So bummed, as a parent of a PSU student. The school is off the rails. Parents at orientation literally heard 10+ minutes of pronoun introductions (of every single tour guide) and zero minutes of "our commitment to excellence in academics, art, and/or athletics".
Peter was a bright spot. Fortunately, my kid is in the Computer Science progr…
So bummed, as a parent of a PSU student. The school is off the rails. Parents at orientation literally heard 10+ minutes of pronoun introductions (of every single tour guide) and zero minutes of "our commitment to excellence in academics, art, and/or athletics".
Peter was a bright spot. Fortunately, my kid is in the Computer Science program which is still excellent, probably because computer code doesn't compile if it is fed gibberish.
I commend you for speaking out. However, remain vigilant. Rather than cite them all, I would encourage you to google "anti racist software engineering". It, too, will soon be subject to the woke rules.
I've looked at every CS assignment and it lacks any social justice dimension. I do think my kid will have a one-credit "ethics in programming" class... whatever... real world wants results.
That is good to hear! Again, I commend you on your vigilance.
I do disagree with you slightly on what the "real world" wants. It's a bit complicated, but here it goes. (FWIW, I have a CS degree and work in software engineering).
At most large tech companies, the machine of profit is running at such magnitude that it is actually hard to stop it even if you wanted to. This affords them tremendous latitude on rank-and-file engineers. Add to this that today public companies are increasingly placing "wokeness" ahead of the classic "shareholder value" objective, and you have a recipe for a less competent, woke engineer being more (or just as) valuable than an unwoke more competent engineer.
Moreover, engineering managers are getting pummeled with woke objectives that have nothing to do with engineering proper. I see and hear about it every week.
Startups are a bit different. They still need results. In bigger companies, I'm not saying that competence isn't required or valued; rather, I'm suggesting that the story is more complicated and not as clear cut.
Just looking back at this. This comment was (probably true) before Elon demonstrated you only needed 10% of staff to manage Twitter and then Facebook and Google followed suit with huge layoffs. Plus ESG suddenly predicted failure rather than success.
Sadly, that all happened as my kid graduated Suma Cum Laude. Got zero callbacks on 500 applications. He's finally clawed his way up to a full time contractor gig, starting at 10 hours a week, and the gig was found through his music contacts, not Computer Science contacts.
Small company, so full-time was driven by results, in this case.
Every semester I ensure that my kid knows we would support a transfer away from the nonsense. Again, not much nonsense in CS... too much code to write. The forced elective choices have some nonsense.
That’s why I love code - lack of nonsense. There are always a multitude of ways to create something, to solve a problem, and it can be more unconstrained and creative than most people realize. But you can’t pretend your way to a solution. At the end of the day, the code runs or it doesn’t, the application solves the problem or it doesn’t. Good luck to your kiddo! I think this is such an exciting time to be starting in computer science.
Still a great computer school. I have let the administration know multiple times about my disillusionment. They are still more likely to listen to paying customers than randos.
PSU forces kids to learn C++ using only vi as an editor for the first two years (they get a peek of an IDE in a java unit). They are hard core... more so than many schools. I've been a software engineer since the 80s, as they have well chosen, difficult but reasonable problems to solve.
Possibly because they are a primary feeder school to Intel.
This is the only thing that makes me happy about my kids' education there. The city has gone to literal shit and broken glass since his enrollment. The liberal arts side, based on a zoom call which had mono-thought and many synchronized nodding heads could be from a 1984 sound stage.
Hardest popular language to do well. Write standard library code, handling exceptions, without leaking memory... if you don't think that's hard, you're probably doing it wrong. As far as binary... check my middle name.
You need those forms of math to engineer bridges. Software requires a different set of engineering skills. Its math is logic, not calculus.
In my 55 years in IT, I have had to assist many engineers of your type who don't know the first thing about computational logic. There is nothing wrong with their brains; it's just not a part of their field.
I believe that people who use pseudonyms to call others "a*****" online may be very very very very very intelligent, but their actions illustrate their lack of character. There's a lot more to life than IQ.
It depends on what problems you are trying to solve. A lot of IT projects need little or no math, ditto system administration, whereas engineering and scientific problems require loads of it, as well as a good understanding of your tools, including the computing system you are using. And those "math" problems often need programming for execution efficiency, not coding convenience. Hence the need for coding in C or Fortran... sometimes even Assembler.
Can you explain that for someone who doesn't know anything about agile? Genuinely interested in what you mean and want to understand it. I literally know nothing other than it's a jargon word I've heard.
This isn't my experience of Agile. I grew up in the "Software Craftsmanship" school of development, but have been working in the Agile environment for several years with my current employer. I think that the main benefit that management sees with Agile is that they thing "everyone should know how to do everything". Tasks are thin sliced and passed around to whomever needs something to do at the moment. I can't tell you how wasteful of human effort this involves in the amount of rework that has to be done to get a stable product. No one on the team works on anything long enough to gain expertise in an area. I could go on and on, but the standard answer to any complaint about the methodology is that "you're doing it wrong". Well, I've never seen it "done right" and those who specialize in training and leading in this methodology tend not to hang around long enough to see the problems in the first place.
Good description, I’m a software developer and I didn’t know the history prior to the early 2000s blend of extreme and agile into agile. Problem with the trendy things is that while they often become trendy for good reasons, they’re never a silver bullet to solve every problem. And even when it’s the right solution, implementing a good thing in a sloppy or ill-advised manner will still produce a stupid outcome.
There really aren’t any shortcuts to doing it right, even if trendy buzzwords tend to make management happy.
So bummed, as a parent of a PSU student. The school is off the rails. Parents at orientation literally heard 10+ minutes of pronoun introductions (of every single tour guide) and zero minutes of "our commitment to excellence in academics, art, and/or athletics".
Peter was a bright spot. Fortunately, my kid is in the Computer Science program which is still excellent, probably because computer code doesn't compile if it is fed gibberish.
Until they say that learning to code is racist. Yes, it’s coming.
The academic Maoists have already decided that astronomy is 'colonialist', so racist code may be coming even sooner than you thik.
I heard there are 53 different bit values on the spectrum between 0 and 1.
Good one, Rich! And did you know there are 10 kinds of people in this world? Those who understand binary and those who don’t.
I commend you for speaking out. However, remain vigilant. Rather than cite them all, I would encourage you to google "anti racist software engineering". It, too, will soon be subject to the woke rules.
I've looked at every CS assignment and it lacks any social justice dimension. I do think my kid will have a one-credit "ethics in programming" class... whatever... real world wants results.
That is good to hear! Again, I commend you on your vigilance.
I do disagree with you slightly on what the "real world" wants. It's a bit complicated, but here it goes. (FWIW, I have a CS degree and work in software engineering).
At most large tech companies, the machine of profit is running at such magnitude that it is actually hard to stop it even if you wanted to. This affords them tremendous latitude on rank-and-file engineers. Add to this that today public companies are increasingly placing "wokeness" ahead of the classic "shareholder value" objective, and you have a recipe for a less competent, woke engineer being more (or just as) valuable than an unwoke more competent engineer.
Moreover, engineering managers are getting pummeled with woke objectives that have nothing to do with engineering proper. I see and hear about it every week.
Startups are a bit different. They still need results. In bigger companies, I'm not saying that competence isn't required or valued; rather, I'm suggesting that the story is more complicated and not as clear cut.
Just looking back at this. This comment was (probably true) before Elon demonstrated you only needed 10% of staff to manage Twitter and then Facebook and Google followed suit with huge layoffs. Plus ESG suddenly predicted failure rather than success.
Sadly, that all happened as my kid graduated Suma Cum Laude. Got zero callbacks on 500 applications. He's finally clawed his way up to a full time contractor gig, starting at 10 hours a week, and the gig was found through his music contacts, not Computer Science contacts.
Small company, so full-time was driven by results, in this case.
You’re helping fund the nonsense however.
Every semester I ensure that my kid knows we would support a transfer away from the nonsense. Again, not much nonsense in CS... too much code to write. The forced elective choices have some nonsense.
That’s why I love code - lack of nonsense. There are always a multitude of ways to create something, to solve a problem, and it can be more unconstrained and creative than most people realize. But you can’t pretend your way to a solution. At the end of the day, the code runs or it doesn’t, the application solves the problem or it doesn’t. Good luck to your kiddo! I think this is such an exciting time to be starting in computer science.
Still a great computer school. I have let the administration know multiple times about my disillusionment. They are still more likely to listen to paying customers than randos.
Just wait until your kid gets out in the corporate world.
PSU forces kids to learn C++ using only vi as an editor for the first two years (they get a peek of an IDE in a java unit). They are hard core... more so than many schools. I've been a software engineer since the 80s, as they have well chosen, difficult but reasonable problems to solve.
Possibly because they are a primary feeder school to Intel.
This is the only thing that makes me happy about my kids' education there. The city has gone to literal shit and broken glass since his enrollment. The liberal arts side, based on a zoom call which had mono-thought and many synchronized nodding heads could be from a 1984 sound stage.
Hardest popular language to do well. Write standard library code, handling exceptions, without leaking memory... if you don't think that's hard, you're probably doing it wrong. As far as binary... check my middle name.
LOL
It's "potatoe, potahto".
You need those forms of math to engineer bridges. Software requires a different set of engineering skills. Its math is logic, not calculus.
In my 55 years in IT, I have had to assist many engineers of your type who don't know the first thing about computational logic. There is nothing wrong with their brains; it's just not a part of their field.
I believe that people who use pseudonyms to call others "a*****" online may be very very very very very intelligent, but their actions illustrate their lack of character. There's a lot more to life than IQ.
It depends on what problems you are trying to solve. A lot of IT projects need little or no math, ditto system administration, whereas engineering and scientific problems require loads of it, as well as a good understanding of your tools, including the computing system you are using. And those "math" problems often need programming for execution efficiency, not coding convenience. Hence the need for coding in C or Fortran... sometimes even Assembler.
lol, Smith.
Can you explain that for someone who doesn't know anything about agile? Genuinely interested in what you mean and want to understand it. I literally know nothing other than it's a jargon word I've heard.
Thanks for this background Smith 🙌🏻
This isn't my experience of Agile. I grew up in the "Software Craftsmanship" school of development, but have been working in the Agile environment for several years with my current employer. I think that the main benefit that management sees with Agile is that they thing "everyone should know how to do everything". Tasks are thin sliced and passed around to whomever needs something to do at the moment. I can't tell you how wasteful of human effort this involves in the amount of rework that has to be done to get a stable product. No one on the team works on anything long enough to gain expertise in an area. I could go on and on, but the standard answer to any complaint about the methodology is that "you're doing it wrong". Well, I've never seen it "done right" and those who specialize in training and leading in this methodology tend not to hang around long enough to see the problems in the first place.
That was GREAT, Smith.
Good description, I’m a software developer and I didn’t know the history prior to the early 2000s blend of extreme and agile into agile. Problem with the trendy things is that while they often become trendy for good reasons, they’re never a silver bullet to solve every problem. And even when it’s the right solution, implementing a good thing in a sloppy or ill-advised manner will still produce a stupid outcome.
There really aren’t any shortcuts to doing it right, even if trendy buzzwords tend to make management happy.
Yah, agree.