new years resolutions

[Laura Creighton]

<snip>

> Ah, but you are equating "computer background" with "CS background"
> which ignores a large segment of knowledgeable people.  There is a guy
> at my work who built a serial IO card using nothing but a pen plotter to
> etch the circuit board, a small processor (and a couple of support
> chips) and his own custom firmware.  I doubt many CS majors could do the
> same, yet they would somehow exclude his POV in favor of their own,
> despite the fact that their entire world ceases to exist without people
> like him.  Ask yourself, is computing about software, or about
> hardware?  Obviously both, but I can assure you that hardware without
> software is far more useful than the reverse <wink>.
> 
> -- 
> Cliff Wells <clifford.wells at attbi.com>

I don't think that dividing 'csc == software' and 'engineering ==
hardware' is the best possible way to distinguish between them.  A
more useful question, I believe, is 'do you hunger to build things, or
just to think about them'?  (Some people do both about equally, of
course.)  The distinction is important for people who are considering
getting a degree in computer science.  Some of them do quite badly at
it because what they want is a degree that will help them build the
programs they dream of creating, and instead they are persuing a
degree that will help them think about thoughts they have no interest
in thinking. This is a very bad fit.

proto-Scientists who mistakenly head for the Engineering, or
Engineering-Science departments tend to do much better.  They become
Engineering professors. This is not necessarily good for the
Engineering professions -- graduate engineers in all fields generally
spend their first few professional years discovering they have studied
way too much theory, and not enough 'how to recognise a really bad
engineering design based on the practical experience we have in
building things'.  By the time they have learned that, they have mostly
forgotten the theory that was crammed into them at university ...

Laura Creighton