Thou shalt have no other gods before the ANSI C standard 1453

Hank Oredson

I spent half my working life in industry and half in academia, in Computer Science, so I'm well qualified to be negative about both.

I'll start with Academic CS.

First, what's wrong with it: For many people it's self-absorbtion and total lack of interest in the industry. Most of these people come from a math background - it seems CS jobs are a refuge for mathematicians who are not quite good enough to get tenure in math depts, but their publication records often look better than real CS applicants. They work on problems that have no revelance to real computing (like just how impossible something already known to be impossible is).

OTOH there are many good people who do work in relevant areas, but who do not communicate well with industry types, who think they are just weird. Much of BAH's beloved OS development is based on their work, in memory management, process synchronisation, etc. I'm not sure this is really "Science", but like any engineering, it depends on science, at least on mathematics, for its validation and acceptance.

Industry people, apart from those in research labs and some able specialists, mostly don't even begin to understand what CS people do. They, insofar as they are interested in anything to do with their work, are interested in solving business problems at a level of generality that ignores anything technical, while the managers aren't even interested in that. The pracbreastioners say that you don't need to know how a car works to be able to drive, and the managers don't even need to be able to drive - they can hire the necessary skills. It's no wonder that communication between industry and academia is poor.

One might expect that academics who work in business schools, in departments with names like "Information Systems" might bridge this gap. My old Dept has made some joint appointments with IS to aid this, but it really isn't effective. To my mind the problem is cultural. The IS people's research work is mostly sociology, and the two groups don't understand eachother any better than they understand industry people.

The best thing about a.f.c is that there are lots of people who are pracbreastioners who break the mould, who do understand and even love the technology, and some academics-researchers who understand the other side.

I wonder where the superpeople with science, engineering, craft and language skills are going to come from. CS is too narrow, or rather, the typical undergraduate program does not have time or space for essential material. The more practical courses I've seen are so geared to the details of current technology that they leave people totally unprepared for real future professional development. I hope the answer lies with the engineering schools, as they gradually recognise computing as an engineering discipline, and build programs that reflect engineering culture, and are long and deep enough to cover everything. But with a totally unregulated industry that hires kids long before they have completed their formal education, and lacks any standards of professionalism or responsibility, I'm not optimistic that change will occur. :-(

--brian

-- Brian Boutel Wellington, New Zealand