Re: Any research putting c above ada?

[clines@delete_this.airmail.net (Kevin Cline)]

John Apa <japa@DIE_SPAMMER.dasd.honeywell.com> wrote:

>Roy Grimm wrote {The shear unadulterated truth}:

Careful with those citations!  I wrote the stuff with three >'s; Roy wrote the
stuff with two.

>> > 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.

I write software, now in C++, previously in Ada83, and before that in C.

>I had 25 companies calling me for interviews. I don't even know what my
>gpa was. 

If you mean that they were calling to hire you out of school, then
I would guess that one of the following is true:

1. Your GPA was pretty good.
2. You wrote a great resume.
3. You attended a school of some reputation.
4. You had strong co-op experience.

>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. 

Of course.

>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.

In companies of any size, initial screening will be done by non-engineers.
They will cut resumes of those who couldn't or wouldn't perform to some
minimum standard while in school, unless there is something extraordinary,
like co-op experience or a strong recommendation, to mitigate a poor GPA.
Personally I would tend to cut candidates who could not maintain a B average
in their CS classes unless I saw something special on the resume.

>> > We just turned down an MSCS graduate with a 3.5+ GPA, because the candidate
>> > couldn't demonstrate any understanding of the coursework.
>> 

>I've been a SW engineer for 8 years now and during my recent job search
>no one asked what my GPA was. 

Of course not.  It's irrelevant.  That was my point.  I didn't turn down the
candidate because she had a poor GPA, I rejected the candidate even though the
GPA was quite good.

>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's bizarre.  I hope he didn't go to work there.

>That shows an unrivaled level of stupidity, yes the HR person did lose his job over
>that one. 

Wow!! Cool.

>> > 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! 

Let's figure this out.  Contract rates for solid software developers are now
around $60/hour, and much more for Ph.D's whose research has practical
application.  Your class meets for say 42 hours, and there are 25 students.
Each student pays $300 in tuition, for a total of $7500.  The university keeps
half and pays the professor $3750.  He teaches 42 hours and also has to
prepare course material and exams and be available outside class.
You can see that consulting is pays considerably more than teaching.
So if you get a good instructor, rest assured that he is not doing it for the
money.  He is doing it for the love of teaching.  To me, that's charity.

>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. 

$30k gets you about one year at CMU or MIT these days.  I'm not happy about
that at all.  I graduated CMU in 1979 and payed $2900 in tuition my freshman
year, and $3900 my senior year.  A bargain compared to tuition these days.

>Sorry. I guess the schools that my taxes and my parents taxes went
>into are just crap. 

I never said that.  I'm sorry you had a bad experience.  There are good
schools, and if you can get admitted you can probably borrow enough money to
graduate.  I don't know if it's worth it.

>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. 

>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.

That's a different number than five professors out of a single department.

>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. 

I'm not recommending that you read textbooks.  I'm thinking of books like
"Design Patterns", by Gamma et. al, "Peopleware" by DeMarco and somebody,
or "Debugging the Development Process" by McGuire. 

One book a month is one hour per week.  Probably less time than you spend
reading and posting to newsgroups.