> From: "Carlo Sogono" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: Re: Re: [plug] [WAY OT] What Computer skills should a
>highschoolgraduatehave?
> Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2000 16:58:53 +0800
> charset="iso-8859-1"
> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> I have a few questions that has been in my mind for quite some time. Linus
> Torvalds created Linux when he was still in college. I wonder if any student
> of any reputable school here has reached that level of proficiency in
> programming. Do local schools even provide the environment for the students
> to learn such topics. And...are the profs themselves that proficient in
> programming?
>
>
I've been following this OT thread for a while and its quite interesting
how the discussion has shifted from focusing on highschool graduates to
CS graduates... WAY OT na nga, lalo pang naging WAY WAY OT :^)
Lemme just add my two centavos...
IIRC, Linus was in college when he developed Linux, but he stayed there for a
long, long time -- he was a CS graduate (i.e. PhD level) student who was allowed by
the school to focus on developing Linux almost fulltime. One reason he was able to do
this
was the cheap but excellent educational system they have in Finland.
Another factor was that he started programming when he was still very young --
and he didn't learn it in school but through his lolo who bought him a computer...
So I think his proficiency in programming may have less to do with a particular
school's
CS curriculum rather than growing up in a place where you can be exposed to computers
at an early age as well as an academic environment that encourages/allows students to
explore
and think creatively about what interests them... rather than pressure you to graduate
as quickly as possible and go find a job and get rich quick (like here in the
Philippines) :^)
Remember that Linus' initial motivation in developing Linux was so that he could
play with Unix on his home computer rather than always be forced to use the computers
at school -- in fact, the Open Source world recognizes this motivation as "scratching
our own 'galis'" and is a very strong factor in becoming very proficient in anything,
not just programming...
So what I'm saying is that if you can get a student (i.e. HS/elem) interested in
programming
early enough so that it becomes his life's goal -- he will overcome a lot of the
limitations
of our educational system -- because if he is really interested in programming or
anything
computer-related, he will learn all these things (languages, HW, etc...) on his/her
own...
Kahit siguro dito sa PLUG list na ito, there is only a very small percentage who
learned about
Linux, system administration, programming, etc... in a school course. In fact, I would
bet that the majority of us here probably learned it by studying on their own (and
asking the
plug-list :^)) because we are interested in learning it, not because its in our
curriculum or
even need it on our job (siyempre, there are always exceptions).
In fact, this accounts for the high quality of advice that you would get if you asked
a technical
question in this list -- the people here are among the best filipino techies you can
get --
because most of the people here are so "interested" in Linux that they have spent a
lot of time
learning it on their own, and not because a school required them to learn it so they
can graduate
and call themselves "programmers" ;^).
So what I'm saying is that our philippine equivalent of "Linus" may not come out of a
CS school at
all... but may in fact be already lurking around this list, just waiting
for the right day to announce to the world the new "killer OS" that will replace Linux
:^)
Butch Landingin
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://squishdot.org
PS. On another related-OT topic, is there anyone here in the Philippines
studying the newer-fangled trends in software development ?
(especially in post-doc/Phd/Master levels in the CS depts.
in our universities) such as :
1. Software Design Patterns
(see http://hillside.net/patterns/patterns.html)
2. Extreme Programming (or other method-lite methodologies)
(see http://www.extremeprogramming.org/)
3. UML (this is not-so-new) and UML methodologies
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