> You certainly do have a point from a different > angle. I'd agree with > you on this CS/IT skill thing. I've had CS students > asking me: What > is Unix ? Is it something similar to Linux ? I > have interviewed folks > who have done Java Web Services development but > did not know > how to set the CLASSPATH. For that matter how many > of the Visual > C++ weenies would have even heard of something > called WinMain ? [snipped for brevity] ... > The list goes on and on. But isn't the root cause > of this sad situation > at some different point - academics. Isn't it the > responsibility of the > academic institutions to focus on basics using CLI > - IMHO start with > BASIC and Shells.
Yes, yes it is. Of course it is! I couldn't agree more with you. However, IT / CS are very specific. By spawning IT as a product of CS, CS has effectively become an industry. And the thing is this: why would anybody spend their time fangling with students, if they are really a CS / IT expert, when they could be raking in the cash working in the industry? And we can't really fault people for that; it's in the human nature to want to live comfortably. In addition to that, there are very few people, me included, that truly *enjoy* teaching what they know and transferring knowledge to others. It's just much easier to scrap all that and work for a corporation! > The problem domain is different and needs to be > tackled somewhere > else. I remember when I was going to school. During my student days, at the onset of the dot-com boom, we were going through teachers / professors / instructors like underwear; and anybody who was worth anything left to work for some corp raking up to 2.5 times more than what they were being paid in academia. Consequently, there aren't very many Dijkstras and Knuths left teaching CS. That's our problem! It's up to us to address this problem, because obviously it won't get solved by itself. And obviously academia will not become lucrative enough to attract exactly what CS needs - experienced professionals and veterans of the industry teaching real world knowledge to students. So, what do you propose we do? > Keeping the Human-Computer interface > un-dumbed and difficult > to use won't really achieve the desired result. I grudgingly admit you have a point. It's a different construction site though: human-computer interface is for a general consumer, and will never be able to cope with requirements of professionals because it is either cumbersome to build all the functionality in it (monolithic Microsoft approach), or it will always lag behind the newest CLI executable (as is the case with MacOS X / Apple approach). So if you want to make Solaris closer to the general consumer, you will need even more engineers and possibly a collaboration with Apple (it has been hinted here that bringing Aqua-like functionality and Solaris would be unprecedented in terms of functionality). > I'd rather be optimistic since there will always be > inquisitive people > who want to dig underneath the pretty interfaces > and get their hands > dirty, there will always be hackers, scientists, > innovators - human > nature, thirst for knowledge after all. Believe it or not, but that largely depends on one nation's mentality. 99% of the people here don't want anything to do with a computer. They'd rather spend obscene amounts of money for an appliance. I mean, we're talking about people who even put appliances in big enterprises, just so they wouldn't have to develop expertise! Perhaps you live in a different world. I did once too. Which is why where I'm at now is a nightmare in terms of "computer curiosity". Nobody cares about that stuff around here. > How easy it is to use the Computers on board the > USS Enterprise NCC > 1701, and we still have geniuses like Scotty and La > Forge - my kind of > future. Mine too. But it requires something we currently neither have, nor are on the way of achieving with the current computing: a whole different computing model. Computers and technologies as we know them today will be incapable of reaching that kind of intelligence. Don't forget - in StarTrek computers don't have chips - but half-alive neural nets! This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list [email protected]
