[Edu-sig] Playing games

[kirby urner]

What stood out for me in the Dijkstra talk is something he fights against:

(2) the subculture of the compulsive programmer, whose ethics
prescribe that one silly idea and a month of frantic coding should
suffice to make him a life-long millionaire

Now consider this paragraph from Microsoft:

"""
The percentage of incoming undergraduates indicating plans to major in
computer science declined by more than 60 percent between fall 2000
and 2004, and is now 70 percent lower than its peak in the early
1980s. And the number of women and minority students, while low in the
past, has declined at an even faster rate, educators say.
"""

In my view, just knowing how to code is no ticket to great wealth, but
a prerequisite for being considered modestly well educated.  That
doesn't mean you can code giant applications all by yourself, just
that you can whip out a few functions to do this or that, maybe find
the 100th fibonacci number is if your life depended on it (a
simulation).

If the overarching goal is "making money" then I can't think of *any*
promising career for ya, other than pyramid schemer (already a very
crowded field).

Where I find a lot of the best software engineering talent is at
places like FreeGeek, where making money is not the issue.  It's
having very high level skills that gets the girlz or boyz to admire
ye.  Flashing cash is ho hum.  Know Perl 6 in your sleep, hit an SQL
backend while turning a somersault in bash, and you're in the money
(the currency of the realm -- respect, juice, winning and intimidation
through POSIX kung fu).

The Pycon keynote I look forward to hearing (or even giving) someday,
would be something about Python in the Peace and/or Marine Corps.
That's how I'll know we've really advanced our cause.  Some local
colleges and universities won't ever change as it's *already*
expected that their "best students" will go elsewhere for an education
(like Ramanujan had to go to England for some stupid reason).

Kirby