Computer Education

From: Brad Parker <brad_at_heeltoe.com>
Date: Sun Jan 16 19:02:01 2005

"George & Oksana Wiegand" wrote:
>Anyone have experience or know for a factor of a Bachelor's degree program
>that teaches computer hardware and software in a logical order and
>comprehensively?

I think this is one of the most interesting questions I've seen here in
a while.

I've been nipping at a nice Barolo, so I'll save real commentary till later.

I'm a bit enamored with "course 6" at MIT. But I'm not in love with the
mix of students. Way too skewed toward high test scores with out enough
arts and common sense. Few of them lust after dancing puti sculpled by
dead italian guys. But they do have a mean microprocessor lab course
(6-114/6-115). I'll bet that is on the web.

Recently I've run into Olin College here in Boston. I think it might
have potential. I don't know enough about the curriculum to say but the
students I've talked to are top notch and not afraid at all to do
fundumental engineering work.

I was pretty impressed with a group who flew water rockets from their
quad in the middle of the night and used doppler shift to track the
different phases of propulsion & flight. not bad given all they had was
a sound card and matlab. and some others made a full blown pong game
from a xilinx. they just fired up some verilog and went at it. I'd
hire those guys.

Some day I'd like to look into Carnegie Mellon. Everyone I've met from
there had good fundamentals. I don't know their program but it seems to
good.

But as for logical order, I'm not sure. Most try to not be 'vo-tech
schools' but then get lost trying to cover fundamentals.

I have strong opinions but they are probably just that, opinions. I
(hah) naturally believe in massaging the shoulders of the giants we all
stand on, so I'd start by reproducing the Eniac in a FPGA :-) And then
doing an in-depth study of Grace Hopper, followed by Gordon Bell and
some of those upstart guys from Leyland Stanford. I might make a few
semiconductors from scratch along the way and write a paper or two on
how storage scopes really work. Oh, and a paper or two on why those
holes flow the way they do. I'm still trying to figure out why those
holes move they way they do.

And I'd also study the Manhattan project and Enrico Fermi. But that's
me. I remember I ran into a brief report on Lous Slotin when I was in
high school. Ever since then I'm really careful when I pry something
open with a screwdriver.

-brad
Received on Sun Jan 16 2005 - 19:02:01 GMT