From Jeff Atwood,
“For a fast-moving field like computer science, the work you’re doing is far more relevant than any classes you’re taking. If you must choose between formal schooling and work experience, always choose work. If you’re in school, aggressively pursue real-world experience that compliments your schoolwork.”
I agree with Jeff! Nothing is more important than trying things by yourself when learning something new. Especially programming which is a mix of Science, Engineering and Art.
Yesterday, coincidentally, I was telling my students that this what Science is all about: doing experiments!
Jeff quotes Stephen Leacock:
“If I were founding a university I would found first a smoking room; then when I had a little more money in hand I would found a dormitory; then after that, or more probably with it, a decent reading room and a library. After that, if I still had more money that I couldn’t use, I would hire a professor and get some textbooks.”
What he meant was that what is important in a University is to have a place where people can meet and talk and learn and share experience. This is sooooooo true. When I think about my years in France, I distinctly remember the various nights my friends and I spent in our rooms having fun and talking about technology, programming and philosophy. I have forgotten about most lectures I attended… This is what is missing here at the University of Mauritius. And this is why many people tell me that it is just a glorified college. And I think I have to agree. Unfortunately.
Jeff gives the following advice to young people willing to become great Computer Scientists:
- Do work placements (stage)
- Participate in local user groups (LUGM is nice!)
- Contribute to an open-source project.
- Publish articles.
- Start a blog.
So, dear students, move your ass and try to secure a work placement (stage) as soon as possible in a good software development company! Yesterday, we were discussing with Accenture and the people there are very nice! I guess the people from Infosys are also very nice. You get the point?
unfortunately cse dpt doesn’t actually impose work placements as it for other courses.
Anyway its not a reason to be lazy, i wonder if accenture will be willing to recruit trainees for a 3 month period
That’s why I want you all to move your ass…
I’ve talked with the top guys there and they are keen to get trainees as (i) trainees are cheap labour and (ii) who knows, they might find someone extraordinary :-)
What you get is a lot of experience and the opportunity to get a nice job if you are good enough…
I absolutely share the idea that universities are here to let people socialise and share lots of ideas at night. It’d be great if UoM provided students with a lodging (decent apartments) facility (against some payment perhaps!) so that they could just live a nice university life!
Huh, I wanted this since my first year. That would enable students to stay up to late for courses and socialise more instead of socialising near the ex-post-office or at James’, which isn’t bad either :()
What u mean by “publish articles”? what’s worth publishing?
Concerning publishing articles, Jeff says:
To Dilraj:
It’s a pity that the Government (or the University) has not realised that dormitories are essential in a university. Until then, many students will continue to behave as college students.
ya that wouldve been a good idea..
well for the moment..we stay up late with friends on msn..
each one having his beer and smoking his cigs at his house..
working collaboratively on msn
wouldve been much mpre fun if we were actually together
i remember in my first year..
we all went to stay at a friends place..we had a comms skill presentation that day and a viva for SSD on the next day
it was pretty fun
i still do have some pics of those times..
which i will surely miss when i’ll leave uni next year (hopefully)
we do have a good social life at uom..although it wouldve been much more fun if we had dorms around in the campus..or nearby..we had fn time at bassin canard..ou meme kass nou pose lor rebord cafet..or in our first year lor balcon kot billard..these we nice time..bt since we lacked a decent dormitory..there were many time when we went to stay at a friends place either to work..or have some fun..or to revise(which i did only once..and we ended up not revising anything lol)
those 3 years at uom were really nice..and will b missed…
I must say that indeed dorms would be nice for us uni students, but i guess as always some of us found a work around to this constraint… by staying over night at friend’s place(i should point out that we have the chance of having nice parents who indulge our fancies)… i still remember the nite preceding the SSD viva, sundeep n i debugging the programs of our friends while drinking our beers, and most important of all having lots of fun.
but i also agree with avinash, being a good computer scientist is not all about sitting in classes, and learning our notes by heart… its more of, understanding what we learn, trying things out, exploring new ways, going headfirst in the wall when we’re wrong and learning from our mistakes. Though unlike avinash, i don’t believe that being a good computer scientist automatically implies that you have to be a good programmer.
And its really sad to notice that at the end of the 3 year course, most of the students will end up being coders, working on a 9 to 16 schedule… with not much hope of progressing beyond…
To all of us, future “computer scientists” lets ask ourselves if that is what we really want to do? do we really feel that the field of computing is THE field for us? If you’re still positive about that, then its really time to shake the cobwebs of ur butt and go explore new openings, get a taste of IT on the professional level… personally i don’t really care if its a big software development company or not, the most important thing is to get the chance to work side by side with seasoned professionals, learn from them, feel the stress and strain as they do.
Else, well it might still be a good time to change ur career path and chose a field in which you will actually excel. From my personal experience i can say that nowadays being good is not good enough, you have to be the best… else you’ll just be another face in the crowd…
I don’t smoke or drink so Jeff Atwood’s 3 step program won’t do me any good.
but…
* Do work placements (stage) done that… (hmmm dunno if i’d want to do that.)
* Participate in local user groups (LUGM is nice!)
* Contribute to an open-source project. (done in tiny tiny quantities.)
* Publish articles.
* Start a blog. (never will do anything this pointless again)
Right now, the university is holding me back more than helping me go forward. Sure i’ve learnt interesting things and will probably learn some more in few months left.
but i really don’t care about a degree right now.
my dissertation is still imcomplete amd frankly, vraiment vraiment pas envie fini li.
… the extension we received really fucked up my time table… Wether or not, I’d had been able to finish by last friday or not, at least, i wouldn’t have to work on it one more week…
i’m in pursuit of fun stuff to do. not a piece of paper and a career writing programs.
ahhh.. VERY logical. indeed you are someone who knows what students need and want.
There are lecturers who like a tyrant swamp ppl with homeworks like as if in college, and then.. finally students have no more time and just forget about real world experience and just do homeworks just for the sake of doing it without any love of doing it.
*note: am not against homework.. but i have seen that in osme classes homeworks are given like as if DOS’in students.. then with 2 lecturers giving massive homeworks like that.. it becomes DDOS’in of student brains :p
+selven
mo bien dacor ar sa. mai mo pa dacor ar dormitories moi. si mo tifi ale liniversite moris dormi b pou ena zafaire coutchou coutchou enba moultron pou derouler. mo pa ler zendre ou zendreS ou vine nana astere la mem moi.
kultire pays la bizin respect.
* Do work placements – ena accenture. banne la p forme liniversite zeleves aprane oracle et servi unix
* Participate in local user groups (LUGM is nice!) — moriciens sa pena boucou ki fer sa
* Contribute to an open-source project — weh, mais kan travail pa gagne les temps et bizin refair contract ar bouzoi pou capave fair side work. ena legal matters la dan
* Publish articles. — lot moi pou ena submission lartciles mari bon
* Start a blog. – weh, mo pa gagnr les temps moi. ena plein couma sa. ena plein ki contan fessebook et sa mama hi5 la.
mo dire – choisir lelite admission pou classe infomratique a coz c ene pillier de lenocomy.
weh mo ena ti question. fer couma dire mo fer mo application mai mo envi license li lro sa zafair opensurce la, ki mo fer? mo dan morice ki mo fer? mo ler mo nom paraite dan sak release, ki mo fer? ena biro international opnesurce pou rengregistrement?
merci.
Hi Ed,
I think you have a slighted skewed image of dormitories. They are not places where orgies take place. Rather, they allow responsible and intelligent young adults to spend more time together doing productive work.
As a matter of fact, when I was at university, we mostly worked after dinner.
Concerning open source licensing issues, it’s no different from commercial licenses. When you write a software, you release it with a license and, from this moment, anyone using the software MUST comply with the license. So no need to register anything. Just distribute the source with the license.
can any body help me out how to become a computer scientist
Hi Ravi,
Have a look at Norvig’s suggestion.
I believe that university is here to make students develop a critical mind, not simply to become vulgar production tool.
Students should decide how they want to live their life. either as an artist or a mere production tool.
I don’t believe that students should haste to take training from multinational companies like accenture. because these companies will forge the perception of the students towards their need. These students won’t be able to forge their own perception. hence they will lose all their creativity.
And companies like accenture do not really want engineers, but simply developers to do exactly what they want them to do.., I have worked there for 2 years, and I know what I am talking about.
I believe that university should help people develop a critical mind. Exams should be abolished and replaced by presentations. Presentations should be guided towards the latest research made by lecturers and professors.
Lecturers should share their research work with students through presentations and brainstorming session.
The IT course should return to 4 years including the industrial training.
inter departmental brainstorming session should be organized very often.
Students should be able to present any work he has done on his own, and explain his reasoning.
The whole idea is to create a medium where students are forced to create stuffs and communicate them
After the students have become mature and accumulated a great deal of knowledge and has become very critical, then he can go to accenture or any company. And accenture will have to train these students and harness their knowledge.
In this condition, the students will learn much much faster from training. secondly, he will be free to move in any field he wants. Thirdly he can provide ideas that nobody has thought about and create innovations.
The role of the university is not to train people to work. This is completely false. University is to provide educations. And education means the development of a critical mind.
I want to continue on what is happening at the university.
Last year, I attended a session at the university called “work based learning”
This stuff has been suggested by some UK universities, and our lecturers have accepted this idea without even questioning it.
The idea is to make student follow industrial training during their holidays. And the result of the training will be used for the final grading of the students when he leaves university.
Furthermore we know that the course has changed from 4 years to 3 years and has become more specialized.
At first glance this seems a good idea. Students will come into contact with the professional world. They will learn from the professional world., and will be more easy for them to get a job.
But me personally, I don’t see it like that.
What I see is that when multinational companies have arrived to mauritius, they have successfully shacked our education system.
the UK has suggested that the course becomes 3 years, and split into 3 and oriented towards producing development skills. Not engineering skills. We did it!
Later they found out that they can even maximize their profit if they found a way to get already trained students, so that they won’t spend money on training.
So they asked university to train the students themselves, grade them, and do that during the student’s holiday. Which is work based learning. We did it (I don’t know if it has been implemented yet, what’s sure is that I have obtained a certificate that makes me eligible to give training to students)
In the end, when these multinational companies entered mauritius, we no longer can produce software engineers, students no more have holidays. And university are producing specialized and fragmented labour. Those who know Karl Marx, will know what is meant by “specialized and fragmented labour”. It is certainly not something to be proud of.
Now just think a moment what would happen when more multinational companies will access other fields of engineering like electronic, or civil engineering?
In the end, we will have a university that don’t produce people who thinks.
Little by little we will have a middle class that don’t think.
If you combine the fact that our social configuration is like a dynamite where a civil war can explode at any moment + the fact that we will no longer have a middle class that thinks, we will definitely end up with a civil war, and we will ask who provoked it.
I certainly don’t say that we should kick these companies out. But we should take great care in what the UK suggest. Because the UK don’t see us as a nation that should shine, but rather a way to make money from of us. We cannot blame them for that. It us who should resist.
For God’s sake, we mauritians we have everything required to shine. We are extremely brilliant people. We have an exceptional sense of creativity. We have been gifted a wonderful nature. The sun shines during the whole year. We enjoy one of the best democracy in the world. Everybody have equal rights.
We just need to get rid of the preconceived ideas of europe and stand on our own feet. Its high time to get out of our cocoon and reject all that our ancient colonizers want us to believe. We are a free nation and we are unique in this whole world.
Cheers!!
I’m impressed by your eloquence and enthusiasm to share your beliefs :-)
I, too, am not happy at all with what the university has become. And, as you put it, we are potentially as good as anyone else but we have an education system which is slowly creating a whole generation of terribly passive and unimaginative people. It’s high time something is done. But what?!?
I guess the problem comes from even earlier i.e at college. Have you wondered why most people do either economics or science at school. Very little do literature, history, sociology, i mean art.
I think one good idea is to do the necessary that the government makes sociology a compulsory subject at college up to form 5, just like english is.
It does not cost much, no extra infrastructure will be required. Mauritius will only need to train more sociology teacher. Thus creating job.
What we get in return? A generation that understands how the society works. They will understand many things like “superstructure of the society”, “stratification of society”. They will understand better what is politics. They will understand what is left wing and right wing politics. I’m sure if you ask many student what is the difference between “la gauche” and “la droite” they won’t know.
More importantly, students will choose a field at university by vocation, not because we have a prestigious cyber tower. I’m sure you agree with me that if somebody does something by passion, he will be able to develop his full potential. I believe that the need for creativity is one of the fundamental need of man.
After creating a generation that thinks, there will have more and more people who will resist or at least question the policies of the university. I believe that the students themselves can make things change.
However, I do agree I’m saying this at a speculative level.
To be more practical, your idea of making students socialize is indeed very good.
Actually, during my time at UOM, we hired an apartment at reduit, with friends. And as you say, we remember the time spent there more than what we actually did in class. And this helped a lot. Because we could have the point of view of future managers, future lawyers, future engineers, future political scientists. We discussed on subjects that we could have never imagined.
Another good idea, is that lecturers should span their lectures towards other fields. I explain. It is good to begin a class with an anecdote or an existential question that will excite the imagination of students. e.g why lawyer is considered a prestigious job in Mauritius?. Or explain object oriented technique in an abstract/philosophical perspective, and little by little make it more concrete. Or even start the class with a story. why not!.
Here again is requires quite a lot of wit from the lecturer. And the lecturer should be doing this job by passion.
To solve this problem, lecturers should undergo pedagogical training first.
And of course to make things change, we should keep on criticizing UOM. And flood them with blogs, forums, newspaper articles, radio plus, youtube. How long do you think they will continue to make a deaf ear.
The last scandal has caused the resignation of the vice chancelor. This should keep on going.
It seems that the fact that you yourself has left the university has made a buzz.
True. People here tend to study what is trendy instead of really doing what they like! Or else they don’t know what they like!
As for my resignation making a buzz, this is great! I loved my job as an academic (and I think the students liked me too…) but I was completely against the way people were being “educated” there.
wai..I think it’s high time for me to get my contribution on lugm and start internship…
Yes. That would be an excellent idea :-)
The fact is that computer science was good for having experience. As i can just say!
Thanks for your comment, @Saifullahi.