Re: Any research putting c above ada?

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

I missed the original response to my post, but I'm glad that someone
else is willing to state the truth about the state of "higher education"
in this country. The original idea of my post was simply to state that
there was a need for an Applied CS or SW Engineering field of study in
school. I made some comments about the state of Technical education and
the following ensued, I probably should have snipped more:

I fully agree with what Mr Grimm has written.

Roy Grimm wrote {The shear unadulterated truth}:
> 
> > 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

Are you an engineer or a HR type.

> > 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.
> 

Yes, it's always good to hire people who have initiative and have a wide
field of knowledge. I have also been in the position of reviewing and
interviewing. I could care less what school projects someone did or what
their GPA was. If someone can convince me that they know what they are
doing and that they can solve problems I will recommend them. But then
I'm in the engineering field, we solve problems. There is always a need
for people to do the academic research and push the technology ahead,
but unless it is applied it's useless. People must know how to apply
what they learn in school, or it does no good to anyone.

> > >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.

I had 25 companies calling me for interviews. I don't even know what my
gpa was. I had no problems, no one cared to ask me for it. I know of
others in the same position. My knowledge and experience make me
valuable. What I did years ago in the artificial academic world is
irrelevant. The first company I worked for out of school didn't care
either. So what's your point, your company discriminates against good
engineers who had to work through school and couldn't spend 100% on
classes? Then I'm sorry for your company.

> > 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.)

I've been a SW engineer for 8 years now and during my recent job search
no one asked what my GPA was. I don't even know, who cares. My father
who has 45 years of engineering experience was looking for a new job a
few years ago, one of the HR people wanted to know his GPA. That shows
an unrivaled level of stupidity, yes the HR person did lose his job over
that one. He had to work and fight a war while going to school, he is
one of the engineers who got us to the moon and helped us win the cold
war. I doubt that I will ever gain as much knowledge as he possesses.

GPA is not a measure of anything but your ability to get through school.
I hated school, because it was to slow and lacked any creativity. I
loved my reasearch and design courses because I had to think to figure
things out. I tutored many of the "4.0" students I went to class with,
many would have failed had I not helped them understand how to apply the
theories we were taught. This doesn't make me smarter than them, nor
them smarter than me for having a 4.0.

> 
> 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.

I'm still getting calls on my resume because of the things I know and
the experience I've gained over the years. If my gpa is more important
than my knowledge and experience then I sure don't want to work at that
company. They probably haven't got a clue as to how to do real
engineering. Knowledge is power. Arbitrary social standards are
meaningless.

> 
> 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.

One of my friends went on to get a MS, yes I tutored some of those
classes also. This particular friends graduated 1st in the class with a
4.0 MS with honors. The job aquired is as a crew chief on a phone
company repair team. Most of the people graduated with me are in nowhere
jobs because they weren't able to apply their CS skills to anything
real.  A terrible waste of good people. Thank the educational proponents
of the socially balanced student for that.

> 
> > > 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.

Don't EVER EVER tell me that my outrageous taxes are charity! That's
crap. I had to go to school and pay while others get full scholarships
because of their race or religion. I wasn't so lucky. I had to pay for
my education, and for others who where studying basket weaving and
partying everyweekend. SO DON'T EVER EQUATE MY EDUCATION AS CHARITY!

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

I didn't have the 30k to buy my degree. I had to work my way through it.
I couldn't afford to put my parents into poverty so I could go to CM or
MIT. Sorry. I guess the schools that my taxes and my parents taxes went
into are just crap. I had the gall to go to school funded by our
overbearing tax structure and expect thet the professors would a) be
professional and b) actually have a clue. I was wrong for the most part.
And for the miss guided soul who thinks you can do anything about a
tenured professor, let me tell you that I was deliberated failed in two
classes for complaining and going to to the department chair. I tried to
appeal but of course the president of the school and the oversight
commitee wouldn't even convene to consider it. But that was only because
they were never actually on campus. Tenured professors know that short
of actually killing a student they will not be fired, that must change.
Bad professors are destroying the very institutions that they hide
behind.

> 
> > > 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,

It's five out of about 100 in all my classes and labs. 5% success rate,
if that's your definition of not so bad then I feel sorry for you.

> > 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.

YES YES YES. School should be about learning how to think. That is what
is important. The details of any language or field can be picked up
fairly quickly if you KNOW how to think and reason. I know many people
who have no formal training in CS, yet they are very brilliant. One has
a chemical engineering degree, one of the toughest degrees to get. He
learned the stuff that was important as he went along his career.

> 
> > >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...

Being able to apply a little knowledge is much better than knowing
everything and not having a clue as to what to do with it. It's the car
analogy. A big engine doesn't do any good if you're up on blocks or have
small tires. If you can't get power to the ground you're not going
anywhere.

> 
> > >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.

If you are going to college and don't have a clue as to what you want to
be then it's already to late and you're wasting time in college. How
would that work, "Should I be a CS, EE, or a liberal arts student?" I
have a EE degree. I knew I wanted to be an engineer since grade school.
The people I went to school with all know what they wanted to be before
they got to college. It was only a matter of deciding which disciple to
enter. With my experience right now I was able to pick the area where I
wanted to work and live, the job was there and they were glad to hire me
on. 

> 
> 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...

It'll get you your offer letter before you leave from the interview.

> 
> > >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.

I call BS on this. If you can't teach someone to reason and think in 4
years then the person is either destined for the trades or more likely
the school is crap! Or are you saying that CS people aren't as smart as
other engineers? Either way it's just pure crap. CS is a real degree
just like engineering, I think it needs to have more focus on the
applied side of things.

> 
> 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?

Best advice I got from my father (over 50 years in engineering) pick up
a book read 3 or 4 chapters and call it read. I do have  fairly high
comprehension rate, unfortunately most of the books that are put out by
"publish or perish" professors aren't worth the paper they're printed
on, much less the 60-70 dollars they seem to feel is justified. At to
this the fact that I have a fammily that I love and spend time with. One
book a month is very hard. My family comes first. No matter what. Anyone
who doesn't have this attitude will end up messing up their life. I've
seen it happen to many times. It's sad. My father put the family first
and it did affect his career, but we're al happy he did. We have a fully
functional family.

> 
> --
> Voicing my own opinion, not speaking as a company representative...
> 
> Roy A. Grimm
> Rockwell Collins Avionics
> Cedar Rapids, Iowa
> ragrimm@cca.rockwell.com

Thank you Roy for backing me up on this stuff.

One of my co-workers here has a 4.0 and honors and such. I showed him
this post and he laughed about the gpa meaning anything. It's what you
know and how you apply it that is important. I apologize to all the
profs and CS people who know what they are doing. Some of my comments
may be to broadly applied, and that is not what I meant. My original
point was that a CS degree alone does not prepare you for the real
world, unless you have the initiative to go out on your own and do it.
The concept that it's to hard to do SW engineering in 4 years, or that
schools can't teach it properly is simply more evidence showing that the
CS schools aren't effective in applied CS. Perhaps Applied CS is a
better term for a degree than SW Engineer. I don't know, but touting
educational institutions as being the final solution is a joke.

I guess the best equalizer is living well. I'll be retired by the time
I'm 45. Living up in the Rockies and enjoying life. Hmm....

John


-- 
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Standard Disclaimers Apply
John Thomas Apa
Senior Software Engineer
Replace "DIE_SPAMMER" with "delphi" to email.
Honeywell Defense Avionics Systems
Albuquerque, New Mexico.
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