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From: djw@a.UUCP (David Wade, Neutron Measurements Group, Computer Abuser )
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: Resources and education
Message-ID: <170@a.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 30-Apr-87 16:46:55 EDT
Article-I.D.: a.170
Posted: Thu Apr 30 16:46:55 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 2-May-87 11:14:06 EDT
References: <780@killer.UUCP> <1262@arthur.cs.purdue.edu>
Reply-To: djw@a.UUCP (Dave Wade)
Organization: The Batch Factory, "Batches?  Batches?  We ain't got no stinkin' batches..."
Lines: 56

>
>  When designing an assignment for a class that I am teaching,  ...
>                 I do this because it is my philosophy that CSE
>  is primarily developing problem solving skills and not teaching how to
>  program.   
I believe that something is missing here...

	1) do you have the kind of equipment that I will need after school?
	2) do you have the language I will need after school?
	3) do you understand the marketplace I will be entering OR are
	you educating me for a particular job?
After all; you wouldn't teach a locksmith without having locks around.
And, since I've been paid as a programmer/analyst for over 17 years, I
wonder why the schools are turning out brain-damaged graduates.  Not
that it is really their fault, but just in case you have been paying
attention, ALL OF THE CURRENT PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES ARE TEACHING YOU
TO THINK IN A WAY THAT WON'T HELP YOU ON THE NEXT GENERATION OF
MAINFRAMES.

Here in Los Alamos we usually have fast computers.  We tend to have
a reasonable collection of "new" computers.  We recently changed
the direction we were going with respect to the "hypercube" because
of something I'm not qualified to tell you, but we still have a
"Hypercube" around. And we have a CrayXMP48.

Please explain to me which of your classes emphasizes that I be
writing in a lauguage which does 256 independent tasks concurrently.
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""

That's important, folks!  I expect to see micro-clusters in home
computers before many of you reading this graduate.  How many of
you can even conceive of a program which does 4 different 
program tasks, concurrently?  The Cray will give you its 4 CPU's
if you ask for them corrrectly, now!  This stuff is real!

The Hypercube has 256 separate CPU's working on your program independently.
When you get a bug, which stack are you going to check?  How are you
going to write a bubblesort for a machine which uses 256 separate/
independent CPUs?

Perhaps the fact that the student (who was advocating leniency for
student cheaters) couldn't spell plagiarize, didn't use punctuation,
and wrote as though he were a 9-year old; doesn't really matter.
His training at your school's hands will merely give him an earlier
chance at the queue awaiting their chance to write a program on a
machine which processes data in a matter fundamentally alien to the
currently taught curriculum.

Perhaps it is time that we force CS students to read about general
semantics?  Perhaps we can screen out Aristotelian thinking in our
Computer Science Departments?  But then Computer Science would
start to look like the Philosophy Department.  Perhaps that's
wise,  we could change its name to Philosophistry...

Meaning no real harm,
Dave Wade