Re: Any research putting c above ada?

[John Apa <japa@DIE_SPAMMER.dasd.honeywell.com>]

Robert I. Eachus wrote:
> 
> In article <5k88f8$387@bcrkh13.bnr.ca> kaz@vision.crest.nt.com (Kaz Kylheku) writes:
> 
>   > Ah. The thing is, I thought that all good computer science
>   > programs included software engineering as part of the curriculum,
>   > and I always saw them as inseparable. I realize that this is not
>   > the case in every institution.
> 
>    Unfortunately true.  Some programs, MIT and UCLA have been
> mentioned here, concentrate on computer science theory, some Worcester
> Polytechnic Institute, for example, are very software engineering
> oriented, and most are in between.
> 
>    But in reality it is the responsibility of the students to get the
> knowledge that they need.  Even at heavy theory schools you can get
> practical experience, and (elective) courses to cover the holes.  It
> is possible to get through the CS program at MIT without learning C,
> C++, Fortran, COBOL, Ada, Pascal, or even BASIC.  But who would want
> to?
> 
>    (Flame retardant: I don't think you can get through without a
> course in Programming Languages.  But when teaching the course, and I
> have--but not at MIT, the tendency is to cover less popular languages
> which are interesting for other reasons.  I covered Algol 60, PL/I,
> APL, and Common Lisp.)
> --

Yes it is the student's responsibility to get the knowledge they need.
However the current trend in education is to over generalize so that the
student is a wonderful citizen by forcing them to take highly irrelevant
classes. The cal state system requires over 60% of classes not be
related to scientific majors. Yes, I probably picked the wrong school,
but this seems to be a general trend in "higher" education. Many schools
have gone away from preparing students for the "real" world. They need
to get back to their original purpose.

I have an EE degree. Many of my friends were CS majors. All very smart
and also unprepared for the job market (for better or worse, many live
in Redmond now, SW hell I think). They were taught the wonderful
languages of lisp, algol, and other "interesting" languages. However,
these are things that do not help you find a job. Which, I think most
people will agree, is the main goal of most people going to college.
College is not about learning, it's about jumping through all the right
hoops and writing down what the profs want to see. Anyone who doesn't
believe that has probably never pointed out a design error to a prof in
class. Granted this is worst case but in my (and many of my associates
and friends) experience this is the way many profs work. I did have a
few, maybe 5, profs who were able to teach and encouraged us. It should
not be that way. I don't mean to be preachy on this but my college
career was full of profs in both the technical and non-technical fields
who "knew" everything and were more than willing to fail you for
questioning that. Funny since they always insisted that questions were
important to learning.

We will always need people in academia to do research, but at the same
time someone has to know how to go out and engineer solutions to real
world problems. After all, someone has to keep the planes in the air.

I have long thought that we need to have a degree in the field of
Software Engineering for those who want to learn how to apply SW
technology to the real world. CS could be free to remain dedicated to
doing the pure research that so many of the profs love. It would also
give students more freedom to chose their career direction.

CS covers many great things, but solving design problems is not one of
them (at least in my experience). Now that I am doing real-time embedded
systems using Ada95, I find that most of the _SW_ engineers are indeed
engineers and not CS grads. We have engineers from all fields:
aeronautics, chem, civil, mechanical, Electrical, and even genetics. The
big difference is that in the engineering departments of schools
students are shown how to solve problems.

My $0.02.

John

> 
>                                         Robert I. Eachus
> 
> with Standard_Disclaimer;
> use  Standard_Disclaimer;
> function Message (Text: in Clever_Ideas) return Better_Ideas is...

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John Thomas Apa
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Honeywell Defense Avionics Systems
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