On Sep 30, 2005, at 11:35 AM, Ethan Rutter wrote:
In practice it's been far easier for us to bring a mathematician up to
speed on good practices in our development environment (which is only
used in the semiconductor field...Grapheq anyone? CELLman?) than to
teach CS types how to analyze and solve problems...something the
math/eng has been learning all along. I suppose we may also be using
the term "software engineer" a bit differently. A lot of companies
throw around the term rather loosely when what they really mean is
developer or programmer. We're looking for people who can not only
design/develop but who also have a real tack toward engineering...the
best ones have a math/science major and either a minor or significant
coursework (i.e., much more than just a class in C/C++) in CS.
Don't misunderstand. I'm not bashing CS departments or students, and
for other specialized functions we do hire primarily those types
(e.g., sys admins, dba). In our automation environment the major
constraints aren't physical (e.g., RAM, HD access, CPU availability,
network volume/speed) but logical. The CS types we've seen may be
*great* at taking an already solved problem and coming up with the
best possible implementation for it. We need folks who can solve the
problem to begin with.
[Note to Americans who are afraid of outsourcing and jobs moving
offshore: most of the Asian and Indian/Pakistani CS candidates have
been much better. Not cheaper. Better. But then, they already knew
calculus coming out of high school. The rest of the world really gets
math and physics...why's it so hard for us?]
It's not; this is in large part a myth. It's usually the stronger
people that make their way to the US, and they have already survived a
brutally-competitive winnowing process. The US is plenty strong in
mathematics and mathematics education; indeed, US universities have
been overproducing postgrads in mathematics and science for many years.
--------------
Charles Yeomans
_______________________________________________
Unsubscribe or switch delivery mode:
<http://www.realsoftware.com/support/listmanager/>
Search the archives of this list here:
<http://support.realsoftware.com/listarchives/lists.html>
|