A kid I know graduated last year with a degree in "Systems Engineering" from one of the best-known public universities (at least on the east coast). And he did fairly well.
He disliked his first job and has been job hunting. He went to a technical interview last week and they asked him to write a small program to read in a string of characters - all 1's and 0' - and convert it into binary and then display the ASCII text. He failed it. He asked me to explain it to him, which I did and we made it work (well, I gave him pseudo-code and made HIM make it work), but it turned out that he had no real concept of binary. It had never come up in his schooling and he said what he read on Google didn't help. HAH. In later conversation he told me he got through most of his degree and his first job by finding code on the web and minimally adapting it to his needs - never understanding what some of it did. I just had to shake my head. Regards, Michael B. Smith Consultant and Exchange MVP http://TheEssentialExchange.com -----Original Message----- From: Kurt Buff [mailto:kurt.b...@gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 2010 9:30 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Big Changes Ahead for IT - Anyone seen this? That's rich. A series of bald statements that the world as we know it will end, with no evidence. Somewhat apropos of this, the current (June 2010) issue of ;login magazine has an article titled "Programming with Technological Ritual and Alchemy" and is well worth a read. It's an observation by a CS professor who notes that his current students are much less inclined to actually understand the way things work, and to simply produce mashups, according to some ill-defined rituals. It's a fascinating read. Kurt On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 20:51, Angus Scott-Fleming <angu...@geoapps.com> wrote: > Sometimes you have to wonder ... > > -----------------------fwd------------------ > ============= Included Stuff Follows ============= Big Changes Ahead > for IT - Anyone seen this? - Spiceworks Community > > This link comes from eWeeks Editor's Pick newsletter. The article > is > titled: "Radical Reductions in IT Workforce Ahead" > By Edward Cone, CIO Insight > May 21, 2010 > > Jobs may move to other areas of the company, be outsourced--or just > go away. READ MORE... > > ============= Included Stuff Ends ============= More here with links: > http://web.eweek.com/t?r=2&c=24763&l=23&ctl=739AC:1A76A774489FFA8BAB70 > 058F2260 825E&kc=EWKNLEDP05212010A > > Part of what they are trying to indicate in these slides is that > less than > 25% of today's IT workforce will remain by 2015, IT CIO's and those > working in IT overall will be less in charge of their destiny, and > IT > activities will devolve to business units and will become > consolidated > with other departments like HR, Finance, etc. Almost everyone will > be a > knowledged worker and will in many ways be able to use and deploy > IT apps > and technology. > > Wow, I can't wait! I especially love slide # .... > -------------------- end of forward --------------------- > http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/99492?page=1 > -- > Angus Scott-Fleming > GeoApps, Tucson, Arizona > 1-520-290-5038 > Security Blog: http://geoapps.com/ > > > > > > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ > <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
