Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ginosko!shadooby!mailrus!purdue!bu-cs!xylogics!world!bzs
From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Fed up with MIPS
Message-ID: <1989Oct22.001109.1008@world.std.com>
Date: 22 Oct 89 00:11:09 GMT
References: <76700077@p.cs.uiuc.edu> <2526@uceng.UC.EDU>
Organization: The World
Lines: 62


> To keep the PC industry thriving we must produce many more technicians
> and design engineers, to use high-MIPS CPUs in design optimization and
> simulation.  There is a big possibility that the U.S.  educational
> system will let us down.

The U.S. Educational System will let us down???

How about the industries who supposedly need these people?

It never ceases to amuse me how industry types will wring their hands
bitching that universities aren't teaching this or that.

Yet, when it comes time to make a donation, they're nowhere to be
found or do palliative things that look good in the newspaper (donate
a few PC's) but balk at doing anything substantive (real $$ to develop
real programs and hire real teaching and support staff.)

It's only important to them when they have the podium, not the
checkbook.

If US Industry has a need of academia they can put their money where
their collective mouths are. Otherwise they should take what they get.

I doubt you could even *find* a university that, if offered sufficient
funding, wouldn't develop an educational program tailored to whatever
your little hearts desire.

Go visit some computer science departments, other than the big four or
five, and watch them scraping around for even the most basic teaching
facilities, fighting with the administration to just get a few dumb
CRT's and (much more importantly) unable to pay salaries which will
draw anyone beyond re-tread mathematicians who could care less about
actually using computers (you can spot them easily, they refer to
programmers as "button-pushers" and sneer, it's not unusual to see cs
depts with 3/4 logicians and the like cuz anyone who can actually do
anything practical is out doing it for a real salary and real support
for their work.)

When industry does show up with a supposed donation either they have
ulterior motives (let's donate one of our XY1000's so they'll buy more
of them!) or they're looking to get some cheap programming done under
the guise of "research" (with a tax deduction to boot!)

Shit, I've sat in any number of meetings where certain big computer
companies stood up and said: "We'd love to support RESEARCH here, we
need proposals that CAN BE PRODUCTIZED WITHIN TWO YEARS." What about
education? Nervous silence, er, how do we PRODUCTIZE education??? Get
serious.

There's occasional generosity, it seems to come and go with changes in
the corporate tax laws. And it's almost always limited to donations of
some equipment which ain't enough to put good teachers in front of
classrooms.

Anyhow, if you're not part of the solution you're part of the problem
and all that.
-- 
        -Barry Shein

Software Tool & Die, Purveyors to the Trade         | bzs@world.std.com
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