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From: kitten@wheaties.ai.mit.edu (Patrick Juola)
Newsgroups: misc.jobs.contract,comp.edu
Subject: Re: Qualified? or Dreaming?
Message-ID: <9402@gelatinosa.ai.mit.edu>
Date: 12 Jul 90 13:57:06 GMT
References: <1990Jul8.063302.4076@xavax.com> <2616@igloo.scum.com> <1990Jul11.233006.17884@nmt.edu>
Reply-To: kitten@gelatinosa.ai.mit.edu (Patrick Juola)
Organization: MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Lines: 26

In article <1990Jul11.233006.17884@nmt.edu> john@nmt.edu (John Shipman) writes:
>+--  (nevin@igloo.scum.com)
>| I went to a highly rated (top 5) university, yet all of the real
>| fundamentals were only found in electives.  It really surprised me
>| that you could get a BSCS without learning about compilers or operating
>| systems.  And more than just a few students missed these fundamentals.
>+--
>Is this generally true? 
>
>At New Mexico Tech, nobody gets a BS in CS without going
>through both the compiler class and the OS class

Well, at Johns Hopkins U *when I attended (1984-1987)* there was a
joint EE/CS department.  I managed to graduate without having taken
either compilers or OS.  My understanding is that the degree requirements
for the new CS program are somewhat stricter....

I also don't consider myself particularly damaged by failure to take
the OS or compiler classes.  The textbooks and source code are out there;
I've used them to teach myself compiler theory.  In my ideal universe,
computer science would be taught as a branch of the math department
and everyone would know up to and including topology by the time they
left....

	- kitten
Patrick Juola	kitten@ai.mit.edu	juola@boulder.colorado.edu