ArsDigita University- a tuition-free program by MIT professors

ArsDigita University or ADU , was a tuition-free, one-year, intensive, on-site, post-baccalaureate program in computer science. The curriculum was based on the MIT undergraduate curriculum and most of the professors came from MIT.

 

Looks like a cluster f**k to me...

No employer or RA school would let you set foot inside the door based upon this "course". Besides, "Computer Science" is a totally worthless degree (unless you are an HR person who doesn't know any better, or, even worse, an academic). It's utterly irrelevant - all the real research and development is going on in industry, not academia. Schools are now "teaching" programming using abominations like C++ and Java.

How many compiler writers does the world need? Who really gives a c**p about discrete math? In almost 30 years in IT, I have only once needed to know how compilers work, and I have never used any of the 4 years' worth of Calculus that I studied.

I did, however, get to use knowledge I acquired in Economics, Finance, and Accounting. The most useful things that I learned in math were Boolean Algebra and Set Theory. It also doesn't hurt to learn the essentials of Statistics and Probability.

The most valuable skill that anyone can learn in any field is the ability to think logically, and express oneself clearly and unambiguously.



P.S I have a degree in Computer Science.

 

Well, I personally believe that no degree is totally worthless.. The degree itself (without the major) shows that you have a sense of commitment. A company may feel that you can apply those fine qualities that drove you through a degree program to a specific job that they are looking to fill.

Because your job doesn't require it, right? Mine doesn't either (some trig, a lot of basic statistics). There are some jobs that actually do require it (hardware engineering jobs come to mind). Depending on what they were working on, I am sure there are plenty of computer science majors that use high level mathematics in their job. That's why I personally think computer science is a great major; it is versatile. They can be IT guys for a business environment, or they can be a systems guy for some industrial equipment.

With all that said, you can have a BS in Gameboy and (provided you have the right experience) you could still land a particular job. Key point is (especially with mid-career professionals) doesn't really matter the specific major you pursue, just as long as you have the experience a potential employer would be interested in.

Bill

 

C.S. degree "worthless"?

OK, it's worth something when Tator Tots Consulting is padding out your resume for that $10 per hour job that they are about to "outsource" from some American company, but that's it.

Has anyone else noticed that NOTHING of any value has come out of academia in, let's say, 100 years or so? Who was the first professor to fly a working powered airplane? Or build a car?

Consider my specialty, databases. Who created the most advanced databases out there today, industry or academia? The answer is that academia's own institutions are using COMMERCIAL databases, such as Oracle, DB2/UDB, and even Microsoft SQL Server.

If all the world's professors vanished tomorrow, it would be a net gain for society.

 

Re: C.S. degree "worthless"?

God, you're bitter. Didn't you noticed that ALL commercial databases are based on pretty theoretical paper by Dr. Coad? Granted, he worked for IBM, but was an academic newertheless. Relational algebra and all, you know...
Let's see... Cisco router, BSD Unix (and it's TCP/IP stack "reused" by Microsoft), e-mail - all invented in academia. Your "speciality" - RDBMS - require pretty technical CS knowledge, and IBM, Oracle and even Microsoft people seem to be pretty good at it.

Even in industry, it does not pay to be THAT ignorant.

 

SQLPlus,

The reason why you have never had to use your knowledge in CS in your job is that you are so low in the IT food chain. In your role as a DBA, you are only one or two steps removed from an end user. This is not mean't as a put down (although admitedly it sounds like one). I used to work as a Database Developer and DBA myself (Oracle and DB2, with a little MS SQL Server on occasion). As you get into the more technical and bleeding edge aspects of the field, it will require more CS knowledge. Think of it this way, even as a DBA, your job is still primarily to utilize existing technology, not create new technology.

To be quite honest, the the DBA job does not require a degree in C.S. to perform one's duties. Infact, I would go so far as to say that most jobs in IT should not require a degree in C.S. a C.S curriculum teaches one much less about being a network administrator than a 6 month intensive cert course. Hell, when I started working in information security back in the 90's my tech experience consisted mostly of surfing the internet. I was able to bring myself up to speed pretty quickly just by reading books and online resources.

But in the areas of IT where you need CS knowledge, you REALLY need CS knowledge. Data Structures, Algorithms, Discrete Mathematics, Combinatorics, these are all esssential in some areas. Lets go back to databases for now, have you ever tried building an RDMS? Try doing it with no knowledge of Data Structures and Algorithms. Try even building the SQL interpreter without knowledge of formal languages.

You see, it doesn't take that much CS knowledge to use Oracle, and MS SQLServer. However it takes a ton of such knowledge to build Oracle and SQLServer.

Over the next year, I suspect that my work is going to lead me further into bioinformatics and medical informatics. Here determining if a polynominal time solution, as opposed to exponetional time solution, can be found for a particular problem will be of major importance. In fact I just used information from both my theory of computation class and my discrete math class in dealing with a problem at work today.


Jon

 

SQLPlus,

I apologize for using the term "low on the IT food chain". I was trying to find a better way to put it, and when I found one, I could no longer edit my messege on this board. What I meant to say was that on a spectrum with "next generation technology creator" at one end and "non-technical end user" at the other, a DBA's role is much closer to the end user side of the spectrum. DBA's often act as liasons between non-technical end users and the technology, as opposed to creating new technologies.

Jon

 

Re: Looks like a cluster f**k to me...

Uh, isn't that what one learns in a Discrete Mathematics course?

 

Re: Re: C.S. degree "worthless"?

OK, I did come across a bit harsh, and for that I apologize. I believe that the paper that you are referring to was the 1971 paper by Dr. Ted Codd. To be strictly accurate, not ALL commercial databases are based on this paper, only the relational ones. There are still plenty of non-relational databases out there, including IMS (hierarchical) from IBM, not to mention the object, network, and inverted list databases which are still chugging away in many companies.

 

Re: Re: Looks like a cluster f**k to me...

Not necessarily - I learned Boolean Algebra and Set Theory in high school as part of an Advanced Applied Math course. The Discrete Math class I took in college hardly touched on it. You may be right about other college classes, of course.

 

Obviously, no offense was meant and none taken. I agree with you that many DBA's are not especially technical, although you do need to know a great deal to run Oracle or DB2 efficiently. This is one more job that is at risk of offshoring, because many of the day-to-day functions of a DBA can be done remotely.

Actually, I am not primarily a DBA, although I have performed that role off and on for many years. I design and build large data warehouses (2+ TB) for analytical purposes. I am also heavily into data mining (e.g predictive modelling).

 

Re: Re: Re: C.S. degree "worthless"?

If you remove harshness, your whole point would be the fact that some positions in IT do not require CS degree. Wich is true. So?

You seem to be quite knowledgeable in CS, so you must know that when you complained about "no inventions from academia", your statement was simply not true. (I thought about another example - look at the "About" box in Microsoft Internet Explorer. I'm sure you don't even need to do so to know that it is based on Mosaic - developed in the University of Illinois). So what was it REALLY about?

 

Regarding the original topic of this thread:

The 1 year intensive post bac program was created in direct response to the HUGE disparity between supply and demand for software engineers during the dot com bubble. Many people with humanities and social science degrees (myself included) were desparately trying to figure out how to cross over to the tech field because of the amazing salaries being offered, but could not afford to spend 2-3 years on a second bachelors.

I don't know how that certificate would have been viewed in industry. My suspicions are that had the demad continued to be higher than the supply of programmers and engineers, enough businesses in the metro Boston area would have acccepted the credentials to employ the graduates. All of that became completely irrelevent once the bubble popped and businesses could pick and chose among actual CS graduates.

Today, I wouldn't accept any certificate as substitute for a degree. The market is just way too competitive to do so. Considering the problems with outsourcing now, I would say that one should only consider going into IT today (unless you live in India) if you really love the field. There are much better choices out there if you are looking for job security or high pay. Thankfully, I love the field so I don't mind as much.

As a side note, If you are trying to become self taught in computer science, their curriculum is a pretty good one (although I don't think it is identical to MIT's, but I could be wrong). I may consider getting copies of their lectures just as an additional resource.

Jon

 

CS Degree and its worth.

From my work experience, I have seen IT people who have had quite varied backgrounds: from anthropology to music to mythology. Some have quite an excellent grasp of the technology, programming, DB and/or web development but I have found many instances where I felt, thats why, you do need some understanding in CS. For instance, while coming up with a item arrangement problem for a web-site menu, I figured out that the optimal way would be to use a dynamic algorithm wich would be both aesthetically pleasing and computable. A person even with extensive knowledge on computer programming without a CS degree won't even know what dynamic programming would be and think it to be some sort of dynamic data structure like a list.

I think SQLPlus is upset about the current job market in general and thinks IT has gone to hell and people on their right mind should abandon studying it. Same thing we would probably say to someone who decides to major in Philosophy or Archeology: "what are you going to do with it?" But what about people who have the passion for it...

Some of us have passion for things and some of us can't really pick up a completely different thing just because its "hot" in the market and will get us the job.

Having said that, my background is BS in math and computer science...and I have been working in this field for about 7 years. I couldn't have done most things I do without adequate theoretical knowledge, at least not do it so well, besides it was my passion. Sure I don't use Calculus or Pumping Lemma in day to day work, but somewhere somehow that training and practice has helped me prepare for the kind of "mathematical/logical" problem I have to solve everyday.

 

Re: C.S. degree "worthless"?

I'm going to assume that we aren't talking about things like medical science, nanotech or microbiology. Or biochemisty. Or micropharmacology.

You just hate computer science? Or are liberal arts good for nothing either?

 

Re: CS Degree and its worth.

Very true. I took a few CS courses in undergrad, but no data structures and algorithms. I had been working in IT doing database and web app development for a few years when I decided to get a masters in IT. I had to teach myself data structures and algorithms as a prerequisite for the program. While I was studying it I was shocked that I had gone so long in the field without knowing this information. I was using recursive algorithms when a dynamic programming solution would have been much simpler and faster. I was doing exhuastive searches when a greedy algorithm would have provided me with the optimal solution. I was using all this extranious code to manipulate arrays in a manner that poorly mimiced the results of more appropriate data structures which I either did not know existed or didn't know how to impliment.

Jon

 

Re: Re: C.S. degree "worthless"?

Most of the significant advances in these fields have been made by commercial enterprises, such as the widely-hated pharmaceutical companies or research labs that they fund.

I don't hate CS, I just want people to know that it's irrelevant for 99% of the jobs in the IT field. As for the "liberal arts", yes, I do believe that 99% of that field is totally worthless. I have met university professors in "liberal arts" who were utterly ignorant and uneducated outside their own extremely narrow academic area of study. If I tried to engage them in conversation about politics, philosophy, history, art, theatre, music, and on and on..., they were clueless. Maybe I picked the wrong colleges...

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: C.S. degree "worthless"?

Mosaic was a response to the invention of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee (yes, an academic!) at CERN, which is a multi-government-funded organization in Switzerland (the European Center for Nuclear Research).

The Windows GUI concept that Microsoft "borrowed" from Apple was originally "borrowed" from Xerox Parc. Many other ideas that are now mainstream came from Bell Labs and IBM. I am still waiting for someone to come up with one MAJOR advance in computer science that came from academia and that is now mainstream IT. Even COBOL was developed by the US Navy!
Relational databases - IBM
Object Oriented programming - Xerox Parc (by way of Simula 67 from Scandinavia, and Smalltalk from Alan Kay of Apple)
C++ - Bell Labs
Java - Sun
..........

 

Re: Re: Re: C.S. degree "worthless"?

No, the commerical enterprises take over after the academic fields have done the down and dirty, not glamorous work. Look at the millions being spent on Alzheimer's reseach at the University of South Florida and University of Ohio. The research has been on going for over 10 years with less than 10% of the funds coming from private companies.

When something viable and potenially profitable comes out of it, and it will, then the private sector takes over. That is almost always how research has worked.

On the liberal arts front, I think our definition of useless might be completely different. The liberal arts produces teachers who produce students in all the fields we are discussing. Those professors and students also creat great works of art, interesting works on civilization, history and sociology. They have made breakthoughs in criminology and archeology. They have written great novels and poems.

As far as IT, I agree. I have been a DBA for years, for three different companies and have no formal training. When computers started in retail stories in 1981 I was just good with figuring out computers and teaching other people to do it.

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: C.S. degree "worthless"?

Easy, the von Neumann architecture for computers. Considering the fact that virtually every computer in the world uses this architecture, I would say that it is in mainstream IT.


Almost all of the advancements which you mentioned share 2 things in common. First, most of them were developed by people with very extensive formal academic training. Second, many of them are based on theories and discoveries made in academia.

The goal of academia is to discover new knowledge, not create new products. It is the responsibilty of business to take those discoveries and turn them into products that society finds useful, thats how they get the big bucks .

Take google as an example. It has a great search engine, with proprietary algorithms for text searching. However, there are 2 things that I am absolutely positive about. The first is that many of the people that google employs to enhance those algorithms are PhDs in mathematics and CS. The second is that a significant part of there algorithms are based on algorithm discoveries made by academia which were published in journals and taught at schools.

Jon