Why bother teaching American children the skills that will more and more be shipped off to India and China (or Indians and Chinese brought in to do the work locally)?
In the U.S., baby boomers are retiring and the workforce (tax base) is shrinking over the next 20 years. In the Southeast Asia, Indians and Chinese will join the middle class and stay in their own country. These two factors will produce a critical shortage of skilled information workers. I learned that from a study published prior to the dot com bust. I went back to college to learn computer programming and earn my technical certifications. With 25 years until retirement, I'm in position to take advantage of this skill shortage and make the big bucks.
Most students wrote the majority of their papers either with pen and paper or using a typewriter.
I was in college during the early 1990's. Most instructors wouldn't accept dot matrix printouts (not even Near Letter Quality) and I couldn't afford the $200 parallel interface to turn my electronic typewriter into a printer. All my term papers were done on the typewriter. Things changed when the library got Macs and charged 10 cents a page to use the laser printer.
CS hasn't changed all that much since the 60's if you ask me.
Computer programming has changed quite a bit. During my first tour through college in the early 1990's to learn general education, C++ was the teaching language of the day. During my second tour of college in the early 2000's to learn computer programming, all flavors of Java was taught since the college couldn't afford to renew the Microsoft site license. These days I hear Python is a popular teaching language.
His problem is his unwillingness to get current when it wouldn't take a whole hour on the net to learn what he needs to know.
His problem is typical of full-time employees with many years at a company. They stop learning, become comfortable and panic at the slightest hint of change. I had two friends with software engineering degrees who fell into this trap, getting great jobs out of college and getting laid off six years later in the dot com bust, unable to find a job with obsolete skills, and still working as drug store clerks years later.
You can get 4GB DDR2 sticks of memory from ebay for real cheap (a pair of them). They only run on AMD deskops.
Do I get more DDR2 memory for a nine-year-old AMD 690 motherboard that limits my quad-core processor to 800MHz and maxes out at 16GB RAM. Or do I buy a brand new AMD 970 motherboard that runs my quad-core processor at 1600Mhz, maxes out to 64GB, and upgrade to an eight-core processor at later date. Decisions, decisions, decisions.
Apple should know by now that opening up the OS to other hardware would mean making even more off the App Store.
Apple tried licensing to third-party hardware makers and saw their hardware sales decline as the cheaper Macs became popular. That was the first thing Steve Jobs killed off when he came back to Apple.
A tech manager who been with the company for 15+ years recently threw a fit. He was trying to replace the hard drive in a new Dell laptop. There was no slot for the 2.5" hard drive he wanted to install. He took the whole laptop apart and couldn't find the hard drive. Some of the techs pointed out a card on the logic board that was the new hard drive standard. He screamed that the card was the wireless card, and got madder when they pointed to the wireless card with the antenna connections. The laptop remains on the back shelf because he can't fix it with a standard 2.5" hard drive.
If the IT department is not current, it's a management problem and not a technology problem.
Do you actually believe that PCs are made like crap compared to Macs when they both use the same parts?
The Dell, HP and Lenovo laptops that are issued to non-technical workers in a corporate environment are typically crap. A comparable Mac laptop is better engineered and last longer. My company recently gave me a $3,000 Dell laptop as a desktop replacement, which is much better engineered than any Mac Pro laptop that I ever used.
He's still using it as his primary computer.
My nine-years-old gaming system is still using the original AMD 690 motherboard and DDR2 memory, second processor (dual core to quad core), and fourth OS (Windows Vista to Windows 10). Long overdue for an upgrade. I could get an AMD 970 motherboard and DDR3 memory to extend its useful. I'm waiting to see how AMD Zen plays out this year. You typically don't buy Macs to play high-end games on.
What is that, 14 years or so? Didn't even need to replace any fans.
I once opened up a ten-year-old Windows 98 system at a job, and found a softball-sized dust ball underneath the fan intake.
Well, the problem is that the cost to buy (including maintenance) a Mac is a lot more expensive than to buy a PC.
My 2006 MacBook lasted for eight years. The only reason I retired it so soon is because it had a 32-bit processor and many of the programs I've used stopped upgrading the 32-bit version. The only repair job I had was a replacement fan and a new battery in 2014. Most Macs maintain high resale values because they're better made than many PCs.
"Non-technical users should use $WHAT_I_THINK_IS_BEST_FOR_THEM_BECAUSE_I_UNDERSTAND_ALL_USE_CASES as it simply works". Gotcha.
Some of the better IT shops are giving users the choice between Mac and PC. From what I've seen in the field, non-technical users and engineers prefer the Mac. Macs and PCs are pretty much interchangeable these days.
I wish this was true so I wouldn't have to deal with so many support requests from Mac users.
Deleting the preference file because iTunes stops working doesn't count as a support request. Something I had to do all the time at one Fortune 500 company because I was the only Windows tech with Mac experience.
I am beyond amazement as to how little some developers touch hardware.
I don't think assembly language or inspecting the assembly output of a compiled language like C++ is taught in the schools anymore. Unless the programmer is developing for embedded hardware or cross-compiling across different hardware platforms, the underlying hardware details are abstracted away from being a concern.
That would be within the concern of an information technology degree.
Maybe that's my problem then. I took computer programming at a community college. We had no one standing around to turn on our computer for us. In fact, we were expected to troubleshoot why the computer didn't turn before letting the instructor know. No sense in wasting the instructor's time by having him troubleshoot the computer.
I once had some folks drop a PDP-11/23 on my porch, ring the doorbell, and run away.
My father did that to me by abandoning his old car in my carport and calling me to wish me a happy birthday. I spent the next three years having the mechanic fix all the problems that my DIY father fixed but didn't tell me about, and junked the car two years later when the alternator finally gave up the ghost.
IBM is still making new mainframes. With all those obsolete mainframes collecting dust in the back office, it makes sense to repurpose them with Linux.
Several years ago my apartment complex in Silicon Valley had a gather your recyclables event at the leasing office and the flyer had a detailed list of what was acceptable to turn. I noticed mainframe on the list. Alas, no one put a mainframe out for pickup.
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Why bother teaching American children the skills that will more and more be shipped off to India and China (or Indians and Chinese brought in to do the work locally)?
In the U.S., baby boomers are retiring and the workforce (tax base) is shrinking over the next 20 years. In the Southeast Asia, Indians and Chinese will join the middle class and stay in their own country. These two factors will produce a critical shortage of skilled information workers. I learned that from a study published prior to the dot com bust. I went back to college to learn computer programming and earn my technical certifications. With 25 years until retirement, I'm in position to take advantage of this skill shortage and make the big bucks.
Most students wrote the majority of their papers either with pen and paper or using a typewriter.
I was in college during the early 1990's. Most instructors wouldn't accept dot matrix printouts (not even Near Letter Quality) and I couldn't afford the $200 parallel interface to turn my electronic typewriter into a printer. All my term papers were done on the typewriter. Things changed when the library got Macs and charged 10 cents a page to use the laser printer.
CS hasn't changed all that much since the 60's if you ask me.
Computer programming has changed quite a bit. During my first tour through college in the early 1990's to learn general education, C++ was the teaching language of the day. During my second tour of college in the early 2000's to learn computer programming, all flavors of Java was taught since the college couldn't afford to renew the Microsoft site license. These days I hear Python is a popular teaching language.
*cough* Harvard Calculus *cough*
http://www.math.harvard.edu/~knill/pedagogy/harvardcalculus/
His problem is his unwillingness to get current when it wouldn't take a whole hour on the net to learn what he needs to know.
His problem is typical of full-time employees with many years at a company. They stop learning, become comfortable and panic at the slightest hint of change. I had two friends with software engineering degrees who fell into this trap, getting great jobs out of college and getting laid off six years later in the dot com bust, unable to find a job with obsolete skills, and still working as drug store clerks years later.
[...] probably get a lot of apps from GitHub [...]
Nope.
Bone structure and fatness have nothing to do with each other.
That wouldn't become obvious until after I became an adult. I was just big all around as a kid.
You can get 4GB DDR2 sticks of memory from ebay for real cheap (a pair of them). They only run on AMD deskops.
Do I get more DDR2 memory for a nine-year-old AMD 690 motherboard that limits my quad-core processor to 800MHz and maxes out at 16GB RAM. Or do I buy a brand new AMD 970 motherboard that runs my quad-core processor at 1600Mhz, maxes out to 64GB, and upgrade to an eight-core processor at later date. Decisions, decisions, decisions.
Windows 10 will pay for itself out of its own App Store and MS knows it.
I ignore the App Stores on both Mac and Windows. Neither company are making extra money from me by having an app store.
Apple should know by now that opening up the OS to other hardware would mean making even more off the App Store.
Apple tried licensing to third-party hardware makers and saw their hardware sales decline as the cheaper Macs became popular. That was the first thing Steve Jobs killed off when he came back to Apple.
Macs require a much more current IT staff.
A tech manager who been with the company for 15+ years recently threw a fit. He was trying to replace the hard drive in a new Dell laptop. There was no slot for the 2.5" hard drive he wanted to install. He took the whole laptop apart and couldn't find the hard drive. Some of the techs pointed out a card on the logic board that was the new hard drive standard. He screamed that the card was the wireless card, and got madder when they pointed to the wireless card with the antenna connections. The laptop remains on the back shelf because he can't fix it with a standard 2.5" hard drive.
If the IT department is not current, it's a management problem and not a technology problem.
Do you actually believe that PCs are made like crap compared to Macs when they both use the same parts?
The Dell, HP and Lenovo laptops that are issued to non-technical workers in a corporate environment are typically crap. A comparable Mac laptop is better engineered and last longer. My company recently gave me a $3,000 Dell laptop as a desktop replacement, which is much better engineered than any Mac Pro laptop that I ever used.
He's still using it as his primary computer.
My nine-years-old gaming system is still using the original AMD 690 motherboard and DDR2 memory, second processor (dual core to quad core), and fourth OS (Windows Vista to Windows 10). Long overdue for an upgrade. I could get an AMD 970 motherboard and DDR3 memory to extend its useful. I'm waiting to see how AMD Zen plays out this year. You typically don't buy Macs to play high-end games on.
What is that, 14 years or so? Didn't even need to replace any fans.
I once opened up a ten-year-old Windows 98 system at a job, and found a softball-sized dust ball underneath the fan intake.
Macs are really only suitable for top level security experts. Certainly not non-technical users.
You obviously haven't spend much time at an Apple Store. I seriously doubt that Grandma is a top level security expert.
Well, the problem is that the cost to buy (including maintenance) a Mac is a lot more expensive than to buy a PC.
My 2006 MacBook lasted for eight years. The only reason I retired it so soon is because it had a 32-bit processor and many of the programs I've used stopped upgrading the 32-bit version. The only repair job I had was a replacement fan and a new battery in 2014. Most Macs maintain high resale values because they're better made than many PCs.
"Non-technical users should use $WHAT_I_THINK_IS_BEST_FOR_THEM_BECAUSE_I_UNDERSTAND_ALL_USE_CASES as it simply works". Gotcha.
Some of the better IT shops are giving users the choice between Mac and PC. From what I've seen in the field, non-technical users and engineers prefer the Mac. Macs and PCs are pretty much interchangeable these days.
I wish this was true so I wouldn't have to deal with so many support requests from Mac users.
Deleting the preference file because iTunes stops working doesn't count as a support request. Something I had to do all the time at one Fortune 500 company because I was the only Windows tech with Mac experience.
Non-technical users should use a Mac, as it simply works.
I am beyond amazement as to how little some developers touch hardware.
I don't think assembly language or inspecting the assembly output of a compiled language like C++ is taught in the schools anymore. Unless the programmer is developing for embedded hardware or cross-compiling across different hardware platforms, the underlying hardware details are abstracted away from being a concern.
That would be within the concern of an information technology degree.
Maybe that's my problem then. I took computer programming at a community college. We had no one standing around to turn on our computer for us. In fact, we were expected to troubleshoot why the computer didn't turn before letting the instructor know. No sense in wasting the instructor's time by having him troubleshoot the computer.
I once had some folks drop a PDP-11/23 on my porch, ring the doorbell, and run away.
My father did that to me by abandoning his old car in my carport and calling me to wish me a happy birthday. I spent the next three years having the mechanic fix all the problems that my DIY father fixed but didn't tell me about, and junked the car two years later when the alternator finally gave up the ghost.
Computer science has as much to do with building computers as astronomy has to do with building telescopes.
Computer science doesn't cover turning on your own computer? That explains all the clueless computer scientists I've dealt with over the years.
Did you complain to your driving instructor because he didn't teach you how to wire up the ECU in your car too?
If I have a problem with the car, I take it to my mechanic and pay for the privilege. Sometimes at $1,000+ per pop.
I'm glad when people ask easily answered questions instead of F-ing with sh-t that isn't theirs and that I might have to fix if they F up.
Turning on the computer shouldn't be one of those questions.
[..] it makes not much sense to install a hobbyist operating system [...]
We're not talking about Microsoft Windows.
IBM is still making new mainframes. With all those obsolete mainframes collecting dust in the back office, it makes sense to repurpose them with Linux.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/ibm-unveils-mainframe-encrypted-hybrid-050100233.html
Several years ago my apartment complex in Silicon Valley had a gather your recyclables event at the leasing office and the flyer had a detailed list of what was acceptable to turn. I noticed mainframe on the list. Alas, no one put a mainframe out for pickup.
Step 2: Get a refund from Stanford University for not learning how to turn on a computer while learning computer science.