The Story of Engineering Education in India • Hacker News Board

Re: The Story of Engineering Education in India

#41

Post by okpatil » Mon, Sep 23, 2013, 4:00 PM UTC

enry_straker wrote: post #28

okpatil wrote: post #9

I am a start up founder as well and I am facing the same problem. Most of freshers applying for the jobs claim to have decent "Java", "SQL" knowledge in their resume. But they cannot even write a simple program that reads and writes to a file. They don't even know that there is something called "Open Source Technology". Absolutely no one has hands on experience with Linux. And they haven't even heard of technologies…

Also blame the students themselves. It really doesn't matter what collages they attended, how poor their teacher was etc. The internet is the biggest teacher of all. With institutions like Khan Academy and MITx and Google and coursera and other MOOCs, the availability of free knowledge is plentyful for people with an ounce of interest. And never invest in a person who does not love programming or problem solving. No…

I agree. I learned that hard way.

Re: The Story of Engineering Education in India

#42

Post by pramalin » Mon, Sep 23, 2013, 4:29 PM UTC

Even the top institutes like IITs engage in superstitious and fraudulent activities.

Here are some very recent examples.

Pseudoscience unchallenged at IIT Kanpur: http://nirmukta.com/2012/08/06/pseudoscience-unchallenged-at...

Hall of Shame: On a Hindutva Apologist’s Recent Lectures at IIT Madras:

http://nirmukta.com/2012/09/05/hall-of-shame-on-a-hindutva-a... """ Gravity was not discovered (sic) by “Newton or Oldton”, but by Bhaskara II and is described in his work Siddhānta Siromani.

The spherical shape of earth was not discovered by “Copernicus or Silvernicus” but Indians knew it well in advance and is mentioned in Bhagavata. """

One can imagine what is going on in other less reputed colleges?

Granted these are off-school activities, but it would be better for them to seek entertainment in better ways.

Re: The Story of Engineering Education in India

#43

Post by axc123 » Mon, Sep 23, 2013, 4:29 PM UTC

enry_straker wrote: post #38

av501 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was presumptuous on your part. First I shall talk about C. 2 reasons. 1.Any engineering graduate in India should know C. It is the first language they learn and use in curriculum. 2. We work in embedded and kernel domain. Welcome to a world where C is important. Also it is not about deep understanding of pointers and stuff like that. The sad part is that most of them can't even write it in pseudo code. As for th…

Wow. Dude, you really need to learn how to parse english. 1) When i said, "i don't buy that..." i was referring to people blaming the collage or university for their own lack of knowledge. In today's world where the internet is available to everyone with a net connection, i would expect people to use some initiative, go online, search for C sources or tutorials, download free compilers and linkers, learn them thoroug…

You have serious anger issues all over the thread. Calm down a bit.

Re: The Story of Engineering Education in India

#44

Post by enry_straker » Mon, Sep 23, 2013, 4:39 PM UTC

axc123 wrote: post #43

enry_straker wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. Dude, you really need to learn how to parse english. 1) When i said, "i don't buy that..." i was referring to people blaming the collage or university for their own lack of knowledge. In today's world where the internet is available to everyone with a net connection, i would expect people to use some initiative, go online, search for C sources or tutorials, download free compilers and linkers, learn them thoroug…

You have serious anger issues all over the thread. Calm down a bit.

Really.

I guess you are entitled to your own imagination.

Re: The Story of Engineering Education in India

#45

Post by kamaal » Mon, Sep 23, 2013, 5:09 PM UTC

pramalin wrote: post #35

enry_straker wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's not. 'naive' and 'mischievous' don't mean what you think they mean, and the author of the parent post did not claim anything of that sort. It's just that your opinions differ and you want to throw some idiotic words at the author's post.

I quoted what the poster said. It is _naive_ for a person born into low caste, to believe that the reservation system is corrupt. On the other hand it is _mischievous_ for the elitist to claim that it is corrupt. Indian popular media and the justice system which are disproportionately occupied by the elitists, have been successful in their propaganda to make the younger generation think that it is wrong to utilize th…

Justice is equality, not reservations.

There are two people, Person A works very hard, Person B doesn't. In a exam, because of the registration number system both are anonymous. Now if Person A scores above Person B. I don't see why B must get a seat above A? For what?

Social justice is to give people what they deserve corresponding to their efforts.

>>Indian popular media and the justice system which are disproportionately occupied by the elitists

By elitist you mean people who work hard and make it big in their lives?

And 60+ years of reservation system hasn't changed anything which says volumes about the problems with uplifting weaker sections of our society. If you give some one an option to get something for free, they take that rather than working for it.

Net Result? You get people who only look progressive but are actually not.

Re: The Story of Engineering Education in India

#46

Post by kamaal » Mon, Sep 23, 2013, 5:14 PM UTC

arocks wrote: post #20

This post captures very accurately the engineering education scene in India. I would add that many students today are actually aware of what they are getting into (Most of the times, they don’t need engineers but mere “coders”). Unless they are living under a rock, their predecessors have already told them that by now. Going further the students who were pressurized to take up engineering are now using these jobs as…

>>The good engineers are seen as capable to lead bigger teams and pressurized to enter project management

In which company does this happen?

Because nearly everywhere that I have seen, and especially in big IT services companies. Managerial aspirations happen as people find coding to be too much of intellectual work and would like to settle down in a desk clerk sort of work accounting job.

A middle manager in a large company these days is basically a guy who fills up forms for work accounting purposes.

Re: The Story of Engineering Education in India

#47

Post by kamaal » Mon, Sep 23, 2013, 5:24 PM UTC

av501 wrote: post #34

enry_straker wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you really programming in C? If so, good for you and your organization. If not, i suggest not wasting time becoming a career counselor and try finding a faster way to eliminate idiots. I don't buy the crap that they have not been taught in collage. In the age of the internet, there are so many damn resources on every language possible on the internet that a person claiming that they know how to code in c should h…

That was presumptuous on your part. First I shall talk about C. 2 reasons. 1.Any engineering graduate in India should know C. It is the first language they learn and use in curriculum. 2. We work in embedded and kernel domain. Welcome to a world where C is important. Also it is not about deep understanding of pointers and stuff like that. The sad part is that most of them can't even write it in pseudo code. As for th…

>>Any engineering graduate in India should know C.

A big assumption.

When I finished my engineering, I was pretty good with assembly language programming. I could do anything with 8085 and 8086.

It took a good deal of time to learn ALP, and I'm glad I did it before learning C as I got all necessary low level details correct and complete.

But I agree your point on pseudo code.

Re: The Story of Engineering Education in India

#48

Post by kamaal » Mon, Sep 23, 2013, 5:32 PM UTC

denzil_correa wrote: post #21

One of my colleagues was taking an interview of a potential candidate who listed "Python" as a core programming language. This is similar to most interviews I've been part of. Here's how it went - Interviewer : Name some data structures in Python Interviewee : Same as C, C++ Interviewer : Can you name some specific data structures? For example, have you heard about lists? Interviewee : I haven't heard about lists in…

I once had a experience with a colleague. She would continually come to me to parse XMLs and give it to her in some format like a csv which she could open it in Microsoft excel for some report generation purposes.

It started to happen pretty frequently and would consume a great deal of my time- It was reaching a stage where I had to stop my work to do her's. After a time she would just show up at my desk with her laptop, I had to write the code while she chatted with some one on her mobile. One afternoon I had, had enough and I asked her why she couldn't do it herself. She then mentioned she only knew C and C++. Then I asked why couldn't she parse the XMLs in C or C++? After a few questions back and forth, she understood I wasn't going to her homework after all.

She shed enough tears to convince our project manager, that I wasn't a good team player and I was the reason why the productivity in the project was falling down.

Thankfully one afternoon our clients had her removed from the project when I was on leave, and they made her write programs in a war room while the whole team was watching her screen on a projector.

Re: The Story of Engineering Education in India

#49

Post by unlimit » Mon, Sep 23, 2013, 7:22 PM UTC

kamaal wrote: post #2

Your post has a lot of gems, but you also misunderstand a lot about what is going on in Indian society. I am not surprised, not a least bit. >>I am sorry to say this, but parents come with an “old generation” mindset ... Because they think that if he gets a job he has settled in life ... Unfortunately, what they don’t realize is that there is no such thing as “settling” in IT jobs. They come with a very correct minds…

I work at one of these IT service companies. This year I complete my 10 years. I love coding, solving problems and learning new things. But unfortunately, with extreme reluctance I will have to become one of these managers. I just do not have any other way, no body cares about writing code here and writing good code will not get you nowhere.

I am too old for the product companies and I am not from a top tier college. So its game over for me, however the only hope I have is that someday I will manage to build something on my own that will free me. This is what I have been dreaming of ever since I passed out of college. You may ask me why I did not do it then, but for a guy from a lower middle class background, it was not an option. I needed to survive.

Re: The Story of Engineering Education in India

#50

Post by axc123 » Mon, Sep 23, 2013, 11:04 PM UTC

enry_straker wrote: post #44

axc123 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have serious anger issues all over the thread. Calm down a bit.

Really. I guess you are entitled to your own imagination.

Your aggression and quips do nothing but reveal your insecurity and obviously degrade a rather sensible thread into a showdown of your ego. Kindly refrain.