The idea definitely has potential. The current market they are targeting is the best setting for this kind of application. A bunch of horny college students in a confined location, i.e. a campus. If the founders manage things right I think they could turn this into a great platform for developers and advertisers and this comes at just the right time because everyone and their gandma at this point has a location aware mobile device.
For years I've heard the argument that Mathematics should be Maths (being Australian). That's the first time any one has made a sensible argument (to me) for the alternative.
I've never heard anyone call Gymnastics "Gyms". :P
Interestingly, in Spanish and French the unambiguously plural terms 'las matemáticas' and 'les mathématiques' are commonly used, so the 's' in 'mathematics' may be of a different kind than that in 'gymnastics' or 'economics'.
"Code" by Charles Petzold is a wonderful book about how computers work and it covers pretty much everything but in a way that is accessible to anyone who understand basic algebra.
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If they were IT majors they'd probably be able to browse porn without getting their computers infected, or at least fix their computers if they did get infected. Different people have different areas of expertise. An IT major couldn't write a 2500 word critique on Kant if their life depended on it.
>An IT major couldn't write a 2500 word critique on Kant if their life depended on it.
I can, but that's because I did a philosophy degree before entering CS. At any rate, I still can't believe how many people get viruses from porn. With the proliferation of tube sites, you don't need to download anything. AdBlock takes care of malware-serving ads. You pretty much have to fall for the "this video requires a codec. Click here to download" bullshit. I get that some people can barely google, but it depresses me that there's enough of them to make it worthwhile for people to write viruses.
> You pretty much have to fall for the "this video requires a codec. Click here to download" bullshit.
The less knowledgeable ones fall for the "codec" bit. Those who have been bitten fall for the "your security software needs updating" bit. I've helped plenty of friends and acquaintances, but they're fighting an uphill battle because they don't stay up to date with their knowledge of the new scams.
I even taught a class on this stuff at the library for a while (I was volunteering for the group giving classes, but I created the internet security one on my own). Take it as optimistic or pessimistic if you want, but everything I did was but a drop in the ocean. Still, at least it's my drop.
Certainly, no one is denying this but people often stick to a single paradigm and tout it as the best thing since slice bread. People often make claims without any backing and since the argument is about programming languages it should be really easy to back up claims with actual working code. It's hard to argue with code that compiles and does what its creator claims it does.
i find most of the 'pro-dynamic' stuff to be kind of well... not very impressive. and i say that as someone who primarily uses 'dynamic' languages. to be the big win for dynamic languages is the ability to debugger driven development but many dynamic languages don't have a debugger that will allow you to do that. i never really understood the power that 'dynamic' gives you until i started using lisp and smalltalk environments. ruby, as an example, is nice- i use it all the time- but it doesn't have the same power as a smalltalk or lisp w/ a serious dev environment- and that has nothing to do with the typing system.
with smalltalk, i can write a test, have it fail and from the debugger, add my needed classes, add instance variables, change variable values, check state, move back to previous points in the stack and restart after making those changes and continue on my way. once you've tried it, it is a very addictive and pain free way to develop. just doing dynamic typing doesn't give you that. it requires much more, in the end that is what really interests me. i find that to be far more of a productivity boost day to day than the stuff that these static vs dynamic arguments usually turn on.
As to people who stick to a single paradigm and tout it as the best thing since sliced bread well... except when I get a little cranky I don't have much use for that and try to tune it out as background noise.
This seems a bit unfair to people who learned programming by way of web development and tinkering with scripting languages because it seems to assume the usual undergrad CS course load.
Why do you feel that's unfair? If you've only ever done Ruby on Rails, never wrote any algorithmic code and never done any algorithm course, you will indeed score low in the "Computer Science" section. Apparently you managed without those skills, but that doesn't mean that the assessment is not accurate.
Not what I meant. I'm familiar with several dozen languages and I try to get acquainted with at least one topic and programming language outside my comfort zone every six months. I've been keeping with this routine for about 3 years now and what I've realized is that almost all those things he mentions have absolutely nothing to do with being a good programmer. There are certain meta-cognitive patterns that are far more relevant for being a good programmer and it's hard to gauge these meta-cognitive abilities by just running through a grid of requirements.
But if you're filling a RoR web development position does it matter?
Yes, it most certainly does. In the long run, the developer with the better grasp of fundamentals (e.g., discrete maths, data structures, algorithms and so on) will produce better code. NB, I'm not saying that the "naive" web coder can't produce good code. Nor am I implying that CS education always makes you a better developer. On average, however, that's exactly the case.
The fact that people with a CS education are better coders does not imply that the CS education made them better coders. Without more evidence it's just as likely that people who are, or will become, good coders anyways tend to get CS educations. Do you have any evidence besides correlation that a CS education makes you a better web developer?
I guess you're either asking one of two questions, both which seem strange:
1) Do you receive magic fairy dust during college that makes you more productive and removes bugs from your code? No, I don't think so.
2) Will someone who knows the things taught in a typical 4-year undergraduate CS education be a better web developer? Obviously (?) yes; you can look at any of them and clearly see that they are good things to know. Will you point to some particular thing that you think is useless? Let me list some that seem reasonable for a lot of web development: non-trivial data structures, for understanding databases; experience with multiple languages; continuation-passing style; general system and network architecture (e.g. the OSI model) -- and so on.
I wasn't arguing that CS fundamentals wouldn't make you a better developer. I was just asking for better evidence than a mere assertion, which you provided by citing specific examples. So, thanks, that's informative.
You'd be surprised at how often a cleverly chosen data structure or algorithm can improve a web app. For instance, where I work our frontend code uses tries, heaps, and other data structures (and using these makes the user experience noticeably and measurably better than using slower data structures).
Just because a person "learned programming by way of web development" does not give them any excuse for not understanding fundamentals. Just because modern dynamic frameworks abstract away lots of "hard" stuff does not mean that your dreams wont come crashing down without any understanding of computational complexity theory etc.
> Just because modern dynamic frameworks abstract away lots of "hard" stuff does not mean that your dreams wont come crashing down without any understanding of computational complexity theory etc.
Your post is missing any supporting arguments for this claim.
I know a lot of 'Rails guys' and their dreams certainly aren't crashing down. If anything, they enjoy their lives more because their programming education has been focused on making things, before making things fast.
Conversely, there's a lot of guys with CS degrees who ended up jaded with the idea of making things and became Unix admins, mid-level managers, or PMs.
>Your post is missing any supporting arguments for this claim.
We all know rails has problems with scale, and that these problems can be overcome. The way to overcome these problems is through optimal and performant coding/data-storage patterns, and to practice these one requires knowledge of CS-type matters.
Now Rails or Rails-esque apps obviously will not encounter these issues until they reach a certain size. Therefore unless one has the requisite CS-style acumen, one's projects have a cap on their maximum success/popularity.
Assuming that when we say "dreams" we are referring to hackers' projects becoming big and successful and popular, (thats what everyone around here seems to dream about,) they will not be realized without someone around who knows their big O from their divide and conquer.
All languages have problems with scale, including C and Java, which most programmers don't know how to deal with either.
If you can make something (or likely many things, quickly) you can be lucky enough to get the point where scale is a problem. At which point you can pick up these skills where you need them - they're not difficult, especially if they directly apply to a problem domain you're working on rather than a arbitrary one.
The Rails guys I know who these issues typically end up with a quick move to JRuby and pick up what they need.
If you can't make something quickly, all the premature optimization won't help you with the problems you'll never have.
I'm afraid I might have misunderstood you, but you seem to believe that having a reasonable understanding of compsci counts as premature optimization, and is therefore somewhere between "a waste of time" and "actively harmful". Is that the case? Or are you playing devil's advocate? Or what?
I would rather hire someone who has made more apps than someone who has excellent knowledge of algorithms but has made no apps. Would you?
This is rather a false dichotomy, isn't it? Who can obtain "excellent" knowledge of algorithms without ever making anything? Very few people can learn so much without ever doing.
Nobody is suggesting that it's better to not make something than to make something. The real suggestion is that it's better to make something good that you won't have to throw out later than to make something substandard, born of ignorance. Having reasonable background knowledge about algorithms, data structures, and architecture makes it much easier to get it right than if you're solving those problems as you come to them.
Its not a false dichotomy at all. Don Knuth hasn't made a successful product, the original stated goal of TeX (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX) was never achieved and most folk who require typesetting neither use the product or know of its existence. Knuth's knowledge of algorithms is excellent, but try and submit a usability bug for TeX like it was a real product. Academics focus on very specific areas of computing, sometimes at the expense of broader knowledge. If I had a web app to make, I'd hire the rails guy that had made a successful app before I'd hire Knuth.
> Nobody is suggesting that it's better to not make something than to make something.
Certainly. But they do focus on optimization as the core of programming. It isn't - turning logical problems into code - aka, making programs - is.
I'll take your word for it with TeX; I use LaTeX and I know other people who have, but I don't know what professional authors or publishers use for typesetting.
However, I think your specific example doesn't reflect the argument I imagined you making. Your comparison is someone smart who doesn't know the tools (Ruby, Rails, Javascript) with someone who knows them well. If it were a short project, at least, I agree with you; I'd probably take the guy who knows the tools.
It's not even the tools, it's things like iterating quickly, having working code, good deployment tools, understanding of usability, etc. Nobody has an unlimited amount of time. And sometimes the people who kick ass at algorithms don't give a damn about anything else (and if they're academics that fine). The 'Rails guys' won't have their dreams crushed by performance issues. They'll learn what they need - in fact, since most web app performance is IO bound that's often the first thing they learn to optimise.
I've been educated in two different countries and the obsession that the US schools have at every level with segregating and separating students never ceases to surprise me. Administrators are so obsessed with the metrics used to perform this separation that they are no longer doing any real educating and are instead developing more and more arbitrary rules for separating students. If you don't believe me then I point you to the profits being made in making standardized tests. The solution is simple but it leaves a lot of educational pundits and standardized test makers out in the cold. Everyone is held to the same standards gifted or not with the caveat that special education still chugs along as it does today.
I didn't say anything about penalizing people. If you are so gifted that you can take college courses in 7th grade then be my guest but you'd be surprised to know that in most other nations what people learn in 6th and 7th grades is what the US students learn in 11th and 12th grades. The point is that educators should be focused on educating instead of providing a custom tailored product to suit the prevailing political climate in order to funnel more dollars to their school's districts. Removing all the testing and separation and holding everyone to the same standards makes it much easier to apportion tax dollars in a fair way. Currently there are so many bureaucratic layers and so many constantly changing rules that by the time textbooks are published they are already out of date and new ones have to be ordered for the next school year. Obviously this only benefits the book publishers who are more than happy to reprint materials sometimes even different materials for adjoining states and get paid for it.
It's not enough to just let students take the classes at their level; you also have to offer them classes at their pace. The 5th grader who's ready for algebra is probably capable of finishing the course in a third of the time that it would take a 9th grader who is taking algebra at the usual age for US students (at least, that was the case for me and the cohort of segregated gifted students I was in).
Offering special classes for gifted students can also help solve a lot of problems stemming from disparities in emotional and academic maturity, or offer instructors the chance to provide greater depth or branch out beyond the standard curriculum.
How far are you going to atomize the students? Grade level, proper pacing, emotional development, what else? The logistics of what you are suggesting is simply impossible. I have been involved in the education space and I know people that are still in it. If we had more resources and a lot more teachers then providing a customized education experience for students would be possible but the system is simply not there and won't be there for a very long time because everyone is focused on making the system more and more convoluted. There is no push to simplify and streamline standards and processes because there is more money to be gained from making things convoluted. The problem is that politicians treat it as a business and consider tax dollars spent on it as an investment and naturally they want to see a return on this investment so they start to measure things which almost always ends up being the wrong way to approach the problem because an education is a holistic process and treating it in six month chunks makes no sense whatsoever.
Well, it's going to have to be something other than "Keep doing the same thing but throw more money at it."
What about scrapping about 80% of the curriculum and returning to an apprentice system as a serious career path? Does teaching "item A" in the curriculum really matter if the resulting system still churns out 90% of its graduates who don't know or can't do A? What about really deeply integrating computers, in a way that isn't just "Keep doing what we're doing, but throw more computers at it?" What about any of these things but different for different children?
I don't really know what the answer is, but I observe that it simply can't be "keep doing what we're doing". The entire world has changed a lot in the past few decades and schools are starting to look distinctly 19th century. Not a typo. And I don't mean that the answer is "add lots of shiny technology" necessarily, but this factory mentality has got to go and I don't know that we can get there by incremental change.
"How far am I going to atomize the students?" Why, until they are what they actually are again: Individuals.
Who are you quoting? Is it me? If it is how did you infer I propose doing the same thing but with more money? In fact I'm advocating the opposite. Currently the move is towards more and more customized education and it's not working out well at all. The whole thing is so convoluted that whenever a student ends up learning something people have no idea if it was because of their efforts or some other factor so moving towards even more customized education is going to make things worse not better. Also, in the future please refrain from putting words in my mouth if you were indeed quoting me.
Obviously I wasn't quoting you. Your text was right there and clearly did not include those phrases. Quotes can also be used grammatically to turn a phrase into something that can then be commented on as a phrase, rather than as direct speech of the speaker. This is why the Lisp quote operator is called what it is, for instance, it is doing the same thing.
I may overuse it, but, well, I'm just very comfortable with that usage. Sometimes it's just what is called for.
I agree - universities often (depending on your degree) allow you the freedom to choose courses of various difficulty across various faculties to suit your interests and skills. This doesn't seem like a massive extension of that.
How are you comparing public schools to universities? First of all each state has maybe a dozen universities but it has a hundred or more school districts, in some larger states, each with at least a dozen schools. The complexity of managing public schools is on a completely different level and saying universities do it so why can't public schools is way too simplistic.
A school has an entire staff of administrators and teachers, and they can't manage to allow students to choose their own courses rather than pre-allocating them?
Of course, there's going to be some toxic DNA sitting in the sequences they are making, and it will be to the advantage of the bacteria to spit it out, they will find a way to do it with recombinases, even the ones with the most pernicious recombinase (recA) knocked out.
