[Info-vax] And another one bites the dust....

[Bill Gunshannon]

On 2/20/22 00:17, Dave Froble wrote:
> On 2/19/2022 11:02 PM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>> On 2/19/22 21:07, Dan Cross wrote:
> 
> Bit of a trim of the old stuff needed ...
> 
> To me, a university is there to teach a person how to think and learn.

That's definitely part of it.  BUt, based on observing life around us
today, they appear to have abdicated the part about learning to think
as well as COBOL.  :-)  They do  not teach yo how to learn.  It is
pretty  much assumed you got that in the schools before you got to
University.

> 
> When my son started school, he asked "what type of job should I learn to 
> do?". 

Bad question.  But then, that's probably why so many students end out
taking 5 to 6 years to get that degree because they really don;t know
why  they are even there.

>        My reply was "You aren't going to learn a job.  You're going there 
> to learn how to learn, and think, and to learn about the world that you 
> haven't seen yet."

And partly a wrong answer.  Colleges are trade schools.  They are
trade schools for the white collar class.  Bankers, CPA's, chemists,
lawyers, future CEO's and yes, systems analysts (which is actually
a higher level programmer than today's buzzword, "coder".)  You are
certainly not going to learn any of that in the local Vo/Tech or even
Community College.

> 
> As to teaching Cobol, learning computer languages should be a part of 
> university, if the student chooses.  I had a semester of Cobol when I 
> was in school, maybe 50 some years ago.

50 years ago?  What school and what degree program?  Computers were in
their infancy in the University system in those days with only a couple
major colleges offering degrees in it.

> 
> What I would not agree with is misinformation.  If a professor is 
> misleading students based upon his/her own bias about how the world 
> should be run, well, that's dishonest, and it should be "former professor".

But that is what too much of college has become, and especially  in CS.
They are no longer satisfied with merely driving the bus they now want
to even tell the riders where they want to go.

> 
> As for skills, to me is seems it always comes down to OJT.  No school is 
> going to teach exactly what a particular employer needs.  Some basics, 
> and how to learn, yes.  Details, no.

That's true up to a point.  A new entry level job always includes OJT.
But there is an expectation that the candidate has basic skills for
the tasks they are expected to do.  You don't start in the construction
business as a master carpenter but your boss expects you to know which
end of the hammer should strike the nail.

Again, we really come down to the CS/CIS difference.  If one is going
for a CIS degree it is expected that they will come arrive at that
first job with the basic knowledge required by the job. That means
COBOL, Databases, including SQL programming, web concepts and probably
HTML, JavaScript and PHP and even UI concepts.  They won't design and
code a shopping cart the first day, but they should understand what it
entails.  Sadly, all of that is there except for the language needed
for the backend.  For some, as yet never explained, reason that part
was dropped.  And, the most interesting thing about it is how close
to each other they all dropped it.  That is the stuff conspiracy
theories are built on.  :-)

> 
> As an example, I was taught about linked lists.  I wasn't taught about 
> what I needed them for, that came later on the job.  The school taught 
> the concept, the job taught the need and design.

Very true.  I had been in the business for over 40 years before I
started taking classes for a degree (which I got 4 years before my
somewhat forced retirement!)  I got to observe a lot of our upcoming
students in these classes.  It was funny listening to chatter among
the Discrete Math students.  "Why are we learning about nodes?
What is this Venn Diagram crap?  Who cares about Linked Lists?  I
just want to learn how to be a programmer."  Of course, having done
this for 40 years I knew exactly how all this stuff fit in.  Like
it or not, COBOL fits in the same way.  It uses a paradigm not quite
the same as the procedural paradigm of Pascal or Ada.  And the
students who plan to do this for a living should at least have the
basics under their belt before they hit that first job.  At least
a 3 credit course although 6 credits would do them much better in
the real world.

Will it happen again?  Who knows.  But I am betting it won't happen
at the University level.  Another major truism about the academic
world is they never admit to making a mistake.  That would be a sign
of weakness.

bill