OT: Modern college educations

From: Chuck McManis <cmcmanis_at_freegate.com>
Date: Wed Oct 21 18:14:06 1998

A lot of discussion here on college educations, my 0.02.

1) I don't expect New College Grads (NCG's) to know a lot, I expect them to
know how to find something out that they don't know and how to power
through bull s**t type work. I also expect them to know the basic theory
behind their area of expertise. Stanford actually added a new degree
program that is a mix of 'digital mode EE' + 'basic CS' that trys to
address the mismatch normally found (see below).

2) I don't expect CS majors to be taught assembly, per se. In case you
missed it, people who program in assembly are EEs these days, *not* CS
majors. CS majors write data bases and object oriented compilers, they
don't "need" to know assembly because the computer they use never uses it.

People who started experimenting with making transistors glow in
high-school come out of college much more valuable than those who decided
that engineering was a "good major" their sophmore year.

A fun exercise (in a nerdly sort of way) is to presume you've been dumped
onto some raw continent with nothing but your brains and underpants, now
build a PDP-8. (You can assume that you will have food and shelter.)

One of the things that struck me about a 'dead' PC I was attempting to fix
was that the BIOS flash had been zorched and a) Not only was their no way
to recover the bios but b) the chipset used was both non-standard and made
by a now non-existent company who left behind no records. Talk about
unfixable! When my PDP-8 breaks I can always go back to first principles
and get it working again, when the engine computer on your car breaks, your
out of luck.

Another example, the RM-80 docs I've got, everything you need to talk to
the drive at a register level! Documentation for a 3DFx based Voodoo
Graphics card? "I'm sorry Mr. McManis but that information is only
available under NDA to qualified customers who can prove a market of at
least 1K units/month." Talk about self defeating!

Now if I were James Burke I would have ended up back at college grads, oh
well.
--Chuck McManis
Received on Wed Oct 21 1998 - 18:14:06 BST