[BangPypers] Responding to people who lack the curiosity

[Kenneth Gonsalves]

On Saturday 13 June 2009 16:07:42 Kiran Jonnalagadda wrote:
> Doctor? Architect? Lawyer? They require dedicating a serious chunk of your
> life and are one-way streets.

not so. I am just back from interviewing over a hundred would-be programmers 
whose parents have dedicated a serious chunk of their cash to put them through 
and engineering degree. And now they are jobless and unemployable. It is also 
not true that Doctor? Architect? Lawyer? are one-way streets. I know an 
architect who is now an IT professional, and a lawyer who is on his way there. 
And several doctors who have done serious programming.

If you really analyse things you will find that the people who embarrass us are 
almost invariably engineering or MCA graduates from the formal stream. The 
people from the informal stream - like aptech/NIIT graduates very rarely stray 
away from the tools they are taught.

I find, in India anyway, the best programmers seem to be people who have _not_ 
formally studied programming. Even from engineering the EEE and ECE guys seem 
far more likely to go the self-learning path that we are looking at.

Again there is a clear distinction between people who are taught and people 
who learn. Most of those who are taught expect to be taught their whole lives 
- and those who learn ...
-- 
regards
Kenneth Gonsalves
Associate
NRC-FOSS
http://nrcfosshelpline.in/web/