[PLUG] Computer Science at PSU a nightmare

[Matt Rae]

I struggled through getting a CS degree and I admit that many courses
I've taken I'll never use again. The only reason I took them was to
fulfill degree requirements. A degree is an excuse to make more money
and shows that you put your time in. If your interviewer has a degree
they expect that you got paddled with the same sadistic physics course
that they did. That gives you something in common. Its the same sort
of thing with fraternity hazing or military boot camp.

Its up to you what you get out of college. There are courses you'll
draw from daily. Its important is to be a life long learner and
college is a good place to soak up new ideas and interact with smart
people.

Still, almost everything you get out of college you could learn from
the internet or diving in and getting real world experience. The
barrier to learning and getting that experience is low.. (Example:
Google will even pay you to get experience developing open source
software).. With access to the internet there is a lifetime of
learning available on pretty much any topic. If you have the
motivation to learn on your own and do something important, that
outweighs going in to debt getting a degree.

Matt Rae

On Dec 20, 2007 9:13 AM, Carlos Konstanski
<ckonstanski at pippiandcarlos.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 20 Dec 2007, Alan wrote:
>
> > Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2007 08:34:05 -0800 (PST)
> > From: Alan <alan at clueserver.org>
> > Reply-To: "General Linux/UNIX discussion and help;    civil and on-topic"
> >     <plug at lists.pdxlinux.org>
> > To: "General Linux/UNIX discussion and help;  civil and on-topic"
> >     <plug at lists.pdxlinux.org>
> > Subject: Re: [PLUG] Computer Science at PSU a nightmare
>
> >
> >> Quoting Keith Lofstrom <keithl at kl-ic.com>:
> >>
> >> [Hide Quoted Text]
> >> someone <plug_1 at robinson-west.com> dijo:
> >> Anyone else find PSU's computer science program next to impossible to
> >> get through?  If the physics and Calculus don't stop ya, it seems
> >> that Karla Fant will.  Programming Systems is called an intro course,
> >> but there's nothing intro about it.
> >> The discussion is not about Linux, so I am replying on plug-talk.
> >> Perhaps one of the "arcane, useless" skills that future employers
> >> may find essential is the ability to post to the proper email list.
> >> The discussion or Portland State's computer science degree in general
> >> is not about Linux?
> >>
> >> A Linux specialist needs to know: bash, perl, python, and php more than
> >> Java and C++.  C is important because the kernel is written in it.
> >> This discussion is relevant from the standpoint of, is it worth it if
> >> your interest lies in Linux to get a CS degree?  I'm leaning towards
> >> no until the mandatory courses are a) passable without special help,
> >> and b) relevant to a Linux environment.  I shouldn't have to ask a
> >> special tutor that I have to compete with 200 people for how to
> >> understand and approach my programming assignments.  Nor should I
> >> have to put up with incompetent tutors, a problem I ran into with
> >> physics at PCC.  College isn't the work world, you pay a lot of money
> >> to access so called higher education where there's a service to be
> >> rendered to you.  Yes, you have to take care of yourself.  It's an
> >> academic setting, the professor isn't supposed to fous on confusing
> >> people.
> >
> > Not all intro courses are designed to be easy.  Some are there to see if
> > you have the true desire and to weed out the weak and infirm.
> >
> > When I was in college I saw a number of people in programming classes who
> > had no business being there.  They took it because computers were the
> > "cool thing" or they thought that they could take it for an easy grade.
>
> I wish the intro to programming (pascal) course at Idaho State
> University were harder than it was for this very reason.  I dropped the
> class because it was soooo boooring.  It was geared toward the biggest
> moron in the class.  That guy should have been culled from the herd.  As
> a result, I never took another computer class.  I don't feel like I
> missed much by getting a real-world education instead of an academic one.
> Maybe it pays to find a CS department that specializes in the area you're
> interested in.  I would think that OSU would be much more linux-oriented,
> being a key datacenter in the linux universe.
>
> Carlos Konstanski
>
> _______________________________________________
> PLUG mailing list
> PLUG at lists.pdxlinux.org
> http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
>