Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!ukma!psuvm.bitnet!uh2
From: UH2@PSUVM.BITNET (Lee Sailer)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Theory vs. Practice
Message-ID: <38797UH2@PSUVM>
Date: 10 Apr 88 15:02:08 GMT
References: <3415@bunker.UUCP> <3326@zeus.TEK.COM> <461@vsi.UUCP> <5775@bunny.UUCP> <2218@ttidc <65@qucis.UUCP>
Organization: Penn Sate Erie--School of Business
Lines: 23

Often, an employer doesn't want someone who can think, apply principles
in novel ways, and be creative, as in "We have these 200 COBOL programs,
and they all use the depreciation tables in the IRS rulebook, and the
IRS just changed the rules.  Get in there and change the programs to
match the new rules..."

IBM has been famous for hiring people with BA degrees but no computer
experience at all, and training them to do things the IBM way.

Certainly, schools like Stanford,        Yale, and so on, are not interested
in *merely* training people.
At the other end of the scale are the JC's, and little out of the
way two-bit struggling four year colleges, where the professor is
lucky if the majority of the students are trainable at all.

In between things get murky.  At a typical main campus of a state
university, perhaps half the students can "learn to think", while the rest
prefer to be "trained" so that they can get that COBOL job.

8-)  Hmmm.  I seem to be in a rather black mood today.  Could it
be because I owe the IRS $1800 this year?

                                         lee