You do make a good point. However it is not as simple as: computer scientist = theoretical, computer engineer = practical. That is arguing semantics; you have to look under the hood to understand each person individually.
1. Degree programs vary. One school calls an MIS degree a CS degree. Other schools don't have CE programs, instead they are called a CS degree with a hardware emphasis.
2. Experience is important. Has the person been a code monkey all his career or does he understand various issues in the design and deployment of production systems (power, rack space/cooling, networking, real estate, capacity planning, server specifications and their implications for all of that)?
3. Life long study a must. Does the person value study in the field, or are they happy with the education they received at the university? Is the person willing to learn new things outside of their area of expertise?
That being said, I know plenty of CE grads I would not want to have to work with on a software development project; many times they assume every problem requires BDUF/waterfall methods, do not understand the need for version management and documentation, and are inflexible when a monkey wrench gets thrown into the mix (which invariably it will when complexity and human interactions drive requirements). Of course, these are generalizations - just as are yours.
Learning a language, or doing anything outside of the ordinary rut you've gotten yourself into, will keep your mind sharp when you get old and start to lose it.
Not to mention, studies on loss of mental acuity due to aging show that people who continually challenged their brains with new learning (unrelated to their core work knowledge) were more likely to maintain their mental capacity.
You've heard the terms, "you can't teach an old dog new tricks", and "grumpy old man"? These are just symptoms of not keeping your brain young by learning new languages, taking courses in unrelated fields, and challenging yourself by doing other activities outside of your normal day to day (e.g. Judo, Aikido, (x)do...)
If anyone thinks that hiring computer scientist's to do anything other than research and theory is a good idea, you should kick that manager to the curb.
Agreed.;)
Maybe you were joking, but this is exactly the attitude that keeps the 'interchangeable code monkey' approach to software development and personnel development alive and well in the software development career field. Go on - keep laughing...while they offshore your job.
It amazes me that developers don't want to be taken more seriously. When they do - they end up becoming architects without much impact on the new batch of developers coming in -- little if any mentoring or lessons-learned. Many of the people who become 'developers' have not a clue about computer architecture - and end up learning from the 'school of hard knocks' - when they do something a CS grad would recognize is the wrong thing from a mile off. (hint: RAM is limited, CPU Cycles are finite over a given time frame, and virtualization is ubiquitous and the key to every important advancement in system capabilities (microcode, machine code, system code, application code, higher level abstractions)).
No wonder software development is so screwed up - and we only have ourselves to blame.
Assuming a 40 hour work week for 52 weeks, that works out to $72,800 per year - with at least 2 weeks of paid vacation.
You are upper middle class in most places in the USA - and your wife doesn't have to work. Congratulations. You salary is in the top 15% of the population.
This, of course, would be a monumental undertaking -- basically creating a security access tunable virtual window into multiple OSs with a consistent display of graphical user interface with full multimedia capabilities worthy of building quality simulations/games - in addition to your standard office type applications and persistence capabilities. This would take a large team to build, with the expectation that it would be used as a framework by large numbers of developers; the W3C's view of these kinds of capabilities is only in its infancy - via the Web Applications Working Group, and what is there looks less ambitious than we are talking about here.
However, without Microsoft software, we would have never seen the price of computing dive into regular joe range.
1977 Apple ][ - $1195
July 1980 - Radio Shack TRS-80 III - $699, TRS-80 Color - $399
Aside from Apples always top shelf prices, seems like computers were available to 'regular joe' even then.
I don't believe BSD would have ever become Linux had the Linux movement not existed. As far as I remember, the free software movement that Linux is a part of actually came from DOS hackers.
Linux is derived from Minix not BSD. DOS hackers my a$$. Get your facts straight.
In other words, it's not about unix, it's about the PC- and the PC begins with Microsoft...Microsoft helped drop these cheap little computers into peoples' laps and stick them on the internet. The universities were never going to create anything usable without all those dedicated DOS hackers. The world without Microsoft and Linux is a world of extremely expensive corporate unices and obscure free software projects furnished like plan9.
I'd like to point out that it was IBM that put forward the 8086 based PC concept, and furthermore Microsoft was headed toward UNIX until they got pulled in by IBM:
1980:
July -
# William Lowe suggests to an IBM Corporate Management Committee that IBM buy a computer from Atari to sell under the IBM name. He is told this is "the dumbest thing we've ever heard of", and is told to begin development of IBM's own personal computer. He is to assemble a team and bring back a prototype machine in 30 days. [606.23] [620.110] [716.237] [1149.167] [1299.150]
# William Lowe assembles the members of "Project Chess", known as the "Dirty Dozen", the twelve engineers chosen to design and build a prototype personal computer, in Boca Raton, Florida. Don Estridge is project manager, Jack Sams heads the software effort.
# Jack Sams of IBM's personal computer team first contacts Microsoft asking to talk about personal computers.
# IBM representatives meet with Microsoft's Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer to talk about Microsoft products, and home computers.
August -
Microsoft announces the Microsoft XENIX OS, a portable and commercial version of the UNIX operating system for the Intel 8086, Zilog Z8000, Motorola M68000, and Digital Equipment PDP-11.
The Project Chess task force at IBM shows a prototype microcomputer to the Corporate Management Committee. Specifications for the proposed computer are: 32 kB ROM, 16 kB RAM (up to 256 kB), six slots, color/mono display, 8-inch floppy disk drives, optional floating-point processor, joystick port, and printer port. Approval is given to build an operational microcomputer, code-named Acorn. They are given a deadline of one year to bring the new computer to market.
IBM meets with Microsoft again, to talk in general terms about their planned personal computers. IBM asks if Microsoft will develop some programming language interpreters/compilers for it. Bill Gates agrees to supply BASIC and other software development tools. IBM also asks for CP/M, but Gates says Digital Research would have to supply that.
Bill Gates calls Gary Kildall, to arrange a meeting between IBM and Digital Research regarding CP/M.
IBM's Project Chess task force meets with Digital Research about using CP/M-86 for IBM's upcoming microcomputer. (Gary Kildall claims he agreed to provide CP/M-86 for IBM. IBM sources state that Gary Kildall was not interested.)
IBM representatives meet at Microsoft again. Bill Gates signs a consulting agreement for US$15,000 to develop the software specifications for IBM's personal computer. Jack Sams asks about alternatives to CP/M-86. Gates says he might find one.
Some of us remember their first viewing of Mosaic. We remember the Internet before the widespread use of HTML.
Raises Hand
I remember gopher, ftp, pine, tin, and newsgroups long before Mosaic hit the scene. When it did hit the scene, there wasn't much to see.../. was just a twinkle in Cowboy Neal's eye.
After self-teaching myself programming (two languages) I moved into the division that handles the programming of my company.
I am almost speechless. Do you at least have someone with a CS background and experience doing development overseeing your work? Is that person mentoring you?
If you are James Bond contacting Q surreptitiously for instructions for how to use that blasted flame thrower in his watch, I don't think that would be rude at all.
Whoa there young whipper-snapper...the real 'vanguard' of gamers are the 40-somethings that paved the way via arcade games (pac-man, asteroids, tron, Q-bert et al). You were getting our hand-me-down computers in the late 80s.:P
It was a wet and smoky night, the kind of night that made my teeth itch. I tipped back my fedora as I polished off that last bottle of Crown Royal that had been mocking me from the bottom desk drawer all day, when Gwendolyn Smalls sashayed through my door, dragging her HP Presario - with a look that would make a small baby cry...
I would argued there are no finished projects in reality. Project completion is a throwback to the old shrink-wrapped software days of yore.
In reality, systems are born, they evolve, and then eventually they die (unless they are emacs). Our development methodologies and lifecycle models should conform to this reality.
Slashdot Mirror
You do make a good point. However it is not as simple as: computer scientist = theoretical, computer engineer = practical. That is arguing semantics; you have to look under the hood to understand each person individually.
1. Degree programs vary. One school calls an MIS degree a CS degree. Other schools don't have CE programs, instead they are called a CS degree with a hardware emphasis.
2. Experience is important. Has the person been a code monkey all his career or does he understand various issues in the design and deployment of production systems (power, rack space/cooling, networking, real estate, capacity planning, server specifications and their implications for all of that)?
3. Life long study a must. Does the person value study in the field, or are they happy with the education they received at the university? Is the person willing to learn new things outside of their area of expertise?
That being said, I know plenty of CE grads I would not want to have to work with on a software development project; many times they assume every problem requires BDUF/waterfall methods, do not understand the need for version management and documentation, and are inflexible when a monkey wrench gets thrown into the mix (which invariably it will when complexity and human interactions drive requirements). Of course, these are generalizations - just as are yours.
Learning a language, or doing anything outside of the ordinary rut you've gotten yourself into, will keep your mind sharp when you get old and start to lose it.
Not to mention, studies on loss of mental acuity due to aging show that people who continually challenged their brains with new learning (unrelated to their core work knowledge) were more likely to maintain their mental capacity.
You've heard the terms, "you can't teach an old dog new tricks", and "grumpy old man"? These are just symptoms of not keeping your brain young by learning new languages, taking courses in unrelated fields, and challenging yourself by doing other activities outside of your normal day to day (e.g. Judo, Aikido, (x)do...)
If people never died, we'd all be starving.
Soylent Green is people!
If anyone thinks that hiring computer scientist's to do anything other than research and theory is a good idea, you should kick that manager to the curb.
Agreed. ;)
Maybe you were joking, but this is exactly the attitude that keeps the 'interchangeable code monkey' approach to software development and personnel development alive and well in the software development career field. Go on - keep laughing...while they offshore your job.
It amazes me that developers don't want to be taken more seriously. When they do - they end up becoming architects without much impact on the new batch of developers coming in -- little if any mentoring or lessons-learned. Many of the people who become 'developers' have not a clue about computer architecture - and end up learning from the 'school of hard knocks' - when they do something a CS grad would recognize is the wrong thing from a mile off. (hint: RAM is limited, CPU Cycles are finite over a given time frame, and virtualization is ubiquitous and the key to every important advancement in system capabilities (microcode, machine code, system code, application code, higher level abstractions)).
No wonder software development is so screwed up - and we only have ourselves to blame.
I think it would be universally recognized that letting non CS/Developer managers pick tools is a bad thing...
Assuming a 40 hour work week for 52 weeks, that works out to $72,800 per year - with at least 2 weeks of paid vacation.
You are upper middle class in most places in the USA - and your wife doesn't have to work. Congratulations. You salary is in the top 15% of the population.
Gives new meaning to the word 'hurt', doesn't it?
You took the words right out of my mouth.
This, of course, would be a monumental undertaking -- basically creating a security access tunable virtual window into multiple OSs with a consistent display of graphical user interface with full multimedia capabilities worthy of building quality simulations/games - in addition to your standard office type applications and persistence capabilities. This would take a large team to build, with the expectation that it would be used as a framework by large numbers of developers; the W3C's view of these kinds of capabilities is only in its infancy - via the Web Applications Working Group, and what is there looks less ambitious than we are talking about here.
What -- you think we have the right to peaceably assemble? Serves them right if they do...
Oh yeah - that 1st Amendment thingy...well we can just repeal that through executive order, like all the rest.
HHOS
However, without Microsoft software, we would have never seen the price of computing dive into regular joe range.
1977 Apple ][ - $1195
July 1980 - Radio Shack TRS-80 III - $699, TRS-80 Color - $399
Aside from Apples always top shelf prices, seems like computers were available to 'regular joe' even then.
I don't believe BSD would have ever become Linux had the Linux movement not existed. As far as I remember, the free software movement that Linux is a part of actually came from DOS hackers.
Linux is derived from Minix not BSD. DOS hackers my a$$. Get your facts straight.
In other words, it's not about unix, it's about the PC- and the PC begins with Microsoft...Microsoft helped drop these cheap little computers into peoples' laps and stick them on the internet. The universities were never going to create anything usable without all those dedicated DOS hackers. The world without Microsoft and Linux is a world of extremely expensive corporate unices and obscure free software projects furnished like plan9.
I'd like to point out that it was IBM that put forward the 8086 based PC concept, and furthermore Microsoft was headed toward UNIX until they got pulled in by IBM:
1980:
July -
# William Lowe suggests to an IBM Corporate Management Committee that IBM buy a computer from Atari to sell under the IBM name. He is told this is "the dumbest thing we've ever heard of", and is told to begin development of IBM's own personal computer. He is to assemble a team and bring back a prototype machine in 30 days. [606.23] [620.110] [716.237] [1149.167] [1299.150]
# William Lowe assembles the members of "Project Chess", known as the "Dirty Dozen", the twelve engineers chosen to design and build a prototype personal computer, in Boca Raton, Florida. Don Estridge is project manager, Jack Sams heads the software effort.
# Jack Sams of IBM's personal computer team first contacts Microsoft asking to talk about personal computers.
# IBM representatives meet with Microsoft's Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer to talk about Microsoft products, and home computers.
August -
Microsoft announces the Microsoft XENIX OS, a portable and commercial version of the UNIX operating system for the Intel 8086, Zilog Z8000, Motorola M68000, and Digital Equipment PDP-11.
The Project Chess task force at IBM shows a prototype microcomputer to the Corporate Management Committee. Specifications for the proposed computer are: 32 kB ROM, 16 kB RAM (up to 256 kB), six slots, color/mono display, 8-inch floppy disk drives, optional floating-point processor, joystick port, and printer port. Approval is given to build an operational microcomputer, code-named Acorn. They are given a deadline of one year to bring the new computer to market.
IBM meets with Microsoft again, to talk in general terms about their planned personal computers. IBM asks if Microsoft will develop some programming language interpreters/compilers for it. Bill Gates agrees to supply BASIC and other software development tools. IBM also asks for CP/M, but Gates says Digital Research would have to supply that.
Bill Gates calls Gary Kildall, to arrange a meeting between IBM and Digital Research regarding CP/M.
IBM's Project Chess task force meets with Digital Research about using CP/M-86 for IBM's upcoming microcomputer. (Gary Kildall claims he agreed to provide CP/M-86 for IBM. IBM sources state that Gary Kildall was not interested.)
IBM representatives meet at Microsoft again. Bill Gates signs a consulting agreement for US$15,000 to develop the software specifications for IBM's personal computer. Jack Sams asks about alternatives to CP/M-86. Gates says he might find one.
Lynx - it's what dialup connections were made for... ...and you didn't think there was any content on the interwebs...
Sadly, in large corporations many of those 'fluff' issues are mandated - so with rare exception he will be fighting an uphill battle.
I would estimate the ratio of fluff to content as the aforementioned 99 to 1 ratio.
Some of us remember their first viewing of Mosaic. We remember the Internet before the widespread use of HTML.
Raises Hand
I remember gopher, ftp, pine, tin, and newsgroups long before Mosaic hit the scene. When it did hit the scene, there wasn't much to see... /. was just a twinkle in Cowboy Neal's eye.
I'll let you know when I'm done with it. I have several projects ahead in the queue though...
After self-teaching myself programming (two languages) I moved into the division that handles the programming of my company.
I am almost speechless. Do you at least have someone with a CS background and experience doing development overseeing your work? Is that person mentoring you?
My MP3/MPEG/RADIO player is a Sansa (SanDisk product), as well as the Micro SD card in it. SanDisk gear is surprisingly high quality.
I can see where they would have an edge in solid state memory hardware.
If you are James Bond contacting Q surreptitiously for instructions for how to use that blasted flame thrower in his watch, I don't think that would be rude at all.
That is how much I was paying on my Razor as well.
Whoa there young whipper-snapper...the real 'vanguard' of gamers are the 40-somethings that paved the way via arcade games (pac-man, asteroids, tron, Q-bert et al). You were getting our hand-me-down computers in the late 80s. :P
Ah - but what was the last one?
It was a wet and smoky night, the kind of night that made my teeth itch. I tipped back my fedora as I polished off that last bottle of Crown Royal that had been mocking me from the bottom desk drawer all day, when Gwendolyn Smalls sashayed through my door, dragging her HP Presario - with a look that would make a small baby cry...
I have an Nvidia card - so that might explain some of this.
I would argued there are no finished projects in reality. Project completion is a throwback to the old shrink-wrapped software days of yore.
In reality, systems are born, they evolve, and then eventually they die (unless they are emacs). Our development methodologies and lifecycle models should conform to this reality.
I know that modern versions of Fortran are still popular for scientific calculations because of massive inertia.
If it ain't broke...
Just because something is new doesn't mean it is better.