[Tfug] Re: CIS faculty at PCC west disavow existence of Linux
classes
Anthony Steckman
tfug@tfug.org
Fri Jan 31 02:17:01 2003
I have never taken a programming class. I did take an Intro to Computers
class at PCC once and we did a little VB programming.
That's actually how I got started but everything I've done since then,
I've done on my own. Oh, I've looked at a lot of source code and I've
asked for help here and there...
But I find, especially with Java, that I end up answering more questions
than I ask -- and, often, the people who are asking are more qualified
than I am (they either have a lot of education or a lot of real world
work experience).
At the same time, I'm not trying to come off like Mr. Programmer++. All
the stuff I've done is just for fun. I've never been paid a dime for
anything I've written, and although I have been invited to join a few
open source projects, I've never contributed code to any of them.
So maybe I'm more of a hack than a hacker -- all the same: I agree. With
computers, as with most things, the best way to learn is to jump into
the pool.
If it turns out you can't swim... There's always tech support. :-D
+ I'm probably responding to some of what was said below:
. Date: Thu, 30 Jan 2003 11:32:26 -0700
. Subject: Re: [Tfug] Re: CIS faculty at PCC west disavow existence of
. Linux classes
. From: Leo Przybylski <leo@leosandbox.org>
. Reply-To: tfug@tfug.org
. To: tfug@tfug.org
. User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.2.1)
. Gecko/20021130
.
. I have to agree with him. I'm not sure what he means by "coding" skills,
. but I'll assume he is referring to basic knowledge and understanding of
. various syntaxes (how to write a program). I'd definitely have to say
. that "coding skills" have to be attained through experience. I also
. agree with his last paragraph.
.
. I even learned a few things. I had misconceptions that a majority of CS
. is taught in undergraduate cirriculum. It sounds like it can hardly be
. expected to learn much CS in the undergraduate cources.
.
. My original thought was not over the CS vs. ECE college in general, but
. rather the quality of education that is to be attained. Though ECE and
. CS approach in different ways (practical and theoretical), students seem
. to gain more from ECE than CS.
.
. I know I also said that CS colleges in general (no matter which
. university) don't impress me. When I said this, I was referring to the
. skills and knowledge that have to be attained through experience. Mr.
. Lubbock set me straight on that one.
.
. On another note, I feel like I'm now kicking a dead donkey. Does anyone
. feel the same?
.
. Thanks for that note from Lubbock,
. -Leo Przybylski
.
. Angus Scott-Fleming wrote:
.
. >On 30 Jan 2003 at 8:28, Sam Hart wrote:
. >
. >
. >
. >>My main thrust was not to mention how bad or good a particular CS dept
. >>was, just that, if you want to learn /real/ programming, then I could
. >>think of no other way than getting involved in some
. >>Free-Software/Open-Source project. It also teaches teamwork, and
. >>(possibly) even leadership skils (if the project manager suddenly
. >>becomes sick of a project and hands it over to you).
. >>
. >>
. >
. >Here are some relevant possibly interesting comments from a former ECE
. >instructor who taught programming and other computer-related classes at
. >the UofA and is now teaching at Texas Tech in Lubbock. I forwarded him
. >one of the messages in this thread to see if he had any comments ....
. >
. >
. >
. >>I believe he is right in some ways: that the ECE dept. has several
. >>more practical courses than C.S. However, I think he has a rather
. >>narrow view of what C.S. is...sounds like he expects the focus of a CS
. >>program to be to teach good coding skills. From my perspective, at the
. >>Uof A, the study of computers has evolved in two distinct paths. The
. >>practical side, studying hardware, problem solving approaches, and the
. >>engineering application of computers is in the realm of the Computer
. >>Engineering wing of ECE. The theoretical, studying issues like the
. >>mathematical rigor of fault tolerence, development of new paradigms for
. >>computer languages, etc., is the realm of the C.S. folks, who, by the
. >>way, are in the college or arts and sciences at the UofA, not the
. >>college of engineering. Creating good programmers is generally not a
. >>high priority of computer science these days...that has become a
. >>practical problem, just as practical application of mathematics is done
. >>primarily in the engineering school, not the math dept. When I did my
. >>masters there, I don't believe the C.S. dept. even had an undergraduate
. >>program, although they did have some undergraduate courses.
. >>
. >>
. >
. >
. >
. >>(Personally, I suspect that the best place for a straight-forward
. >>this-is-how-to-get-it-done course for developing coding skills these
. >>days is a place like Pima C.C., or even a technical school like Devrie
. >>(sp?) up in Phoenix area. Those places focus almost exclusively on
. >>"how", less on "why").
. >>
. >>
. >
. >
. >
. >>Even here at Texas Tech, where the CS dept. is in the college of
. >>engineering, our focus is not on creating good programmers. We do put
. >>our undergraduates through 5 or 6 courses where coding is a large part
. >>of the class, but these are all lower level courses. The upper level
. >>and graduate courses, where the (supposed) real meat is, are courses on
. >>things like languages/compilers; computer vision; neural networks;
. >>artificial intelligence; parallel computing; networking systems,
. >>networking security; data compression; etc. Obviously being able to
. >>write programs is important for many (but not all) of these, but not
. >>the central focus.
. >>
. >>
. >
. >
. >
. >>Here is an interesting perspective on the issue: I took a graduate
. >>neural networks course here in the CS dept a couple of years ago. We
. >>looked fairly deeply into the math underlying the different neural
. >>networks that we looked at (and coded up). The coding problems were
. >>all very theoretical...fun but generally not practical -- solve the
. >>travelling salesman problem; create a network to solve the XOR
. >>problem, etc. Kudos were awarded for trying out variations, exploring
. >>where they worked well and where they didn't, etc.. I am currently
. >>taking a pattern recognition course over in the E.C.E. dept., and in it
. >>we are looking at implementing many of the same algorithms for
. >>real-world problems, like recognizing defects in cotton, separating
. >>fish by type in a processing plant, etc.. However, the algorithms are
. >>presented largely as: here's the algorithm, code it up, show that it
. >>works, and, "we won't go into details, but here are some references if
. >>you really want to understand the underlying concepts." The bottom
. >>line: the C.S. course deals with the theoretical, the ECE course deals
. >>with the practical. If I were a manager who needed an employee to
. >>solve a pattern recognition problem in the short term, I'd send him to
. >>the ECE course. If I were hiring a new graduate who might work on that
. >>or any number of other problems, I might want a more theoretical
. >>background.
. >>
. >>
. >
. >
. >
. >>Finally, I think it's highly unrealistic to expect an undergraduate in
. >>any discipline to be particularly skilled yet. That has to be learned
. >>on the job. All four years of education does is give you enough tools
. >>to get started. Remember, a full-time student is only part time on
. >>anything. It takes several years of making mistakes full-time before
. >>one learns how to either avoid them or recover from them gracefully.
. >>
. >>
. >
. >
. >
. >>Feel free to share these thoughts with that discussion group.
. >>
. >>
. >
. >--
. >Angus Scott-Fleming
. >GeoApps, Tucson, Arizona
. >http://www.geoapps.com/
. >1-520-290-5038 / fax 1-208-248-3124
. >+----------------------------------------------
. >----------+
. >
. >
. >
. >_______________________________________________
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. >tfug@tfug.org
. >http://www.tfug.org/mailman/listinfo/tfug
. >
. >
.
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