[ale] Off topic

[Vernard Martin]

> It's been more than a couple years since I've been in college, so I'd
> like to ask anyone with recent or current college experience - what the
> hell are they teaching for C.S. degrees these days? Is it computer
> science or computer applications?

Depends on your alma mater. Southern Tech (now Southern Polytechnic) has always
taken a more hands on practical approach to the field. More emphasis on
skills that are used in the business world rather than theory. 

> I just got into a discussion with someone last night who has recently
> gotten a C.S. degree, but had no idea what I was talking about when I
> was asking for a "full path" to a program. This was on a unix system and
> on an operating system this person SUPPORTS!

I believe this trend has two causes: 1) CS departments are becoming more
diversified and not being a UNIX only shop like it used to be. I would be
annoyed with any university that didn't make its students familiar with both
UNIX and the Win95/WinNT families. To put one above the other is to do them a
disservice as scientists. 

> Assembler and C and algorithms as fundamental building blocks? Have they
> been replaced with Windows 101 and Word Fundamentals? This is scary to
> me.

Even here at Ga Tech (which has steadily been rising up the charts towards 
being a top ten university in CS), we are seeing this trend. It seems to be the
fault of the faculty that are designing the curriculum. The low level assembly
and hardware courses are no longer taught in the CS curriculum. The Computer
ENgineering department which is part of the Electricla Engineering dept is
responsible for that. We also no longer offer hands-on networking labs. 

V
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Vernard Martin (vernard at cc.gatech.edu)  | 2nd Atlanta Linux Showcase!
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~vernard/      | October 23 - 24, 1998
Georgia Tech, College of Computing      | http://www.ale/org/showcase