Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987) • Hacker News Board

Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)

#151

Post by hughrr » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 8:07 AM UTC

fridif wrote: post #143

momento wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My father was very strongly against my decision to get into web development (2012) and he echoed this sentiment heavily. I distinctly remember him yelling at me as a teenager; "you'll be living under a bridge in 5 years if you do this! India has this market!". He eventually kicked me out for not listening, forcing me to to borrow money from a friend to pay tuition in my final semester. Needless to say he was complete…

This is a good reason for why I don't strongly hold on to any of my opinions lol

I know you made the point in jest but you’re right. To be adaptable you need to embrace change and opinion is the hardest to change. I’ve seen people die holding an opinion which has been thoroughly disproven. Embrace change!

Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)

#152

Post by foxfired » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 8:07 AM UTC

It was 2011, a childhood friend visited me after 10 years. We talk about the old days, we laugh, I even tease her husband sitting next to me, smiling politely. She excuses herself leaving the men alone to bond.

"So, what do you do?" He asks after a long 5 second.

"Oh, I'm a programmer." I say with pride. To be sure I add, "A computer programmer." I make it a habit to add this because regular people have a hard time understanding what we do as hackers. The man smirks.

"Like, writing code right?" He asks. This is the first time I get this reaction. Usually, people are almost envious when I tell them what I do. They praise me and I act humble by belittling my profession just a bit. But not this man. This one is trying to hold his ribs together.

"Yes, you know I accidentally fell into programming, I actually went to school to become an Electrical Engineer." I say, but as I'm watching his reaction, my voice starts to break. Not only is he not impressed, he feels sorry for me. Before I am done he bursts out laughing.

"No, my friend, if you were chasing the future, you made a mistake."

This was the first time I ever heard this. I'm a programmer, am I not writing the code that powers the future?

"Nursing, my friend. Nursing. That's the future." He went on to explain why nursing was not only one of the most important jobs, but it was also one of the fastest growing. And then he told me something that I still can't believe I heard correctly.

"Even jQuery is becoming irrelevant"

The past few years, I've been working on incredible software. Some of it almost feels like magic. Distributed systems, embedded software, neural networks. But every once in a while, I remember his words. At the very least, they help me stay humble.

Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)

#153

Post by MrBuddyCasino » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 8:08 AM UTC

lordnacho wrote: post #64

My biggest issue with education is the whole "study this, get a job doing that" idea. It's plainly wrong, and it sucks in people who drink the koolaid and think there's an easy route to work. Very little is learned in college that is necessary for general employment. By general I mean just about everything that isn't licensed, like being a doctor. What college does is it throws a bunch of hard but irrelevant subjects…

> Very little is learned in college that is necessary for general employment.

College used to have two value propositions:

- enabling very smart people to do research and nothing else

- identifying / finding reasonably smart people that are needed for important tasks in society, but which might have languished in some village otherwise

Finding smart people has become a non-issue, and research has been corrupted by publish-or-perish. Thus, college today serves four purposes:

- cementing stratification, instead of loosening it: wealthy donors buy their way into prestigious universtities for their offspring

- serve as rite-of-passage: as we abolished all others, this is one thats left to signify a transition to adulthood

- enable a class of parasitic administrators and bureaucrats to extract as much money as possible from future students

- establish a caste of unproductive left-wing ideologues that spread ideas such as critical race theory among the future generation

Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)

#154

Post by happyhardcore » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 8:10 AM UTC

rejectedandsad wrote: post #101

happyhardcore wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW £18k in 2001 is ~£30k in today's money which is on the upper end of graduate starting salaries even for today

Im especially glad I’m not British - in America my $150k TC out of undergrad was mediocre.

Bearing in mind that 30k a year goes a lot further given that there's no need for health insurance and student loans are effectively just a 6% tax on earnings above 27k until either your loan is repaid or it's been 30 years since graduating.

While it's true that UK salaries are quite a bit lower than other countries if I'm honest if I earned £150k a year the only difference in how I live my life would be that I'd be driving a Tesla. 30k is more than enough to live comfortably on, even in areas with a fairly high cost of living.

Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)

#155

Post by varjag » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 8:10 AM UTC

raverbashing wrote: post #85

gumby wrote: post #36

I moved to Palo Alto in 1984 after the tech boom had collapsed. All the mortgages were under water. People talked about how exciting it had been. “But how many disk drives will companies ever want, really?” In 1982 the MIT EECS department was trying to encourage students to pick other majors.* By ‘84 they didn’t need to. * posters in the Infinite Corridor that read, “Course 6 got you down? Change majors!”

But if you could see through the hype and bought one of the houses in PA for cheap today you would have been set for life.

You have similarly endless opportunities for arbitrage today, which will only become clear in a decade or two.

Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)

#156

Post by sbr464 » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 8:13 AM UTC

I think traditional CS programs could take a page from what I believe is the most successful aspect of coding bootcamps; the inspiration/excitement/desire to learn etc. felt by a graduate in a very short period (weeks/months vs years+).

It's not perfect, they are missing many fundamentals, but now the student can appreciate why those are needed and the drive to learn more grows naturally.

I think other disciplines could benefit similarly, especially for students completely new to a field. Go through an intense/short program, then follow up with a more traditional, longer term program.

Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)

#157

Post by chadcmulligan » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 8:14 AM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #42

chadcmulligan wrote: post #37

I think CASE - (Computer aided software engineering) was starting to come about that time iirc. Business folk would just drag and drop stuff in these new fangled GUI's and everyone would go home early. Edit: That crab stuffed fillet sounds good

Wasn't CASE just a fancy word for what we now call IDEs? Business people might not do much dragging and dropping there, but developers do it quite a bit.

I used Oracle CASE at the time, it had a "data dictionary" where you defined the database schema in terms of the business terms and you could match it to the physical elements in the tables.

I think there was also a tool that you could make business logic in and maybe map to SQL*Forms (the user screen painter). There was an idea of being able to join these together somehow, but I don't recall the mechanics.

Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)

#158

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 8:14 AM UTC

foxfired wrote: post #152

It was 2011, a childhood friend visited me after 10 years. We talk about the old days, we laugh, I even tease her husband sitting next to me, smiling politely. She excuses herself leaving the men alone to bond. "So, what do you do?" He asks after a long 5 second. "Oh, I'm a programmer." I say with pride. To be sure I add, "A computer programmer." I make it a habit to add this because regular people have a hard time u…

[deleted]

Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)

#159

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 8:15 AM UTC

sersi wrote: post #140

hellbannedguy wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's ageism. Sorry for being so blunt, but I know to many people who were just uninteresting to human resourses after hitting 45-50. I know more than a few homeless people in my life, and over half were once Programmers. It makes me sick. I do know this, if you are in tech, save up that money. (I have never understood this industry's way of hiring. Long drawn out interviews, and candidates whom are just average that…

As someone who's been in charge of recruitment, I've made an effort in hiring people who are less likely to get a chance at other places (minorities, older candidates) One thing that stood out to me though is that a lot of the older candidates I interviewed that had been struggling had deep knowledge of a technology that's no longer used and had had very little interest during their career in learning new things outs…

[deleted]

Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)

#160

Post by themdonuts » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 8:15 AM UTC

donatj wrote: post #49

I don’t hear much about it these days, but circa 2004 when I was going into computer science I had multiple teachers and a guidance counselor warn me that all the jobs would be going to India and tell me I should pursue something else. This seemed to be very much the prevailing wisdom of the time. I pursued it anyway as it was my passion. I was one of five students in my program that had been a huge multi-campus prog…

I went to uni in 2004 and always had a crush for civil engineering. A few days before signing up my dad told me: I feel construction is stalling, I think you should go for Electrical Engineering. Best advice ever. By the time I finished construction was indeed dead and there were too many programming jobs.

Similarly to other users here from Europe, in 2010 the market was actually starting to take off. My dad was such a visionary... or I just had a total lack of it!