151–160 of 177 posts
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What college was this that required a "course on Marxism" for a CS degree, and what was the course?
It would not be good form to post this.
It's not like you'd be posting forbidden knowledge; most universities publish their required curriculum.
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The issue I have with the "learn to ___ on your own" industry that's popped up is that it doesn't take into account accountability for the student. Take getting into shape as an example. Excluding obvious disabilities there's really nothing holding anyone back. Even with horrible schedules you can absolutely go out and join a gym, lose weight, and get ripped. Heck, you don't even need to join a gym. Everything you ne…
> Take getting into shape as an example. Excluding obvious disabilities there's really nothing holding anyone back. Even with horrible schedules you can absolutely go out and join a gym, lose weight, and get ripped. Like always getting into shape is mostly about not eating rather than exercising. With our highly processed food one could do nothing but run marathons day in day out and still be morbidly obese.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What college was this that required a "course on Marxism" for a CS degree, and what was the course?
It would not be good form to post this.
My guess is that an entire course on Marxism wasn't actually required, and it was either an elective or a much smaller part of a required course.
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> Take getting into shape as an example. Excluding obvious disabilities there's really nothing holding anyone back. Even with horrible schedules you can absolutely go out and join a gym, lose weight, and get ripped. Like always getting into shape is mostly about not eating rather than exercising. With our highly processed food one could do nothing but run marathons day in day out and still be morbidly obese.
I heartfelt disagree and believe that people that push this type of belief are the ones that think being skinny is being fit. Further, look at the amount of calories required to be a strong man. To be "in shape" IS about how much they consume.
If research that goes against the interests of a huge multinational oligopoly has an r value less than 0.1 it's probably true.
Saying that you should just exercise more is literally an opinion taken from a Coca Cola commercial: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/01/cokes-unc...
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> What will the self-taught candidate do at this point? Generally self taught people will have built something. I'd generally consider that the definition of self taught and would not include people that have only done self directed learning.
That would be fine, but I think it’s weird that you’re trying to make the phrase “self-taught” stretch to include also building something. I think it’s far more common for people to believe taking a self-directed online course and getting a certificate entitles them to equal consideration for a job as someone who put in 4 years of a structured university program.
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I heartfelt disagree and believe that people that push this type of belief are the ones that think being skinny is being fit. Further, look at the amount of calories required to be a strong man. To be "in shape" IS about how much they consume.
I always look at the money. If research that goes against the interests of a huge multinational oligopoly has an r value less than 0.1 it's probably true. Saying that you should just exercise more is literally an opinion taken from a Coca Cola commercial: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/01/cokes-unc...
> assumes the student has already taken high school math and physics, including algebra, geometry, and pre-calculus Does anyone have good resources for someone who would like to brush up on these subjects?
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I'm 50/50 on this. Part of me really agrees with you -- you need time and practice and mistakes to learn this stuff. But also, I'm not sure it has to be wall clock time. Four years at university gets you breadth that is probably good for you as a human, and probably important for contextualizing your work as an engineer (oh hey, history might be a valuable lesson for your understanding of ethics. Art and literature m…
>oh hey, history might be a valuable lesson for your understanding of ethics. Art and literature might combine with your computer science degree to inspire projects natural language processing or generative art For what it's worth, this is a very American approach to college. You generally wouldn't spend more than 3 years on an undergrad course as a student in the UK - because you tend to spend the vast majority of t…
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It would not be good form to post this.
How would this be bad form? If this is from a "major university" like you claimed, and if Marxism is bad, isn't it good to tell us this university so we aren't blindsided by it when we enroll our kids in it? It's not like you'd be posting forbidden knowledge; most universities publish their required curriculum.
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I disagree with you in one regard, I think you are taking the position of a young person who hasn't had much education outside of high school. Take a look at it from the perspective of a 30 or 40-something with some college or a degree in another domain looking to transition into CS. In this case, the fact that formal CS degrees are, I dare say, polluted, with irrelevant crap is a waste of time, money and brain power…
> I think you are taking the position of a young person who hasn't had much education outside of high school. I went to college for almost two years, and re-enrolled in college late last year doing night classes. I also worked as a research scientist at New York University for around a year (2015-2016), though this was admittedly more in the working world than the educational world. My wife is doing college full-time…
You are right. My statement was too simple. Experience is not enough. If someone spends 30 years doing the same thing without learning anything else they are not going to be a good hire for anything outside that box.
What matters is learning. That's what I look for. Does the person have a track record of constantly learning during the last ten years? What did they study? Did they try to get a handle on fundamentals? Did they stick to one thing, on domain, or did they learn and have experience in a range of domains? Did they enroll in any MOOC's? What were they? Can he or she speak about these topics with reasonable authority?
What I look for is an insight into who this person is as a professional. One of my typical questions is a short sequence: What are state machines? Give me an example of using a state machine? What's the difference between a Moore and Mealy state machine? Can you whiteboard examples of both?
I am not looking for the person to know the above with 100% accuracy and insight. I am trying to get to know the person and how they think. If, for example, they try to bullshit me, I learn something valuable. If, on the other hand, they say "look, I have never had to use state machines so I don't really know the subject but I understand they can be very powerful and useful and would love to have the opportunity to learn about them and apply the knowledge", well, that, to me, is far more valuable than them being able to parrot answers to my questions. Anyone can prep for an interview and ace it.
CS is an interesting field. When I started life as an EE designing and programming computers of my own design you used Assembler and maybe C and, if you were lucky, Forth. Virtually none of the things I do today existed when I went to school. And so comes the realization that, in my case, when it comes to CS, I am no different than a CS dropout. Virtually everything I do today I had to learn on my own. And that entailed a constant effort spanning thirty years that took me through CS theory, languages, frameworks, applications and new developments such as FPGA --which literally did not exist when I was in school.
Having navigated this journey I am forced to look at the person rather than the credentials. In fact, credentials very frequently lie about what the person is capable of. There are plenty of stories out there about major companies having trouble hiring recent grads because they don't know how to, well, do the work they need them to do.
Engineering in general is a domain that requires constant learning. Stagnate and you become irrelevant. CS can be particularly brutal in this domain.
So, no, it isn't about just experience but rather about what someone did during that time and what they chose to learn.