Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!agate!shelby!decwrl!megatest!djones
From: djones@megatest.UUCP (Dave Jones)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: What exactly is a software engineer ?
Message-ID: <5004@goofy.megatest.UUCP>
Date: 17 May 89 21:53:11 GMT
References: <3359@ae.sei.cmu.edu>
Organization: Megatest Corporation, San Jose, Ca
Lines: 32

From article <3359@ae.sei.cmu.edu>, by rsd@sei.cmu.edu (Richard S D'Ippolito):
> In article <40386@think.UUCP> Franklin A Davis brings up certain points that
...
> 
>>...Fortunately the real world is often a good
>>teacher, so people with CS degrees (or no degree at all) become
>>proficient engineers with experience. 
> 
...
> 
> I find it difficult to believe that one can acquire enough knowledge of a
> technical field without the benefit of a formal period of study of the
> field, such as you suggest, though I suppose it has been done by those rare
> folks that you and I cannot hope to emulate.
> 

Gimme a break. College is not magic and professors are not magicians.

Of course it is possible to learn, and learn well, without going to
college. I'm not recommending that anyone drop out, mind you. If for
no other reason, that degree is a piece of paper that says you can start
and finish a long, demanding project.

When I was in college, rather recently in geologic time, there was no
such thing as a C.S. degree. To get the piece of paper, I got a master's
degree in mathematics. I also got a job as a computer operator and programmer,
so I would have a machine to play with.  And I read everything I could find
about computers and programming.

At the risk of sounding vain, if I'm ever on Jeopardy, it's, "Alex, I'll
take computers for 1000," straight away, even though every hour I've spent
in a college C.S. classroom has been on the chalkboard side of the front desk.