get 10800 MB per day, or 10.5 GB per day. Assuming the math is right, but the point is even with a 1 MB per second, in a few days you will reach their limit of 44 GB if you download all day. So the question is if bandwidth is so bad and they can't afford 4 days of downloading at 1 Mb/Sec, why would they be selling 3 Mb/Sec connections and more. It would seem that higher speed connections only encourage people to reach that limit even faster. Sure and if they start charging for each GB over the limit, I'm sure they will roll out 100 Mb/sec service with a ridiculously small limit. I wish congressman weren't such idiots to fall for their whining. It's pretty clear that the cable companies want to kill video over the internet (unless of course it is their own service, or people like you tube want to pay them for the extra bill). I think some of the quotes were only a few dollars per subscriber to upgrade their network. With their current inflated prices they get more than that, but rather than upgrade they take it as profits. If they were really cash strapped I wouldn't mind an extra 5 dollars per month to upgrade their network, but they won't upgrade they'll book it as profit or use it for something else. Basically the cable providers are fuckers with outdated business models trying to make a power grab and rip people off as much as possible. They also have a monopoly in a lot of areas. I suspect they wanted to be caught traffic throttling and saying the internet is going to collapse so that they could try to kill internet video publicly. Then they try to charge, and now they just cut people off. Soon they'll start rolling out their own unlimited video services that will not do bandwidth caps, just watch.
Why did you study CS? For a job? Did you study to learn about Computer Science because you are interested?
What are your future plans? Do you want to run your own company, work at google, be a mid level technical manager at some company?
Without knowing your goals and motivations it is impossible to answer this question. It sounds like maybe you are in CS for a job in which case a Bachelors will get you a job programming (and in fact there are many many programmers who didn't even get a college degree). The MBA will let you play with the company executives and speak their language. In fact there's a good chance that if you get an MBA mostly you will be doing managing, accounting, marketing, etc. with just a side role of IT. With an MBA you are probably going to be first and foremost a business guy leveraging your IT background to communicate between the IT people and the business people. It also opens up roles like CIO/CTO, etc. (although many people without MBAs get those jobs). And it is probably more recession proof (until everyone gets an MBA). Based on the little you've said and how concerned you are about a job, I think this is probably the path for you but I'm not sure. Also with an MBA you will learn a lot about businesses which will be a great help if one day you decide to run your own company.
I am getting an MS in CS and am thinking if I want a PhD. I learned CS because computers seemed interesting and programming seemed fun. For that, I don't want a watered down program (and in fact am complaining that the CS department is not offering some of the harder classes due to lack of interest [ie AI/Compilers/etc.]). I don't think I would enjoy to be CIO or some VP who spends most of his day overseeing budgets and speaking with upper management about the direction of the company and then communicating the goals to the IT grunt workers. The difference between the MS in CS and IT seems to be that IT/IS requires more business courses and is concerned with how to manage technology while CS teaches you more about what it is. There is some overlap between both sets of degrees. In both you are expected to know discrete math, algorithms, how to program, something about computer hardware, and something about networks. Beyond that CS will have more advanced mathematical and theoretical courses while IS will have some business courses. And the PhD seems to be an MS with a few more classes (in my case 3 more) and a thesis (which is the big thing).
I would say if you want to learn about the technology then get the MS in CS like me. If you want a career in research or to extend the body of knowledge and maybe discover something cool, go with a PhD. If management is what you want, then forget about the MS in IS/IT and just go get your MBA. That will make you much more valuable to the business people, and give you a thorough grounding in a lot of the basic operations of companies (accounting, marketing, management, etc.) and it will be very useful if you ever decide to start your own. Also an MBA opens more doors for you in management. With IS/IT you may always be tied to the IT department while with an MBA you are valuable in any area of the business. Also I think an MBA will help you come up with more ideas on what to build and how to add value to the business. I think an IS/IT degree is good for people interested in business without the technical background, but you have the Bachelors already so you have the technical backround. It is more the business background that you need. Also a Masters in CS isn't that much more than a bachelors, even in pure CS it consists of Networking, Databases, Architecture, Algorithms, Operating Systems, and then a bunch of electives. Generally those 5 areas are the core areas with at least a few required and the rest is all optional. In IS generally they require more management and have more an emphasis on databases (since most business applications are using/managing databases). CS is basically how do you data mine, how do you imple
I for one would love it if all those pesky people who like to chat on their cell phones in the middle of the movie can no longer do it due to it being checked in. Basically that is why I don't like to go to movies. If it's not some loud mouth talking on the phone it is some obnoxious kid text messaging his/her friends with a super bright screen that keeps drawing your eyes. I say check the darn things in.
What if amazon goes under? All those ebooks that I may have bought will be gone. If you look at some of the music DRM services, what happens when Amazon decides not to support the format anymore?
I want an e reader because my books are piling up. But I want the same rights I get for paper books and until I get that I will not buy one. I have some books that are older than me. Now I see people with this e-reader or that e-reader and then a year or two later they have a new one and re-buy all their books.
I want all the benefits of paper books but without wasting all the space on books. Also as a society, what happens if in years people dig up our society and just find these e-readers with a proprietary format? All of our knowledge will be lost whereas with books/tablets at least they can get something to try to translate.
you should realize that spending an extra $100 on a Mac is well worth it
Ah my good friend, alas but if it was only an extra $100 then I might consider it. But a good mac computer is way more than $100 more than an equivalent PC with the same hardware. That is my first gripe with Macs, that their hardware is the same as that of a normal PC but they charge you like it is caviar or something.
My second gripe with MACS is that for a lot of the software you have to keep going back to Steve Jobs and that is kind of expensive. Windows has way more freeware/shareware than a MAC. Although now the situation is improved due to the BSD kernel. Nevertheless there are a fair share of apps that don't work on a Mac. An example of this is in the article, the D programming language. The article mentions that porting D wasn't trivial, the guy had to do more than just run make on the BSD box. Plus as has been mentioned Linux is often incompatible with other UNIXlike operating systems as well. So just because your favorite app works in linux is no guarantee of mac compatibility.
Anyway all said I'd love to buy a MAC to experiment around. But everytime I look at a MAC and I think oh that's not that much more expensive than a PC, I realize that the MAC and the PC often are on a different level of Hardware with the PC having more RAM/Better Video Card/Faster Processor. I see that and figure I'll just go with the cheaper PC.
Then why does the government impose import tariffs to protect companies in many cases. If society is built on competition, then american businesses do not need these tariffs to inflate the value of foreign goods.
I would assume some of the 5,000 people that Microsoft laid off were "skilled enough" for the job.
Sorry friend, if there is such a shortage how can Microsoft and the other companies afford to cut all these tech jobs? if there is such a shortage don't they need every tech worker they can get?
Maybe in Mars you can fire a ton of tech workers and then claim a shortage of qualified workers (or in the Capital) but in reality you just fired a bunch of qualified tech workers (they were qualified enough to be hired in the first place). So go figure.
What if I am robbed and I snap a picture of the perp? Now that he hears the phone he might just decide to kill me....
What if the police are brutally beating someone and I snap a picture to report them later. Now they may decide to brutally beat me...
This is just stupid. I mean yes there are bad uses for the phone. But there are also good uses.
Perl has "shortcomings" depending on taste (for some people it may be perfect and that is fine). Personally I hate Perl's object system. Some of the other languages fix some of the Perl "shortcomings". In particular I like Python's object system. Still I find a lot of things in Python that I preferred in Perl (like the regular expressions, and also I'll take braces over white space or even ruby's end). However for me even with all its flaws (for me) I now prefer Python over Perl.
:)). Perl 6 is Perl's evolution but it is delayed. So for me, and a bunch of others, we are on the Python/Ruby/Lua/etc. until Perl 6 wagon.
Perl6 has potential. The new object system seems much better than Perl 5 (to me). If Perl 6 was out I think it would be harder to choose between Python and Perl and there is a good chance I would choose Perl. But as of now Perl 6 is sadly not ready for prime time. And Perl 5 is still Perl 5.
It's not that Perl 5 is broken, it's that other languages are evolving to a new level (in many cases a new level of LISPness
Passing tests is something, but does not in itself equate to completeness.
Look at http://www.perlfoundation.org/perl6/index.cgi?development_dashboard that seems to have some goals. But still "Language Definition" is on the todo list. And "Language Definition" seems a pretty big item to me, as changes in that can change the tests. Not only that, would you write a bunch of code in a language knowing that at any moment it could be invalidated by a few small tweaks? I wouldn't, not production code at least.
They have some other things like the command line (deciding what it is, then implementing it), deciding what the installation package is, etc.. But still until the language design is frozen, you will never be done. And if a major change is made that results totally rebuilding the architecture you could end up throwing a lot of work away.
This todo list seems more like a brainstorm. Really what is needed is someone like Larry Wall to finish his documentation, then someone to write tests based on the Perl 6 language design (In Perl 6) and then passing those tests can become a chart to Perl 6. Although there will still be issues such as installation package, converting modules in CPAN and getting it working with Perl6, etc... But the most important thing is to get the language down. Then people will start playing with it to get a jump on learning Perl 6. And once the language is finalized it can start to be used in some corporate settings as a piece of beta software.
Most likely the real Perl 6 revolution won't come until CPAN (or some other entity like it) is made for Perl 6 and has some of the more useful modules (like DBI among others). Right now a large part of Perl's value is CPAN and the various modules available. That is another project that cannot even really fully start until after the language is finalized.
Don't give up. I graduated in Spring 2002 and found my first job in March 2003. It sucks but even a 3.96 GPA did not help me. It would have been better to party more in college and have fun. Then sweat the job later. The economy in 2002 was tough just like it is now. I think in Spring 2008 it was better than spring 2002 but after fall 2008 I think we started setting new records for awfulness. So it may take you longer to find a job. Maybe try rentacoder.com (I don't think it was around back then) even third world depressed wages and $5/hr are better than nothing.
I'm going to say that another thing missing is direction from the top. The last time I poked around (admittedly 6 or so months ago) it didn't look like there was a clear path laid out to release. More developers won't fix that. Without someone at the top directing things you have chaos. Not only that, but volunteers will lose motivation after a time. Many are goal oriented and want to see that they are making progress towards a goal.