sigma@usl.UUCP (Spyridon Triantafyllopoulos) (01/07/85)
The following appeared in an employer's (or someone's with a hiring capability) posting. I do not recall the author, however. > Who, then, made the best for our purposes? Our most successful > programmers were people who had done something else for a living. One > managed a nationwide chain of Karate Parlors before going back to > school and learning programming, another had trained as a physicist, one > an air force pilot until he lost a hand in VietNam. What made these > people different from the others is not that they were older or more > experienced - because some were and some weren't. What made them > different is that they had come to view the computer as A TOOL USED TO > SOLVE REAL PROBLEMS. They understood that it was the real-world problem > that had to be solved, not a nifty algorithm, nor a textbook exercise. Well, I have seen enough English or History or [add other professions paying less than $15,000.00 a year before State and Federal Taxes], being 30+, with interesting looking resumes (burger king -> Mc donnalds -> wherever public library -> married -> 2 children -> no money -> Computer Science, it's HOT -> M.S degree (after 3+ years) -> GREAT JOB HUNT Ver. 2.0) What is the bottom line? Hacking is a decease, usualy terminal and resulting in 5+ years in undergrad school. Straight A's is another decease, since the B.Sc. is around 130 credits and only 40-45 are C.S. courses, and the poor *honor(???)* students have to pass their HUMANITIES and OLDE ENGLISH courses with A's so that they make the dean's list etc... BUT: Allowing other, non-professionaly trained personel (people that are in for the BUCK, or switching profession every 2 years, or ??) makes it look bad for the rest of us: would you like to be operated by the ex-Biology B.Sc that went at 32 to medical school, finished at 38, and just started as an M.D.?? I have seen too many people in Computer Science that do it this way, most ending up as managers anyway since all they can do is write specifications for impossible programs. What percentage of C.S., Math, or Engineering Students continue to Grad school??? What percentage of *OTHERS* does?? It is all these people that believe that computers are the solution to everything. Well, folks, 5-6 years ago, it was much easier to find a job, and do something. Now, with all these M.S's, we will soon be like other "crowd" majors. Giving solutions is easy, but solving the problem (THE PROBLEM) takes guts and much more than a *fast* Master's degree or tech/voc school education. FLAME HARD, it's cold down here in LA. -- Spiros Spiros Triantafyllopoulos <> USENET {ut-sally, akgua}!usl!sigma Computer Science Dept, USL <> CSNet TriantafyllopoulosS%usl@csnet-relay.ARPA