31–40 of 109 posts
Without a lot of intrinsic motivation, first worlders don't become geeks. There are major issues with prestige, image, lifestyle, pay, hours, lack of professional associations, lack of government influence, lack of sex appeal.
I suggest working to deprecate the glorification of sports stars, actors, rock musicians, and other careers that don't contribute to the advancement of humanity. Demonstrate the wonders of STEM fields, and do so in a non-hokey manner (I've seen the government ads and the ACM ads, they are terrible). Instead of bubble-heads on the evening news, work to have thoughtful people providing the voice of the country. Work to…
Programming and computer science are important, but there's no need to belittle other professions. All the careers you listed require skill and dedication and contribute to the advancement of humanity in their own ways. I agree it's always good to raise the general level of thought and knowledge, but there are plenty of intelligent people who enjoy football, movies, music, and even gasp booze.
Fed jobs suck.
As a college student, I think the best way to get people my age motivated to become geeks and get into computer programming is to show them how cool it can be as well as how it can result in being successful. Students need to see how cool it is to be involved in the tech startup community. The Social Network movie did a great job of showcasing this, but I think it needs to be taken further. Essentially we need to wor…
I think that part of the problem is in how geeks are trained and what they work on. For example, think of all the software people go go to school, learn java, and then build big ugly enterprise bank, insurance, whatever software inside some megacorp that nobody cares about. Most end users of said software don't like it and have zero appreciation for the people who made it. Outside of Silicon Valley being a geek isn't…
For what it's worth, nothing requires Enterprise software to be big, ugly, boring, hard to use, etc. Maybe I'm biased, since I'm working on an Enterprise Software startup, but I think this stuff can be damn interesting. Then again, I'm in the "Enterprise 2.0" space, and am working with interesting stuff like social network analysis, activity streams, machine learning, text mining, semantic web tech, etc. Maybe writing accounting software is boring, but the stuff we're doing has a lot of interesting aspects to it, IMHO.
I think there's three reasons that there's a shortage of U.S. CS graduates: 1) Dot-com bust: Lots of people jumped into CS when it looked like being a programmer was a easy way to become a millionaire. When it became obvious that wasn't going to happen for most CS graduates and there was a glut of talent in the market, people switched to something else. 2) Outsourcing: Right on top of the dot-com bust was the trend t…
I won't take any government blather about the lack of native-born engineers seriously until this is addressed. What kid in his right mind is going to go into a field in which the government undermines his ability to get a raise?
Career days, mentoring, lab tours, and counseling are all surely good ideas. But building up desire to become a computer geek among teens will only go so far unless the teens have enough background coming out of high school to learn the actual skills of a computer geek.
Currently, the ACT college admission testing organization estimates that three-fourths of the young men and women entering colleges "were not adequately prepared academically for first-year college courses."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230407010457639...
There are varying amounts of mathematical background strictly necessary for working in various kinds of programming jobs. It would be a rare programming job that wouldn't require at least as much solid skill in mathematics as implied by completing a second year of secondary school algebra. But a lot of high school graduates don't reach that level of math skill, even if they have taken an algebra II course.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/requiring-alg...
http://www.act.org/research/policymakers/cccr10/pdf/Conditio...
I've given more citations to studies of United States mathematics education in another HN post,
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2562743
so I won't belabor that point here. I'll simply point out that with students who have decent math skills in shortage already, moving math-able students into computer science or computer engineering but from physics or medicine or other forms of engineering still leaves the United States with a potential national security problem.
I suggest working to deprecate the glorification of sports stars, actors, rock musicians, and other careers that don't contribute to the advancement of humanity. Demonstrate the wonders of STEM fields, and do so in a non-hokey manner (I've seen the government ads and the ACM ads, they are terrible). Instead of bubble-heads on the evening news, work to have thoughtful people providing the voice of the country. Work to…
I'm with you on the athletes, but actors and musicians don't contribute to the advancement of humanity? I'm sorry, but you're quite mistaken. The notion that only technical fields are valuable is a very, very short-sighted mentality. Both technical and non-technical people provide value, and the proper way to get more of both isn't to attack those that are unlike you.
This topic reveals a bit of confusion within the industry. On one hand there's a commonly held belief that anyone outside of the top 1% of developers is next to worthless as an employee. Yet when articles like this come out suggesting a huge shortage of home-grown nerds, everyone agrees that "something must be done" and kids must be guided towards math and CS classes...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm with you on the athletes, but actors and musicians don't contribute to the advancement of humanity? I'm sorry, but you're quite mistaken. The notion that only technical fields are valuable is a very, very short-sighted mentality. Both technical and non-technical people provide value, and the proper way to get more of both isn't to attack those that are unlike you.
this is starting to get off-topic, but one could argue that athletics played at the highest level is an art form, with its own rich culture, history, and passion just like great music, film, or literature.