Modern Electronics (was Re: List charter mods & headcount... ;

From: Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk_at_yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Wed Jun 23 10:20:05 2004

On Tue, 2004-06-22 at 22:58, Tony Duell wrote:
> I got to see a previous year's exam papers, and there was a question
> (IIRC) on the 80386/80837 coprocessor interface (those were current
> devices at the time). The question was trivial to me if I'd had the data
> sheets.
>
> However, I was told that you weren't allowed to take the databooks into
> the exam, you were expected to learn them (!). Now, nobody ever does that.

I seem to recall for my degree anything requiring databooks would be
done as coursework, not as an exam in an exam hall - which seems the
logical approach.

We used eurocard-based 68000 machines for learning assembly, and I can't
for the life of me remember who the darn things were made by. I was
lucky in that I'd done quite a bit of x86 assembly beforehand, so the
68k stuff was a breeze.

I'm not sure if I agree with the current trend toward open book exams -
yes, in the real world, chances are you will have reference material
handy. But the current attitude of most people I've known who have taken
such exams is that they don't need to actually know anything, because
they can just bluff their way through it in an exam by reading the book
and get sufficient marks to pass.

Then these people go out into the real world and they can't think for
shit - as soon as an oddball problem hits them they're just incapable of
working it through to a solution as they're too used to just being able
to read the answer in a book right when they need it.

I know I'm perhaps a little younger than the average age of people on
this list, but I feel I was one of the last generation who was lucky
enough to do an old-style degree course. We had access to real (and
diverse) systems rather than things being emulated, and we were given a
lot of grounding theory in the way things actually worked, and more
importantly we weren't given an easy ride - no such thing as an open
book exam then, no whizzy graphical tools to do half the work for us
etc.

I'm amazed at how often the fundamentals that we were taught have helped
me work some problem out - and I've lost track of how many of the later
generations of graduates I've had to deal with who just can't think
properly because all they've been taught is how to push a mouse around a
screen.

Interesting the point somone made about the games industry stagnating
because there's no innovation any more. I think that's true of the whole
industry - the current generation of students are rarely taught the
basics and how to drive a GUI. They get good pass marks for doing this,
the university's performance figures look good, and that's what the
industry on the surface of things think they want. I do wonder quite
where things will be in ten years when there's almost nobody left who
can actually think for themselves though...

Anyway, rant over :-)

cheers

Jules
Received on Wed Jun 23 2004 - 10:20:05 BST