• (cs) in reply to ToddGilberg

    Anonymous:
    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.

    For reference sake, can anyone that mentions things like above please state:

    start date

    graduation date

    start major

    end major

    most important: name of university

     

    Thanks. 

  • (cs) 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. 

     

    "I'll have the roast duck with the mango salsa."

     

  • mausbrain (unregistered) in reply to Richard Head

    So everybody has to learn english and speak only english? that's not a solution "dude".

  • Richard Head (unregistered) in reply to mausbrain
    Anonymous:

    So everybody has to learn english and speak only english? that's not a solution "dude".

     

    Go to any other country and get a job.  Refuse to learn their national language, and expect everyone their to cater to you.  See how far you get with that.  Come back and report here how well you did.

    I never said you have to speak only english.  But yes what is the problem with having to learn English? 

    Are you saying if you got hired at a company that had a project coding solely in Java, and you only knew C++, you would expect that company to change their project to allow you to code C++ because you didnt know Java.  You can laugh at my trivial example, but its the exact same principle.  You wouldn't walk into a job and expect them to allow you to code in whatever language you want, so why shouldnt the country expect the same thing?

     

  • tango (unregistered)
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    [image]There's always a risk in hiring employees straight out of college. It can be pretty rough adjusting to a normal adult lifestyle (shaving, bathing, not beginning and ending every sentence with the word "dude"), let alone taking in all the wondrous monotony of the 9-to-5 office job.


    Duuuuuude, the real WTF is that you think any non-government job is actually 9-5.  asshole.
  • GONE (unregistered)

    Holy hell, I can't even read this article.
    "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."

    Attrition is the gradual wearing away of something by stress,etc.  It is a REDUCTION in the workforce.  
    For an example of attrition: my patience is worn away by the godawful writing on the internet, thus your readership is now suffering attrition.

  • (cs) in reply to GoatCheez

    start date - Sept 2002

    graduation date - Dec 2006 (yep, just finished my last final)

    start major - Computer Science

    end major - Computer Science

    most important: name of university - Calvin College, Grand Rapids, MI

     

    And what's with all the negative stigma about game development? I came into a CS curriculum knowing programming (started with BASIC and C on TI calculators), and knowing that I want to make games. The whole mentality of 'games make bookoos monies and i love playing them' is not unique to CS. There are people who start in any science field that quickly realize they did not know what they were getting into. It just so happens that games are the major driving force of these types of people for CS. Maybe I'm just one of the few who actually are a Computer Scientist AND want to get into the games industry. Modern game development is some of the hardest and most complicated programs to write, next to OSes and massively parallel systems.

    Maybe I'm just ranting, but does anyone else feel that games seem to be shunned in the rest of the CS world?
     

  • (cs) in reply to GoatCheez

    start date: Fall 1994

    graduation date: Fall 1999

    start major: History

    end major: Computer Systems

    uni: Northern Michigan University (Marquette, Michigan, USA)

    I had a designer degree, basically. Our CIS program covered the practical / real-world programming side of things, our CS program covered the theory. The problem with the CS degree was the heavy emphasis on math (hey, it's a problem if you hate math). The problem with the CIS degree was that it completely ignored theory (well, aside from database design theory).

    Luckily, they had a major that covered all of the classes in the CS major took as well as all of the classes the CIS major. I then just worked with my major and minor advisors to sub out all of the classes that I didn't want. Instead of learning rexx, I did a self-study on Java and then helped convert the cs 101 curriculum from pascal to java. Instead of the language survey class, I helped launch a class on web-based programming (we looked at ASP and Perl). Instead of taking the OS class, I taught a class on remote computing (survey of DCOM, CORBA and Java RPC).

    All told, I think I subbed out 7 classes with self-directed classes. I then backed everything up with 8 month and 4 month internships (the 8 month one slipped my graduation by a semester, but it was worth it).

  • (cs)

    I'm finishing up my CS degree at Michigan Tech next week.  I'm not a programming superstar but I've had a couple years of internships and I feel reasonably confident about the systems programming job I have lined up after graduation.

    You need programming experience and you need theory.  And 4 years isn't really much time to learn both, you have to skimp out on one or the other.  IMO people who take vocational/Information Systems-type degrees and avoid theory, and people who spend all their time studying theory and avoid programming, both have a warped view of computing.

    So, if you want to be the Best Software Developer Ever, I don't have a silver bullet and I'm going to bring the dreaded Hard Work back into the equation: study hard on theory, get work experience, build your people skills, network with people in the industry, and work on your own projects.  It's the same as it was 20 years ago.  If you don't do all those things you'll have weaknesses in some areas or another, but that's an unfortunate symptom of being human. 

    Anyway, about the actual thread topic...yeah, that's pretty messed up.  There's no excuse for that, especially if the submitter gave Steve relevant examples.

  • ToddGilberg (unregistered) in reply to GoatCheez

    Sorry,

    start date: 1999

    graduation date: 2003

    start major: Computer Science & Math

    end major: Computer Science & Math

    most important: Youngstown State University... yes, cheap school, but I took the right courses and I only had one foreign professor, which many of the big named schools can't say. Not saying foreign professors are bad but I heard a lot of people from bigger schools complain. Plus, I got the free academic version of visual studio .NET when it came out and did my senior project on it. I do wish the school had SQL Sever instead of Oracle though that would have helped when I first got out of school. My first job was in ASP and SQL and converting ASP applications into ASP.NET so I felt pretty prepared when I got out of college. I was making 25K and 3 others that graduated at the same point and at the same wage a year later were working circles around the guys with 10 - 20 years  experience and with 80K - 100K salaries that still don't get .NET. Visual Studio .NET didn't come out until 2002 right, or was my school behind the times? I remember getting out of school and employers wanted people with 3 - 5 years experience in .NET, and I remember thinking WTF!

  • (cs) in reply to JamesKilton

    Making games was one of my motivations for doing CS but not so much nowadays.  Maybe I'm biased, but if you get an entry level job in the game industry you'll be working 70 hours a week shoveling out crap that isn't innovative.  Yeah, a lot of entry level CS graduates are glorified accountants working on Yet Another Database-backed Webapp, but there's less of a chance of EA-style sweatshop labor in those jobs.

    That said, I have a ton of respect for the people who do that, but I don't have that level of passion.  There are lots of tough, important problems (pathfinding, AI, multithreading, parallel processing) to be solvedthere but it gets undermined by competition crushing small game companies and people looking for a quick buck.

  • James (unregistered) in reply to JamesKilton

    Got a link to an article saying this?

  • James (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?
     

    Do you have a link to an article saying this?
     

  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous

    I have been out of college for what, 8 years now... and I still wake up occasionally with this weird feeling that I've missed a class.   Or forgotten that I have a class....  its weird.

  • Rob (unregistered) in reply to GONE

    Anonymous:
    Holy hell, I can't even read this article.
    "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."

    Attrition is the gradual wearing away of something by stress,etc.  It is a REDUCTION in the workforce.  
    For an example of attrition: my patience is worn away by the godawful writing on the internet, thus your readership is now suffering attrition.

    I read it as a joke. When he talks about "attrition" you immediately think "oh, so they make it a tough work environment so the new hires quit and only the best remain." The punchline is that the "attrition" discussed is a completely different kind.

    Captcha: clueless

  • (cs) in reply to Richard Head
    Richard Head:
    Anonymous:

    So everybody has to learn english and speak only english? that's not a solution "dude".

    Go to any other country and get a job.  Refuse to learn their national language, and expect everyone their to cater to you.  See how far you get with that.  Come back and report here how well you did.

    I never said you have to speak only english.  But yes what is the problem with having to learn English? 

    Are you saying if you got hired at a company that had a project coding solely in Java, and you only knew C++, you would expect that company to change their project to allow you to code C++ because you didnt know Java.  You can laugh at my trivial example, but its the exact same principle.  You wouldn't walk into a job and expect them to allow you to code in whatever language you want, so why shouldnt the country expect the same thing?



    Very clever, Dick!

    What's the prize for spoiling a joke that's outstayed its welcome? A bean bag?
  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous

    Anonymous:

    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*

    Reminds me of a quote from The Simpsons:

    Boss: Abe Simpson has something you eggheads with your Harvard diplomas don't - life experience
    Writer: Actually, I wrote my thesis on life experience.
    Boss: Shut up!

     

  • (cs) in reply to KoFFiE

    KoFFiE:
    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 :)

    I agree 100%. My old job used to be like that. I was most productive after 5pm, but I think that was more because people kept interrupting me during the rest of the day, but after they went home, I could focus. Then as the company grew they decided to make it 9-5 for everyone, which sucked. I managed to push the envelope a bit (coming in around 9:30, taking longer lunches) so I could still have some productive time after 5pm. Luckily there were a few others that did this too, so they couldn't discipline all of us as long as we stuck together :)

  • (cs)
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    [image]There's always a risk in hiring employees straight out of college. It can be pretty rough adjusting to a normal adult lifestyle (shaving, bathing, not beginning and ending every sentence with the word "dude"), ...

     

    WTF!? The caption for the picture doesn't end with a "dude". 

  • Nick (unregistered) in reply to GoatCheez
    GoatCheez:

    Anonymous:
    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.

    For reference sake, can anyone that mentions things like above please state:

    start date

    graduation date

    start major

    end major

    most important: name of university

     

    Thanks. 

    start date   September 2000

    graduation date   December 2004

    start major   Computer Science

    end major   Computer Science and Mathematics

    most important: name of university   Virginia Tech

     

  • Nick (unregistered) in reply to JamesKilton
    JamesKilton:

    start date - Sept 2002

    graduation date - Dec 2006 (yep, just finished my last final)

    start major - Computer Science

    end major - Computer Science

    most important: name of university - Calvin College, Grand Rapids, MI

     

    And what's with all the negative stigma about game development? I came into a CS curriculum knowing programming (started with BASIC and C on TI calculators), and knowing that I want to make games. The whole mentality of 'games make bookoos monies and i love playing them' is not unique to CS. There are people who start in any science field that quickly realize they did not know what they were getting into. It just so happens that games are the major driving force of these types of people for CS. Maybe I'm just one of the few who actually are a Computer Scientist AND want to get into the games industry. Modern game development is some of the hardest and most complicated programs to write, next to OSes and massively parallel systems.

    Maybe I'm just ranting, but does anyone else feel that games seem to be shunned in the rest of the CS world?
     

    Why does the games industry get such a bad rap?  Well part of it is how the industry works.  The gaming industry is full of recently graduated CS majors who just got into the field because they loved playing video games and now thats all they want to do.  As a result, companies that employ game developers (such as EA) get to have their way with the employees and you will end up working 80 hour weeks for peanuts.

    Also (and yes, I know this will sound controversial) you really aren't producing anything with any value.  Society doesn't benefit from you making a cool new first person shooter, in fact (if you consider all the time kids will waste playing it instead of learning useful skills) it is harmed.  You are just a few notches up from a spammer.

  • (cs) in reply to David

    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.

    God, you must have real problems with puns or poetry, if the correct usage of a word in a setting where you expect a less common one bothers you... The word "attrition" is used here in sense 1; you are arguing that using it in sense 1 where you would expect sense 2 to be the most common usage is incorrect. I believe the correct term for such an argument is "silly".

     

  • (cs)

    The Real wtf is all americans saying Dude, why and why do they say that?!?!?!? It's just irretating and stupid.

  • (cs) in reply to ToddGilberg

    ...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.

    Sounds like a course you'd have done recently (if on a UK course, it was shit in the 90s) as it contains stuff that might be useful in the majority of programming workplaces. Personally, I didn't see the appeal (after having taught myself Turbo Pascal a few years previously) of having to use Miranda, which is so advanced it doesn't even a multiplication operator, and Ada (annoyingly similar to Pascal) when it was bloody obvious that if all those who graduated were going for jobs that actually used that outdated crap there'd be about 90% unemployment. So I taught myself web development, walked out and straight into a job from a choice of plenty.

  • (cs) in reply to SneWs

    SneWs:
    The Real wtf is all americans saying Dude, why and why do they say that?!?!?!? It's just irretating and stupid.

    But dude, like c'mon man... Serially 

    Oh yeah, thx to everyone posting their college info, it really helps me to put things into perspective. 

  • Wonko the Sane (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. 

     I love how you mix this anglocentric viewpoint with the totally PC "cave people" instead of the traditional "cavemen" (see all those GEICO ads).
     

  • Eternal Density (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?
     

    Heh, my working hours are 36.75 per week... but I'm working a couple of extra a day so I can take a few days off in mid January.

    I'm working with four other students at various stages of university (most at University of Canberra but one at Australian National University who is only a first year and is thinking of dropping out.  I haven't had much of a look at the other students' code, but there are some interesting things in the system we're extending... I think it's mostly okay though.  (I was worried on my first day that I'd end up living this site...)  We do use a LOT of Reflection though, but I'm pretty sure it is well warranted.  I have called the ANU guy 'brillant' a couple of times for wasting time on YouTube though.

    captcha = truthiness.  honest.
     

  • José Feliciano (unregistered) in reply to Guy

    Would that then be: 

    void primero() {

        alert("Hola Mundo!"); 

    } 


    ?

  • Theo (unregistered) in reply to José Feliciano

    I wonder what the Spanish translation for Dude is.

  • Mark (unregistered)

    ... Federico reported back that there'd be a few problems. Primarily, there was no server-side code on any of the pages: for the past few months, Steve had only been creating elaborate, faked-out demonstrations using HTML and JavaScript. The reason his progress was improving so much was just getting better at making demos. When they asked Steve about this, he simply replied, "but I thought you wanted demonstrations?"

     This guy has a great career ahead of him -- he has, after all, mastered the art of the rigged demo. I can think of a number of software vendors (one in Redwood Shores comes to mind) that would love to have him on their team!
     

  • (cs) in reply to JamesKilton

    .

  • {AnGeR} (unregistered)
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    There's always a risk in hiring employees straight out of college. It can be pretty rough adjusting to a normal adult lifestyle (shaving, bathing, not beginning and ending every sentence with the word "dude")

    Actually I think the real adult lifestyle is: boredom, hypocrisy, and only worring about appearance, money, elitism and seeming better than the rest.

  • Anonymous Dude (unregistered) in reply to Earl

    Oh, so what you're saying is that you're too lazy and lack pride in your work to even be bothered doing anything of value or proving yourself unless you're paid a high salary and given an executive parking space? Guess what, fresh out of college, you're crap. You're a toilet cleaner. You have to work your way up. Just because you partied and got drunk for four years on mommy's and daddy's dime doesn't suddenly make you a genius or experienced or worth anything more than I was when i started into the business fresh out of highschool as a freshman dropout.

     Tell me how you feel when your $150,000 education and fifteen years of experience is sold out to some guy in India for $7.50/hr who has a masters degree in CS.
     

  • Zach (unregistered) in reply to Jeronimo
    Anonymous:
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    Of course, Federico wasn't allotted any additional hours to do this, but he did the best he could by providing examples of database access and internationalization (as the application needed to be in both English and Spanish), and periodically reviewing the code.

    I think the real WTF is Fedrico didn't catch the internationalization problem although he was supposedly reviewing the code.

    It's pretty straightforward: Federico was in a hurry, so he only bothered to check the English versions. Despite the Spanish fake name, he might not even be fluent in Spanish. And he may have been expecting internationalization to be the last feature added.

  • Anon (unregistered)

    Dude, I heard that "dude" refers to the anal hairs on a pig - could this be true?

  • Dale (unregistered)
    Comment held for moderation.

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