[Edu-sig] Python as Application

[Kirby Urner]

> They prepare people tailor-trained for Microsoft and IBM. 

<<SNIP>>

> It's so important that we don't throw growing minds in to a technical
> tunnel.
> 

To take a different point of view:  

If a person *wants* a narrow, specialized training, very vocational,
precisely to be attractive to a Microsoft or IBM, and to pay for the
privilege, is it wrong to make that opportunity available, perhaps somewhere
in Utah?  

Like, maybe the enrollee already has a degree in French literature, plays
the flute, but wants the security of a well paying job.  OK, an unlikely
scenario.

I'm a liberal arts guy too and wouldn't recommend a mind-numbing
strait-jacketing course of study to others.  But should I forbid them the
option?  Real freedom to choose means we don't choose for them.

Plus I think higher ups in Microsoft or IBM know it's perilous to hire only
a few types of worker thereby turning themselves into conformist
mono-cultures, armies of clones.  That's a recipe for disaster over the long
haul.  

And what if they *don't* know that?  OK then, they'll stop being relevant in
due course.  Again, it's not for me to choose their fates.  Let companies
learn from their own mistakes.  Students too.  And me from mine.

Kirby