The sad truth is, it doesn’t take much to excel in IT. I’d put it down to the terrible state of education in that field everywhere I’ve looked or heard from.
To the extent that I think of myself as having something to protect, this is it. I’m not “clicking” as far as the Singularity yet, but it’s clear to me that people in the IT professions, and in particular programmers, represent, at the same time, a huge potential to improve the lot of humanity, and a huge waste of that potential at this moment.
The sad truth is, it doesn’t take much to excel in IT. I’d put it down to the terrible state of education in that field everywhere I’ve looked or heard from.
Can you elaborate on this? I went to school for electrical/computer engineering, and would occasionally hear about people who couldn’t hack it in those programs changing to IT-related ones. I figured it was an OK choice (maybe they hit their limits when it comes to math), but could still learn to good things.
I’ve now worked in small, medium, and large organizations, and have (in most cases) found that whatever best resembles an “IT” department is something you do your best to avoid working with. I’ve seen rigid adherence to obviously bad policies and protocols, failure to complete things on-time or correctly, and a near-religious pursuit of maintaining the status quo in nearly every interaction.
What is it about the education of IT students that encourages this? From looking at my school’s degree requirements, it seems like there’s too much of a focus on “business” skills and middle management, and too little focus on using and applying technology. Is that a fair summary?
it seems like there’s too much of a focus on “business” skills and middle management, and too little focus on using and applying technology.
We’d have to draw some distinctions, as “IT” is a big field. My main beef with the curricula is that, in a nutshell, they fail to teach people to think, to reason conceptually about the tools in their toolbox; and to a lesser extent that they fail to teach the craft, the technology-independent tips and tricks that experienced pros have picked up.
Sometimes that manifests as an excessive focus on technology: specifically curricula that teach people how to use tools X, Y and Z but not why these tools are useful or when to use them. Sometime that manifests as an excessive focus on this or that fad of management or scheduling; for instance, curricula heavy in “estimation models” such as COCOMO.
I’m an autodidact but I later went back to university to pick up a degree with very light course requirements in view of my experience. The one class I sat on was about distributed systems. I was told practically nothing about distributed systems, save for a brief reference to Lamport clocks, the rest of the course was spent on the details of writing “Hello world” equivalents in CORBA and Java RMI: basically running programs on the command line and learning bits of syntax. I distinguished myself by being the only student who was using unit tests to demonstrate properties of my programs.
In other words, this was a Master’s degree at one of the top scientific universities in Paris, and to this autodidact the course looked like vocational training.
The sad truth is, it doesn’t take much to excel in IT. I’d put it down to the terrible state of education in that field everywhere I’ve looked or heard from.
To the extent that I think of myself as having something to protect, this is it. I’m not “clicking” as far as the Singularity yet, but it’s clear to me that people in the IT professions, and in particular programmers, represent, at the same time, a huge potential to improve the lot of humanity, and a huge waste of that potential at this moment.
Can you elaborate on this? I went to school for electrical/computer engineering, and would occasionally hear about people who couldn’t hack it in those programs changing to IT-related ones. I figured it was an OK choice (maybe they hit their limits when it comes to math), but could still learn to good things.
I’ve now worked in small, medium, and large organizations, and have (in most cases) found that whatever best resembles an “IT” department is something you do your best to avoid working with. I’ve seen rigid adherence to obviously bad policies and protocols, failure to complete things on-time or correctly, and a near-religious pursuit of maintaining the status quo in nearly every interaction.
What is it about the education of IT students that encourages this? From looking at my school’s degree requirements, it seems like there’s too much of a focus on “business” skills and middle management, and too little focus on using and applying technology. Is that a fair summary?
We’d have to draw some distinctions, as “IT” is a big field. My main beef with the curricula is that, in a nutshell, they fail to teach people to think, to reason conceptually about the tools in their toolbox; and to a lesser extent that they fail to teach the craft, the technology-independent tips and tricks that experienced pros have picked up.
Sometimes that manifests as an excessive focus on technology: specifically curricula that teach people how to use tools X, Y and Z but not why these tools are useful or when to use them. Sometime that manifests as an excessive focus on this or that fad of management or scheduling; for instance, curricula heavy in “estimation models” such as COCOMO.
I’m an autodidact but I later went back to university to pick up a degree with very light course requirements in view of my experience. The one class I sat on was about distributed systems. I was told practically nothing about distributed systems, save for a brief reference to Lamport clocks, the rest of the course was spent on the details of writing “Hello world” equivalents in CORBA and Java RMI: basically running programs on the command line and learning bits of syntax. I distinguished myself by being the only student who was using unit tests to demonstrate properties of my programs.
In other words, this was a Master’s degree at one of the top scientific universities in Paris, and to this autodidact the course looked like vocational training.