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From: klt@ntcsd1.UUCP (Kristopher L. Tyra)
Newsgroups: comp.edu,comp.software-eng,comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: "Expertise"
Message-ID: <405@ntcsd1.UUCP>
Date: 3 Apr 89 14:38:50 GMT
References: <7531@thorin.cs.unc.edu> <3241@goofy.megatest.UUCP>
Reply-To: klt@ntcsd1.UUCP (Kristopher Tyra)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Northern Telecom,  Research Triangle Park,  North Carolina
Lines: 62

>Do you *really* want an "irritating example"?  Okay, you asked for it.
>
>
>No offense, (really!) ...
>
>... but the top twenty "thinks-he's-a-computer-scientist"
>bozos that I have met were all C.S. Professors.  And the rest were
>postgrads. Most of them just haven't had enough experiece building and
>maintaining computers and software to know beans about it. They're all
>frustrated mathematicians, and would rather to play with pencils
>and paper than with silicon.
>
>(Before you get too angry at me, let me hasten to point out that I
>was one of these jerks for a couple of years... Visiting Associate
>Prof at a certain large midwestern university which I dare not name.)
>
>I had plenty of company, I can assure you!  A visiting lecturer from
>Oxford, whose name you probably would know, once told me that he hadn't
>"programmed in anger" in over three years! He was quite proud of it.
>He was busy coauthoring some of the most worthless theoretical pabulum
>imaginable all written in a pidgin computer language. Most of
>of his theoretical results showed how to pipeline toy processes together
>to produce composite processes with completely unpredictable behavior,
>which he called "chaos". So far as I know, he never showed how to
>get one to do anything useful.
>
>Like I said, no offense... present company excluded.., (except for the
>ex-me), etc.., etc..


  I'm sorry but I just can't let this slip.  As a graduate of North Carolina
  State University in Computer Science, I can say that I didn't do well
  in school and that experience is worth everything.  But the one thing I
  studied (and hard) were the theoretical courses.  Because if you know theory
  you know it!  I claim to know most all computer languages and operating 
  systems because I understand the theories in which they were developed.  
  Therefore to learn a new system I only need to worry about the semantics of
  the system and sometimes the quirks.  

  I think examples are wonderful but it is "monkey see monkey do"
  if you don't understand the theories.  In retrospect, I have seen and 
  managed lots of programmers that do exactly what the book example tells them
  to do and when it doesn't work (for some reason or another) it means the
  machine is broken; all because they didn't understand what they were doing.

  My point is I would take 1 developer with theoretical understanding then 
  10 programmers without.

  No offense to those that don't agree.

   

  These opinions are my own and in no way reflect the attitude or opinion of
  my employer.


		Kristopher L. Tyra
		Northern Telecom, Inc.
		800 Perimeter Park
		(919) 481-5595

		{the world}..!mcnc!rti!ntcsd1!klt