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[UPDATE 20191112_223013 UTC: Per original author's request, I hereby note this is an edited excerpt and not an exact quote from the blog post linked below. --martyb]
Submitted via IRC for Bytram
Three of the Hundred Falsehoods CS Students Believe
Jan Schauma recently posted a list of one hundred Falsehoods CS Students (Still) Believe Upon Graduating. There is much good fun here, especially for a prof who tries to help CS students get ready for the world, and a fair amount of truth, too. I will limit my brief comments to three items that have been on my mind recently even before reading this list.
18. 'Email' and 'Gmail' are synonymous.
CS grads are users, too, and their use of Gmail, and systems modeled after it, contributes to the truths of modern email: top posting all the time, with never a thought of trimming anything. Two-line messages sitting atop icebergs of text which will never be read again, only stored in the seemingly infinite space given us for free.
38. Employers care about which courses they took.
It's the time of year when students register for spring semester courses, so I've been meeting with a lot of students. (Twice as many as usual, covering for a colleague on sabbatical.) It's interesting to encounter students on both ends of the continuum between not caring at all what courses they take and caring a bit too much. The former are so incurious I wonder how they fell into the major at all. The latter are often more curious but sometimes are captive to the idea that they must, must, must take a specific course, even if it meets at a time they can't attend or is full by the time they register.
90. Two people with a CS degree will have a very similar background and shared experience/knowledge.
This falsehood operates in a similar space to #38, but at the global level I reached at the end of my previous paragraph. Even students who take most of the same courses together will usually end their four years in the program with very different knowledge and experiences.
The complete list is available at www.netmeister.org.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by fadrian on Tuesday November 12 2019, @03:50PM (11 children)
Yawn. Another get-off-my-lawn article.
Get with it, man. Nobody cares about alternatives anymore. The world's too busy to deal with plumbing and just wants shit to work. Plumbers don't bore you with the fact that there's more than one type of wrench before they get down to work, do they? I know, in the end, you're training computer plumbers, so maybe they need to know, but they (and the author) shouldn't obsess about it - train them to use any fucking wrench and get the job done.
This touches on a topic that troubles me lately, namely treating computers with more importance than they deserve, because in the end they're nothing but tools. That's really all they are. There's been so little change in the computer world for the last forty years, it's no longer fresh. So unless you have a new, interesting tool, don't bug me (and if you have a new, interesting tool, don't bug me too much). In any case, computers' world-changing aspects are over and by now they're about as interesting as any wrench. This could change with any actual new innovation in computer systems, but I'm not holding my breath, as the computer industry has changed from one where changing the world was a co-priority (along with with getting rich) to one where milking the cash cow is most important.
In the end, lamenting this shit makes me seem older than the author of the article. Get off my fucking lawn. Damn.
That is all.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 12 2019, @05:05PM (7 children)
Really? Were you actually around for the past 40 years? I really don't want to spend the 5 minutes searching online, but off the top of my head, it sounds like you are suggesting the following were considered non-big changes:
1) Shrinking computers from room-sized to microwave-oven-sized.
2) Advent of electronic spreadsheets, including nearly-failproof calculations (especially compound interest)
3) Color monitors
4) Network connectivity, especially the Internet
5) Making the internet be international
6) Online commerce (remember, "the internet is for porn" trope... and nobody would use it to buy shoes or check when a nearby movie is showing)
7) Streaming
8) Social networking
9) Mobile network connectivity
10) Electronic maps and GPS (when's the last time you searched an index for a street name, to find the square your destination was)
11) Electronic directories (when's the last time you memorized a phone number)
13) Expert Systems/Artificial Intelligence
14) RSA/PGP/etc
I could literally go on, but I have more important things to do now.
In any case, computers' world-changing aspects are over and by now they're about as interesting as any wrench. This could change with any actual new innovation in computer systems, but I'm not holding my breath, as the computer industry has changed from one where changing the world was a co-priority (along with with getting rich) to one where milking the cash cow is most important.
Reminds me of this. [amasci.com]
I'm *SURE* that things like quantum computing, image recognition and driverless cars, deep fakes, machine-derived pharmaceuticals, "artificial intelligence" (whatever that is), and everything will turn out to be dead ends.
I'd get off your lawn, but I'm not convinced you actually live in this neighborhood.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday November 12 2019, @05:40PM (3 children)
Even though I've upmodded you, I disagree. Computers *ARE* overrated. People pay more attention to devices than to what they do. Not that they don't *use* what they do, but they don't think about it.
I *think* I'm different about this, but who knows. Consider "facial recognition". What's important is not what the technology is, but how it's used and who controls it. Or computerized selection of job applicants.
It's not the computer that's important, it's how it's getting used. And who's controlling the results, and what selection criteria they use.
Computers are an enabling tool. As long as the "only follow orders" that's all they are, even if the orders are several layers removed from observation. And what's important is what those orders are, and what coercive force is behind them. Until the computers are self directed, it's not the computers that are important.
That said, I'm not a political animal, I'm a technologist. I can control my computer (to an extent). And I can choose to buy a newer, fancier, one. And that's where my attention naturally lives. But I *know* that that's not what's socially important, and pretending that it is, is a mistake.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 12 2019, @06:28PM
Thanks for the upmod, and fair point. I think there were several points in that post I reacted to.
This is the part which got a proverbial bee in my bonnet, and it was the primary point of my response. I strongly disagree with it. If the poster had said "no big innovations in the past 2 years," and had said it in 2015 I may have agreed... but things have changed a TON in recent years, let alone the past 40 years.
I think this is what you were reacting to, and to a large degree I agree. However, saying something is "just a tool" is both literally true, and I think misrepresentative of the reality of the situation. I could likewise say fire, electricity, steam engines, currency, elections, pacemakers, and gunpowder are all "just tools." You are right that on their own they do nothing (case in point: Chinese people invented gunpowder... and only used it for ceremonial purposes until a westerner had the clever idea to use it to project objects into enemies in combat). Steel beams are "just a tool," but imagine trying to build a skyscraper without them. Computers are "just a tool" much like humans are "just some hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, and a few other trace elements."
I will agree with your general point, though, that it's not the tool or its strength that matters, it's how it is used. (e.g. the dotcom bust of the early 2000s, where things like pets.com flopped... just being "on the internet" isn't good enough.)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 13 2019, @03:44AM (1 child)
Don't forget the infrastructure for databases matching human faces to names, collecting the data which is scanned for faces, and of course, being able to act on it.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday November 13 2019, @05:31PM
I included that in "how it's used an who controls it".
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Tuesday November 12 2019, @08:41PM (1 child)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @06:01PM
Barbara (tom) Hudson CHEMICALLY CASTRATED itself with estrogen since you failed as a man lol! You also FAIL as a "woman" you NEUTERED delusional freakazoid! What is is like knowing you are a living mockery? A parody of both a 'woman' or a man! You know that. Everyone knows it about you "TraNsTeSticLe" hohohohoho. Barbara Hudson is a twistoid mental case deluding itself it is a REAL woman. Clue: You will never EVER be able to pass a DNA test due to the fact you do not, nor did you ever, possess female mitochondrial material you crackpot weirdo. It isn't logical to attempt to "fix" bodyparts that work with no issues. You had a working (extremely small) penis and balls you sawed off with estrogen hahahaha! Barbara Hudson breaks laws by possessing a SAWED OFF SHOTGUN!
(Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Tuesday November 12 2019, @11:26PM
But these really aren’t fundamental changes to CS, and in fact the von Neumann architecture on which all classical computers are based is part of almost every CS curriculum being taught today. What you are talking about are the immense changes in scale, and the applications that these changes have made possible.
True AI as I understand it is really NN based, and probably doesn’t fall under CS, but having no exposure to present day CS curricula I could be totally wrong on this.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 12 2019, @07:11PM (2 children)
"Tortured Old Man" submission? Runaway is older than dirt, and just as intelligent.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by barbara hudson on Tuesday November 12 2019, @08:49PM (1 child)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computronium?wprov=sfti1 [wikipedia.org]
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @05:59PM
Barbara (tom) Hudson CHEMICALLY CASTRATED itself with estrogen since you failed as a man lol! You also FAIL as a "woman" you NEUTERED delusional freakazoid! What is is like knowing you are a living mockery? A parody of both a 'woman' or a man! You know that. Everyone knows it about you "TraNsTeSticLe" hohohohoho. Barbara Hudson is a twistoid mental case deluding itself it is a REAL woman. Clue: You will never EVER be able to pass a DNA test due to the fact you do not, nor did you ever, possess female mitochondrial material you crackpot weirdo. It isn't logical to attempt to "fix" bodyparts that work with no issues. You had a working (extremely small) penis and balls you sawed off with estrogen hahahaha! Barbara Hudson breaks laws by possessing a SAWED OFF SHOTGUN, rotflmao!!!!!!!!!!