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To the future occupants of my office at the MIT Media Lab

ethanzuckerman.com

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Re: To the future occupants of my office at the MIT Media Lab

#181

Post by dhosek »

PascLeRasc wrote: post #179
dhosek wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The capstone of the engineering major is the engineering clinic project which has students working on “real engineering problems as encountered in business”. Companies pay the college to have teams of senior engineering majors solve a problem they face. Two of the sexier projects were Disneyland hired HMC to come up with an anti-collision system for autopia and West Dorm had a clinic team refurbish a beloved vintage…

My university had a student club doing that and it's probably my fondest memory of engineering. It was so inspiring and almost addicting to work on projects that actual people would use or have their lives improved by. And you got to have a hand in writing firmware, machining parts/enclosures, meeting the customer (mostly doctors, which was super cool), and researching the market fit for if it were a real project. It…

My wife, after she finished her MS in Software Engineering, ended up in a job where one of her first tasks was writing DOS .BAT files.

On the other hand, her first asp.net page was demonstrated by Steve Ballmer at CES, so she did advance in the world.

Re: To the future occupants of my office at the MIT Media Lab

#182

Post by CarbyAu »

Animats wrote: post #172
lmilcin wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's right. So I see a lot of mechatronics students that actually, instead of trying to develop all their skills, settle in either electronics or software development. Students should understand that what they learn at uni is as far from real world product development as possible. Uni does not have incompetent coworkers, unreasonable, conflicting or entirely missing requirements, scaling issues, vendors trying to s…

Uni does not have incompetent coworkers, unreasonable, conflicting or entirely missing requirements, scaling issues, vendors trying to screw you, procurement processes trying their best to prevent you from doing anything, faulty materials, etc. MIT students have complained, after graduation, of finding companies that worked like soap operas.

I suspect it is the same everywhere.

At Uni you are taught many things including "things NOT to do"; some seeming quite obvious. I thought:

"Well, I shouldn't encounter those "things NOT to do" in the Real World TM, because professionals in the workplace have had 10 years to learn these lessons."

Ah, the naivety of youth...

Professionals are just people who convince someone to pay them for what they do. What they do doesn't have to include competence.

Re: To the future occupants of my office at the MIT Media Lab

#183

Post by jki275 »

lmilcin wrote: post #180
jki275 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’ve described waterfall accurately, but waterfall is kind of an anti-pattern. Nobody actually uses it.

You mean there are no places where managers tell their teams the scope and deadlines and then tell the team to go play "agile"?

That's not waterfall.

Re: To the future occupants of my office at the MIT Media Lab

#184

Post by lmilcin »

jki275 wrote: post #183
lmilcin wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean there are no places where managers tell their teams the scope and deadlines and then tell the team to go play "agile"?

That's not waterfall.

From that point of view I would say no project is waterfall. In any sufficiently complicated project requirements MUST change over development if only for the fact it is not feasible to specify absolutely everything absolutely precisely before development starts.

Re: To the future occupants of my office at the MIT Media Lab

#185

Post by jki275 »

lmilcin wrote: post #184
jki275 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not waterfall.

From that point of view I would say no project is waterfall. In any sufficiently complicated project requirements MUST change over development if only for the fact it is not feasible to specify absolutely everything absolutely precisely before development starts.

I agree. Waterfall is primarily a discussion point on why Agile is the way to go -- hence an anti pattern. Nobody actually does waterfall.
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