At 2011-10-13 11:42 -0700, Ken North wrote:
>> In the '50's, computer science did not exist officially at the
>>science-intensive institution of MIT
Although the ACM was founded in 1947, the first student chapter wasn't formed
until 1960.
I once took an assembly language programming class that was taught by someone
who'd been programming computers in the 1950s.
His descriptions of that era sounded as though programmers were members of a
small select group or club. He knew a 'member' in El Paso, a few in
Boston and
D.C. and so on. It sounded like there were so few that he knew most people in
the US who were programming.
How many computers were there?
The IBM 1401, introduced in 1958, was IBM's most popular mid-sized
computer. IBM
sold 13,000 over the next eight years.
A 1401 was the first computer I programmed on ... in FORTRAN 4
(WATFIV) ... I still remember the day: June 30, 1971. I can't
believe that was over 40 years ago.
I don't have a PhD, and for my undergraduate degree I didn't do very
well in any of the classes related to grammars and parsing and such
because I was more interested in real-time programming and
programming languages.
But I did learn "how to learn computer science (and other topics)"
and I did learn "how to apply what you learn in computer science (and
other topics)" and I've had a successful career in XML because of
having those skills to get me started. I graduated before SGML was
finalized and didn't hear about SGML until 10 years after it was standardized.
I still don't how to write XML processors or XSLT processors
"properly" from scratch, but I know how to apply them and get results
for my customers. I like to think some of my accomplishments for my
customers and for my standards volunteer work in the XML arena would
have earned me a PhD somewhere for original thinking of how to use
these technologies, though I'll never know and I wouldn't want that
bubble burst so please don't tell me I'm wrong to think that.
I think demonstrated "ability to learn" is more important than a
shopping list of "computer languages I've read in the
past". Academia isn't the only place where one learns how to learn,
but I'm probably disposed to think a graduate has had more guidance
in doing so.
I can't expect a graduate (or non-graduate) to know an XML vocabulary
I've just published publicly as part of a standard, but I can expect
them, whatever their background, to figure out what it does and how
to work with it.
. . . . . . . . . . . . Ken
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