4 ms·

When I write code at work, I write so according to guidelines that my employer and my teammates have produced, not all of which I agree with. We mostly write in

by geofft 7y ago

When I write code at work, I write so according to guidelines that my employer and my teammates have produced, not all of which I agree with. We mostly write in Java, which I don't really like as a language (I'm lucky enough to be on a team that writes Python, but if I need to work with another team's code or a common library, I need to write Java). We run Python tests with unittest instead of pytest. We format our code with the `black` autoformatter, even though I disagree with several of its approaches. And so forth. I still follow the recommendations, because I'm working as part of a team, and none of the recommendations are egregiously unreasonable - they're just not what I would have preferred. The recommendations of the university working group seem similar. Well-intentioned people can reach different conclusions on these things, but none of them are egregiously unreasonable. You don't have to use the BMI exercise; there are enough other exercises that solve the goal of inputting some numbers and calculating a simple formula based on them. None of them are even at the level of saying, you must teach a thing you don't believe. (He's not even, say, a biology professor asked to teach/not teach evolution. He's a computer science lecturer, and none of these recommendations are about the facts of computer science itself.) As a professional software engineer, if I picked a fight about the coding guidelines, I would in fact be spending a significant amount of my political capital. If I find something very important, it's possible I can slowly try to convince people of one thing, and have it reflect positively on me. But if I picked a pointless fight - like saying that we should standardize on double quotes in Python instead of single quotes - my management would be right to question whether I was more interested in doing my job or in getting my way. And if I were to say that I wanted to work on "heterodox engineering," I would be surprised if my management did not question whether I was in the right role. By his own admission, this man's "best teaching" is in areas entirely unrelated to computer science - why is he confused about having trouble getting tenure in a school of computer science? For all that Quillette seems to dislike professional victims, they appear to have published one.

kragen 7y ago
> When I write code at work, I write so according to guidelines that my employer and my teammates have produced, not all of which I agree with. This is the core of the opposition between being an employee and being a professional, such as a professor, a priest, a judge, or a doctor. The professions answer to a higher authority than those who pay them, and this is essential to their role. In the case of professors, part of this is codified in the norm of “freedom of inquiry”, which has been central to the modern conception of the University for centuries. It is unsurprising that the dominant paradigm of wage labor attempt to erase and co-opt the pre-capitalist institution of the professions, obliterating it as an outdated or worthless obstacle and even attempting to appropriate its terminology. But I think the existence of professional institutions like the academy and the judiciary has done a fair bit of good, and replacing them with wage labor is a perilous enterprise. To be clear, you are not a professional software engineer. You are an employee, directed by management. That is the opposite. That is why you do not enjoy the autonomy that professors are struggling to retain. Your plight is regrettable, and condemning others to it would be not only regrettable but potentially catastrophic.
- geofft 7y ago
  He's not a professor in the classical definition, he's a lecturer. (Both from his title on paper - Principal Lecturer - and from his actual work - teaching intro CS classes for the purpose of training students to work in wage labor, not guiding researchers.) He's an employee just as much as I am. It's true that professors should have independence from those who oversee them, and there's a mechanism for that: it's called tenure, and he doesn't have it. It's certainly reasonable for him to want to be a "professional," and from his teaching statement and his desire to teach honors classes about Haidt instead of intro classes about programming, that seems like exactly what he wants. I, too, would like to be a "professional." But he doesn't get to just be one merely because he wants to be one, any more than I can.
  - kragen 7y ago
    I understand that you are not aware of this, but freedom of inquiry protects non-tenured lecturers and even, thanks to Humboldt, students. I suggest that you read at least the introductory section of https://www.britannica.com/topic/academic-freedom https://www.britannica.com/topic/academic-freedom so that your opinions are no longer based on complete ignorance of the issues at hand. It is true that tenure is a much more effective protection, and this is perhaps a major reason that managerialists have shifted more and more of the teaching load to adjunct faculty over the last four decades. Unquestionably someone designing a new introductory course, as the author claims to have done, would have been tenured or tenure-track faculty at any US University in the 1950s, 60s, or 70s. That is, as defined by his teaching responsibilities, he is very much a professor or assistant professor according to the traditional definition. It does seem to be correct that he is in fact vulnerable to political interference with his freedom to teach. But what we are debating is whether it would be better if he were more vulnerable to it or less so. Your position seems to be that it would be better if he were more vulnerable to it because that would make him more like you. My position is that it would be better if he were less vulnerable to it because historically that kind of thing has led to disasters like Lysenkoism and the failure of the Nazi atomic bomb program.
    - geofft 7y ago
wayoutthere 7y ago
> For all that Quillette seems to dislike professional victims, they appear to have published one. That's basically all Quillete is. It's "contrarian" by definition, which leads to a lot of similar complaints by authors across the site.
manfredo 7y ago
I think this is missing the forest for the trees. The specific recommendations to his course is only one section in the broader theme of intolerance for different viewpoints on the demographics of computer science. In particular Reges seems to be getting pushed out over his belief that in a society without discrimination, women still won't be 50% of computer scientists. This does set a worrying precedence, and events like these are party of why I've long stopped sharing my honest opinion about discriminatory initiatives in diversity hiring and advancement. It's far too dangerous to be perceived as against diversity.

by geofft 7y ago

kragen 7y ago

> When I write code at work, I write so according to guidelines that my employer and my teammates have produced, not all of which I agree with. This is the core of the opposition between being an employee and being a professional, such as a professor, a priest, a judge, or a doctor. The professions answer to a higher authority than those who pay them, and this is essential to their role. In the case of professors, part of this is codified in the norm of “freedom of inquiry”, which has been central to the modern conception of the University for centuries. It is unsurprising that the dominant paradigm of wage labor attempt to erase and co-opt the pre-capitalist institution of the professions, obliterating it as an outdated or worthless obstacle and even attempting to appropriate its terminology. But I think the existence of professional institutions like the academy and the judiciary has done a fair bit of good, and replacing them with wage labor is a perilous enterprise. To be clear, you are not a professional software engineer. You are an employee, directed by management. That is the opposite. That is why you do not enjoy the autonomy that professors are struggling to retain. Your plight is regrettable, and condemning others to it would be not only regrettable but potentially catastrophic.

geofft 7y ago
He's not a professor in the classical definition, he's a lecturer. (Both from his title on paper - Principal Lecturer - and from his actual work - teaching intro CS classes for the purpose of training students to work in wage labor, not guiding researchers.) He's an employee just as much as I am. It's true that professors should have independence from those who oversee them, and there's a mechanism for that: it's called tenure, and he doesn't have it. It's certainly reasonable for him to want to be a "professional," and from his teaching statement and his desire to teach honors classes about Haidt instead of intro classes about programming, that seems like exactly what he wants. I, too, would like to be a "professional." But he doesn't get to just be one merely because he wants to be one, any more than I can.
- kragen 7y ago
  I understand that you are not aware of this, but freedom of inquiry protects non-tenured lecturers and even, thanks to Humboldt, students. I suggest that you read at least the introductory section of https://www.britannica.com/topic/academic-freedom https://www.britannica.com/topic/academic-freedom so that your opinions are no longer based on complete ignorance of the issues at hand. It is true that tenure is a much more effective protection, and this is perhaps a major reason that managerialists have shifted more and more of the teaching load to adjunct faculty over the last four decades. Unquestionably someone designing a new introductory course, as the author claims to have done, would have been tenured or tenure-track faculty at any US University in the 1950s, 60s, or 70s. That is, as defined by his teaching responsibilities, he is very much a professor or assistant professor according to the traditional definition. It does seem to be correct that he is in fact vulnerable to political interference with his freedom to teach. But what we are debating is whether it would be better if he were more vulnerable to it or less so. Your position seems to be that it would be better if he were more vulnerable to it because that would make him more like you. My position is that it would be better if he were less vulnerable to it because historically that kind of thing has led to disasters like Lysenkoism and the failure of the Nazi atomic bomb program.
  - geofft 7y ago

wayoutthere 7y ago

> For all that Quillette seems to dislike professional victims, they appear to have published one. That's basically all Quillete is. It's "contrarian" by definition, which leads to a lot of similar complaints by authors across the site.

manfredo 7y ago

I think this is missing the forest for the trees. The specific recommendations to his course is only one section in the broader theme of intolerance for different viewpoints on the demographics of computer science. In particular Reges seems to be getting pushed out over his belief that in a society without discrimination, women still won't be 50% of computer scientists. This does set a worrying precedence, and events like these are party of why I've long stopped sharing my honest opinion about discriminatory initiatives in diversity hiring and advancement. It's far too dangerous to be perceived as against diversity.