Comments on Moserware: Rebooting Computing: Why?

Alfonso de la Fuente Ruiz: Gracias por la informac...

2009-06-23T08:02:32.320-04:00

Alfonso de la Fuente Ruiz: Gracias por la información y enlaces sobre lo que está pasando en España. Es bueno ver que la informática está creciendo en todo el mundo, aunque hay retos.

SimonTewbi: Thanks for sharing your story. It's great to hear from people from the other side of the planet :)

One of the difficulties I face is trying to see if what I find "magical" is really universally magical (and thus, we only need better teaching) or rather, I'm a bit of an odd fellow in what I enjoy (and thus, no amount of better teaching would help).

At younger ages, I think also it's good to dance around the periphery of CS as well because it touches many related areas.

I like math, but only discovered this after I was fortunate enough to have a good math teacher in 7th and 8th grade. My enjoyment of math led me to like cryptography. What I like about software is that often times, many disparate fields come together in elegant ways. I tried to show this in my recent HTTPS post.
Do you think your kids would find that interesting? If not, could the presentation be altered to make it better? I'd be interested in your thoughts on this.

I think the important thing is to get younger kids...

2009-06-22T20:44:52.641-04:00

I think the important thing is to get younger kids interested. By the time they're in high school they already have dreams of what they want to do. If they're not interested in high school you won't get them interested after they arrive at university.

Jeff: I think you hit the nail on the head with the comment about magic. That was how I got into computers.

As a kid there were no PCs, computers in the popular media were big blue boxes with chattering tape drives. They were magic - mysterious, locked away in air conditioned rooms and seemingly able to do anything.

I remember being absolutely amazed when our school got an Apple II and I was able to do something like a = 1, b = 2, PRINT a + b and the computer actually responded to my instructions!

Now that computers are ubiquitous I suspect they are not mysterious and magic any more. How magical is the internet? One of my kids is only interested in the games, the other in social networking sites to gossip with her school friends. No magic there.

CS Unplugged isn't enough. We live in Christchurch, where CS Unplugged was developed, so the kids can go along to CS Unplugged sessions during the holidays. It's interesting but the magic is missing. It hasn't ignited a flame in the kids.

In Spain we are worried as well about the downslop...

2009-06-18T13:38:15.720-04:00

In Spain we are worried as well about the downsloping hype of Informatics in education and professional services. Last year we have gone through some movements among students, workers and authorities. It is clear for as as a european country and 8th most powerful economy in the world that we need to reboot our productive system nationwide.
You are encouraged to read more about this issue here and among this set of articles (Google translate available, top right corner).
Greetings,

taxali: You're right in the sense that working...

2009-06-13T11:45:23.010-04:00

taxali: You're right in the sense that working with computers is easy to get started. The slightly harder part is "What is Computer Science?". I don't think there is a clear answer. Is creating a new algorithm Computer Science? Is creating a web page in Dreamweaver Computer Science? What about if they use HTML in notepad? Is writing a document in Word Computer Science?

Part of the initiative is to help answer this. I'm of the belief that computation is a very natural progression of science.

At the same time, I don't want folks to think CS is some elite club. I'd be happy to have it be called "computering" as Alan Kay likes to say. Additionally, Kay says that "Computer Science is the ultimate lab science." My hope is that his work with others at Viewpoints makes this more of a reality.

The Motley Informer: I respect your experience based opinion, but feel that I must disagree with some of your implied arguments. I definitely agree that there are companies that are just looking to viciously cut costs at any (human) price, but I've seen the reverse as well. Companies like Google hire guys like Vint Cerf (who designed IP in the 70's). Others like Alan Kay start their own companies like VPRI.

My biggest concern with your comment is that I see software as one of *the* leading industries of this century. It'd be sad for someone to not even be given the opportunity to pursue this field because of some bad experiences by early companies. Can you think of a field besides perhaps life sciences, that is going to make a bigger impact in the next 30 years?

What you say is great and all, but it applies to t...

2009-06-12T09:31:30.567-04:00

What you say is great and all, but it applies to the small companies. The large ones are too into outsourcing and screwing their employees. The industry is also terrible for age discrimination. I know more than a few 50+ software developers who are brilliant people who CANNOT FIND WORK because no one wants to hire a 50+ guy who has real salary requirements. I would never encourage my kid to go into software. It's really sad. I am not a software developer, but I have worked as a Sysadmin/UNIX operator, etc. I have worked in the software industry for 15+ years. I had the best time in the small companies, but those small companies usually get bought by the behemoths and dissassembled, downsized, outsourced, and generally destroyed. I've seen it with my own eyes. As a matter of fact the huge "household name" tech company that bought our small software maker is right now in the process of closing our office in New Jersey and putting many brilliant people out of work because the manager in charge doesn't believe in telecommuting and if you don't want to move halfway across the country then it's bye bye Johnny.

Startups may be volatile, but at least the work is stimulating and you get to wear many hats. The big corporations and the quarter by quarter Wall St numbers game, non techie CEO's with their fat compensation and penchant for outsourcing and downsizing, has ruined much of the industry. I would never want my son to deal with that crap. He's going into something else - sciences, arts - maybe something that works with computers in a creative way like media related - anything but this garbage...

Fantastic post! To even put it more simply, all yo...

2009-06-11T15:04:41.990-04:00

Fantastic post! To even put it more simply, all you need to do to turn people on to computer science again is to get them exited about computers. They don't have to necessarily know they're doing computer science, but they will inevitably find out about it (and hopefully love) as they start doing simple things like starting a blog. After all, it's only a few steps from blogging about your new favorite chipmunk species to creating a local server and typing away hacks for IE6 on a custom build HTML5-compliant Wordpress theme. And BOOM! you're doing computer science.

Donald: One great way students can get involved is...

2009-05-31T14:23:04.069-04:00

Donald: One great way students can get involved is mentoring others, especially younger people. CS Unplugged has taught me that you can do great CS teaching, even without a computer.

Anonymous: What do you think about this page (especially the interview with Feng-hsiung Hsu). I think we can at least agree that Deep Blue was an interesting machine in its time.

Good post, only comment is that of course Deep Blu...

2009-05-18T04:32:00.000-04:00

Good post, only comment is that of course Deep Blue didn't beat Kasparov, IBM cheated...

Good post Jeff, the computing world needs a dose o...

2009-02-10T08:58:00.000-05:00

Good post Jeff, the computing world needs a dose of new technologies to solve the problems facing it, and what better ways is there than to work from the bottom-up correcting flaws as they come. Rebooting computing should be a lot of fun. I'm just wondering how students like myself can contribute to this project?

Blank: Interesting. Thanks for the link!
2009-02-04T22:20:00.000-05:00
Blank: Interesting. Thanks for the link!

Anonymous: I can't say I agree with your assessment of "worst office based occupation imaginable." I agree that there are some horribly managed projects with Dilbert-ian politics, but usually you have the option of going somewhere else that's better.

I'm not trying to be naive here. I know specific situations are tough and there aren't always easy answers. I'm just saying that there is a mother lode of cool innovations that can be mined in computing if we dig for them. We're just at the frontier. We can't spin our wheels as if the way it is now is the way it always will be. The field as we know it now didn't exist 30 years ago before the PC became wide spread.

The computer revolution hasn't happened yet. We can't let Pointy-Haired bosses win.

Programming is a great career if you can work for ...

2009-02-04T01:03:00.000-05:00

Programming is a great career if you can work for yourself or you're lucky enough to work for one of the very few good software companies in the world that actually respects programmers, of course everyone assumes this will be them. Otherwise, apart from the generally good pay, programming is the worst office based occupation imaginable and will destroy all joy you ever had in software development. It makes excessive demands on your personal time, is extremely stressful and leads to health problems.

The future of programming as an occupation is also very dim. Current demands are artificial and I expect demand will fall away dramatically over the next decade. This current economic downturn might even be the catalyst for some rationalization of those millions of badly constructed, ill concieved, stupid speculative and redundant projects that will never go anywhere, but employ millions of programmers.

K-8 Fundamentals (Creating engaging introductio...

2009-02-04T00:28:00.000-05:00
K-8 Fundamentals (Creating engaging introductions of computing fundamentals at the elementary level)

That sounds like OpenWorld Learning.

Jwendl: Thanks for the kind words! ACM is g...

2009-02-03T22:27:00.000-05:00
Jwendl: Thanks for the kind words! ACM is going to help us out on our project and we'll leverage some of their resources like "Communications of the ACM" (CACM) and the Digital Library. The ICPC is another good source for ideas.

To address your "robot" point, some of the people at the summit were really into Scratch and Alice. They're intuitive visual languages, but not quite like robots. Some of the iRobot models work well the the Microsoft Robotics SDK are sort of like a second generation of things to look at.

I think a good thing for the field guide to have is some of the "left field" concepts that you brought up. There are many to choose from (e.g. nanotechnology is just one example).

Shaun: I definitely agree that tech support stuff that you mention in your post isn't fun. In this post, I was referring more to designing software to solve interesting problems. I also realize that there are pragmatic things that need to happen that aren't always fun (e.g. bug fixes), but the hope is to have a steady supply of new and interesting challenges. I think it's easy for managers to not really care about someone else's career growth.

If at all possible, I'd recommend to not settle if you're not happy where you're at. That's hard advice, especially in this economy, but ultimately in the long run everyone will be happier.

Thanks for sharing your story.

Anonymous #1: You're right, I covered this project starting with this post in April of last year. It's what led me to learn about OMeta. Good stuff.

Anonymous #2: Again, I was more focused on designing software than traditional IT. In your post you mentioned that economics and law have principles that have a long timespan. I'd be very interested to hear your thoughts on the "Great Principles of Computing" that Peter Denning talks about in the video I linked to. I think it's a step towards addressing what you're describing.

Oh great... Here is the URL broken into parts:
...

2009-02-03T19:15:00.000-05:00
Oh great... Here is the URL broken into parts:

http://www.halfsigma.com/
2007/03/why_a_career_in.html

Just read this: http://www.halfsigma.com/2007/03/w...

2009-02-03T19:14:00.000-05:00
Just read this: http://www.halfsigma.com/2007/03/why_a_career_in.html

It sums up the problem pretty well.

Sounds like you'd be interested in Alan Kay's Rein...

2009-02-03T16:27:00.000-05:00
Sounds like you'd be interested in Alan Kay's Reinventing Computing project.

http://www.vpri.org/html/work/ifnct.htm

Among other things, they think they can make a complete operating system, with gui and networking, in 20K lines of code.

Interesting read. Personally, I believe that the ...

2009-02-03T14:29:00.000-05:00
Interesting read. Personally, I believe that the reason for the decline in interest is that although "Computer Science" is an allegedly lucrative field, if you work for someone else you tend to find yourself accepting "competitive" (cough*low*cough) salaries.

I work in a room full of sharp computer guys. We know how to create computer programs that can help make our job easier, and we try to do that as much as possible because that's interesting and fun for us. The problem is that there's a huge disconnect between our understanding and management's understanding of "the way things should get done."

Consequently, we always end up supporting management's bad decisions. If someone tries to force the issue, they're hit with a "not a team player" layoff and it makes those of us left fear for our own jobs. In this tough market we will do whatever management says even if we disagree with it, because we consider ourselves lucky to at least have jobs.

What's worse is that it's been this way no matter where I've worked ever since I received my CS degree. I was expecting to get high paying computer jobs straight out of college, but there's no shortage of talent among the unemployed. Therefore employers really have their pick, and will hire whoever is willing to work for the lowest salary.

Since businesses care most about the bottom line, they'll hire anyone with computer experience who will accept $19,500/year to be the computer go-to guy. He may not be able to do what the $50k/year computer guy can do, but he's cheap.

I wrote out a long list of gripes about why it "doesn't pay" to be the computer guy, full article here: http://www.lifereboot.com/2007/10-reasons-it-doesnt-pay-to-be-the-computer-guy/

Interestingly, when I was learning about computer science in school I was really excited about it as a career. Then when I actually started doing it, I learned that what we learned in the classroom is more or less theory, and doesn't always translate well into the real world. After working in the computer industry for over 5 years, I feel like I would rather do something else entirely. It's almost like the computer industry has soured me, and made me come to hate a hobby that I once loved.

I would have to say that this is the most interest...

2009-02-03T13:33:00.000-05:00
I would have to say that this is the most interesting post on my rss feeds list in the past 3 months.

I love this topic, when I was in coursework at the U of MN I actively promoted computer science anyway that I could. Long story short, I think if you can find a way to make the ACM ICPC (http://cm2prod.baylor.edu/login.jsf) more modern and popular you could win in this battle.

Additionally, to address the k-12 crowd. I was always amazed with robots and other technology because it was new and unique (back in the 1980's). What needs to happen is to find the "modern" equivalent to the robot. A technology so out in left field that it sparks imagination.

Comments on Moserware: Rebooting Computing: Why?

Alfonso de la Fuente Ruiz: Gracias por la informac...

I think the important thing is to get younger kids...

In Spain we are worried as well about the downslop...

taxali: You're right in the sense that working...

What you say is great and all, but it applies to t...

Fantastic post! To even put it more simply, all yo...

Donald: One great way students can get involved is...

Good post, only comment is that of course Deep Blu...

Good post Jeff, the computing world needs a dose o...

Programming is a great career if you can work for ...

K-8 Fundamentals (Creating engaging introductio...

Jwendl: Thanks for the kind words! ACM is g...

Oh great... Here is the URL broken into parts:...

Just read this: http://www.halfsigma.com/2007/03/w...

Sounds like you'd be interested in Alan Kay's Rein...

Interesting read. Personally, I believe that the ...

I would have to say that this is the most interest...

Oh great... Here is the URL broken into parts:
...