No Disrespect(weblog.raganwald.com)
weblog.raganwald.com
No Disrespect
http://weblog.raganwald.com/2008/01/no-disrespect.html
4 comments
Who does not understand recursion? Who has not learned the recursive version of quicksort at least a dozen times? Recursion is fast at the expensive of memory. It's also very fun to make something that calls itself.
Anyone who puts down "business programming" so easily either has never done it or is flame baiting. I suspect the latter.
Long gone are the days when the "system analyst" met with the users, wrote tight functional specifications and handed them to the "business programmer". In any organization that actually gets anything done, the two are now one position, the "programmer analyst", and it's been that way for 20 years now.
And what does a programmer analyst have to do?
- examine and understand almost any business situation
- solve technical and logistical problems
- present ideas clearly and cleanly
- organize and manage time and tasks
- play nicely with others
- and, oh yea, code
And where do you find people who can do these things? Lots of places, but the 2 that come to mind first are from work experience or college experience. Nobody actually believes anymore that you'll use anything from class in your work. But it can be a very good place to develop the life skills needed to be a programmer analyst.
Nobody's going to ask you to write a linear programming model using the simplex method to determine how to allocate continuous inventory to customer orders. (OK, maybe they will.) But they will wonder why Mary and Joe can't seem to figure out how to use Program ORP560 to generate this month's performance metrics. Is the problem with them or the program? They'll tell you to figure it out and fix it. Count on it. And count on college to help you become the kind of person who can do that.
Long gone are the days when the "system analyst" met with the users, wrote tight functional specifications and handed them to the "business programmer". In any organization that actually gets anything done, the two are now one position, the "programmer analyst", and it's been that way for 20 years now.
And what does a programmer analyst have to do?
- examine and understand almost any business situation
- solve technical and logistical problems
- present ideas clearly and cleanly
- organize and manage time and tasks
- play nicely with others
- and, oh yea, code
And where do you find people who can do these things? Lots of places, but the 2 that come to mind first are from work experience or college experience. Nobody actually believes anymore that you'll use anything from class in your work. But it can be a very good place to develop the life skills needed to be a programmer analyst.
Nobody's going to ask you to write a linear programming model using the simplex method to determine how to allocate continuous inventory to customer orders. (OK, maybe they will.) But they will wonder why Mary and Joe can't seem to figure out how to use Program ORP560 to generate this month's performance metrics. Is the problem with them or the program? They'll tell you to figure it out and fix it. Count on it. And count on college to help you become the kind of person who can do that.
The more fundamental problem with colleges is they have no idea how to help people learn. And don't even think that's what they should be doing. No, they want to "teach" students, by which they mean force them to listen to lectures, whether they are interested and learning or not, and force them to do work whether it helps them individually or not, and force them to take tests to make sure they obeyed.
The only way to get through college without losing your sanity is to take classes you know absolutely nothing about and don't particularly care about, other than being vaguely curious. When I stopped taking CS and business classes and started taking stuff like intro to Asian religions and intro winemaking I got a lot happier. Your goal in taking a course should be to learn enough of the terminology, context, and schemas that you can read the rest of the journal articles in the field on your own. (You should also learn to ask meaningful questions.)
Speaking of, I think everyone should take a class that covers the history and methodology of religious study before graduating. Religious studies people, the good ones at least, spend a lot of their time thinking about the same stuff that net natives think about, like how memes go viral and how stuff creates value for users. Even if you're a militant atheist it's still kind of interesting and useful.
Speaking of, I think everyone should take a class that covers the history and methodology of religious study before graduating. Religious studies people, the good ones at least, spend a lot of their time thinking about the same stuff that net natives think about, like how memes go viral and how stuff creates value for users. Even if you're a militant atheist it's still kind of interesting and useful.
"Respect comes from what you accomplish"
Only partly true. You need to sell your accomplishments; they don't sell themselves.