[aclug-L] Re: CS Degrees (Was: Re: Cool new fan site....hehe)

[Larry Bottorff <mrprenzl@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Having said what I did about degrees and WSU, one of the main reason I'm
in school right now is career direction confusion. Prior to enrolling, I
was in a total tailspin over what direction to continue with. So many
competing platforms, languages, directions, etc. The paradigm shifts
were beginning to feel like one 9. earthquake after another. I knew that
school would give me C, C, C, and C, as well as C with math and C on
Unix.

Another reason was two people I knew at Mizzou who were simply
world-class. They were "up there" knowledge and skill-wise. I dropped
out and went to work for a telcom start-up in St. Louis, and I talked
one of them into working at my new company. He started at double the
salary I did, and wound up taking over the top guru spot when the
previous all-knowing-one decided to leave. My friend had a Masters in CS
from Mizzou and I'm sure he got most of his skills from the schooling.
But MU did have at least 4 Unix systems/network programming courses, the
networking taught by a real grim task-master.

...which leads me to a definite plus for the university scene: sometimes
a school has world-class people on their faculty. And I've seen time and
again how just one small amount of key insight can make all the
difference and take you to the next level. Back at MU, anyone who made
it out of Springer's Networking I and II alive was a real contender, and
was sought after in the StL and KC markets and beyond.

But then there's the great (and late) W. Richard Stevens. He literally
wrote the book on Unix networking. He said (at his Website) that he
gained most of his original networking knowledge (for the development of
BSD) from reading code (DEC/VAX) and stressed reading code as part of a
good CS education. In other words, he was self-taught.

WSU has some good people, and some waste-of-time people, and some good
people teaching stuff they don't know anything about, which makes them
look like losers. But hey, this is knowledge, and knowledge doesn't
always come clearly marked.

Lars Von Dem Ast

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