• Marc (unregistered) in reply to darin

    darin:
    I agree, that was harsh.  It's also too difficult to put "dude" into writing, since you lose all of the intonation.  The nuances of the communication are lost.  You can give a full code review by only pointing and using the word "dude" with different tonalities.  It is a spoken part of grammar, and I can't represent it here correctly.  "Dude" is not just a noun that refers to the listener, or an interjection.

    Ahh... I get it... kinda like "smurf" ;-p

  • (cs) in reply to EvanED
  • name (unregistered) in reply to JamesKilton

    Where?

  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous

    Anonymous:

    Mistake #1: Putting an 8am class on your schedule

    Mistake #2: Not skipping the 8am class 

    So true. The most important difference between first and second year students is that the second year students have realized the futility of 8am classes. Nowadays my schedule looks something like this

     8-10: sleep

    10-11: still to sleepy to do any work

    11-12: wait for lunch break

    13-14: lunch coma

    15-17: too tired to do any work

     It's a wonder anything gets done at all :-(

  • ... (unregistered) in reply to David
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    "Many large companies will bring in graduates with the goal of attrition: they'll instill such hopelessness in their impressionable minds that they'll never have the desire or motivation to leave."

     Isn't that the opposite of attrition?

    I'm not seeing the contradiction.  "Attrition" is the act of wearing something down.  Alex is saying "Many large companies will bring in graduates with the goal of [wearing grads down]: [description of wearing grads down]."  How are you reading it?
     

     

    Friction and wearing down is one meaning of attrition, but you don't really get any physical friction in jobs.  Look at the second and third definitions below, the commonly used meaning of attrition when relating to business:

    Attrition (n) 

    1. A rubbing away or wearing down by friction.

    2. A gradual diminution in number or strength because of constant stress.

    3. A gradual, natural reduction in membership or personnel, as through retirement, resignation, or death.

    4. Repentance for sin motivated by fear of punishment rather than by love of God.

     

    These definitions came from answers.com.  Feel free to contest them, but I agree with Anonymous in that attrition was incorrectly used.

    Webster's has:

    "the act of weakening or exhausting by constant harassment, abuse, or attack " (example: a war of attrition)

    Although I agree that it was a poor choice of word.

     

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to Roll Over

    Anonymous:

    Am I the only one who had to get up at 6am to make it to an 8am class?

     

    I guess so. I usually got up at 10am for my 8 am class 

  • (cs)

    Oh those pesky college students...


    There seems to be a lot of anti-college sentiment here. While college might not be for everyone I think it's great for the people who choose that route.

    Computer science for example. Do people actually sit down and decide to learn fundamental things like complexity theory or the inner workings of data structures and algorithms on their own? If so then great, go for it, but I think it's nice to have a structured curriculum to guide you.

    Granted a lot of the stuff you'll learn is theoretical, and as this WTF shows sometimes not enough practical stuff. But the way I see it college doesn't teach you everything you need to know, since if you learned specific tools and languages you need to work in the industry much of it would be outdated by the time you graduate. Instead, college teaches you the fundamental concepts that everything else is built upon, and more importantly it teaches you how to continue learning and interact with other people... stuff that will transfer to any career (since supposedly people in my generation will switch careers on average 3 times in our lifetime).

    Because of this, in the long run it doesn't really matter what your undergraduate major is, although you might as well learn something you enjoy and plan on doing when you graduate so you can jump right in. (but for graduate school hopefully you already know what field you want to go into.)

    My point is, you shouldn't expect college graduates to know everything straight out of college, just as you wouldn't expect anyone just beginning a new career to know everything (although copying and translating every file including variable names for "localization" is a pretty big WTF no matter what level of experience you have...)


    Perhaps another problem is the zillions of students who aren't really passionate about computer science / programming that come to college to learn computer science because either a) they heard you can make millions of dollars making websites during the dot com bubble, or b) they play video games 18 hours a day and think it would be cool to make video games for a living. If you go to a decent college hopefully there will be some courses that weed out these types. I know lots of freshmen at my school who switched out of CS within a couple semesters... usually to business.


    (p.s. I'm a senior in college majoring in a BS in computer engineering and computer science and MS in computer science)

  • Some Dude (unregistered) in reply to Roll Over
    Anonymous:

    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    I'm in college. Although the WTF wasn't that funny, dude, the description of college students was dead on :)

    Dude, like, totally.
    And 9 AM? Isn't that around the time where that dreaded ball of lava appears in the sky? Must be a typo dude, you can't possibly suggest that dudes actually go outside around that time.

     

    Am I the only one who had to get up at 6am to make it to an 8am class?

     

    yes 

  • (cs) in reply to mnature
    Anonymous:
    The second one I learned through taking a calculus class:  Never ever take a math class that starts at 7:30 in the morning.

    I agree completely.

    But to add to that, don't be tempted to base your decision on what classes to take TOO MUCH on the days of the week, the time of day, or whether or not it has a discussion section. You don't really realize how helpful the discussion sections are until you take a class with an insanely smart guy but horrible teacher and no discussion section (e.x. my "theory of numbers" course this semester... yeah sounds easy right? that's what i thought)
  • zerrodefex (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:

    Mistake #1: Putting an 8am class on your schedule

    Mistake #2: Not skipping the 8am class 

    Not much of a choice in the matter when it's a class required for your major but it is only taught at 8am in the morning, 5 days a week, two semesters in a row. 

    And the professor wasn't a morning guy either so I have no idea why he did it.

     

    captcha: bedtime
     

  • (cs) in reply to RichieUT
    Anonymous:

    amateurs. I used to have to get up for a 7:00 class. Normally would roll out of bed at about 6:50. Even the professor wore pajamas to class half the time. 

     

    I live in a boarding shool, so the classroom is about 50m away, up one flight of stairs. For a 09:00 class I get up at perhaps 08:58, the vast majority of that time is spent waiting for my breakfast to microwave itself. Similar thing for going to work, the taxi leaves at 09:00, I often end up taking my breakfast with me...

     

    "Woah, Dude."

  • (cs) in reply to cheesy
    cheesy:
    ...Computer science for example. Do people actually sit down and decide to learn fundamental things like complexity theory or the inner workings of data structures and algorithms on their own? If so then great, go for it, but I think it's nice to have a structured curriculum to guide you.
     
    I for one did. It was just something you have to pick up if you plan on doing anything more complex than hello world or suzie homepage site. Also, unfortunately, not all colleges cover this as well as you may think.
     
    cheesy:

    Granted a lot of the stuff you'll learn is theoretical, and as this WTF shows sometimes not enough practical stuff. But the way I see it college doesn't teach you everything you need to know, since if you learned specific tools and languages you need to work in the industry much of it would be outdated by the time you graduate. Instead, college teaches you the fundamental concepts that everything else is built upon, and more importantly it teaches you how to continue learning and interact with other people... stuff that will transfer to any career (since supposedly people in my generation will switch careers on average 3 times in our lifetime).
    This is exactly why I think the true WTF is that Steve didn't ask about the proper way to do things. He just assumed and did it any way he could. Big WTF.  

    cheesy:
    Perhaps another problem is the zillions of students who aren't really passionate about computer science / programming that come to college to learn computer science because either a) they heard you can make millions of dollars making websites during the dot com bubble, or b) they play video games 18 hours a day and think it would be cool to make video games for a living. If you go to a decent college hopefully there will be some courses that weed out these types. I know lots of freshmen at my school who switched out of CS within a couple semesters... usually to business.
    Yes. Yes. Yes. A MILLION TIMES YES. But again, unfortunately, you can only hope there are courses that will weed out those types, and more often than not there aren't, or they don't do a very good job at it. The big tech school are really the only schools you can count on (and even then, you can't really count on it that much) to weed out the people that really aren't cut out for the profession.
     
    Just another $0.02 
  • (cs) in reply to SpComb

    When I went to college, one class (Counterpoint 101) was REQUIRED of all freshmen in the department and was ONLY taught at 9:00 a.m.

    What department?  Music.

    Think about it.  When do musicians work?  When do they sleep?

    (Those damned Church Organ majors were always perky, bright-eyed and all smiles at 9 a.m.)

     

  • (cs) in reply to David

    Anonymous:

    Friction and wearing down is one meaning of attrition, but you don't really get any physical friction in jobs.

     

    Unless you work in the porn industry!

     

  • Dude-ThatsASandwichAintIt (unregistered) in reply to Roll Over
    Anonymous:

    Am I the only one who had to get up at 6am to make it to an 8am class?

    Yes.  I got up at 7:45 for my 8:00. 

  • (cs) in reply to cheesy
    cheesy:
    Oh those pesky college students...

    There seems to be a lot of anti-college sentiment here. While college might not be for everyone I think it's great for the people who choose that route.

    Computer science for example. Do people actually sit down and decide to learn fundamental things like complexity theory or the inner workings of data structures and algorithms on their own? If so then great, go for it, but I think it's nice to have a structured curriculum to guide you.

    Granted a lot of the stuff you'll learn is theoretical, and as this WTF shows sometimes not enough practical stuff. But the way I see it college doesn't teach you everything you need to know, since if you learned specific tools and languages you need to work in the industry much of it would be outdated by the time you graduate. Instead, college teaches you the fundamental concepts that everything else is built upon, and more importantly it teaches you how to continue learning and interact with other people... stuff that will transfer to any career (since supposedly people in my generation will switch careers on average 3 times in our lifetime).
    I know about that. But they should give you SOME real coding, just to get you started. Once you know how to program C++ you can also program C#, Java, Perl, PHP and so forth. Not in top quality, but you can understand it, and learn the rest yourself. Here, at the Technical University of Eindhoven, people graduate who cannot handle bigger pieces of code than the examples in "Introduction to Algorithms". They have their qualities, but you might want to call them Mathematicians. Computer Science & Engineering sounds to me like you can write some code, and for at least 30% that's not the case.
    (there is one course in the Bachelor part, in which they have to form groups of 6 persons, and write some huge program in half a year. In most cases, 2 of them write the program, 2 pretend to do, and 2 do the design, documentation, that kind of stuff. No individual examination on programming unfortunately...)
     
    Because of this, in the long run it doesn't really matter what your undergraduate major is, although you might as well learn something you enjoy and plan on doing when you graduate so you can jump right in. (but for graduate school hopefully you already know what field you want to go into.)

    My point is, you shouldn't expect college graduates to know everything straight out of college, just as you wouldn't expect anyone just beginning a new career to know everything (although copying and translating every file including variable names for "localization" is a pretty big WTF no matter what level of experience you have...)
    They should have learned how to code, at least in a more general way. Just because as a student you have the time to do it right, no deadline waiting to strike. So you can at least learn how it should be done :)
     

    Perhaps another problem is the zillions of students who aren't really passionate about computer science / programming that come to college to learn computer science because either a) they heard you can make millions of dollars making websites during the dot com bubble, or b) they play video games 18 hours a day and think it would be cool to make video games for a living. If you go to a decent college hopefully there will be some courses that weed out these types. I know lots of freshmen at my school who switched out of CS within a couple semesters... usually to business.

    I know one guy who actually has started because of the videogames :$ He didn't make it, fortunately.

     

    And by the way, what I hate most at starting at 8:45 (earliest time possible at TU/e): the dark rooms they create for using the beamer. How on earth am I going to stay awake tomorrow in a dark room, if it is hard with some daylight?  

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to cheesy
    cheesy:
    Oh those pesky college students...

    There seems to be a lot of anti-college sentiment here. While college might not be for everyone I think it's great for the people who choose that route.

    I got a lot out of college, and it was worth my time.  In this and most other WTFs, it's just being used as shorthand for noob, except the non-college educated noobs are more likely to ask for help and not end up like Steve.

  • CynicalTyler (unregistered) in reply to VGR
    VGR:

    In all fairness, I've found programmers who understand proper internationalization are very rare.  Web authors who understand it are even rarer.

    I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that it isn't taught in college. 

    It wouldn't be going out on a limb to say that programming isn't taught in college.  I haven't even graduated yet and I am keenly aware of that fact.  Can the average college grad (ACG) implement a red-black tree?  Yes.  Can the ACG design a Turing machine to recognize languages?  Sure.  Does the ACG know database theory?  Probably.  But I didn't learn thing one about programming in the real world until I had an internship where I was given extremely loose specs, given an end-of-summer deadline, and told "go".  I'm not saying some of my code isn't WTF-worthy in retrospect, but such is the learning process.

    That being said, universities across the United States offering software development degrees (CompSci, CompEng, etc.) need to start having courses that offer real experience designing and implementing software at an enterprise level.  The senior project should be a real or contrived business case where a company needs software to do a complex job... web development would be great for this in my opinion.  Students should be broken into several teams of maybe three people each.  Lectures would be about design in an interactive environment, and there would be a lab where the students get together in their groups to program against that design.  Student groups would report back to the instructor who would act as the project manager in seeing that the students were meeting deadlines and producing usable code.  Students would be exposed to code repositories and change management, unit testing, peer code reviews, deadlines, and other things that existing classes are completely inept at teaching.  (If that project were anything like the senior project that we have to do as engineers, a real company could provide the business case and in the end would get a real, working, tested program for its support.)

    So anyone who wants to get a degree from the university that I'm founding right now, send me your tuition. ;)

    Now, to those who aren't learning crap from their university and know it's too late to change course: the trick is you have to be willing to read actual books, read actual websites, and find actual examples.  In fact, more important than that you have to be willing to go bother real software engineers to tell you how things should be done.  Don't sit around waiting for your boss to handcuff someone to you, there has to be someone in the company you're in who's doing something similar to you.  Go find them.

  • rgz (unregistered) in reply to GoatCheez

    > Do people really need to be taught to do this? THAT's the TRUE WTF!

    You got it wrong dude! that be the  REAL wtf!

    Dude. 

    captcha: mustache - Here we go!!! 

  • Anonymous Coward (unregistered) in reply to Roll Over
    Anonymous:

    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    I'm in college. Although the WTF wasn't that funny, dude, the description of college students was dead on :)

    Dude, like, totally.
    And 9 AM? Isn't that around the time where that dreaded ball of lava appears in the sky? Must be a typo dude, you can't possibly suggest that dudes actually go outside around that time.

     

    Am I the only one who had to get up at 6am to make it to an 8am class?

    Had to? Peh, everyone HAD to get up at 6am to make it to 8am class. Just that nobody ACTUALLY DID IT.

  • Tyronomo (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    I'm in college. Although the WTF wasn't that funny, dude, the description of college students was dead on :)

    Dude, like, totally.
    And 9 AM? Isn't that around the time where that dreaded ball of lava appears in the sky? Must be a typo dude, you can't possibly suggest that dudes actually go outside around that time.

     

    Am I the only one who had to get up at 6am to make it to an 8am class?

     

    Mistake #1: Putting an 8am class on your schedule

    Mistake #2: Not skipping the 8am class 

    Bingo!

     Failing those two;
    Rocking up at 9... and joining all your friends in the Uni Cafe (Kaf for those in UNISA Australia)  for breakfast :D

    For the next 3 hours (Classes) 

  • Andrey (unregistered) in reply to VGR
    VGR:

    In all fairness, I've found programmers who understand proper internationalization are very rare.  Web authors who understand it are even rarer.

    I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that it isn't taught in college. 

    Only cave people don't speak English and they don't know what a computer is, anyway. 

  • Walter (unregistered) in reply to emurphy

    That rug really tied the room together dude.

  • Nick (unregistered) in reply to JamesKilton
    JamesKilton:
    VGR:

    In all fairness, I've found programmers who understand proper internationalization are very rare.  Web authors who understand it are even rarer.

    I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that it isn't taught in college. 

     Hells no! Most CS courses don't even go out of their way to teach good style and design. Personally, I understand internationalization, but do not know how to implement it properly.
     

     So if you don't know how to implement it, how do you understand it?  You understand that it exists?  That sounds like a WTF waiting to happen.

  • Nick (unregistered) in reply to CynicalTyler

    Anonymous:
    That being said, universities across the United States offering software development degrees (CompSci, CompEng, etc.) need to start having courses that offer real experience designing and implementing software at an enterprise level.  The senior project should be a real or contrived business case where a company needs software to do a complex job... web development would be great for this in my opinion.  Students should be broken into several teams of maybe three people each.  Lectures would be about design in an interactive environment, and there would be a lab where the students get together in their groups to program against that design.  Student groups would report back to the instructor who would act as the project manager in seeing that the students were meeting deadlines and producing usable code.  Students would be exposed to code repositories and change management, unit testing, peer code reviews, deadlines, and other things that existing classes are completely inept at teaching.  (If that project were anything like the senior project that we have to do as engineers, a real company could provide the business case and in the end would get a real, working, tested program for its support.)

    We had a class like that at Virginia Tech.  Though its still not the same as a real-world environment, and still not a substitute for the experience you get from internships, co-ops, and your first few assignments out of college. 

    The point of a Bachelor of Science is not to make you an expert in a trade (especially in CS where the technology is changing so fast that anything you learn in college will be outdated by your second year out of school) but to get the basic knowledge needed to start a career in your chosen subject. 

  • (cs) in reply to Nick
    Anonymous:

    We had a class like that at Virginia Tech.  Though its still not the same as a real-world environment, and still not a substitute for the experience you get from internships, co-ops, and your first few assignments out of college. 

    The point of a Bachelor of Science is not to make you an expert in a trade (especially in CS where the technology is changing so fast that anything you learn in college will be outdated by your second year out of school) but to get the basic knowledge needed to start a career in your chosen subject. 

    A BS in CS is far to heavily oriented toward the science aspect, rather than the engineering that the vast majority of graduates really need. The way CS curriculum is typically taught, students get an in-depth instruction in how to badly recreate STL, how to design a crappy database, how to create an operating system and optimize its thread scheduler. Sure, they get the basics of the craft, but then they veer off into tangents that they'll only ever need if they work in the top teams of companies that create server software (or compilers) for a living, or go into research.

    What they need to spend more time on is once you have the framework and you have the database, how do you build large systems that aren't self-contained (like a CRM, BI, or BPM project) in a scalable and maintainable way? How do you code review yourself and others? How do you manage future-proofing without overengineering? How do you take over a massive project to fix bugs or extend functionality without the luxury of rewriting it? (There should also be at least one MIS course for intro to business and team management.) College doesn't prepare you for the top-skill jobs of the real world, usually glosses right over such topics, so it gives you no competitive advantage. The advantage of being taught how to find advanced solutions to intractible problems is lost when you're thrown into a problem domain you know little or nothing about.

    CS courses are simply training people with the IT equivalent of molecular physics and math degrees when they need engineering or at least chemistry degrees instead.

    I know it can be better, because I was in several computer security courses that were based on MCSE and CISSP real-world security, covering everything from NT, 2000, various flavors of unix & linux with a bit of mac classic (the dino days before xp, os x, wifi, and programmable phones), from the dry filesystem security to details of hacking, forensics, and mail & web app security. But in general, you have to go to technical schools or these overpriced cram courses for tests to get any useful learning you'll be able to apply later, because most colleges just teach wanking. It makes sense - colleges are in the business of research, not development, so they teach research and groom students for a career of research, which is all they'll be good for.

  • rob_squared (unregistered) in reply to JamesKilton
    JamesKilton:
    Anonymous:

    9-to-5 office job dude thats awesome!

    here we work 8.30 to 6.30 when we leave early, and people shout jabbadabbadoo at you beacuse you are leaving at 6.30 and you are not giving more!

     You know it's been shown that the most productive programmer workweek is 37 hours?
     

    Over the weekend?  I'm sure management would agree. 

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to foxyshadis

    That depends on what the goals of the CS curriculum are and is the primary reason for researching where you go to school.

    Mine was basically all theory; however most students realize this in the first year and work outside of class to get real world experience.  Either this is through internships (most people) or open source work (me) or other venues of learning.  It's also not the goal of my University's program to create "Programmers."  The point being you come out with the foundation to build upon in your career.  I think a lot of this is a drive and motivation problem.  I worked in a three person team on a compiler for IBM this semester, I had one guy who had 6 internships, a 4.0, and basically a job whereever he wanted (went to google, fyi).  If you aspire to be a good programmer then you will accrue that experience by...programming.  If you aspire to be something else then you will probably accrue experience in that field (system administration for me, although I can write software I do not enjoy it).  I think a lot of people just have no idea what they enjoy and come out experienceless.  That is a shame, but happens in other majors besides computer science; but you don't see people faulting the other programs.

    If we were to compare, it would be like a Business School getting chided for not giving their graduates enough 'real world' business experience.  The whole point is to teach them the fundamentals.  If you want experience go out and get it

  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous

    I've noticed quite a bit of anti-CS degree comments, and I think the biggest reason is people don't understand what computer science teaches you.  CS is theory.  It's closer to having a math degree than courses in software engineering.  You can choose more real world based courses, but the goal of CS departments isn't to spit out programmers ready to tackle any industry challenge, its to educate people on theory.  Personally, as a junior in CS, I've had one course that taught programming, and it was just to equip us with the bare minimum of knowledge.  Any programming I've had to in other classes was just used to teach theories and concepts.  Often we weren't graded on the code's style, but just to make sure the theory was understood, no need for maintainability, useful comments, structure, etc, just make sure the database was normalized or the binary search worked.  But remember, most professors have never been outside academia, they wouldn't know source control or code review any better than I would.

    A CS degree isn't a swiss-army knife of IT ability.

  • Skywings (unregistered) in reply to Roll Over
    Anonymous:

    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    I'm in college. Although the WTF wasn't that funny, dude, the description of college students was dead on :)

    Dude, like, totally.
    And 9 AM? Isn't that around the time where that dreaded ball of lava appears in the sky? Must be a typo dude, you can't possibly suggest that dudes actually go outside around that time.

     

    Am I the only one who had to get up at 6am to make it to an 8am class?

    Unfortunately not. I spent 3 of my 5 years at uni attending 8am lectures. I lived about 20 km from uni and had to wake up at 6:30am to hop on a bus which transfers on to a train and then on to another bus and a final 500m walk. Reverse the process at the end of the day.

     

    captcha: knowhutimean 

  • cookie (unregistered) in reply to thickasabrick

    We're on the same side.  I don't wear those formal office attires on a job interview.  I even talk to the interviewers (and even to the president of the company) like i'm talking to my friends.  I even laugh or sometimes teach them on what how to get a good programmer, or even interview them haha (WTF!!!).  I still get the position =)

    It's being true and showing who you really are.  It's just telling them that you're not afraid to face them and their questions.  Well, many applicants are shaking while on the interview.

  • cookie (unregistered) in reply to cookie
    Anonymous:

    We're on the same side.  I don't wear those formal office attires on a job interview.  I even talk to the interviewers (and even to the president of the company) like i'm talking to my friends.  I even laugh or sometimes teach them on what how to get a good programmer, or even interview them haha (WTF!!!).  I still get the position =)

    It's being true and showing who you really are.  It's just telling them that you're not afraid to face them and their questions.  Well, many applicants are shaking while on the interview.

  • Nutjob (unregistered)

    As a recent college graduate i still find this hilarious. I'm currently rolling out my second system post college and the first one was reasonably complex.

    The fact i was writing assembly langauge under dos 6.22 at age 13ish may have helped or the fact iv read books on coding standards and refactoring etc may actuall help.

    Tips for getting good grads is simple ask tough tech and theory questions.

    Then when you get them into the company give them more books on standards and international software. 

     
    To share a quick story.

    After i was employed on my first internship with a large multinational development team and Christmas beer rolled round i asked the guys who interviewed me why the hell the hired me and what the competition was like. Expecting  drunken  honesty i got a surprise. "You turned up on time knew what you were talking about". As for the previous guy "He turned up looking like he had been on the beer all night slept on a friends couch or in a field and then got dragged through a bush backwards"  and  ogh  "and  he was late". When i asked about the other candidates i was quickly told "most couldn't string together a coherent answer even when we fed them the answer"
     

  • Urho (unregistered) in reply to Andrey
    Anonymous:
    VGR:

    In all fairness, I've found programmers who understand proper internationalization are very rare.  Web authors who understand it are even rarer.

    I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that it isn't taught in college. 

    Only cave people don't speak English and they don't know what a computer is, anyway. 

    You're probably from US? No?
    The question is that do you know there are more countries in the world?
     If you don't, then buy an atlas or something.

  • (cs) in reply to Urho

    Well ehm, in my now 7-year old carreer, I rarely arrived at the office at 9am, except when some idiot planned a meeting that early. Mostly it's between 10 and 10:30am (god I love flexible hours). Downside offcourse being that I can't leave at 5pm, usually it's more like 7 or even (a lot) later, but I have a lot of freedom here and can do what I want and like, as long as the job gets finished.

    Never really understood why the hell I would have to get up at 7 to arrive at the office at 9, while I can perfectly get up at 9 and be at the office at 10. Fucking traffic... On top of that, I'm a night/evening person. Once past 5pm my brain has completely booted after the liters of coffee fed to my system, and I usually get a lot more work done between 5 and 7/8pm than the rest of the day.

    But well - I don't work in a large company, and I plan to keep it this way :)

  • DOA (unregistered)
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    Well, that, and those with no work experience tend to work for next-to nothing.

     You get what you pay for.

  • Whatever (unregistered) in reply to m0ffx

    NatSci fule.

  • (cs)

    For even more Dude fun check the wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dude , especially the 'A riff on "dude"' section!

  • Dude (unregistered) in reply to darin
    darin:

    ...  It's also too difficult to put "dude" into writing, since you lose all of the intonation.  The nuances of the communication are lost.

    You mean like this?

    http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=84796&threshold=1&commentsort=3&tid=200&mode=thread&cid=7401683

  • Arthur Chaparyan (unregistered) in reply to Richard Head

    That's the kind of Aryan mentality that started a genocide.

  • Arthur Chaparyan (unregistered) in reply to Richard Head
    Learn English or get the fuck outta
    here.  If this in fact did not take place in the US, then they were
    correct by coding English into it because it is obviously far
    superior. 

    That's the kind of Aryan mentality that started a genocide.

  • Remco van Bree (unregistered) in reply to Arthur Chaparyan

    Learn English or get the fuck outta here.

    That doesn't make business sense. If your customers want to pay for a Spanish product, you sell Spanish products, and maybe, heaven forbid it, it is a bit of accounting software that is sold in multiple countries.  

  • Faye Gibbins (unregistered) in reply to mbvlist
    mbvlist:

    This is one pretty lousy trimester: I have to be in college at 8:45 3 days, start my job at around 9 am on tuesdays. I must admit i'm not very good at that point, although I volunteer to get out of bed half an hour early twice a week to do some swimming (as anti-RSI measure). (and yes, I'm late a little too often :()

    I am able to imagine the problem above: out of 10 persons in my Master classes, only 3 can do some actual programming. They ones who got there Bachelor of Science at a University are all much better at math than the ones who got their Bachelor at a school for Professional Education, but the latter ones can produce some usefull code. So guess who's doing the code part on an assignment with mixed students...
     

     

    No Bad, I remember my schooling and Uni days.

    At School I'd get up at 5am and cycle three miles to the train station. 27 miles on the train with bike. Then two miles to the convent School. Thirty mile cycle ride home. I'd be lucky to get home by 6pm. Did that for 7 years. I remember once the fog was so thick on the way home once during winter it froze my hair (v.long) into the shape it held while cycling :-).

    @Uni I was up at 5:30, five mile walk there and back sometimes. Classes and study all day. Lucky to finish at 6pm. Party all night. :-) Even now I get up at 5:30 at the wekeends, but that's more to do with the Dr Who omnibus on UK GOLD.

    Funny thing was I learned programming and sys admin after I left Uni. I got a shop working shifts, 6am - 2pm and 2pm to 10pm alternate weeks sorting money at a bank. Read books during my break and tried stuff out at home. Now I have a good job using skills I taught myself and the respect of my peers. Go figure. Still my English is awful so I'm learning to solve Cryptic Crosswords to help improve my word skills and vocabulary. This is fun in Scotland as we have three languages although the puzzles I try are only in Scots and English.

     

     

  • wacco (unregistered) in reply to mbvlist
    mbvlist:
    <snip>
    (there is one course in the Bachelor part, in which they have to form groups of 6 persons, and write some huge program in half a year. In most cases, 2 of them write the program, 2 pretend to do, and 2 do the design, documentation, that kind of stuff. No individual examination on programming unfortunately...)
    <snip>

    Here in Amsterdam (HvA) we do have a group-examination of the source, where eacht student ends up with a grade constructed from your random answers to their random questions, and how much you've written from that huge program. Since I've written 95% of the 2000+ lines (and the application is half done, so expect it to go up quite a bit before the examination) I'm going to have some serious good fun seeing how the other 5 guys will try to explain the more subtle nuances of my artistic monster.
    And no friendship-politics here, if they want to 'claim' they've written a certain part, I'll claim plagiarism. On the spot. With proof.

    Anonymous:
    That rug really tied the room together dude.

    Dude. Let's go bowling.
  • seinin (unregistered)

    Wake up at 6AM? I had classes that started at 6AM!

  • Nick (unregistered) in reply to foxyshadis
    foxyshadis:

    A BS in CS is far to heavily oriented toward the science aspect, rather than the engineering that the vast majority of graduates really need. The way CS curriculum is typically taught, students get an in-depth instruction in how to badly recreate STL, how to design a crappy database, how to create an operating system and optimize its thread scheduler. Sure, they get the basics of the craft, but then they veer off into tangents that they'll only ever need if they work in the top teams of companies that create server software (or compilers) for a living, or go into research.

     But if they did things the way you wanted, employers at companies that create server software or compilers would complain that universities wasted too much time on teaching useless skills like web programming.  Again, the purpose of a BS is not to train you for a specific job.  Thats what on the job training is for.  The BS is supposed to give you a broad education in the field.  If you want something deeper, you need to stay and get your masters.

  • Hob (unregistered)

    No quack, dude.



    captcha: chocobot. There's so small variety of captchas here that even such a dumb robot as me could learn them and try one of them repeatedly. If you can read this post, it means that I succeeded. If I could suggest some new captchas: noquack, beanbaggirl, NaN (case-sensitive, of course), FileNotFound, 10011101, etc... Would be fun. At least for you, humans.

  • Neomojo (unregistered)

    Hahahaha
    BS in CS
    I'm so juvenile

    Also, someone mentioned that students don't have hard deadlines. WTF?
    Compared to a (UK, I can't speak for other countries) Master degree, the real world is slack. I work in the real world, my stuff is always on time. cf. my manager, who's consistently late, and I can resently quote as saying that education is a waste of time. Where did the term slippage originate? You can bet it wasn't at uni.

  • ToddGilberg (unregistered)

    You guys must have went to some crappy colleges or were just lazy and took basket weaving 4 or more times till you passed. My first two basic programming courses in CS were in C++ on a unix system, after that was OOP class in JAVA, then a GUI class in VB6 (shudders, I must be getting old), Database class with Oracle, and an E-commerce class in asp and mySQL, software engineering in JAVA that taught design methods and working in groups and source control, and of course the required architecture, algorithms, and operating systems. You don't just get what you pay for you get out what you put into something. I had 40 more upper division credits than I needed to graduate, because basket weaving and bowling didn't look all that appealing.

  • Richard Head (unregistered) in reply to Remco van Bree
    Anonymous:

    Learn English or get the fuck outta here.

    That doesn't make business sense. If your customers want to pay for a Spanish product, you sell Spanish products, and maybe, heaven forbid it, it is a bit of accounting software that is sold in multiple countries.  


    I would agree if they were selling this software to customers.  But it was stated clearly that its a small one-person internal web-application.  Meaning its solely for the employees to submit expense reports, and its just a one-off application to help them sort things out.

     
    I still think if you live in the US you should be able to speak English.  Call me old-fashioned.  What you want to do on your own time with your own family/friends is fine - but at least be able to understand the language to converse. 
     

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