[rescue] Mainframe on eBay

[Phil Stracchino]

der Mouse wrote:
> Computer Science is a *theoretical* discipline.  Its practitioners
> *are* mathematicians (specialized mathematicians, to be sure, but
> mathematicians still).
> 
> It has about as much overlap with practical programming and sysadmin as
> any field's theory does with its practice - that is to say, little to
> none.  (Of course, knowing some computer science makes a programmer a
> better programmer, just as knowing some programming makes a computer
> scientist a better computer scientist.  But that doesn't make the two
> fields identical - and there's also sysadminning, which is yet another
> fettle of kish.)
> 
> Part of the problem is that very few people (seem to) realize this, and
> as a result we have problems such as you describe - expecting
> theoreticians to be competent at the practice, on the one hand, and
> turning out practitioners mislabeled as theoreticians, on the other.

If I'd realized this myself before I went to study CS at EWU, I might
have gone for computer engineering instead.

Then, if I'd realized just what working in the computer industry was
going to do to me, I might not have picked computers at all.

I still wonder if it was a mistake not trying harder to join the US Air
Force when I first came to the US.


-- 
 Phil Stracchino       phil.stracchino at speakeasy.net
    Renaissance Man, Unix generalist, Perl hacker
 Mobile: 603-216-7037         Landline: 603-886-3518