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- From: magus@drktowr.chi.il.us (Louis Giliberto)
- Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
- Subject: Re: Licencing of computer professionals
- Message-ID: <9212211525@drktowr.chi.il.us>
- Date: 23 Dec 92 11:44:44 GMT
- References: <bhayden.724494481@teal>
- Organization: DarkTower Software
- Lines: 110
- X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]
-
- Bruce Hayden (bhayden@teal.csn.org) wrote:
- : It may be true that almost all classes require some hands on. However,
- : that does not mean that you actually get any experience. I recently
- : worked with a woman who got a 4.0 on her MS/CS degree. It became
- : readily apparent that though she was very bright, she had _no_
- : experience with writing a program over 50 lines long. What had
- : happened?? We hypothesize that she levereged her looks and southern
- : charm into having her male partners do most of the work throughout
- : school. This is the downside of the almost universal practice,
- : espeically in upper division or graduate courses of working in teams.
-
- Or it could be she went to a crappy school.
-
- At any rate, this breaks down into one basic argument:
-
- Are "computer professionals" more like engineers or mathematicians?
-
- Some schools put them in with EE, some with math. What exactly is it?
- Mathematicians (except for actuaries) aren't licensed. Engineers are.
- What's the difference?
-
- Engineers
- ---------
- Finished product usually physical, applied form.
- Finished product usually sold for commercial purposes.
- Theory taught to end in application.
-
- Math dudes
- ----------
- Finished product usually theoretical, applied in other apps.
- Finished product usually not sold.
- Theory taught to end in development of more theory.
-
- Ok, it's not comprehensive, but it's a good start.
-
- In general, I think it would be fair to state this;
- Mathematicians develop tools, engineers develop products.
-
- Computer scientists develop both. They must abstract data into new
- structures, formulate algorithms, and figure out how the hell to
- code the thing in Lisp (inside joke). However, nowadays even engineers
- and mathematicians must be able to code a little bit. So CS seems to
- be caught in the middle.
-
- Not a bad place to be, really. If you want to see CS fall apart fast,
- then start licensing. What do you license on, the applied, the theoretical,
- what? I took the advanced GRE (subject) in CS about 2 weeks ago. The
- entire exam was theoretical CS. Does a guy who works for a word processor
- software house need to know Turing theory or routing theory? And how could
- you test applied CS? A true CS program would be over 500 lines probably,
- and can't be written inside a few hours on paper with no testing. A lot
- of CS is just winging it, so more important than getting it right the
- first time is being able to *debug* it, which is an art in itself.
-
- If you test the theoretical, what good is that to a software house?
- There are probably more mathematicians who understand queing theory
- than programmers, but couldn't code it for all the tea in china. What
- good does theory do a company that turns out a product when you can't
- code for squat?
-
- When Microsoft interviews people, they ask questions like: Why are
- manhole covers round? How many gas stations are there in the world?
- (This was in a magazine article). Why? The most important asset of
- a programmer is being able to think on your feet: you must be a true
- hacker -- you must be able to get around obstacles in new and swift ways
- in order to complete the project. You can't test for this. Only time
- will tell.
-
- Any attempt to test and/or license programmers will result in a bunch
- of dweebs who can regurgitate theory or can code but don't even know
- what a finite-state machine is. And most importantly, you won't even
- know if they can think.
-
-
- : Well, as mentioned above, a degree (even a MS degree) doesn't ensure
- : anything of the sort.
-
- Just to interject: why? An MS in computer science teaches you theory,
- not applied. To examine theory you don't need to write programs over
- 50 lines long. Half the time you don't even see code, just pseudo code.
- The applied CS ends with the BS degree. The only graduate courses that
- allow you to write a program over 50 lines long are: software engineering
- or programming project/independent study. Once in a while something pops
- up (like I took compiler theory this semester in which we had to write
- a compiler), but in general you have courses like: Parallel Architecture
- and Processing Theory, Theory of Programming Languages, Network Theory,
- Algorithms, Automata and Turing Machines, etc. After a BS degree, you
- spend little time behind the console. You are supposed to know how to
- code, now it's time to learn how to think. If you look at Denning's book
- on operating systems, there is like 0 code in there. It's all performance
- considerations.
-
- So, it's not that woman's fault that she can't code over 50 lines. The
- problem is that the school's idea of what makes a MS degree and corporations'
- ideas are different.
-
- But, for you CS majors out there getting your BS or MS, as I complete mine
- I make one recommendation: write programs until your fingers fall off.
- When you look at the theory and understand it, it's great. But you
- don't understand it until you code it. You can learn music theory,
- and analyze Bouree in E minor, but until you pick up that Lute, it
- doesn't mean squat.
-
- -Louis
- --
- ---------------------------------------------------------
- Louis J. Giliberto, Jr. ! magus@drktowr.chi.il.us
- -sysadmin drktowr ! lgilibe@orion.it.luc.edu
- Chicago, IL USA !
- ---------------------------------------------------------
-