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

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

#401

I wish this were the case now. The field has eternal Septembered. Tools no longer empower, they constrict and patronize developers, setting up ceremonial barriers that are merely performative while restricting and shepherding users away from creativity independence and ownership into proscriptive systems. The other disciplines actually take systems of qualifications seriously. Doctors, mechanical and civil engineers,…

I agree with your complaint about tools being designed to constrict and patronise us (my old manager used to always make reference to "hardware obstruction layers"). Perhaps software development as a whole is in an Eternal September, even, but don't think that using qualifications as gatekeeping tools will solve this. I come from a "real" engineering background (EEE), as does my old man (Chem Eng) and things are no d…

But the code doesn't speak for itself. It's not meritocratic.

It's amenable to the same social ingratiations as all other institutions.

In the same way that say, homeopathy presents itself as medicine where it is just expensive capsules of pure sugar, the reliance on the extraordinary popular delusions and madness of the crowds has been a well documented problem since mackey wrote a book in that name in 1841.

That's why when barriers were real, in days of inferior computing, only competency could pull through while now it's been supplanted by conformance and orthodoxy.

To what? It's merely perfunctory. The levers to reality have been detached. We have become the homeopaths diluting belladonna in a hope that poison will become medicine. But all we get in the end is merely a sugar high.

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

#402
post #52

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

Only $9.95!

*per HOUR. Some early case tools were $1000/seat/month.

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

#403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My parents to this day ask me when I will be getting a *real* job. I make three times what my dad makes in a year.

Surprised you don't say right back, "When are you getting a real job?"

Because I don't want to catch la chancla :P

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

#405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are legitimately so good, and a great way to console yourself after busting at the blackjack tables

Honestly, it is you busting at the blackjack table that makes those prices so low. These restaurants are subsidized by the house via the majority of losing gamblers. About the only reason why they even charge for the food in the first place is to set a minimum threshold for the non-gambling clientele.

That makes total sense now

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

#406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 pu…

I have increasingly come to believe that part of the purpose of university education in the UK is to transfer money from taxpayers to the private owners of student housing via student loans.

Hi, I am not sure how to reply to the Broadwell bench thread, but I am randomly the nephew of malcolm. (Fathers brother)
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