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Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

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Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#81

Post by dwaltrip »

gizmo wrote: post #71
dwaltrip wrote: post #47

This should be titled "Condensed snippets of accumulated wisdom, focusing mostly on software and business, that I am fairly confident of and feel compelled to share with you". Many of these nuggets are not "obvious", for any conventional understanding of that word. That said, I enjoyed the post, and liked the concise format.

"obvious" is not a property of a statement itself, it indicates a relationship between a piece of knowledge and a larger knowledge base, where one thing immediately follows from other things that are already known. I don't think "obvious" in the conventional sense is a real category, because no two people would agree the same things are obvious.

Ah, just like the good old "it is trivial to see that a -> b" from advanced mathematics.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#82

Post by Danihan »

codingdave wrote: post #49
drewrv wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been spending a lot of time lately wondering if people who treat colleges and universities as though their job is worker training are confused, or if I'm naive in believing colleges and universities exist to expand human knowledge through research and education. I suspect the answer is that our culture is confused, we want people who are smart and well rounded to also be useful. And the ugly side of it is, we wa…

> One would never refer to law school or medical school as "vocational". Sure you would. They are 100% vocational schools. Their cost, acceptance rates, time commitment, and difficulty level may be higher than other vocational schools, but that doesn't change what they are -- 100% focused on giving you the knowledge and skills to do a specific job.

Well then where are all the "vocational" CS programs at universities?

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#83

Post by tikhonj »

wnoise wrote: post #3

> CS programs have, in the main, not decided that the primary path to becoming a programmer should involve doing material actual programming. Well, that's because CS programs are designed to teach CS, not to be a vocational school for programmers.

To be fair, they do a pretty bad job teaching CS too. Your average undergrad program is almost entirely learning about CS, not learning CS. A non-trivial of students get through a CS degree never doing anything novel in CS—a real shame because, unlike math, research-level CS problems are eminently accessible to undergrads.

It doesn't even have to be "real" research: I just expect more than classes which have you regurgitate what you learned to pass. And yet that's all you need to get a CS degree. It's a bit like learning to write by filling in blanks.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#84

Post by santoshalper »

drewrv wrote: post #17
wnoise wrote: post #3

> CS programs have, in the main, not decided that the primary path to becoming a programmer should involve doing material actual programming. Well, that's because CS programs are designed to teach CS, not to be a vocational school for programmers.

I've been spending a lot of time lately wondering if people who treat colleges and universities as though their job is worker training are confused, or if I'm naive in believing colleges and universities exist to expand human knowledge through research and education. I suspect the answer is that our culture is confused, we want people who are smart and well rounded to also be useful. And the ugly side of it is, we wa…

I definitely would refer to law and medical schools as vocational, much more so than many other educational programs.

I have known several people who went to medical or law school and every single one them went only because it is a per-requisite to becoming a doctor or lawyer. What is your explanation, that people attend these schools to expand their mind, and then entirely coincidentally, manage to end up in the corresponding career as though by accident?

Get real.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#85

Post by Danihan »

toasterlovin wrote: post #51
drewrv wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been spending a lot of time lately wondering if people who treat colleges and universities as though their job is worker training are confused, or if I'm naive in believing colleges and universities exist to expand human knowledge through research and education. I suspect the answer is that our culture is confused, we want people who are smart and well rounded to also be useful. And the ugly side of it is, we wa…

Higher education is used as a proxy for intelligence by companies who are hiring because they are not allowed to use IQ tests. So I think it kind of makes sense that our society is confused about the purpose of higher education.

For fuck's sake, cut out the middle man and just request SAT / ACT scores.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#86

Post by jack9 »

allenz wrote: post #77
macintux wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...yet that's not obvious to everyone, hence the inclusion.

It's not about that fact. The author argues that programming schools should be vocational schools (while ostensibly presenting a list of objective facts).

> The author argues that programming schools should be vocational schools

I dont see where. The implication is that they are assumed to be contrary to reality. It's supposed to be a list of obvious facts.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#87

Post by jerf »

throwawayjava wrote: post #37
jerf wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As cool as libraries are, and they are cool, if you value your time at even minimum wage rates, they are not "coffee money". That's why you... yes, you, even you... whip out your phone to answer questions that you would never dream of running to the library to answer on the spot. This is a real effect, not an illusion. Friction matters, a lot.

Again, all these things people are saying are indeed true, but they also make the university comparison in the original quote something of a red herring.

I'm not sure you, or any other of the other commenters in this thread, quite understand what was meant by "university money". "University money" is what it costs to buy scientific journals; in theory anybody can do it, in practice only Universities have both the need and the funding to do it. It isn't that your phone is a university... it is that it has all this information accessible for so dirt cheap that African farmers can get at it, modulo the language barrier.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#88

Post by pavlov »

toasterlovin wrote: post #51
drewrv wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been spending a lot of time lately wondering if people who treat colleges and universities as though their job is worker training are confused, or if I'm naive in believing colleges and universities exist to expand human knowledge through research and education. I suspect the answer is that our culture is confused, we want people who are smart and well rounded to also be useful. And the ugly side of it is, we wa…

Higher education is used as a proxy for intelligence by companies who are hiring because they are not allowed to use IQ tests. So I think it kind of makes sense that our society is confused about the purpose of higher education.

If IQ tests were a reliable measure of any job capability, surely the brilliant minds at Mensa would already have made a mint by selling recruitment services.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#89

Post by icebraining »

codingdave wrote: post #49
drewrv wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been spending a lot of time lately wondering if people who treat colleges and universities as though their job is worker training are confused, or if I'm naive in believing colleges and universities exist to expand human knowledge through research and education. I suspect the answer is that our culture is confused, we want people who are smart and well rounded to also be useful. And the ugly side of it is, we wa…

> One would never refer to law school or medical school as "vocational". Sure you would. They are 100% vocational schools. Their cost, acceptance rates, time commitment, and difficulty level may be higher than other vocational schools, but that doesn't change what they are -- 100% focused on giving you the knowledge and skills to do a specific job.

That's the point - they are, but are not referred as such.
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