On Mon, 4/25/16, Swift Griggs <swiftgri...@gmail.com> wrote: >The idea is somewhat that if students learn a > "good" language that'll teach them some meta-structure that will help them > later.
Certainly a lot of people do view it that way, but it's not what I was getting at or how I see it. Based on my experience, the virtues of any single language are pretty much irrelevant. What's vitally important is that the student emerge with a deep understanding of how a variety of languages actually work, how they're processed and how the computer executes code written in them. If you have that deep understanding with a sampling of languages that represent some of the variety of techniques and paradigms (for lack of a better term), then you'll be able to pick up and adapt to most any language that comes along. To tell you the truth, I'm not very likely to hire anyone who isn't conversant with at least half a dozen different languages. To summarize, my focus isn't on the skills of any particular lanugage; it's on the understanding of the fundamental concepts, principles, techniques, and mechanisms that make up the world of computing. >Then, let me say that the *idea* that I was attacking Pascal via > Oberon rather than the Ivory Tower Academics is ridiculous. I did understand the point in your first message to be anit-"Ivory Tower Academics." However, my point it is that viewing the people you have identified as such and dismissing their experience and expertise is a narrow-minded and short-sighted perspective. > Your point might be > logically valid, but ask a 23 year old if they care when they can't get a > job after giving the uni a quarter million bucks and 4-5 years of time > they spent being "educated" rather than "trained". It's interesting that you pick that age as the example. My daughter is 23. For her, the undergraduate experience wasn't about a job at all. It was about exploring the intellectual world and (to borrow from Thoreau) sucking the marrow out of that life. In the interest of full disclosure, however, I should point out that she's not typical of most college students (although I wish more were like her). She did grow up in a household that averages more than two degrees per person and she did triple major in her four undergrad years. (A proud daddy can't help but brag a little. :) ) > The underlying point I was making is that schools don't always > "train" a person ... I apologize if I misinterpret, but I also detect the suggestion that they are supposed to. I don't disagree that they don't train, but I do disagree that's what their purpose is. I'm not suggesting that some degree of training coming along with the education is a bad thing. However, I'm saying that's not the primary purpose of the university. > and that's what I wanted and actually needed. There seems to be an implication here of an XOR when I look for an AND. In particular, if I have a candidate sitting across the interview desk from me, I'm not interested unless they have both education and training. I expect the education to come from a formal environment where people of long experience can help the student understand many perspectives. I expect the training to come from self-directed experience. Unless a candidate shows both the ability to work in a rigorous intellectual manner and the self motivation to go beyond what they've been given, I'm not interested. > all but one of the profs had > turned off their brains in 1986 and it was the 90's. It's certainly true that does happen both in academics and in industry. However, more often than not, the ideas that were seen as "new" in the '80s, '90s, '00s, and '10s, are really ideas that the Computer Science community saw, studied, understood, etc in the '50s, '60s, and '70s. So what appears to be out of touch is often really a broader perspective and one worth understanding and learning from. > True. I wonder though, do you believe that teaching a > language with almost zero commercial value is justified > in the name of education because of it's superior "meta" > qualities ? I'm not sure I can answer the question as you've posed it. As I said, I tend to consider the choice of any single language to be mostly irrelevant. I'm much more interested in the neural pathways that the student builds as a result of the experience of coming to understand a large set of languages. As it turns out, I am currently involved with a restructuring of the introductory programming sequence at one university. Our choice of languages was driven by both pedagogical and vocational considerations. Were our environment different such that we should have looked at only one or the other, then we would have chosen differently. Regardless of what we did pick, we never intended for the freshman languages to be the only languages our students knew before graduation. No one or two languages will give the breadth and depth needed pedagogically. Neither will any one or two languages suffice for building a career as a computer scientist. > Grades aren't meaningless if you have a grant/scholarship > to maintain or need to get into graduate school. There are expected minimums, certainly. Based on my experiences in both academics and industry, I would have my doubts about whether someone is really cut out for a CS major if they can't average Bs in their major classes. On the other hand, I have yet to be in a hiring meeting where one candidate was chosen over another because they had a 3.5 vs the 3.3 the other candidate had. For that matter, I always question candidates that come in front of me who have 4.0 averages. Before I can take them seriously, I need to see some evidence that learning new things is a higher priority to them than the grade. It goes back to the expectation that the candidate show evidence that they can pick things up on their own as well as in the classroom. > They have plenty > of meaning to employers like IBM who might not hire you for > that entry-level position with a low GPA. Actually, it's better to consider companies with unenlightened cutoffs to be simply advertising that they are not where you want to be. > They might not reflect some aspect of education or learning > you think is important, but there is more to going to uni than just > to get a mind expanding education. The purpose of the university is the discovery, dissemination, preservation, and interpretation of knowledge. A necessary, but not sufficient, part of being well-prepared for a professional career is the exposure to that breadth and depth of knowledge. I would rephrase your statement to say that there's more to preparing for a career than just getting a university degree. > I think folks who haven't been to school in 20+ years have a totally > warped view of what is happening nowadays. I might point out that on this mailing list, you will find people who are all across the spectrum with exposure to education. Some of us were students many years ago and haven't had much contact since. Some of us have been students recently. Some of us have siginificant faculty experience. As with the experience of changes in the CS field, I'd suggest that the longer the period of time over which one has experience with education the less warped the view of what's happening. However, each individual must decide for themselves whose opinions and experiences earn their respect. > All our code was in C or C++ and we found that none of the students > from the local universities had those skills. Although there are plenty who disagree with me, I argue that the purpose of the university experience isn't the skills; it's the understanding. I always say I want to hire the preson who I can tell on Friday that we'll be using Intercal for the project and they'll spend the weekend teaching themselves the language and come in Monday morning ready to code in Intercal. I (as well as entrepreneurs I know) have very little interest in how much experience and skill a candidate has in a particular language. The reality is no matter what their experience is coming in, I'm going to have to teach them how to do things the way I want them done. > I could only attribute that to the memorize-and-regurgitate > culture of the schools, but maybe it was just bad luck. It's a combination of bad luck and the ill effects of misplaced priorities filtering up from the primary and secondary school levels. As I tell my students, there is a continuum of understanding. At one end, there is the mere repeat back to me what I've said to you. If that's all a student can do, then there's not much value in it. I can simply put the same information into a computer and then not bother paying a person for it. At the other end of the continuum is the ability to ask the right next question, the understanding of how our current knowledge came about, and the understanding of how to advance that knowledge. My objective in every class I teach is to help each student move as far along that continuum as they are capable. The farther along that continuum you move, the more you will be able to discover what has never been known before and create what has never existed before. Many would classify that perspective as "Ivory Tower." They might say, I can't put food on the table with that attitude. I would differ with that. I have put food on the table for several decades, and in only a few of those years were the funds coming primarily from the academy. Indeed I have realized that my level of understanding and my drive to explore, investigate, and create are of significant value to many. Those who recognize that are willing to exchange monatary renumeration for the contributions I can make. Those who don't recognize it self-select themselves out of the pool and I don't have to worry about them. Throughout this, it has not been my intention to in any way dismiss your perspective or to suggest that it is a "wrong" perspective. Indeed, it's a perspective I'm quite familiar with. Instead, my objective has been to suggest there's another perspective whose consideration might lead to deeper understanding. It is a perspective which attempts to temper the immediacy of the question of tomorrow's employment with the longer-term view of how that employment fits into the thousands of years of human civilization. BLS
