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- From: crawford@church.mitre.org (Randy Crawford)
- Subject: Re: Scientists as Programmers (was Re: Small Language Wanted)
- Message-ID: <1992Sep1.153804.25759@linus.mitre.org>
- Sender: crawford@church (Randy Crawford)
- Nntp-Posting-Host: church.mitre.org
- Organization: The MITRE Corporation, McLean, VA
- References: <1992Aug31.170849.11927@mprgate.mpr.ca> <1992Aug31.211256.20455@a.cs.okstate.edu> <BtvI3A.MHA@comp.vuw.ac.nz>
- Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1992 15:38:04 GMT
- Lines: 43
-
- In article <BtvI3A.MHA@comp.vuw.ac.nz>, brian@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Brian Boutel) writes:
- >
- > In article <1992Aug31.211256.20455@a.cs.okstate.edu>,
- > hip@a.cs.okstate.edu (HUFFMAN BRADLEY SP) writes:
- >
- > |> Since accountants must take continuing education credits, I think professors
- > |> should every 2 years be forced to go work in industry for 3 months.
- >
- > Why? What would they learn that wasn't evident 2, 4 or 10 years previously, apart from a few fashionable buzz-words?
-
- They would learn which skills are _necessary_ to deliver software on time
- and in a reusable fashion. Ten years ago, how many profs had any sense of
- the practical value in software reuse? How many profs today have a good
- appreciation of how much legacy code is out there? Do they understand the
- commercial value of a degree steeped in finite automata, computational
- complexity and turing machines? Industry wants software engineers, not
- computational scientists with BS degrees.
-
- A little time spent in the commercial (or government) sector could do great
- things to make profs aware of the current needs of the market. They should
- design their curriculums with the needs of today's marketplace in mind.
- Why shouldn't operating systems classes be taught as half theory/half Unix?
- Or a compiler class which teaches LR(1) parsing and illustrates LALR(1) using
- LEX and YACC? I've heard of a number of schools which implement compilers
- in scheme or ML. For god's sake, get a sense of what's useful and what's
- not!
-
- It takes several years in the workplace for the average BSCS to acquire the
- skills necessary to understand and then build most modern applications,
- because today's apps are complex collections of components combining X Windows,
- RPCs, sockets, Unix internals, and practical software engineering. You don't
- learn these in college, and that's dumb. CS is a form of engineering, and
- until there's employment for theorists in the market, schools must temper
- theory with practice. Certainly you don't see EE programs teaching power
- systems or non-solid state technology. Teaching practical CS labs using
- techniques and tools which are decades old (like VAX assemblers or IBM/VM
- virtual memory) is inappropriate and a waste of tuition. It's also damned
- poor preparation for getting and keeping a job.
- --
-
- | Randy Crawford crawford@mitre.org The MITRE Corporation
- | 7525 Colshire Dr., MS Z421
- | N=1 -> P=NP 703 883-7940 McLean, VA 22102
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