OT: Modern college educations

From: John Foust <jfoust_at_threedee.com>
Date: Thu Oct 22 09:56:09 1998

At 04:14 PM 10/21/98 -0700, Chuck McManis wrote:
>
>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.

But you did, and didn't realize it! The person working tech support
was a college grad! :-)

I entered UW-Madison in 1981. Both the EE and CS tracks had courses
where you learned how PDP-ish computers worked from the flip-flops
on up, and you did some assembler programming. Some courses required
a knowledge of C, but there weren't any actual courses that *taught* C.
You had to pick it up via K&R, or through the volunteer efforts of
friendly teaching assistants who held night classes.

- John
Received on Thu Oct 22 1998 - 09:56:09 BST