Depends.

Post #109,084 by admin 7/10/03 6:40:06 PM Reply	Depends. Ask him a question about finite state automata. Or information theory. He'll probably pass. A Master's (or a Bachelor's for that matter) only says that you took a bunch of (mostly) theoretical courses and passed them. It says absolutely nothing about how a particular person does in any particular programming language. One more reason to use a degree only as the last tiebreaker. Regards, -scott anderson "Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
Post #109,085 by Yendor 7/10/03 6:46:39 PM Reply	Agreed. When I was an undergrad at UT-Austin, I programmed better (note: rose-colored undergraduate glasses worn) than more than a few of my TAs. Reason for this is that UT was mainly a research university. The TAs only were TAs because they needed the money, not really because they were interested in actually programming anything useful. That's one reason that I swore I would never get my MS in CS. It's all a bunch of hooey when it attempts to get applied to anything but a research project. -YendorMike [link\|http://www.hope-ride.org/\|http://www.hope-ride.org/]
Post #109,153 by gdaustin 7/11/03 12:22:37 AM 7/11/03 12:37:46 AM Reply	Not buying it... But even researchers need to be able to write a decent program once in a while. While I was at Texas A&M as a BBA Undergrad, I: 1. Wrote a Lotus 1-2-3 "chain" of spreadsheets which allowed the Dean of Liberal Arts College to keep track of expenses for each department, then summarize them into a College Spreadsheet. It was so good, the education department wanted the same, but I didn't have time to do it and pass school. 2. Wrote a Turbo Pascal program to allow for data entry on an IBM-PC, which interacted with the user and asked polling questions. As the questions were asked, the answers were validated against the possible answers, AND it wrote punch card image records, so the data could be uploaded to a mainframe. It even validated the data, by allowing a 2nd person to re-enter the data and it would compare 1st data entry to second. The polls were originally entered from forms (paper), but later they ditched the forms and used the program itself as the polling. The results were so accurate, they didn't feel they needed the 2nd pass of data entry. They used the program for 5 years after I graduated (6 years total) and quit using it when they needed a large record size than the fixed record size that was originally written into the program. Sadly, I had long moved into the working world, and all that was needed was to change a constant in the top of the program and rebuild it. 3. Worked on a mondo SAS program which maintained the profiles of heroin addicts and their recidivism rate. The data was depressing, but it was the largest SAS program I ever worked with. It was HUGE! 4. Fixed a sociology professor's Pascal program on VAX, which was overwritting results with the same file name. I created a version of the program which created unique files for each "instance" of the program (when multiple people were running the program at the same time) and then the grad student could merge the files to do his research. 5. Finally, I started (but never finished) a program to read a Lotus 1-2-3 data file, and then print out data to a standard pre-printed form. By the time I was close to having it working, someone finally purchased a product for about $500. I would say, all in all, I had the most FUN working on these in college. Much more fun than schoolwork. My experience at UT Southwestern in 1997/1998 as an employee was much the same. I enjoyed the collegiate environment, and the opportunity to work with "new" technology, and the atmosphere. But neither job paid well! Now, I like my job much LESS, but I get paid much MORE. I dream of being able to return to an environment like that, maybe someday when money matters a lot less. Right now, with 3 kids, the money matters, and jobs aren't so much fun. Glen Austin Edited by gdaustin July 11, 2003, 12:33:49 AM EDT Edited by gdaustin July 11, 2003, 12:37:46 AM EDT Expand All History
Post #109,159 by Yendor 7/11/03 12:59:35 AM Reply	And I'm not buying yours... While I was at Texas A&M as a BBA Undergrad, I: Emphasis mine. Big difference between undergrad and grad student. And "employee" != "TA" either. As grad students, TAs have their own research projects going on, and that is infinitely more interesting to them than the work they are forced to slog through as a TA. -YendorMike [link\|http://www.hope-ride.org/\|http://www.hope-ride.org/]
Post #109,187 by gdaustin 7/11/03 8:28:00 AM Reply	I'm saying that a Computer Science or MIS Grad Student SHOULD be able to write a simple C/C++ function like the problem described above. I know they may be more interested in their research, but that's part of the problem with academia these days. Not much of it has to do with the "real world". Glen Austin
Post #109,189 by Arkadiy 7/11/03 8:45:08 AM Reply	This is not a friggin' function! This is an algorithm, more fundamental than quicksort in some way. I asked him to remove elements that match certain condition from the array, shift the rest of elements to the left and reset the array's size. If he can't recognize the algorithm or implement it, he is in trouble. -- Less Is More. In my book, About Face, I introduce over 50 powerful design axioms. This is one of them. --Alan Cooper. The Inmates Are Running the Asylum
Post #109,474 by a6l6e6x 7/13/03 2:14:06 PM Reply	Yep, the guy doesn't understand null terminated strings. A very basic C construct. Alex The tendency to turn human judgements into divine commands makes religion one of the most dangerous forces in the world. -- Georgia Harkness in "Conflicts in Religious Thought" (1929)
Post #109,491 by Ashton 7/13/03 8:51:38 PM Reply	Is that like the element which connotes "Social Security Benefits" with a maturation date a few years downstream from the present regime's tenure? IANAP but, sounds like a working example of a null terminated string. Just sorta feels right. (I guess this is the problem of learning programming n'stuff using a Dissembler) Ashton
Post #109,492 by Arkadiy 7/13/03 8:54:16 PM Reply	Nope, that's null-terminated chain. -- Less Is More. In my book, About Face, I introduce over 50 powerful design axioms. This is one of them. --Alan Cooper. The Inmates Are Running the Asylum
Post #109,494 by ben_tilly 7/13/03 8:58:22 PM Reply	Nope NUL is ASCII character 0, in C and C++ is put at the end of a string, kind of like a door stopper, to indicate where the string ends. If you don't understand this, you don't know what text is in C. If you don't know that, good luck in getting any text manipulation to work... Cheers, Ben "good ideas and bad code build communities, the other three combinations do not" - [link\|http://archives.real-time.com/pipermail/cocoon-devel/2000-October/003023.html\|Stefano Mazzocchi]
Post #109,500 by FuManChu 7/13/03 9:23:22 PM Reply	Oh, is THAT how you reverse-engineer Microsoft code? With a Dissembler? :D I'm gonna go build my own theme park! With Blackjack! And hookers! In fact, forget the park!
Post #109,089 by Arkadiy 7/10/03 7:19:17 PM Reply	Next time I see someone like that, I'll try. I have very low hopes, though, because somebody who coded in C++ and was too lazy to learn how arrays and "delete" work, was probably too lazy to learn any theory either. -- Less Is More. In my book, About Face, I introduce over 50 powerful design axioms. This is one of them. --Alan Cooper. The Inmates Are Running the Asylum
Post #109,256 by tuberculosis 7/11/03 12:45:05 PM Reply	Next time you see someone like that please shoot him in the back* on his way out of the office so the rest of us won't have to deal with these wannabes. I mean, there are qualified people who need jobs - lets try to give them some help. *void where prohibited by law
Post #109,128 by Simon_Jester 7/10/03 10:25:10 PM Reply	Also depends on the College Had one instructor (back when I was going to UCF) who graduated from University of Texas (at Austin)...he knew those State Machines (he was good at them). He didn't know what the hell PKZIP was (or why one would use it to turn in code that was larger than 1.44 M on a floppy). (BTW: if the kid is claiming 5 years experience ... in particular C++ experience...ask him why the hell he didn't use the STL?)
Post #109,190 by Arkadiy 7/11/03 8:46:32 AM Reply	He did not use STL because of the way I posed the question Before you're allowed to use STL, you have to understand what's under the hood. -- Less Is More. In my book, About Face, I introduce over 50 powerful design axioms. This is one of them. --Alan Cooper. The Inmates Are Running the Asylum
Post #109,194 by Simon_Jester 7/11/03 9:00:22 AM Reply	ah - now I understand You're looking at his thinking and problem-solving abilities. (And I agree, if you should understand what STL is doing underneath the hood before you use it.)

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