So by your definition someone who recently started caring about programming after highschool can't exist? How do you ever get started? Many students majoring in CS weren't interested in it before, but that certainly doesn't mean they aren't now.
Being two years into the program is more than long enough to read ahead and learn about areas yet to be covered during the course. Most university CS courses move very slowly, especially at the beginning.
Also let me add this, in Universities you have all kinds of research and ideas being passed around which are fresh. If you can't find a way to take advantage of being there in person in the presence of this generation of ideas then you aren't trying.
The same goes for the web and many OSS projects. University doesn't offer anything special there.
Unlike medical / chemical / mechanical courses, universities really don't provide access to any equipment or knowledge that isn't accessible to the average student at home. That isn't the fault of universities - CS just happens to be wonderful that way.
The last thing the world needs is more students who don't care about school as anything but a means to an end
School is a tool, nothing more. Students do not harm society by not caring about it, nor do they benefit society by caring about it. This is not the case for software development.
Try getting a decent CS job without a degree. Unless you have somebody on the inside in a company you would like to work for who can put in a good word for you, you are out of luck.
If you do have somebody on the inside then you'll be able to net a great deal of experience you can then throw on your resume. Otherwise having a degree is a prerequisite for getting a job.
Wrong. If they have nothing to learn in the course, then they have no place in that course. What you are trying to say is that if the person is worth even a tiny shit, they should be able to leave highschool and take every CS test an undergraduate in CS at Standford would take and do all the projects aswell without having to learn anything new. This is laughable.
If they care about programming, then by the time they are near the end of their highschool career they should have already spent three to five years spending a good chunk of their free time learning it.
If that's the case, they should know just a fair chunk of the coursework and be able to do the projects no problem.
The course is there to let you prove you know what you do, and to fill in the few bits you may not. It works as a filtering system for companies hiring workers - they can reject anybody who doesn't have a degree and avoid wasting the time necessary to interview every applicant. That isn't a dig against companies; there is no compelling reason for them to do anything else.
No that is false...a second year CS student is probably going to have less knowledge then someone who graduated with a CS degree (assuming same school) and is working in the field. I still can't see how you automatically assume they should know enough - this is naive.
Thus the statement 'he only limiting factor should be their lack of workplace experience'.
Again you are assuming. These kids could be on full scholarship and a limited budget. They may have not had internet access (still many parts of this country do not have it), and their family could be poor enough where they never owned a computer so having a computer book - even a free one - would do them no good.
Considering CS students working with a scholarship are the vast minority, you really don't have an argument here. Maybe one in one hundred will have an valid excuse other than pure laziness to attribute their lack of knowledge to.
I care about programming, I love it - I don't know 10% of it.
Then you don't care about it. You may enjoy it, but you don't really care about it. If you cared about it you would spend hours every day pouring over every bit of knowledge you could get your hands on. Mechanics serve as another good example - the good ones that really care about their work are the kind of people who fix up cars (or do something in their field) in their spare time.
I know people who don't really care much about programming, but can program like there is no tomorrow.
And how many of these people are turning out genuinely decent code? Code that is stable, fast, and just plain clever? Or better yet, how many of them are doing simply codemonkey work like writing glorified frontends to databases in Perl/PHP/ASP?
You have no idea of how much or how little they enjoy programming.
If they don't care about it, then they shouldn't be taking programming.
You have no idea what extra-curricular activities they have performed.
The person I was replying to stated that it was decent work for second year students.
If they really care about CS, then the fact that they are second year students should be meaningless as far as knowledge goes. The only limiting factor should be their lack of workplace experience.
You have no idea what resources are and are not available to them.
Used books can be picked up cheap, and free internet access is widely available. Chances are if they can afford to go to university, they can afford learning material.
Some people enjoy going to school and getting a degree; even without knowing a majority of what they'll be taught in school.
Yes, but those types of people shouldn't be taking CS.
The last thing the world needs are more lackluster programmers who simply do not care about programming as anything more than a means to an end (namely a paycheque).
Without trying to be offensive, that is a completely obtuse statement. To expect someone who enjoys something to know about it, and to know most of it, before enrolling? Then really there is no point to school if you are going in knowing all of the information. You have no basis to say they do not truly care about what they are in school for, nor do you have a basis to say what their previous background was, and frankly their work is nice for 2nd year students. When I was a 2nd year student we weren't this sort of stuff, makes me wish I went to Stanford.
The point is you get the little piece of paper that says you know it and allows you to get a job. I know, I ended up having to go through university just to get employers to even look at me.
Everything you need to learn most of what is taught can be obtained from various programming books, online resources, and open source projects.
If they don't enjoy programming enough to go out and get that information, then they have no place in a CS course.
[quote]Yea but for a CS246 (2nd year comp sci students) this is good...you are comparing 4 grad students to 2nd year under grads?[/quote]If they truly care about and enjoy programming then they should already know everything that is going to be taught for the rest of their enrollment. They should have known most of it before enrolling.
If not, then they shouldn't be taking CS.
As I said, a gray area... no community has the right to impose conditions that conflict with the law.
The conditions do not conflict with the law. Not in the least. The student is not being forced to do community service - it is merely required of him if he wishes to maintain his enrollment, which he is more than welcome to cancel.
The university in this case is a private institution. They can choose their students based on almost any criteria they desire, and can impose almost any arbitrary requirements on the students.
The student is free to speak in the manner he did, and the school is free to terminate his enrollment or add additional requirements - such as community service - necessary for him to maintain it. Freedom works both ways. If those terms are not acceptable then the student is free to leave.
It is certainly dangerous if the server belongs to a business that cannot sell anything online without it. A significant amount of money could be lost.
It's would be just about impossible to make significant profits off games if people had easy free access to them after corporations spend millions designing them.
Scientific papers or articles are there to provide information in a concise and accurate manner.
Scientists are not entertainers. If some laymen are too thick to derive intellectual pleasure from reading papers, then let them wallow in their ignorance.
That IQ is controlled by genetics doesn't seem very contentious to me.
Consider that the only thing responsible for the difference between brains formed in humans and brains formed in cows is genetics.
Upbringing certainly has a large effect too, of course.
Re:Is programming getting much harder?
on
Build a Program Now
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· Score: 2, Insightful
As far as learning goes, there are still toy languages available for people to cut their teeth on.
For serious programs, however, simply things like binary trees and linked lists can be all but impossible to create with old BASIC-style languages. A complete lack of pointers and references makes it very difficult to write reusable code, and even trivial changes can require modifications to the code in a large number of places.
Traditionally trivial code now has more overhead than it once did, but complex code is far more manageable.
You may learn quite a bit if you treat it as a full time job, putting in over 40 hours per week and actually stretch your knowledge. However, unless you work on a wide variety of projects, you will not hit everything covered in a CS course.
Which is what any dedicated individual will do - spend almost every waking moment reading or programming.
Some of the best OSS programmers learned simply by completely dedicating a few years of their life to programming, rather than wasting time on meaningless social outings.
All the information is available to a dedicated individual. Once the basics have been established - reading, writing, basic math - only idiots need to be taught. Once you have the basics of math and reading, you can teach yourself differential and integral calculus, physics, programming, and much more. There is a massive wealth of information available to people. Personally I began programming around age six, kept with it all the way through high school, and then ended up wasting $6000 on tuition for CS degree that taught me absolutely nothing. $6000 to have a few assholes instruct me on what I had already been spending my entire life learning.
Insulting me only implies that I struck a nerve. You'd rather insult me and denigrate my intelligence than address what I wrote, which on some level you must believe is true.
No, it means I simply tire of arguing with elitist asshats.
Slashdot Mirror
Being two years into the program is more than long enough to read ahead and learn about areas yet to be covered during the course. Most university CS courses move very slowly, especially at the beginning.
The same goes for the web and many OSS projects. University doesn't offer anything special there.
Unlike medical / chemical / mechanical courses, universities really don't provide access to any equipment or knowledge that isn't accessible to the average student at home. That isn't the fault of universities - CS just happens to be wonderful that way.
Completely true. It makes it possible, however. It is just about impossible without a degree.
Best thing to do is pick up something other than pure CS but where your CS knowledge can be applied.
Try getting a decent CS job without a degree. Unless you have somebody on the inside in a company you would like to work for who can put in a good word for you, you are out of luck.
If you do have somebody on the inside then you'll be able to net a great deal of experience you can then throw on your resume. Otherwise having a degree is a prerequisite for getting a job.
If that's the case, they should know just a fair chunk of the coursework and be able to do the projects no problem.
The course is there to let you prove you know what you do, and to fill in the few bits you may not. It works as a filtering system for companies hiring workers - they can reject anybody who doesn't have a degree and avoid wasting the time necessary to interview every applicant. That isn't a dig against companies; there is no compelling reason for them to do anything else.
Considering CS students working with a scholarship are the vast minority, you really don't have an argument here. Maybe one in one hundred will have an valid excuse other than pure laziness to attribute their lack of knowledge to.
Then you don't care about it. You may enjoy it, but you don't really care about it. If you cared about it you would spend hours every day pouring over every bit of knowledge you could get your hands on. Mechanics serve as another good example - the good ones that really care about their work are the kind of people who fix up cars (or do something in their field) in their spare time.
And how many of these people are turning out genuinely decent code? Code that is stable, fast, and just plain clever? Or better yet, how many of them are doing simply codemonkey work like writing glorified frontends to databases in Perl/PHP/ASP?
The person I was replying to stated that it was decent work for second year students.
If they really care about CS, then the fact that they are second year students should be meaningless as far as knowledge goes. The only limiting factor should be their lack of workplace experience. Used books can be picked up cheap, and free internet access is widely available. Chances are if they can afford to go to university, they can afford learning material.
The last thing the world needs are more lackluster programmers who simply do not care about programming as anything more than a means to an end (namely a paycheque).
MAngband is an online variant of Angband.
Unfortunately online play necessitates timing turns to ~ a second.
Everything you need to learn most of what is taught can be obtained from various programming books, online resources, and open source projects.
If they don't enjoy programming enough to go out and get that information, then they have no place in a CS course.
[quote]Yea but for a CS246 (2nd year comp sci students) this is good...you are comparing 4 grad students to 2nd year under grads?[/quote]If they truly care about and enjoy programming then they should already know everything that is going to be taught for the rest of their enrollment. They should have known most of it before enrolling. If not, then they shouldn't be taking CS.
There is no grey area here.
You may want to update your link. SubspaceHQ hasn't worked in ages.
The university in this case is a private institution. They can choose their students based on almost any criteria they desire, and can impose almost any arbitrary requirements on the students.
The student is free to speak in the manner he did, and the school is free to terminate his enrollment or add additional requirements - such as community service - necessary for him to maintain it. Freedom works both ways. If those terms are not acceptable then the student is free to leave.
The school has done nothing illegal.
Leverage implies 'use to his advantage'.
It is certainly dangerous if the server belongs to a business that cannot sell anything online without it. A significant amount of money could be lost.
Incorrect.
It's would be just about impossible to make significant profits off games if people had easy free access to them after corporations spend millions designing them.
C, Python, Perl, Java, C#, etc are fine for both highschool students and hobbyists.
If an individual is not going to read the full works, then s/he is just better off not reading anything at all.
Uh-oh, looks like I ticked off one of those idiots. Seems some people can't handle the truth.
Scientific papers or articles are there to provide information in a concise and accurate manner.
Scientists are not entertainers. If some laymen are too thick to derive intellectual pleasure from reading papers, then let them wallow in their ignorance.
Upbringing certainly has a large effect too, of course.
As far as learning goes, there are still toy languages available for people to cut their teeth on.
For serious programs, however, simply things like binary trees and linked lists can be all but impossible to create with old BASIC-style languages. A complete lack of pointers and references makes it very difficult to write reusable code, and even trivial changes can require modifications to the code in a large number of places.
Traditionally trivial code now has more overhead than it once did, but complex code is far more manageable.
Perhaps have a standard directory name that marks the end of the domain?
/org/slashdot/politics//comments.pl ?
Maybe a null directory name?
Some of the best OSS programmers learned simply by completely dedicating a few years of their life to programming, rather than wasting time on meaningless social outings.
All the information is available to a dedicated individual. Once the basics have been established - reading, writing, basic math - only idiots need to be taught. Once you have the basics of math and reading, you can teach yourself differential and integral calculus, physics, programming, and much more. There is a massive wealth of information available to people. Personally I began programming around age six, kept with it all the way through high school, and then ended up wasting $6000 on tuition for CS degree that taught me absolutely nothing. $6000 to have a few assholes instruct me on what I had already been spending my entire life learning. No, it means I simply tire of arguing with elitist asshats.