You've hit upon a major issue. Once you've moved past the point of designing the interface for the programmer, then what? You have to design for "the user". But who's that? There's lots of different kinds of users out there, and no one interface will be optimal for all of them.
For great coverage of how to deal with this, see Alan Cooper's latest, "The Inmates are Running the Asylum". Killer book, maybe not quite as good as "About Face" (and some of it is even a rehash), but his technique of using "personas" looks great. Check it out.
I don't care if you go to a $2.5k/year school or a $25k/year school - when you come out you're just a trainee. In this field, all that going to school does is give you a license to learn. I can't see that the expensive schools get you anything unless you are looking to get a very specific type of job.
All the people saying that the concepts are important, not the technologies, are absolutely right. Getting a degree is well worthwhile, and don't worry too much about the specific technologies taught. Not only will you get a good overview, there are many places that won't look at you if you don't have a degree.
If you can possibly get real-world experience while going to school, do it! It's a huge advantage, far more than what school you went to. Co-op is one of the smartest things you can do. We hire a lot of people right out of college, and almost all the ones that get offers did co-op or some other type of hands-on work.
Now me personally, when I do tech interviews on people, I really don't care if they have a degree or not. I don't tech with easy questions, I assume you know those, I tech with hard questions. No one has ever aced one of my tech interviews. But the difference between someone who gets a 30 and someone who gets a 70 is huge.:) Even that's not foolproof though. Had a guy not long ago that did real well, 70 or 80, something like that. Turned out we had to let him go because he couldn't deal with large systems. Sure, he was real bright, and he knew all the theory - just couldn't apply it effectively. He knew -how- to do something, but not -when- or -why-.
I do a lot of mentoring on my team. Almost all our new hires are fresh grads, and I'm the technical lead, so it's part of my job (and I enjoy it). One of the things I like to do is, after they've been on the job six months or so, ask them what they found the most difficult to deal with, and what surprised them the most compared to what they thought working in the field would be like.
In almost every case it's the same thing: they didn't realize how much more complex real-world systems are than training systems. The most complex thing you ever do as an undergrad CS student is the equivalent of a couple of days or a weeks worth of work on a real system. And you'll be working on systems with man-years in them. It's different. Try to get exposed to real systems as soon as you can.
The other thing that's different is that most of the work in the real world is maintenance/enhancements. It's real, real hard to only do new development all the time. So you don't have the luxury of working just with your own code (which I presume you find easy to understand)...you have to deal with the code of many other people, many of whom are, how shall I put this, less than standouts in their field. Oh, hell, let me be blunt: 90% of the code in production today is more or less garbage. And that's what you're going to have to deal with.
Work on as many systems as you can. Look at as much code as you can. Is a given piece of code good or bad? Why or why not? How would you do it different? What are the trade-offs involved?
Finally, I'll give you something I give every new programmer: I think every new coder should read certain books to supplement what they get in college. Applied properly, the stuff in these books can move you from a newbie to the equivalent of an experienced programmer in a much shorter time. "Code Complete" is at the head of the list. "About Face" is next in line. Then do "Writing Solid Code", "Rapid Application Development", "Debugging the Software Development Process", "The Mythical Man-Month", in no particular order.
> Think to yourself, what is the biggest, most power-consuming thing a computer could ever do. Ever. It will stop there.
The biggest, most power-consuming job I can think of that a computer could do would be to do a real-time full-scale simulation of every piece of space-time-matter in the universe, backwards and forwards thorugh all time. Since the universe is infinite, so too would the simulation be infinite. And I might want to run more than one of these at a time...
Many of the computing problems of yesterday and today are becoming more or less "solved problems"...at least if you consider today's solution optimal. But the problems of tomorrow will always be bigger yet. We have a loooong way to go.
>... and refactoring configuration information among dozens of software projects that aren't even necessarily aware of each other would be an interesting problem in change management.
Most would argue (and several have said or implied on this thread) that the purpose of code is to control a computer.
I disagree. IMO, the primary purpose of code is to -communicate with other programmers-. Controlling a machine is usually also important (but not always, think of example code), but this should never be allowed to unduly interfere with the primary purpose.
If code is a communicative medium for humans, then surely it is possible for it to be art...I just don't think that's very important. I'd rather see a much higher percentage of well-"craft"-ed code.
90% or more of production code in use today is utter crap. And not because it doesn't instruct the machine - it does (albeit usually poorly). No, it's utter crap because it does a terrible job of communicating to -humans-, thereby making the code much less reliable and maintainable in practice. We as an industry should be ashamed.
The economy, at any time, reflects the "votes" of consumers. Governments (at least in this case), reflect the votes of voters. These are generally the same people/entities. So, while it is true that government introduces "noise" into the pure free-market prices and distorts them, it is also true (imo), that those government policies are generally more-or-lees what the body-politic want as well.
In other words, those very subsidies that encouraged suburbia were put in place not only so that certain persons or groups could make lots of money, but also because a lot of people wanted them. Certain other people figured out to give that to them, hence greatly profiting themselves financially, politically, or both. For better or worse, that's how it works in the U.S.
A number of geek girls have responded on this topic. For those of you still in school, I just want you to know that not all IT shops obey the stereotypes that we've seen mentioned on this topic.
I work at a S&P 500 utility in Florida. We have an in-house IT staff of several hundred. I'd say that roughly 30-40% are female. Half of the department heads are female, and our acting CIO is female. And these women aren't stuck in the touchy-feely areas either. We have female C programmers, Unix admins, Oracle DBAs, web programmers, etc., etc. Right now my own team doesn't have any females, but that's unusual. At one point it was about 70% female.
So what's the point? Just that these notions that women "can't do" the techie stuff are baloney. Some of the sharpest programmers I've known are women.
As to "encouraging" women to go into CS, I have mixed feelings about that. I'm not sure that -anyone- should be "encouraged" to go into CS. It's a very difficult field. Not because of the smarts required; plenty of fields require that. No, because of the commitment and dedication required. The field moves so fast; learning is constant. I think if you're not at least somewhat "driven" to be constantly learning about new technology, on your own time, then this is not the field for you. I've seen a number of young people burn out and leave the field (or worse, stay on and just become obsolete and incompetent) once they realized that graduating from college wasn't the end, but rather the beginning of their learning.
But if you're driven, whether male or female, hang in there, because we need you!:)
Interesting theory...the problem is it's simply not true. The notion of the "workplace" is part of the heritage of the Industrial Revolution. Before that started, men worked "at home", meaning in the fields surrounding their cottages. Women came out to work the fields when required, like at harvest time. At other times, women worked at home, and they did plenty more than just take care of the kids and cook for Poppa. The family unit was a cooperative work unit.
So the Industrial Revolution comes along. The capitalists (not a perjorative) needed workers, and a number of factors encouraged/forced people off the land and into the cities. At this point -both- men and women worked 60-70+ hour weeks in the factories. Women did the same work as men, and worked alongside men, except for the jobs that required so much brute strength that most women couldn't do them (most men couldn't either). Oh, and women were paid the -same- as men (a pittance).
The work practices of the Industrial Revolution had a horrific effect on the children of the time. Wages were so low that both husband and wife had to work very long hours in order to make enough money to support the family. There were no public schools as we think of them today. Children were simply abandoned to their own devices during the day, placed with members of the family too old to work (if possible), or even forced into the factories and mines themselves.
To counter the effect this was having on children, the family, and society, the first "feminist" movement was formed: the "Family Wage" movement. Their goal, which was achieved, was to -introduce- wage inequality. They wanted to see men paid a large enough wage that the women could stay home and take care of the kids and family. Ironically, given current conditions, this was a very liberal, progressive movement.
Read some history of the early days of the Industrial Revolution in England. Read about the changes in family lifestyle, and what that was like before the Industrial Revolution. As for CS being "created by men for men" ever hear of Grace Hopper, among others?
Slashdot Mirror
Every Time cover is a parody. Unintentionally.
You've hit upon a major issue. Once you've moved past the point of designing the interface for the programmer, then what? You have to design for "the user". But who's that? There's lots of different kinds of users out there, and no one interface will be optimal for all of them.
For great coverage of how to deal with this, see Alan Cooper's latest, "The Inmates are Running the Asylum". Killer book, maybe not quite as good as "About Face" (and some of it is even a rehash), but his technique of using "personas" looks great. Check it out.
I don't care if you go to a $2.5k/year school or a $25k/year school - when you come out you're just a trainee. In this field, all that going to school does is give you a license to learn. I can't see that the expensive schools get you anything unless you are looking to get a very specific type of job.
:) Even that's not foolproof though. Had a guy not long ago that did real well, 70 or 80, something like that. Turned out we had to let him go because he couldn't deal with large systems. Sure, he was real bright, and he knew all the theory - just couldn't apply it effectively. He knew -how- to do something, but not -when- or -why-.
All the people saying that the concepts are important, not the technologies, are absolutely right. Getting a degree is well worthwhile, and don't worry too much about the specific technologies taught. Not only will you get a good overview, there are many places that won't look at you if you don't have a degree.
If you can possibly get real-world experience while going to school, do it! It's a huge advantage, far more than what school you went to. Co-op is one of the smartest things you can do. We hire a lot of people right out of college, and almost all the ones that get offers did co-op or some other type of hands-on work.
Now me personally, when I do tech interviews on people, I really don't care if they have a degree or not. I don't tech with easy questions, I assume you know those, I tech with hard questions. No one has ever aced one of my tech interviews. But the difference between someone who gets a 30 and someone who gets a 70 is huge.
I do a lot of mentoring on my team. Almost all our new hires are fresh grads, and I'm the technical lead, so it's part of my job (and I enjoy it). One of the things I like to do is, after they've been on the job six months or so, ask them what they found the most difficult to deal with, and what surprised them the most compared to what they thought working in the field would be like.
In almost every case it's the same thing: they didn't realize how much more complex real-world systems are than training systems. The most complex thing you ever do as an undergrad CS student is the equivalent of a couple of days or a weeks worth of work on a real system. And you'll be working on systems with man-years in them. It's different. Try to get exposed to real systems as soon as you can.
The other thing that's different is that most of the work in the real world is maintenance/enhancements. It's real, real hard to only do new development all the time. So you don't have the luxury of working just with your own code (which I presume you find easy to understand)...you have to deal with the code of many other people, many of whom are, how shall I put this, less than standouts in their field. Oh, hell, let me be blunt: 90% of the code in production today is more or less garbage. And that's what you're going to have to deal with.
Work on as many systems as you can. Look at as much code as you can. Is a given piece of code good or bad? Why or why not? How would you do it different? What are the trade-offs involved?
Finally, I'll give you something I give every new programmer: I think every new coder should read certain books to supplement what they get in college. Applied properly, the stuff in these books can move you from a newbie to the equivalent of an experienced programmer in a much shorter time. "Code Complete" is at the head of the list. "About Face" is next in line. Then do "Writing Solid Code", "Rapid Application Development", "Debugging the Software Development Process", "The Mythical Man-Month", in no particular order.
> Think to yourself, what is the biggest, most power-consuming thing a computer could ever do. Ever. It will stop there.
The biggest, most power-consuming job I can think of that a computer could do would be to do a real-time full-scale simulation of every piece of space-time-matter in the universe, backwards and forwards thorugh all time. Since the universe is infinite, so too would the simulation be infinite. And I might want to run more than one of these at a time...
Many of the computing problems of yesterday and today are becoming more or less "solved problems"...at least if you consider today's solution optimal. But the problems of tomorrow will always be bigger yet. We have a loooong way to go.
> ... and refactoring configuration information among dozens of software projects that aren't even necessarily aware of each other would be an interesting problem in change management.
:)
Heh. Droll, very droll.
Most would argue (and several have said or implied on this thread) that the purpose of code is to control a computer.
I disagree. IMO, the primary purpose of code is to -communicate with other programmers-. Controlling a machine is usually also important (but not always, think of example code), but this should never be allowed to unduly interfere with the primary purpose.
If code is a communicative medium for humans, then surely it is possible for it to be art...I just don't think that's very important. I'd rather see a much higher percentage of well-"craft"-ed code.
90% or more of production code in use today is utter crap. And not because it doesn't instruct the machine - it does (albeit usually poorly). No, it's utter crap because it does a terrible job of communicating to -humans-, thereby making the code much less reliable and maintainable in practice. We as an industry should be ashamed.
The economy, at any time, reflects the "votes" of consumers. Governments (at least in this case), reflect the votes of voters. These are generally the same people/entities. So, while it is true that government introduces "noise" into the pure free-market prices and distorts them, it is also true (imo), that those government policies are generally more-or-lees what the body-politic want as well.
In other words, those very subsidies that encouraged suburbia were put in place not only so that certain persons or groups could make lots of money, but also because a lot of people wanted them. Certain other people figured out to give that to them, hence greatly profiting themselves financially, politically, or both. For better or worse, that's how it works in the U.S.
> just curious - what is the age ogf those female > geeks?
Most are under 30. We tend to hire straight out of college. The female department heads are older, of course, 40s-50s.
A number of geek girls have responded on this topic. For those of you still in school, I just want you to know that not all IT shops obey the stereotypes that we've seen mentioned on this topic.
:)
I work at a S&P 500 utility in Florida. We have an in-house IT staff of several hundred. I'd say that roughly 30-40% are female. Half of the department heads are female, and our acting CIO is female. And these women aren't stuck in the touchy-feely areas either. We have female C programmers, Unix admins, Oracle DBAs, web programmers, etc., etc. Right now my own team doesn't have any females, but that's unusual. At one point it was about 70% female.
So what's the point? Just that these notions that women "can't do" the techie stuff are baloney. Some of the sharpest programmers I've known are women.
As to "encouraging" women to go into CS, I have mixed feelings about that. I'm not sure that -anyone- should be "encouraged" to go into CS. It's a very difficult field. Not because of the smarts required; plenty of fields require that. No, because of the commitment and dedication required. The field moves so fast; learning is constant. I think if you're not at least somewhat "driven" to be constantly learning about new technology, on your own time, then this is not the field for you. I've seen a number of young people burn out and leave the field (or worse, stay on and just become obsolete and incompetent) once they realized that graduating from college wasn't the end, but rather the beginning of their learning.
But if you're driven, whether male or female, hang in there, because we need you!
Interesting theory...the problem is it's simply not true. The notion of the "workplace" is part of the heritage of the Industrial Revolution. Before that started, men worked "at home", meaning in the fields surrounding their cottages. Women came out to work the fields when required, like at harvest time. At other times, women worked at home, and they did plenty more than just take care of the kids and cook for Poppa. The family unit was a cooperative work unit.
So the Industrial Revolution comes along. The capitalists (not a perjorative) needed workers, and a number of factors encouraged/forced people off the land and into the cities. At this point -both- men and women worked 60-70+ hour weeks in the factories. Women did the same work as men, and worked alongside men, except for the jobs that required so much brute strength that most women couldn't do them (most men couldn't either). Oh, and women were paid the -same- as men (a pittance).
The work practices of the Industrial Revolution had a horrific effect on the children of the time. Wages were so low that both husband and wife had to work very long hours in order to make enough money to support the family. There were no public schools as we think of them today. Children were simply abandoned to their own devices during the day, placed with members of the family too old to work (if possible), or even forced into the factories and mines themselves.
To counter the effect this was having on children, the family, and society, the first "feminist" movement was formed: the "Family Wage" movement. Their goal, which was achieved, was to -introduce- wage inequality. They wanted to see men paid a large enough wage that the women could stay home and take care of the kids and family. Ironically, given current conditions, this was a very liberal, progressive movement.
Read some history of the early days of the Industrial Revolution in England. Read about the changes in family lifestyle, and what that was like before the Industrial Revolution. As for CS being "created by men for men" ever hear of Grace Hopper, among others?