Trust me…

Why indeed? Stroustrup, new developers and accreditation.

In software development there’s not many times that you can disagree with Bjarne Stroustrup but I’m not sure I agree with his article “What Should We Teach New Software Developers? Why?”

I agree that the teaching in Universities isn’t aimed at industry enough and that some things just aren’t taught enough, well emphasized enough perhaps. At university I was taught Java in what seems to me now an awful way, teaching procedural programming in the Java language is just not sane - especially to extend it four weeks later to full OO and expect everyone to start writing properly structured programs. Code style was never taught, and efficiency wasn’t top of anyone’s priorities. It was all geared to getting the job done - a typical attitude in research.

However I consider myself a reasonable developer, I can write tidy efficient code - even in c++ - so I must have learnt it somewhere, which must be either in my own time or work (I think both have played their part) and it wouldn’t take much to add it to the material covered in the programming courses. However teaching things like Unit testing, effective code review technique and build systems just won’t happen at university, these things have to be learnt on the job, no one is going to take the unit testing course if they can pick robotics are they?

As for his suggestion that there should be some form of accreditation for Software engineers, well he can sit in his tower saying all of that but some of us struggle to make it through University financially - having to take a whole set of accreditation exams after that would exclude many people - me included - from entering the profession. That’s in addition to the extra time that this would require, you’d effectively be making people choose between a research career or a professional one as those that do Masters/Research qualifications would then have to get another accreditation before they can start practising professionally.

What would an accreditation scheme do for the profession anyway? Well I think that software engineering is one of the most innovative jobs out there and a formal qualification structure would halt that in it’s tracks. Every accredited engineer would have to follow a strict set of guidelines that would be agreed on by committees that people like Bjarne Stroustrup would sit on and if they strayed from this they would be struck off. Yes it would mean we inside the circle could earn more money but isn’t this why we all hate lawyers? How many start-ups would employ chartered software developers I wonder?

Maybe I missed his point.

Good Hunting

Damn adsl modem

I find it hard to live without the internet at home, especially when I’m trying to do work as google holds all of the answers for any programming issue. So when my cable modem started playing up the other day and getting very very hot I though, ah I’ll phone bt and get a new one - not so.

Apparently they just give you the modem and once it’s out of warrenty thats it, tough. So I’ve ordered one from dabs and it should be here post haste but in the mean time we’re offline - (I’m at uni writing this - I couldn’t spend the whole day without the internet!). Whenever there is a break in the internet service it just reminds me how cut off I feel and how stupid that is. Pre 96 I hadn’t even used the internet, how do we become so dependant upon it so quickly. I’m sure I’m not the only one. It’s also hard to live with dial-up which I suppose I can set up at home, although it hardly seems worth it.

What would life be like without the pervasive nature of the internet - or more correctly the world-wide-web - the internet could exist and be of little use to anyone. How would we bank? How would we communicate… I know that the answers are in the past but it does seem kinda strange that ten years ago there were only a few people with the internet and a 33k modem was the absolute cutting edge of technology how far we have come.

None of this fixes my modem which buzzes when I plug it in.

Good Hunting

Ice cream sticks

Why when you buy an ice cream does it have to have chocolate half way down the stick so that its impossible to eat without getting chocolate all over your fingers!

It’s just annoying and surely it’s a waste of chocolate!

Pah!

Good Hunting

Changing hands

With Brown set to succeed Tony Blair in the next month or so, the French having already appointed a new President and the Americans having to soon what will the state of world politics be for the next few years?

Blair, Bush and Chirac have had their differences over the last few year but they have all been in power for a considerable amount of time and their personalities have influenced the way others think of their countries. With all of these nations about to get new and very different leaders (Unless the US elects another Republican) how will that landscape change? I have no idea really I’m just a computer scientist but I can’t see things staying the same.

At the moment each of these nations has been relatively outrospective, they have been concerned with world issues and making the world and safer and cleaner place but each of the new leaders has reasons not to continue with this precedent - the French are dying for internal reform and I can’t see Sarkozy being too worried about whats happing outside of the French economy really, Brown has already said that his main focus will be on home issues such as the NHS and Education and the Americans, whoever they elect will have to deal will Bushs negative impact on their foreign image before they can even consider looking any further, coupled with a slowing US economy they’ll probably have their work cut out!

This could be bad news for humanitarian issues and climate change, with China also seeming not interested in these issues then could there be a swing wawy from internationalism and back towards nationalism…?

Good Hunting

Facebook seems to be evil

Charlotte recently forced me onto facebook at knife point - well almost.

This however means that I’m now trying to get more friends and keep that upto date as well. Hopefully now I have imported my blog into it I can leave that alone and get on with some hard research…

Facebook seems to be quite a good way to keep up with those active people who do a lot on it, maybe that’s a good thing? Although it does raise problems such as how do you say no you don’t want to be friends? (Not that I’ve done that to anyone)

Facebook good? Facebook Bad?

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