[ILUG] where are the Irish "Summer of Code" entrants?

[John Madden]

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On (14/06/05 14:04), Paul Biggar didst pronounce:
> > What I've learned, I learned outside college and I know I'm not the only
> > person on this list who did the same course in the same year who feels
> > this way. Most of the class couldn't have cared less what they were
> > studying and while I was disappointed entering it, thinking I'd actually
> > be really interested and motivated to learn, it was just a grind. I did
> > learn but not anything that was really all that useful.
> 
I'd agree with Dave on this one. I did the same course, though I started
a year earlier and repeated a year in the middle. The only ongoing
modules that I found interesting were the programming ones. It only got
interesting in the final year, when we actually got to chose some areas
of interest. But, even the choices were slim.

The course leans more towards networking, yet there was only one module
where we did practical networking stuff (ie. messing with routers etc.).
This was only for one semester in final year, and the labs were more of
a beginners CLI than anything to do with the routers themselves.

> Pisser. I loved my course, and learned loads. Not all was relevant,
> but I've found that you get significantly better coders out of CS
> degrees (or CA, or whatever your variant is called) than out of maths
> or physics. I suspect the algorithms courses and the computer
> architecture courses are the culprits personally.
> 
I'd put more blame on the students doing the courses. As has been
mentioned, and from my own experience, most of the students in the
computer courses these days aren't interested. They may have thought
they were before starting, because they could hack Windows registry or
knew how to use a torrent client, but had very little idea of what the
course was about. As well as this, as has also been pointed out,
computers is sometimes seen as an easy option for money. This, in turn,
doesn't help the industry either, since employers end up hiring
under-qualified staff who have no interest in the job they're being
hired to do. I recently heard from a Skynet ex-member who's working for
a company in Dublin. They've been looking for a number of good admins to
work on a large project, and have found out the hard way that they're
few and far between in the current market. They were looking for Solaris
and Linux admins (anyone interested, contact me off-list).

This isn't helped by the shortage of information on the _actual_ course 
material for the 4 years of the course. I had a look at the details for 
the IT course I did at some stage -- it listed all the modules you'd have 
to do, when you did them, but gave no details on what would be taught in 
them, or how they linked together etc. This is all information that I
would like to read before deciding on a course. I got a lot of this
information from my cousin who did the same course before me, but by the
time I started, the course had changed significantly from what he did.

Anyway, enough rambling!

- -- 
Chat ya later,

John.
- --
BOFH excuse #1: clock speed
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