Re: U.S. colleges retool programming classes - Yahoo! News

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Brett Glass <brett () lariat net>
Date: June 2, 2007 1:14:31 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net, ip () v2 listbox com
Subject: Re: [IP] U.S. colleges retool programming classes - Yahoo! News

[Note: Typo in earlier message fixed in this one -BG]

Dave:

I must echo what Andrew Burnette says:

> Now, here in NJ, former home of former bell labs and all the good
> brainpower formerly associated with it, high school counselors are
> telling students "don't major in CS/EE/etc" because of the horrible
> treatment the average programmer gets on the job; no job loyalty,
> long hours, lousy benefits.  I realize star performers in just about
> any field in addition to star companies are exempted from that low
> standard, but the standard is low nonetheless.
>
> At one former Lucent spinoff, currently the process is called
> "shadowing" where an overseas employee shadows you around for 6
> months, learns your job, and you then receive your pink slip.
>
> My young cousin is in law school now. He wanted to be a programmer,
> but I would not lie to him about his future in an industry that
> essentially does not offer potential for longer term gain (sans a
> very small minority of the industry).

I wanted to be a programmer. But I quickly learned of the lack of
respect that others (especially managers) had for the profession
-- and of the fact that most programmers quickly burned out and/or
tired of this poor treatment and opted to move up to management as
soon as possible. I learned of companies' tendency to value quick,  
sloppy
hacks over quality output. The advent of programmer-hostile licensing
(the GPL, which was explicitly intended to prevent programmers from
creating successful companies), and its popularity among programmers
who did not understand the real world well enough to know how much it
would harm their profession, were also deterrents. Seeing that being
a programmer would likely not be a viable career option, I started
two parallel careers in which I could use the knowledge I had acquired
during my studies: one in computer journalism and a second in wireless
broadband. While I do still program, and am glad that I have the ability
to do it, it is not my primary profession as I had hoped it would be.
The software craftsman simply is not respected enough or rewarded
adequately enough for such a career to be attractive.

The following song (by Jonathan Coulton) and YouTube video (by an
unknown performance artist) are germane and would probably be amusing to
IP readers. The song describes a young programmer who is hired as a
"code monkey" (a term which alludes to the famous conjecture that an
infinite number of monkeys placed in front of typewriters would pound
out the works of William Shakespeare -- and perhaps also to the IBMish
habit of rating the difficulty of technical problems in numbers of
bananas). The programmer described in the song is so demoralized, early
in his career, that all he can do is nurse a crush on the office
receptionist and hope someday to ditch his job for a better life
elsewhere. See

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lLRBiEBRAc

--Brett Glass

very a



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