Re: Any research putting c above ada?

[Roy Grimm <ragrimm@cca.rockwell.com>]

> I interview one or two people a week, from new college hires to very
> experienced professionals.  It is not true that studying LISP and ALGOL
> will not help you get a job.  Actually, although we program in C++, I do not
> really care what languages candidates know, provided that
> they can demonstrate knowledge commensurate with their training and
> experience.  If a new graduate can give me some good reasons why they enjoyed
> programming in LISP more than in ALGOL, I will hire them, because they are
> likely to have a solid understanding of C++ (or any other language) in short
> order.

I'd have to agree that this appears to be one sound method of choosing
the candidates.  Seeing that they have "tried out" languages enough to
determine favories shows a little bit of initiative.

> >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.
> 
> I don't recommend anyone with this attitude, because we need adults with
> problem solving skills, not juvenile grade-grubbers.  A low GPA will make it
> harder for you to get an interview, but a high GPA is no guarantee of a job.
> We just turned down an MSCS graduate with a 3.5+ GPA, because the candidate
> couldn't demonstrate any understanding of the coursework.

I'd have to disagree with your judgement of this "grade-grubbing"
attitude.  I am a perfect example of someone who had a "less than
stellar" academic career (graduated with less than a 3.0 GPA) but had
plenty of opportunity to demonstrate I have real problem solving
skills.  (I was on a team for an ACM programming contest and finished
two programs myself while the other two members each finished one.  That
made our team one of less than one hundred, out of more than a thousand
nation wide, that finished at least 4 out of the 6 programs in the time
allotted.  A significan percentage of teams didn't even finish one.)

When I was considered for my first job out of college, my boss (to be)
wasn't interested in my GPA in the slightest.  He asked me direct
questions about what I had done to get and/or demonstrate practical
experience and how I would respond to particular problems.  I was direct
and told him what I did (not what I thought he wanted to hear) and he
hired me.

At a homecoming a few years later, I found out that a few people in my
class who had graduated with a 4.0 in comp sci were having trouble in
their jobs maintaining COBOL code for accounting/insurance type
companies becasue they didn't know how to apply their theory to real
world situations.

> > 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.
> 
> That is truly unfortunate.  However, with industry salaries for top-notch
> experienced professionals in six figures now, it is hard to get good
> instruction for $100/credit hour.  If you do, be grateful; it's charity.

Grateful?  Charity?  Hell, I demand it be good instruction, whatever the
price.

> > I did have a few, maybe 5, profs who were able to teach and encouraged us.
> 
> Five!  That's not so bad.  I hope you learned everything you could from them,
> and took all possible steps to complain about the rest.

When they have tenure, complaining does nothing but get you chastized...

> >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.
> 
> Which is hard to do with no understanding of fundamental data structures and
> algorithms.

But you can teach the fundamentals in a few weeks, rather than in the
two semesters they currently waste.  If students spent more time
learning how to solve real problems, they would be able to pick up the
theory much faster.  They would see a problem and ask the intelligent
questions about how to solve it.  At that point, you can show them the
theory and how it applies in that case.  Instead, the instructors show
students the theory, spend a long time making sure people understand the
theory and move on to the next one.  Almost no time is spent applying
the theory to anything more than very focused, contrived example
problems that are easy to grade.

> >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.
> 
> There are many schools that have more practical programs.
> But I believe that some knowledge of CS theory is required to work
> effectively on new applications.  I do not recommend candidates who are
> unable to demonstrate some knowledge of CS theory.

I would go a step farther and demand that they be able to demonstrate
the ability to _apply_ that theory.  Unless, of course, they were only
doing theoretical work...

> >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.
> 
> Few undergraduates know enough to choose their career direction.
> But a good understanding of CS opens the most doors, and leads to the most
> rewarding careers.

Ah, but good understanding of engineering coupled with computer science
would not only open the door but get you all the way inside and down the
hall a ways...

> >CS covers many great things, but solving design problems is not one of
> >them (at least in my experience).
> 
> There is not enough time in an undergraduate cirriculum to teach SW
> engineering judgment.

Horse Hockey!

How would software engineering be any different than any other
discipline?  Do they not teach engineering judgement to the other
engineering disciplines?  We recently hired a new graduate, straight out
of engineering school.  He's got a much better handle on engineering
judgement than any of the software weenies (myself included) did when we
started.  I was able to coach him on the fundamentals of algorithm and
data structure design in just a few weeks.  Teach someone to solve
problems and they will pick up the theory much faster.  They know how to
ask more intelligent questions.

> But there are plenty of excellent books on the subject. I suggest you try to
> read one technical book a month.  Soon you will be well ahead of your
> classmates.

Sure.  If you are one of the 5% of students who are able to comprehend
technical manuals, that's good advice.  What about for the rest of them?

-- 
Voicing my own opinion, not speaking as a company representative...

Roy A. Grimm
Rockwell Collins Avionics
Cedar Rapids, Iowa
ragrimm@cca.rockwell.com