Downloading, double-clicking and installing Windows software is "out of reach" for most of the computer novices I know. Finding the proper installer is not always trivial, especially when companies push users towards a pay version and hide the free installer. After downloading, some novices have difficulty determining where the file went. And finally, many get confused by the options presented during the install (though clicking accept, next, and okay until your fingers bleed is a fairly reliable route). I've talked many novices through installs on the phone, and it can be very tedious.
On the other hand, I set Gentoo Linux up on my sister's machine. When she wants something installed, I call her up and say: "open a konsole, type su -, enter password, type 'emerge xyz'". It takes all of 20 seconds of phone time, and then whisks her off to a long install. Furthermore, this is a consistant interface for installing a new program (as opposed to going to different pages on different websites, downloading different files (zip,exe...),etc.) All you change is the name of the program you want to install.
Yes, long installs are annoying, but its pretty easy to compile during the night. Yes, it can go horribly wrong, but so can Windows installs. (Countless times novices have called me up and said, "oh this wouldn't work, it popped up some error message, I forget what"). And for updating the whole system? "emerge world" is many, many times more convient than going to 50 websites to check if the software/drivers/etc have updates, downloading each individually, double clicking each manually, and so on.
As the tech support guy for way too many friends and family, I wish they all had access to a package management system. Sure, installation on Linux isn't ideal, but in my experience, its a hell of a lot more convenient than Windows.
Why not just get a group of your friends together and start an open-source program?
I think that would be a great idea, but I'm not sure it would offer the same variety of challenges offered by an undergraduate program. Also, starting an open-source project is not mutually exclusive with college; I know a variety of classmates that are involved in open-source projects. In fact, some of my classmates and I will likely be releasing our senior project code under the GPL this summer - we plan to lead development on it as an open-source project.
Why not just get a group of your friends together and... start a book-group/philosophy group, etc., etc.
Again, I think that is a great idea for varying your knowledge: joining together with other people in a learning process. But I'm not sure it would necessarily match the education of having discussions with experts, who have had to defend their thesis and spent years of their lives dedicated to research on the area. I've done both informal and formal education, in my personal experience, even if the difference is subtle, there is a difference.
Why are there no apprenticeships, like in the middle ages? Why can't you apprentice yourself to a microbiologist when you get out of highschool (or even before!), and help them with their research as they teach you the necessities of their job?
Perhaps its because science has become so advanced that a variety of background knowledge is required to do the required work. It is almost as if all of the Biology series, the Chemistry, the Math, etc, is needed before the apprenticeship could even begin. It would be a waste of time/effort for the microbiologist to teach the fundamentals, when they could be doing the higher level work enabled by the strong science background of a freshly graduated Biology major. Many of the medical fields and some of the scientific fields do have internships for a year or more, which are essentially the apprenticeships you mention. That's because the idea of an apprentice is great (though more or less applicable depending on the field). But don't underestimate the benefit of a formal, thorough education.
If you could have bought you college experience for less, would it still be worth every cent you paid?
If I could have, probably not. But I sincerely do not believe that I could have replicated this experience on my own. Before I came to college, I read a variety of textbooks, philosophy, etc., but it was fundamentally different than my education in college. And like I alluded to, I've been awarded various scholarships, etc., so my actual cost of college has been bearable.
I'm aware that my experience may be atypical, and I definitely see the validity to your arguments. Depending on what one's goals are, college may or may not be the right option. In my experience, I was reluctant to go, but am really thankful I decided to. Undoubtedly there are many with the opposite experience. I just wanted to voice a pro-college opinion; I think that offhandedly disregarding a college education is as dangerous as blindly worshipping it.
I am sure others could put together a better argument, but as someone who has really enjoyed my college education I'll throw out some ideas.
People who might benefit by going to a university:
1) Anyone who doesn't know what they want to do: Before I started college I had never heard of Linguistics. Because there were no other courses available, I took a Linguistics course my first quarter, and immediately loved it. I'll be graduating with bachelors in both Linguistics and Computer Science soon. Without going to a university (one large enough to offer Linguistics, at that), it would have been very difficult to stumble upon that passion. This broader background will help me to do the natural language processing research I am (now) interested in. Similarly, backgrounds in many fields (e.g. Biology, Physics, Geology,...) complement a CS degree nicely. Getting such a diverse education is harder at a worksite.
2) People who like variety: Depending on who you work for, the variety of the type of work you do will vary. By design, the courseload in a undergraduate CS program is varied, including architecture, ethics, algorithms, automata theory, and of course, programming. I've programmed in Scheme, Prolog, C, C++, C# over the past four years on projects including a networked filesystem, a unix shell, a raytracer, a scheme interpreter, and device device drivers in NetBSD and WinXP. All of these projects were great fun.
3) People who like to challenge themselves: Anywhere you go, smart people will be able to find ways to challenge themselves. At a university, you have the advantage of a knowledgeable faculty who have plenty of pet projects they'd love to let you loose on. I've also found it very easy to get faculty to supervise research projects of my choosing. It's a great environment for getting a lot done, if you are self-motivated and hardworking. And there is something "pure" and refreshing about doing work without commercial motives - many great projects were birthed and/or nurtured in an academic environment.
I was reluctant to go to college, under the same opinion that if you are smart enough, you don't need it (plus I was just lazy). However, I've found that the university environment is ideal for smart people: lots of challenges, lots of variety. Anyone with the intelligence, curiousity and passion to succeed on ther own would thrive in a good program. Sure, college is expensive. But, again, if you are that intelligent and motivated, you can get scholarships, assistantships, and grants.
I am extremely grateful that I decided to go to college, it has been a great experience and worth every cent.
"When one is speaking on behalf of a major corporation, it is usually best not to speak in such a colloquial manner. I actually don't mind the use of words like boxen and virii, but if I heard a security expert using such language in his professional capacity, I would certainly give him less credibility."
Boxen and virii are slang/jargon, re-architected is neither: it's a linguistic innovation. He wanted to communicate his ideas, and he chose the best word for the job - it just so happened that the best word isn't in a dictionary. It wasn't a misuse, it wasn't ungrammatical. The only crime he commited was a social violation of the prescribed rules by language snobs. If such snobs always had their way, we'd be speaking Old English, Proto-Germanic or Proto-Indo-European.
There is no need to fear change: a confident, appropriate linguistic innovation speaks more to someone's intelligence than hiding behind the familiar conventions he/she is accustomed to.
Interesting anecdote. I like that your post is rather neutral on such a charged topic. By reading your article, if so inclined, one could conclude that Macs are superior, as they are used for longer. Just to play the devils advocate, I'm curious to know what people think about two other possible conclusions based on your post:
1) PCs are superior quality, especially at old ages, so they require less service than old Macs. 2) PCs are cheaper, which makes them more tempting to upgrade sooner; price forces Mac users to use their computer past their prime.
Before anybody flames me, I don't neccessarily believe either, I'm just floating a few hypotheses. It seems like there is so much propoganda in both directions on the Mac vs PC issue. Does anybody have any concrete numbers for or against either of these possibilities?
It's Pinker vs. Chomsky, winner take all, pass the popcorn!
Where does the versus come in? From everything I have read by Pinker, he seems to be a loyal disciple of Chomky. Don't they both fall far onto the nature side of the fence? Who is the nuture proponent in this equation?
No, we have not taught chimps and apes sign language. We have taught them a small subset of sign language, and the implications of that are debatable. We can similarly condition other animals to communicate (via pecking buttons etc.) in situations that clearly do not involve human language. Animals can communicate, sure. But human language requires an ability to convey novel information with grammatical utterances (among other things). Chimps and apes have communicated seemingly novel information, but in an ungrammatical fashion. So yes, it is nearly certain that there is some biological difference in humans that allows for human language, and all the power that it provides. Chimp / ape sign "language" is not some sort of Human Language Lite, but something fundamentally different altogether (and radically inferior in terms of expressive power).
"Time flies like an arrow" is a simile, and is idiomatic. There are a finite set of idioms, and they should be fine as "memorized" exceptions in a speech system (they are often memorized exceptions in humans). Most language is rule based, but I think many underestimate the number of idioms that humans encounter and have difficulty "parsing."
"Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana" is a joke. Translating it into other languages would neither be funny or especially meaningful, as the whole point is to play the idiom for a joke.
Humans are imperfect speech systems - everyday people hear things wrong, misinterpret sentences, etc. Humans just typically have lower error rates than machine systems, especially for language systems. Building a system that understands jokes, metaphors, etc. will take an extensive knowledge to draw from, which is one of the big advantages humans have in disambiguating language. Without a large knowledge-base and efficient ways of getting feedback to update that knowledge-base, computers will still have difficulty disambiguating novel phrases and words. Even then it is unrealistic for them to be able to always "understand" idioms, which rarely retain a meaning that can be deduced, just as it is unrealistic for humans to always understand an idiom when they first encounter it. Language systems should do what humans do - memorize its meaning and move on. You're welcome to wait for systems that understand jokes, and you'll probably be waiting for a while. I don't think, however, that is a useful prerequisite for "believing" in language systems.
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Downloading, double-clicking and installing Windows software is "out of reach" for most of the computer novices I know. Finding the proper installer is not always trivial, especially when companies push users towards a pay version and hide the free installer. After downloading, some novices have difficulty determining where the file went. And finally, many get confused by the options presented during the install (though clicking accept, next, and okay until your fingers bleed is a fairly reliable route). I've talked many novices through installs on the phone, and it can be very tedious.
On the other hand, I set Gentoo Linux up on my sister's machine. When she wants something installed, I call her up and say: "open a konsole, type su -, enter password, type 'emerge xyz'". It takes all of 20 seconds of phone time, and then whisks her off to a long install. Furthermore, this is a consistant interface for installing a new program (as opposed to going to different pages on different websites, downloading different files (zip,exe...),etc.) All you change is the name of the program you want to install.
Yes, long installs are annoying, but its pretty easy to compile during the night. Yes, it can go horribly wrong, but so can Windows installs. (Countless times novices have called me up and said, "oh this wouldn't work, it popped up some error message, I forget what"). And for updating the whole system? "emerge world" is many, many times more convient than going to 50 websites to check if the software/drivers/etc have updates, downloading each individually, double clicking each manually, and so on.
As the tech support guy for way too many friends and family, I wish they all had access to a package management system. Sure, installation on Linux isn't ideal, but in my experience, its a hell of a lot more convenient than Windows.
Why not just get a group of your friends together and start an open-source program?
... start a book-group/philosophy group, etc., etc.
I think that would be a great idea, but I'm not sure it would offer the same variety of challenges offered by an undergraduate program. Also, starting an open-source project is not mutually exclusive with college; I know a variety of classmates that are involved in open-source projects. In fact, some of my classmates and I will likely be releasing our senior project code under the GPL this summer - we plan to lead development on it as an open-source project.
Why not just get a group of your friends together and
Again, I think that is a great idea for varying your knowledge: joining together with other people in a learning process. But I'm not sure it would necessarily match the education of having discussions with experts, who have had to defend their thesis and spent years of their lives dedicated to research on the area. I've done both informal and formal education, in my personal experience, even if the difference is subtle, there is a difference.
Why are there no apprenticeships, like in the middle ages? Why can't you apprentice yourself to a microbiologist when you get out of highschool (or even before!), and help them with their research as they teach you the necessities of their job?
Perhaps its because science has become so advanced that a variety of background knowledge is required to do the required work. It is almost as if all of the Biology series, the Chemistry, the Math, etc, is needed before the apprenticeship could even begin. It would be a waste of time/effort for the microbiologist to teach the fundamentals, when they could be doing the higher level work enabled by the strong science background of a freshly graduated Biology major. Many of the medical fields and some of the scientific fields do have internships for a year or more, which are essentially the apprenticeships you mention. That's because the idea of an apprentice is great (though more or less applicable depending on the field). But don't underestimate the benefit of a formal, thorough education.
If you could have bought you college experience for less, would it still be worth every cent you paid?
If I could have, probably not. But I sincerely do not believe that I could have replicated this experience on my own. Before I came to college, I read a variety of textbooks, philosophy, etc., but it was fundamentally different than my education in college. And like I alluded to, I've been awarded various scholarships, etc., so my actual cost of college has been bearable.
I'm aware that my experience may be atypical, and I definitely see the validity to your arguments. Depending on what one's goals are, college may or may not be the right option. In my experience, I was reluctant to go, but am really thankful I decided to. Undoubtedly there are many with the opposite experience. I just wanted to voice a pro-college opinion; I think that offhandedly disregarding a college education is as dangerous as blindly worshipping it.
I am sure others could put together a better argument, but as someone who has really enjoyed my college education I'll throw out some ideas.
...) complement a CS degree nicely. Getting such a diverse education is harder at a worksite.
People who might benefit by going to a university:
1) Anyone who doesn't know what they want to do:
Before I started college I had never heard of Linguistics. Because there were no other courses available, I took a Linguistics course my first quarter, and immediately loved it. I'll be graduating with bachelors in both Linguistics and Computer Science soon. Without going to a university (one large enough to offer Linguistics, at that), it would have been very difficult to stumble upon that passion. This broader background will help me to do the natural language processing research I am (now) interested in. Similarly, backgrounds in many fields (e.g. Biology, Physics, Geology,
2) People who like variety:
Depending on who you work for, the variety of the type of work you do will vary. By design, the courseload in a undergraduate CS program is varied, including architecture, ethics, algorithms, automata theory, and of course, programming. I've programmed in Scheme, Prolog, C, C++, C# over the past four years on projects including a networked filesystem, a unix shell, a raytracer, a scheme interpreter, and device device drivers in NetBSD and WinXP. All of these projects were great fun.
3) People who like to challenge themselves:
Anywhere you go, smart people will be able to find ways to challenge themselves. At a university, you have the advantage of a knowledgeable faculty who have plenty of pet projects they'd love to let you loose on. I've also found it very easy to get faculty to supervise research projects of my choosing. It's a great environment for getting a lot done, if you are self-motivated and hardworking. And there is something "pure" and refreshing about doing work without commercial motives - many great projects were birthed and/or nurtured in an academic environment.
I was reluctant to go to college, under the same opinion that if you are smart enough, you don't need it (plus I was just lazy). However, I've found that the university environment is ideal for smart people: lots of challenges, lots of variety. Anyone with the intelligence, curiousity and passion to succeed on ther own would thrive in a good program. Sure, college is expensive. But, again, if you are that intelligent and motivated, you can get scholarships, assistantships, and grants.
I am extremely grateful that I decided to go to college, it has been a great experience and worth every cent.
"When one is speaking on behalf of a major corporation, it is usually best not to speak in such a colloquial manner. I actually don't mind the use of words like boxen and virii, but if I heard a security expert using such language in his professional capacity, I would certainly give him less credibility."
Boxen and virii are slang/jargon, re-architected is neither: it's a linguistic innovation. He wanted to communicate his ideas, and he chose the best word for the job - it just so happened that the best word isn't in a dictionary. It wasn't a misuse, it wasn't ungrammatical. The only crime he commited was a social violation of the prescribed rules by language snobs. If such snobs always had their way, we'd be speaking Old English, Proto-Germanic or Proto-Indo-European.
There is no need to fear change: a confident, appropriate linguistic innovation speaks more to someone's intelligence than hiding behind the familiar conventions he/she is accustomed to.
Interesting anecdote. I like that your post is rather neutral on such a charged topic. By reading your article, if so inclined, one could conclude that Macs are superior, as they are used for longer. Just to play the devils advocate, I'm curious to know what people think about two other possible conclusions based on your post:
1) PCs are superior quality, especially at old ages, so they require less service than old Macs.
2) PCs are cheaper, which makes them more tempting to upgrade sooner; price forces Mac users to use their computer past their prime.
Before anybody flames me, I don't neccessarily believe either, I'm just floating a few hypotheses. It seems like there is so much propoganda in both directions on the Mac vs PC issue. Does anybody have any concrete numbers for or against either of these possibilities?
It's Pinker vs. Chomsky, winner take all, pass the popcorn!
Where does the versus come in? From everything I have read by Pinker, he seems to be a loyal disciple of Chomky. Don't they both fall far onto the nature side of the fence? Who is the nuture proponent in this equation?
Haven't we taught chimps and apes sign language?
No, we have not taught chimps and apes sign language. We have taught them a small subset of sign language, and the implications of that are debatable. We can similarly condition other animals to communicate (via pecking buttons etc.) in situations that clearly do not involve human language. Animals can communicate, sure. But human language requires an ability to convey novel information with grammatical utterances (among other things). Chimps and apes have communicated seemingly novel information, but in an ungrammatical fashion. So yes, it is nearly certain that there is some biological difference in humans that allows for human language, and all the power that it provides. Chimp / ape sign "language" is not some sort of Human Language Lite, but something fundamentally different altogether (and radically inferior in terms of expressive power).
Here's another article on the same subject. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.03/brain.htm l
"Time flies like an arrow" is a simile, and is idiomatic. There are a finite set of idioms, and they should be fine as "memorized" exceptions in a speech system (they are often memorized exceptions in humans). Most language is rule based, but I think many underestimate the number of idioms that humans encounter and have difficulty "parsing."
"Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana" is a joke. Translating it into other languages would neither be funny or especially meaningful, as the whole point is to play the idiom for a joke.
Humans are imperfect speech systems - everyday people hear things wrong, misinterpret sentences, etc. Humans just typically have lower error rates than machine systems, especially for language systems. Building a system that understands jokes, metaphors, etc. will take an extensive knowledge to draw from, which is one of the big advantages humans have in disambiguating language. Without a large knowledge-base and efficient ways of getting feedback to update that knowledge-base, computers will still have difficulty disambiguating novel phrases and words. Even then it is unrealistic for them to be able to always "understand" idioms, which rarely retain a meaning that can be deduced, just as it is unrealistic for humans to always understand an idiom when they first encounter it. Language systems should do what humans do - memorize its meaning and move on. You're welcome to wait for systems that understand jokes, and you'll probably be waiting for a while. I don't think, however, that is a useful prerequisite for "believing" in language systems.