Re: Any research putting c above ada?

[jmartin@cs.ucla.edu (Jay Martin)]

kaz@vision.crest.nt.com (Kaz Kylheku) writes:

>That is slip-shod, but it doesn't seem to relate to my own computer science
>background and experiences.

>What was the focus of your computer science training? Was it largely
>theoretical, or did it involve a lot of ``hands on'' work?

>I remember one school project that I never even implemented. It was just a
>paper outlining requirements and design. There weren't many software
>engineering courses in the program, but there were two tough ones. One
>two-semester long team project, and a course focusing on various topics
>in software engineering. I've never been encouraged to just code something;
>design was always the focus. We learned to admire an elegant design, rather
>than implementations. 

Two tough software engineering courses, actual full-year team projects, 
taught to admire elegant design.... what kind of clown computer science
department did you go to???  

>Throughout school, I hustled my own contract work. I've always insisted on
>going through a requirements analysis with the clients, as well as walking
>through some of the less technical aspects of the design. I thought that this
>was what computer scientists were supposed to do, and since I was trying to
>become one, I emulated the behavior. 

No real Computer Scientists are supposed to be incorrigible hackers or
just so theoretically spaced-out as to be useless.  You obviously
don't have want it takes to be a "real" Computer Scientist.

>However, over the years I've had the chance to talk to a few graduates from
>other computer science programs and was surprised at the diversity of
>experiences. One student complained that his whole undergraduate career was
>``all theory'' geared toward further studies. He never got to do any projects
>involving real implementation.  He claimed to have gained next to no experience
>with things like networking, graphical interfaces or concurrent programming. I
>was shocked when he revealed to me that he allegedly studied at MIT!

Ditto for UCLA which teaches practically no software. In fact, it
seems the higher the CS dept is rated the more theoretically
masturbatorial or hack oriented it becomes. My undergrad institution,
UC Irvine, is much lower rated in CS but its attention to the software
education was/is vastly superior.

>It's hard to say anything about the nature of computer science training,
>since it seems to vary a great deal from institution to institution.

The problem is that the most prestigious (visable) ones are the most
rotten with respect to software engineering.  Thus you get a steady
stream of brilliant software idiots.

Jay