4 ms·

Sounds like the author likes hacking but loathes being a professor. Can't help but assume he's doing a huge disservice to his students by being so disinterested

Sounds like the author likes hacking but loathes being a professor. Can't help but assume he's doing a huge disservice to his students by being so disinterested in teaching that he forgets about/doesn't even try to improve his lectures from the year before.

Scaevolus 16y ago
It sounds like he didn't have enough time to accomplish all his duties as a professor.
smanek 16y ago
FWIW, I sat in on some of his lectures on distributed sensor networks and thought he was great. Even if he wasn't, he gave up his tenured faculty position to hack full time at Google (IIRC, less than a year after getting tenure). See http://matt-welsh.blogspot.com/2010/11/why-im-leaving-harvard.html http://matt-welsh.blogspot.com/2010/11/why-im-leaving-harvar... for some background.
patricklynch 16y ago
His RateMyProfessors page: http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=961898 http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=961898 At least one person thought he was good (though the lack of more than one review may be a sign).
- smanek 16y ago
  Harvard doesn't use RateMyProf much (there is an internal rating system called the 'q guide'). Chosen at random, his 2009 CS61 class has generally very positive reviews (see: http://imgur.com/cSWsq.png http://imgur.com/cSWsq.png).
yanw 16y ago
That's a tad judgmental, I'm sure Harvard doesn't just hand out tenure to anyone who punches a time card.
- mattlong 16y ago
  You're right in that it's judgmental; I'm not at all familiar with him. Perhaps he's just gotten burned out on professorship. But this is coming from the horse's mouth.
- cdavid 16y ago
  While geting tenure at harvard is indeed no small feat, I doubt teaching has much to do with it. Teaching sadly plays little role in getting tenure, especially for prestigious institutions. Grants and papers are the most significant points.
  - Create 16y ago
    Teaching has nothing to do with it (see Brian Harvey at the bottom of the ranks). Papers have nothing to do with it. Really few papers are read these days. I would guess, that an average IEEE author _writes_ the same number or more papers than reads (write-only memory doesn't make sense). Even less papers have an actual academic impact in CS in the age of the internet, where bits come at the price of caffeine and inspirations of ideas of somebody from a blog/news site (peer review comes in the comments). Not much old-school papers, journals or libraries. As always, there are few exceptions, but you are certainly better off playing the lottery. Non-virtualizable science is a different matter (wet lab, electronics, physical experiments etc.) But bureaucrats prefer in silico, because it is cheaper.
    - cdavid 16y ago
      I may be wrong, but it does not seem like you have much experience in academics. I don't know any university where papers (and more especially their impact, as measure by h index and co) do not matter a lot when getting tenure (or any kind of post PhD position, really).
      - Create 16y ago
        They do matter, I think our experience does match. This is part of the problem I was alluding to. All I am saying is, that I do no longer take for granted the paper/IF (& other Thomson ISI Corp.) science metrics as the golden standard, because it is being actively abused (clique self-referencing, grant business etc.). This is not a new controversy, and I think it is much like the RIAA/MP3 shift, which is not only taking place in publishing (web daily news, kindle etc), but also in scientific publication (NIH publication policy etc). arxiv.org seems to be one of the best technical compromises, but unfortunately, it doesn't fit very well in the establishment's established authoritative scheme (IEEE, ACM etc), which is a racket by anyone's standards. And it can be misleading too (there was an ARS report on this, about the level of trust in the result being published). Long story short: I, for one (and I think you too) are very unlikely to get tenure based on papers on arxiv.org about volcanoes, transportation, urbanization and JIT. No matter how good we are in Linux sysadmin an distributed systems. Though back on topic, publication per se is what early stage training is about (and not PhD), in my experience. Of course, one can always ''downgrade'' an EST to a PhD, but then one has to go through all the post-docs, to get to be staff again. Short of luck, of course. For those with tenure, it is very rare to actually write papers to publish (though it does exist) -- that is what students, assistants and fellows are kept around for.
16s 16y ago
I'm sure he felt his lectures were no good. Most smart people are that way. They underestimate the impact of what they do. I've read that Leonardo da Vinci felt he had accomplished nothing when he died.

Scaevolus 16y ago

It sounds like he didn't have enough time to accomplish all his duties as a professor.

smanek 16y ago

FWIW, I sat in on some of his lectures on distributed sensor networks and thought he was great. Even if he wasn't, he gave up his tenured faculty position to hack full time at Google (IIRC, less than a year after getting tenure). See http://matt-welsh.blogspot.com/2010/11/why-im-leaving-harvard.html http://matt-welsh.blogspot.com/2010/11/why-im-leaving-harvar... for some background.

patricklynch 16y ago

His RateMyProfessors page: http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=961898 http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=961898 At least one person thought he was good (though the lack of more than one review may be a sign).

smanek 16y ago
Harvard doesn't use RateMyProf much (there is an internal rating system called the 'q guide'). Chosen at random, his 2009 CS61 class has generally very positive reviews (see: http://imgur.com/cSWsq.png http://imgur.com/cSWsq.png).

yanw 16y ago

That's a tad judgmental, I'm sure Harvard doesn't just hand out tenure to anyone who punches a time card.

mattlong 16y ago
You're right in that it's judgmental; I'm not at all familiar with him. Perhaps he's just gotten burned out on professorship. But this is coming from the horse's mouth.
cdavid 16y ago
While geting tenure at harvard is indeed no small feat, I doubt teaching has much to do with it. Teaching sadly plays little role in getting tenure, especially for prestigious institutions. Grants and papers are the most significant points.
- Create 16y ago
  Teaching has nothing to do with it (see Brian Harvey at the bottom of the ranks). Papers have nothing to do with it. Really few papers are read these days. I would guess, that an average IEEE author _writes_ the same number or more papers than reads (write-only memory doesn't make sense). Even less papers have an actual academic impact in CS in the age of the internet, where bits come at the price of caffeine and inspirations of ideas of somebody from a blog/news site (peer review comes in the comments). Not much old-school papers, journals or libraries. As always, there are few exceptions, but you are certainly better off playing the lottery. Non-virtualizable science is a different matter (wet lab, electronics, physical experiments etc.) But bureaucrats prefer in silico, because it is cheaper.
  - cdavid 16y ago
    I may be wrong, but it does not seem like you have much experience in academics. I don't know any university where papers (and more especially their impact, as measure by h index and co) do not matter a lot when getting tenure (or any kind of post PhD position, really).
    - Create 16y ago
      They do matter, I think our experience does match. This is part of the problem I was alluding to. All I am saying is, that I do no longer take for granted the paper/IF (& other Thomson ISI Corp.) science metrics as the golden standard, because it is being actively abused (clique self-referencing, grant business etc.). This is not a new controversy, and I think it is much like the RIAA/MP3 shift, which is not only taking place in publishing (web daily news, kindle etc), but also in scientific publication (NIH publication policy etc). arxiv.org seems to be one of the best technical compromises, but unfortunately, it doesn't fit very well in the establishment's established authoritative scheme (IEEE, ACM etc), which is a racket by anyone's standards. And it can be misleading too (there was an ARS report on this, about the level of trust in the result being published). Long story short: I, for one (and I think you too) are very unlikely to get tenure based on papers on arxiv.org about volcanoes, transportation, urbanization and JIT. No matter how good we are in Linux sysadmin an distributed systems. Though back on topic, publication per se is what early stage training is about (and not PhD), in my experience. Of course, one can always ''downgrade'' an EST to a PhD, but then one has to go through all the post-docs, to get to be staff again. Short of luck, of course. For those with tenure, it is very rare to actually write papers to publish (though it does exist) -- that is what students, assistants and fellows are kept around for.

16s 16y ago

I'm sure he felt his lectures were no good. Most smart people are that way. They underestimate the impact of what they do. I've read that Leonardo da Vinci felt he had accomplished nothing when he died.