Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 ggr 10/10/85; site cord.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxt!houxm!ihnp4!cord!ebh
From: ebh@cord.UUCP (Ed Horch)
Newsgroups: net.cse
Subject: Re: Math and CS
Message-ID: <213@cord.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 10-Mar-86 10:47:41 EST
Article-I.D.: cord.213
Posted: Mon Mar 10 10:47:41 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 12-Mar-86 02:19:01 EST
References: <1194@mit-eddie.MIT.EDU> <1083@terak.UUCP>
Reply-To: ebh@cord.UUCP (59453-Ed Horch)
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Liberty Corner
Lines: 67
Summary: 

>> [Greg Skinner]
>> Actually, this brings me to a deeper question.  I have always wondered
>> why some hackers just didn't grit their teeth and suffer through the N
>> years to get their degrees.  Considering the fact that it was easy for
>> them to grind out their programs, they could have coasted through all
>> their programming projects ...

> [Doug Pardee]
>Continuing part-time, it would consume most of
>my free time for at least a decade.
>
>So, since my career was doing just fine without a degree, I simply
>dropped the matter.  I haven't regretted it.  For me, it was the right
>decision.

First, a reply to Greg:
Being able to "coast" does not change the size of the hill.  What I mean
is that no matter how good you are, programming still takes time.  I'm
not talking about the hundred-line things you can knock off in two hours.
I'm talking about large, multi-week, multi-deadline projects.  For
example, in the school I went to, their second-quarter  assembly class was
considered the "weed-out" course.  The second half of the course consisted
of writing a relocating assembler for the Univac 1100 in Univac 1100
assembly.  About 15% of the students managed to get an absolute assembler
working, but only *one* student ever got the relocating assembler to run.
One student in over ten years.

This is where Doug comes in:
I too had to wrestle with the school vs. work conflict.  I ultimately
quit school altogether.  The reason was simple:  After a sixteen-hour
day, who has the energy to go home and do calculus?  Certainly not I.
The typical scenario went like this.  A new quarter/semester is coming
up, and things are going pretty smoothly at work, so I decide to take 
two or three classes.  Three weeks into it, a crunch hits at work, and
seventy-hour weeks are imminent.  I immediately drop one course, while
I can still withdraw-pass.  Things get rough. An occasional ninety-
hour week is thrown in with the seventy-hour weeks, so I try to drop
another course.  But now it's late enough in the quarter that I can
only get a withdraw-fail.

Things at work back off to only sixty hours a week, so I think I can
pull out the one remaining class (in which, for obvious reasons, I'm
quite far behind).  BUT WHAT ABOUT THAT DEADLINE THE NIGHT BEFORE THE
FINAL???  I take the final after having been up for two days, blow it,
(even though I know the material) combine that with two programming
assignments I never turned in, and presto! Yet Another D Or F, and my
grade-point drops again.

Now, before you think that I've blown it off for good, a quick update:
I now work at a forty hour per week project, and it looks like it will
stay that way.  By fall I hope to be back at school.  After all, maybe
my father will then think I've risen above bumhood.  Also there's an
economic motivation:  as a consultant, I have to carry professional
liability (read malpractice) insurance.  Without a degree, the premiums
are absolutely extortionate.  So, in tax writeoffs and reduced premiums
I should recoup all expenses.

But I'm digressing.  To reiterate:  Greg, you should understand that,
whether for class, client, or employer, real, nontrivial software
design and development is a time consuming process, only made worse
by deadlines, and in many cases that leaves neither the time nor the
emotional energy for hard study.  In these cases, school must either
be put off until conditions allow, or dispensed with completely.

Them's the breaks.

-Ed Horch  {cord,bentley}!ebh