[PRL] The latest from Joel

[Matthias Felleisen]

Felix, Joel is right for the wrong reasons. You're wrong in some 
details, too:

On Dec 29, 2005, at 7:11 PM, Felix S Klock II wrote:

> Mitch-
>
> [RANT #1:]
>
> Joel is a lazy interviewer.

No he is not. How would you pose the following question to people who 
don't know about C/C++ and unsafe programming:

You are linking your Java application to a foreign library written in a 
language called C++. It runs just fine but all of a sudden your 
application stops running, your screen goes all blue, and lo and 
behold, your computer has to be rebooted. What went wrong?

> Joel correctly identifies the real goal here: programmers need a 
> "certain ability to reason, to think in abstractions, and, most 
> importantly, to view a problem at several levels of abstraction 
> simultaneously."  But then he makes the conclusion that because an 
> all-Java degree leaves out pointers and recursion, it has left out 
> those other capabilities as well.  That is totally ridiculous; the 
> school, not the language, is to blame for this.

Sure in a sense you're correct. But the fact that they went all Java 
just shows that the faculty is all wobbly. The typical faculty is 
spineless, gutless and doesn't wish to stand up to the freshmen who 
know everything; the NSF/ACM diktat that we must have more women now; 
and other such crap. Going all Java is a symptom of just this culture.

How many still claim that programming matters? It's under attack too 
(see CACM), and I promise you will see many people flip, real soon now.

> Umm, what's the big problem with not hiring the student either way?

You're right, he shouldn't. But here is a problem. The top schools get 
the top students, those who have already shown that they are creative 
and resourceful. Now they get trained in the Java/Eclipse monoculture 
as I have been calling it for a while now. The country as a whole, the 
parents in particular, have invested close to $200K in them for their 
education and, from his point of view, the value of this education 
isn't the same as ten years ago. Yet industry is expected to pay ever 
more for ever less trained students.

Why shouldn't a well-meaning guy express regrets? I express these 
regrets. I hate to send my jobs overseas when their are perfectly 
talented kids around here but they are just too badly trained. The 
competitive pressures just won't let me go any other way.

But in the end I agree with you. Don't hire the kid. Look for schools 
like NU and Brown and Rice and Chicago and WPI and Utah that still hold 
up the banner.

The more people think like Joel the better for our students.

-- Matthias