Computer Science

[Amanda Lee]

At least you were taught the more difficult and, in the case of Assembler
Language, more efficient.  C is not really an efficient language because
it carries with it a lt of overhead.  However, as compared with Visual C,
Visual Basic, JAVA, Oracle, Access and others, C is preferable.

I have over 25 years experience in  Software Development and maintenance.
I have coded in a few different languages on various platforms except
Unix/Linux which is where I'm a newbie these days.  I guess my fun time
was when I programmed Assembler Language applications on IBM Mainframes
for about 9 years.
The trend is to place too much emphasis upon what I call code in a box.
There's a lot of utility in this but it doesn't work as a onesize fits all
and sooner or later, if the developers involved don't know what really
comprises the inside of that boxful of code, then this is how applications
are literally thrown away and this becomes very costly.

I believe Victor, that in the longrun, what you have studied will give you
the edge.

Amanda Lee



On Thu, 14 Mar 2002, Victor Tsaran wrote:

> Amanda, you are right. I met a lot of so-called "hard coders" during my
> studies at the university who thought that they could do everything.I
> graduated just a year ago and at my university, Temple University in Philly,
> Visual C++ was only a small fraction of the program. Mostly C, Assembly and
> C++, but on Unix and VMS. We were given a chance to try Visual C on Win NT
> platform, but only for comparison purposes. Now I think Java is overtaking
> slowly.
> Vic
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Amanda Lee" <amanda at shellworld.net>
> To: <speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
> Sent: Thursday, March 14, 2002 3:36 PM
> Subject: Re: Computer Science
>
>
> > Nope, Unix, Mainframes aren't standard anymore.  The college grads we get
> > these days at Verizon have no clue what Unix or Mainframes are all about.
> > Everything is taught on a Windows-based Platform.  I believe JAVA is
> > taught, probably Visual Basic, Maybe sometimes C Language but usually C
> > Plus Plus which was actually abandoned in the project I work on for
> > straight C Language.
> >
> > I would think in the future though, there will be a change back to at
> > least teaching Linux since it can run on a less expensive platform.  It's
> > pretty disgraceful how the content of Computer Sciences education has been
> > degraded and these kids coming out have an ego bigger than life and think
> > they can take on the World in a day!
> >
> > They really struggle when they can't understand how to program and the
> > quality of code coming out is pretty awful.  There is even this mentality
> > in the Corporate World which indicates that one can learn everything they
> > need to on the job and yet they can't figure out why  there are so many
> > problems with efficiency and the costs resulting from poor efficiency.
> >
> > Amanda Lee
> >
> >
> >
> > On Thu, 14 Mar 2002 jwantz at hpcc2.hpcc.noaa.gov wrote:
> >
> > > Hi Chris,
> > > I'm not going to get involved in the "bookshare wars', but since you
> were
> > > chastizing others on this list because most people use WINDOWS and not
> > > linux, I think its only fair to point out that your computer science
> > > department is very nonstandard.  Though I am a meteorologist, not a
> > > computer science person, I know many computer science students in the
> past
> > > and the present.  Teaching WINDOWS programming is very nonstandard.  I
> > > would guess that at least 90 percent of the schools teach programming on
> a
> > > UNIX variant of some kind.  In the past thre was a fair amount of people
> > > using VMS.  However, a lot of beginning C and C++ classes did use
> > > Turbo/Borland.  WINDOWS programming is much more difficult than UNIX
> > > programming, so I suppose you are to be congratulated for making it
> > > through such a tough curriculum.
> > >
> > >      Jim Wantz
> > >
> > >
> > >
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