On 08/31/2018 07:20 PM, H. S. Teoh wrote:
The problem is that there is a disconnect between academia and the
industry.
The goal in academia is to produce new research, to find ground-breaking
new theories that bring a lot of recognition and fame to the institution
when published. It's the research that will bring in the grants and
enable the institution to continue existing. As a result, there is heavy
focus on the theoretical concepts, which are the basis for further
research, rather than pragmatic tedium like how to debug a program.
I don't know where you've been but it doesn't match anything I've ever seen.
Everything I've ever seen: The goal in academia is to advertise
impressive-looking rates for graduation and job placement. This
maximizes the size of the application pool which, depending on the
school, means one of two things:
1. More students paying ungodly tuition rates. Thus making the schools
and their administrators even richer. (Pretty much any public liberal
arts school.)
or
2. Higher quality students (defined by the school as "more likely to
graduate and more likely to be placed directly in a job"), thus earning
the school the right to demand an even MORE ungodly tuition from the
fixed-size pool of students they accept. Thus making the schools and
their administrators even richer. (Pretty much any private liberal arts
school.)
Achieving the coveted prize of "We look attractive to applicants" involves:
First: As much of a revolving-door system as they can get away with
without jeopardizing their accreditation.
And secondly: Supplementing the basic Computer Science theory with
awkward, stumbling, half-informed attempts at placating the industry's
brain-dead, know-nothing HR monkeys[1] with the latest hot trends. For
me, at the time, that meant Java 2 and the "Thou must OOP, for OOP is
all" religion.
[1] "I don't know anything about programming, but I'm good at
recognizing people who are good at it." <-- A real quote from a real HR
monkey I once made the mistake of attempting basic communication with.
But then, let's not forget that schools have HR, too. Which leads to
really fun teachers like the professor I had for a Computer Networking
class:
He had a PhD in Computer Science. He would openly admit that C was the
only language he knew. Ok, fair enough so far. But...upon my explaining
to him how he made a mistake grading my program, I found *myself* forced
to teach the *Computer Science professor* how strings
(remember...C...null-terminated) worked in the *only* language he knew.
He had NO freaking clue! A freakin' CS PhD! Forget "theory vs practical"
- if you do not know the *fundamental basics* of EVEN ONE language, then
you *CANNOT* function in even the theoretical or research realms, or
teach it. Computer science doesn't even *exist* without computer
programming! Oh, and this, BTW, was a school that pretty much any
Clevelander will tell you "Oh! Yea, that's a really good school, it has
a fantastic reputation!" Compared to what? Ohio State Football University?
