[Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL

Chuck Allison chuck at freshsources.com
Sun Oct 9 05:16:45 CEST 2005


Hello Laura,

Saturday, October 8, 2005, 8:53:09 PM, you wrote:

LC> I think that only people who thrive on playing with their
LC> mathematical intuition will love computer science and all
LC> higher math.  But most women do not work on developing one.

This is complicated nowadays by the fact that computer-related fields
have multiplied, and only some of them involve much in the way of
mathematical intuition. Core CS is very much a mathematical exercise.
We have many students who balk at the mathematical part of our
program, and they bail to IS or IT or Multimedia, etc. That's fine -
we all should be so lucky to find where we belong - but once again
mathematics becomes the crux of the issue.

Kinda makes me feel good that I have 3 degrees in math. All those
years of geekdom are finally paying off :-). I discovered programming
in a FORTRAN in my senior year at college and knew I found my thing.
The other two subsequent degrees were mainly because I didn't want to
back up and retool in undergraduate CS - but my last degree was in
Applied Math with an emphasis in CS.

Yet I wonder if the likes of us are becoming very much a minority,
in the U.S., at least, since our math skills as a nation are falling
dramatically.

"Knuth alone hath gazed on beauty bare."

I think that's what Edna St. Vincent Millay would've written if she
wrote that poem today. Few there be that find it, eh?

I have an artist relative that thinks I'm a narrow left-brained nerd.
When I try to discuss the beauties of design and problem solving and
clean code, etc., I get blank stares and condescending disbelief.
Sheesh! He thinks he has a monopoly on dealing with beauty.

-- 
Best regards,
 Chuck



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