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Johnny Can So Program
Posted by
timothy
on Wed May 11, 2005 09:32 AM
from the can-not-can-so-can-not dept.
from the can-not-can-so-can-not dept.
theodp writes "In Johnny Can So Program, CS Prof Norm Matloff calls BS on CNET stories like Can Johnny Still Program? and Can the U.S. Still Compete?, saying it's a shame that CNET fails to cover the real threat to American technological competitiveness, the hidden agendas of Chicken Littles like Jim Foley of the Computing Research Association, David Patterson of the ACM and former Intel CEO Craig Barrett, all of whose organizations have a vested interest in playing the education card."
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There is a problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:There is a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:There is a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Parents like to decide what their kids are "going to be" when they're about minus 5 years old. This makes growing up hell on the poor kid who wants to be a concert violinst, but whose parents have him down to be a doctor, balanced by a kid who loves biology, but is forced to practice the hateful violin 6 hours a day.
The process is so pervasive that even kids who "grow up and make their own decision" often don't really, because they aren't actually taught how to make decisions of that nature in the first place.
Quite frankly, the one thing we're up to arses in is apps programers, and, ironically, the one thing in the computer field we're desperately short of right now is computer scientists.
And it's the universities getting into bed with companies like Microsoft and Intel that have resulted in computer science being mistaken for apps programming.
So my question to Norm Matloff is. .
"Is your own house in order?"
Are you, a CS professor, teaching real computer science, or are you teaching programming and calling it computer science at the behest of Intel?
You're right. The competition isn't a valid measure of where the US stands in the tech world. It stands in the fact that we are no longer the number one nation for publishing original computer science papers. We aren't even number two anymore. Japanese kids aren't coming to Boston and Berkeley anymore for the CS educations, they're going to Bejing.
Word is out. We've lost it. We're on the way down The rats started abondoning the ship years ago, but as Van Loon noted when talking about the Roman Empire, empires that have been fallen for hundreds of years are rarely aware of the fact.
I too, like the grandparent, teach privately. I do not, however, take just anybody. Beyond a certain point I'll only work with people, both kids and adults, who I believe are personally involved in the subject. Not who's parents have decided that computer "science" is a good job field for them because they see a lot of ads for Java programmers in the papers.
I do not piss and moan if a kid isn't interested in programming. I try my damndest to find that out, and then direct them to something they are interested in. As it happens, I teach violin too. It's better for everybody that way, and not just the kid.
Because one kid who lives for computer science is worth more than an entire university full of kids who are there because it's a good job field. We are falling behind in the sciences because we no longer focus on that one kid and give him the training and facilities he needs to do brilliant work, but we crank out less than worthless Java apps programmers to satisfy the commercial concerns (yes, that may well mean you, even if you find the concept insulting) by the bucketful.
And one kid who lives to play the violin, but isn't very technically proficient, is going to make more music worth listening to than a whole symphony orchestra full of technically perfect, but bored out of their skulls, orchestra pit monkeys.
Tell ya what, give me 12 kids who have been properly trained as computer scientists and love the field, six theorists and six empiricists, none of whom know a lick of "practical" programming, and just enough capital to set up shop with workbenchs from Sears and computers cobbled together from odd parts, but not enough to hand out free Ferraris to everybody, and in five years the 13 of us will knock all of China on its arse.
But I can't tell you in advance what our output is going to be, because I haven't a frickin' clue and that's the bloody point.
Not that anyone around he
Re:There is a problem (Score:5, Informative)
"Is your own house in order?"
Are you, a CS professor, teaching real computer science, or are you teaching programming and calling it computer science at the behest of Intel?
This question is downright ridiculous. He is without a doubt the best professor I've known. He is notorious (feared?) in his department for teaching real Computer Science. Prof. Matloff's students rip out their hair solving his problems, but nearly every student of his will give a glowing review of his courses.
There are some instructors who are easy, there are some instructors who are difficult for the sake of being difficult, and then there are those who enrich. Prof. Matloff certainly enriches his students.
-Former Student of Prof. Matloff
Re:There is a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:There is a problem (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:There is a problem (Score:5, Interesting)
You get them interested by getting them to create their own games. That's how my college professor did it. We created half-assed cheasy little games. But in the process learned the basics of simulation, object oriented programming, algorithms and managing a software project.
Re:There is a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Character is when you are willing to finish the task once the sparkle of new is gone.
It seems to apply, and I would think this is true for American's or non-Americans. It is not that 95% of Americans are not willing to finish a task, it is that 95% of all people are not willing to finish a task.
I am old enough to remember how the Japanese were going to make all US auto makers obsolete, and how we could not compete in the 70s and 80s, yet we have done more than fine, even improving BECAUSE of the competition. We can't sit idle and wish for more success (wishing is, afterall, passivity) but I would be hard pressed to believe that America is going to hell in a hand basket due to our "underacheiving kids". We have been there, we have done that, and many more people are wanting to move here than move away. As someone who was once one of those kids who was "lazy, underacheiving and a C- student" I can attest that many get over it.
I, for one, do not fear any new outsourced overlords, nor believe they are coming.
Re:There is a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
The guy who stays and wants to code is the one we want. It is perfectly normal, IMHO, that in a group of decent size only few actually can program. Our educational system should be designed in a way to identify those precious few and make sure they can go as high as they can.
It is silly to assume that Indian (Chinese, Russian, etc.) person in general is better programmer than an American one or that there are more programmers born there per 1000 population. It is simply those education systems were (for a while) better tuned to identify and pull up those selected ones.
Re:There is a problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Believe it or not, the language is rather C-like and has quite a bit of potential.
I used to think that making flash was all pointy clicky stuff until a couple of years ago when I attended a presentation at a conference (I went there for some of the other talks, but had a free hour so I decided to drop in for the heck of it).
I was actually impressed.
Moral of the story: don't be so elietest. Inspiration comes in many forms.
From TFA (Score:5, Informative)
Will slashdot help to identify responsible, long-term thinking candidates/policies, or does the second word of this sentence inform its answer?
Why should anyone in business care? (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, then they go and layoff large numbers of technical workers and send their jobs to another country. The message is getting through loud and clear to the younger generations in this country. All the while the business leaders are lamenting the education available here they are shouting at the top of their lungs by their businsess practices - "WHY THE HELL ARE YOU GOING INTO SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, WE DON'T HIRE THOSE KIND OF PEOPLE HERE!!!!"
The kids get it. As the one article states programming isn't glamorous like football. But, even more the kids going to college now look at business and see no need for technical people, because they're sending it all away.
Kids are smarter than people think, they see the writing on the wall. Why go to school for 4-5 years only to find a job market with no room for you. So all the best and brightest kids end up going to law school, which is in and of itself a terrifying thought.
Thinking of the Children (Sort Of...) (Score:5, Funny)
For Johnny is no more,
For what he thought was H2O,
Was H2SO4.
If only he had gone into CS instead of Chem...
Re:Thinking of the Children (Sort Of...) (Score:5, Interesting)
We're Just Spoiled ! (Score:5, Insightful)
while we think its our divine right to be No.1, a Chinese individual who doesn't have that perception just works a lot harder than your average American, add to that the sense of having to achieve and beat the No.1 and you get a will that is tougher than steel to win this thing (and any other situation)
We are "Slipping" because we got too comfy in our No.1 spot; not because our education is worse. Its human nature.
Re:We're Just Spoiled ! (Score:5, Insightful)
Most immigrants are willingly to work their arse off to get ahead. They also value education more so then the average american.
At least that he been my perception.
In other news... (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know what the right answer is, but it seems to me H1-Bs are far, far better than wholesale outsourcing. My favorite form of this is my own companies current push to hire employees and open it's own design centers in Singapore, Shang-hai, Bangalore and Taiwan. This way they get full benefits of Asian labor, without pesky contracting problems, yet get to live in mansions in the nicer parts of the US.
But Norm's article was good, I just think no one is going to listen to him that doesn't already understand the problem.
A blinkered view from the ivory tower of UC Davis. (Score:4, Informative)
From the article:
"News.com didn't tell you that the number of teams competing has grown nearly sevenfold from 1994 through 2005. In other words, for a team to finish at, say, third place, in 1994 would be equivalent to finishing 21st this year. So a hypothetical team that News.com would have lauded in 1994 would now be dismissed as having badly "slipped" in 2005, even though it would be of the same quality."
From this I guess the author means that it's OK to be at the same level they were eight years ago. It doesn't matter that the American teams didn't improve at the same rate at the rest of the world. And in his statistical argument he ignores that although team numbers might have increased so did the number of American teams.
Next comes my absolute favorite argument:
"Long before Olympic athletes from all countries became quasiprofessionals, the Eastern European countries were seeing to it that training for the Games was their athletes' full-time job, giving them a major advantage over other nations' athletes."
OMG, it's not fair, they trained harder! Well hello! Is it cheating to produce programmers who can actually solve problems and write code? What exactly is coursework for if it isn't preparation for the kinds of problems you solve in programming contests? I've done a couple - it's the same thing, you just have to be faster and more accurate, compared to a programming assignment.
"the hidden agenda behind the shrill shortage claims was to push Congress to increase the yearly cap on the H-1B work visa program, which enabled industry to import cut-rate engineers from abroad."
I was a H1-B worker - I made great rates (thanks very much) and so did all the other H1-B's I know. It's convenient for Norm's flawed argument to repeat this myth, propagated by programmers who think they should have had my job because it was their birthright, not because they could have done it better.
"How can American engineers compete with cheap, imported labor?"
Too much time in academia Norm. If you can't do the job right it really doesn't matter how cheap you come. The way to compete is to be the best, there is no other way. Shopping for programmers is not like shopping for socks. Remember, computer-related thingys are digital. At the end of the day it is usually pretty obvious whether they work or do not work. "Almost works" is not good enough for anyone, except perhaps a professor who grades CS101 papers.
When Chinese (or Indian, or anyone else) programmers turn out to cost less AND be better programmers we'll be able to thank guys like Norm, who wanted to deny there was ever a problem.
What's Norm's issue with devoting more to education - is it just that he wants to be able to say "It wasn't MY fault?"
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Insightful)
The rest of the week it's fine.
The way I see it outsourcing is the best thing that ever happened to guys like me. A cheap app gets developed over seas, then the company gets a cheap app back, when they never wanted a cheap app in the first place. The app then gets redeveloped, and it usually ends up on my desk at some point. I've done quite a few of projects like that over the last few years.
Re:Anyone who has ever graded CS papers.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Education Lacking? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:United States - 0 South East Asia : 1 (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Do you know the truth? (Score:5, Informative)
Here's his Chinese software page:
http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/chinese.html [ucdavis.edu]
I hate to use the classic "but I have lots of black friends!" anti-racist argument here, but I think he has earned it. I think the reason your friends don't want him as their advisor is because he is one of the toughest Prof's at Davis, and he isn't going to give out a free ride through grad school.
Of course, you have been modded up, and no one is going to read my reply, so the false prejudiced accusation is what people will see. But again, this IS slashdot. The first to respond is always right!
As an aside, he was also a big reason that Intel Corp. in Sacramento changed their stance on G.P.A. being the major deciding factor in hiring a student. They used to throw out all resumes that were under a 4.0 G.P.A. (they had THAT many applying). Dr. Matloff basically showed them that the students that could REALLY program weren't the ones getting A's. He has a paper somewhere on his site, but again, no one is going to read this reply anyway!
Re:Do you know the truth? (Score:5, Informative)
"as someone who married into a Shanghai family, I congratulate the bright, dedicated members of the winning Jiaoda team, which also took first place in 2002"
Re:We need to teach programming earlier and better (Score:5, Insightful)
If I ever had my say, I would definitely support using Python (or Ruby, from what little I've seen) for teaching introductory programming. There's plenty of things that are hard enough for most people to understand in programming, the language itself doesn't need to make it even harder.sure makes more sense to a young budding programmer thanThere's nothing wrong with learning C++, but I can definitely attest that at least in my case, it wasn't conducive to a rapid learnign experience. Discovering Python literally renewed my interest in programming because it made it so accessible.
-Jay