more on a rant from your Editor on the state of ourfield in research

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: "Joseph C. Pistritto" <jcp () jcphome com>
Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2002 18:56:22 -0700
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: <[IP]> a ranmt from your Editor on the state of ourfield in
research

If you think the state of affairs is bad in the Academy, it's way worse in
industry.  The number of people who practice in the field without *even
being aware* that many of the things we do today were in fact done before
(on minicomputers, or *gasp* mainframes) and that many of the key algorithms
have been implemented multiple times in each "generation" of
machines/operating systems/languages/programming environments is shocking.
So we do it all again.  And again.  I think this effect is actually much
worse in the startup company environment, where staff sizes are smaller and
experience is much less than average.

I blame this on the average experience level of the people working the field
dropping consistently.  When i started in the business (in 1977), most of
the people i worked with were in their 30s and 40s.   Now most s/w companies
seem to be average age high 20's.

The downside of a high growth (until last year I suppose) field.  Of course,
not a problem for me now, as i haven't worked for several months...

Thanks,
  -jcp-

------ End of Forwarded Message

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