[aklug] Re: AKLUG and others

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adam bultman wrote:

> If what you learned in class could have been picked up in 20 minutes,
> either you're very, very, very smart, or the CS program at UAF is terrible.
>
> I keep writing things to say, and then deleting them; I suppose my
> message to everybody out there is to resist the urge to pick up a 'learn
> [some language] in 21 days' and thumb through it, and then boast about
> your programming skills. (I'm not saying anybody is boasting).
>
> The gap between a bad programmer and a good programmer is huge. Work
> hard, don't overestimate your knowledge, and become a good one.
>

I will not make any summary judgment on either my own intelligence or
the value of the UAF CS program. Only the reality that I have faced: In
the first programming class I took at UAF (Intro to programming) every
single concept I was taught was only a repeat of the concepts I had
gleaned from the first 10 page programming tutorial I had studied on
line. 1/3 of the time spent on the class was creating obscure, pointless
little programs to satisfy the teacher, another third was spent standing
in line in front of a TA in order to turn the homework in, and the
remainder of the time was spent trying to get a group to cooperative
accomplish what could be done by a single person in two hours.

By the next semester I had (in my own spare time) learned the basics of
C and C++, hence making the intermediate programming class that semester
entirely review.

I have since programmed extensively in Perl, PHP, Java, C, and C++, and
also played around a little with Python, Ruby, and Prolog. But sadly,
for all the thousands I have spent, /none/ of that is to the credit of
my UAF education. (Though I did learn some ASM in one class.)

I'd go so far to say: if you took just about any energetic,
self-motivated young programmer, put him in a house with an Internet
connection, and gave him the financial means to do nothing but study
programming on his own for four years, he would become a programming
genius and make any UAF CS graduate look like a drop-out script-kiddie.
And heck, I wouldn't mind trying that myself, but unfortunately I have
not yet found a backer. So I learn what I can in my spare time (a.k.a.,
breaks from my regular homework.)

- --
 ________________________________
/ \
| Christopher Howard |
| http://indicium.us |
| http://theologia.indicium.us |
\________________________________/
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Received on Thu Mar 4 23:21:26 2010