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Are Professors Obsolete?

kiba 15y ago
Even if I can google programming answers or use stackoverflow, it probably takes 5 minute for me to get my answer. In other words, just because knowledge exists on the internet, it will take me a non-trivial time to retrieve these information. Rote memorization allows me to bypass the latency and allows me to get things done faster. The rest of my brain is focused on retrieving all my experiences on how to debug or knowledge or how the framework I am using interact. I use Google and stackoverflow as needed. My suggestion is to use SRS software like anki or supermemo and build your own deck of things to memorize such as how to get the size of an array, how to capitalize a string, etc. A good rule of thumb is to memorize anything you have to google twice. This will save you many 5 minutes of development time in the future.
- silvestrov 15y ago
  Even more important: You need to know a lot before you can ask the interesting questions. You need knowledge in advance about algorithms and tools to have an idea about possible solutions and thus what you should Google or ask stackoverflow about.
cdcarter 15y ago
Professors are not obsolete. Professors who spend their students' tuition on research and professional equivalencies instead of teaching and putting a majority of their efforts into their classes are.
msg 15y ago
Facts are the machine language of knowledge. Hopefully you didn't spend university, in whatever major, memorizing long binary strings. You were meant to be climbing the abstraction ladder (say, to higher level programming and language design) and pushing the boundaries of what can be expressed and known. DRY is for every discipline, not just software.
DrJ 15y ago
Going beyond the question, one could say that Professors provide a view into the avenue beyond just business. I have personally found that being able to chat with professors about stuff beyond just Q&A and `what should I do` to be very insightful/helpful.
gatlin 15y ago
No. A good professor (and I'll leave it as a lemma to determine if the majority of professors meet this standard) is able to package up information and ideas in such a way that they take root and flourish in the student. A professor can take years of mastery, introspection, and mistakes and present a simple idea to a student in 5 minutes which will keep that student up all night. I have very rarely found this on the Internet.

kiba 15y ago

Even if I can google programming answers or use stackoverflow, it probably takes 5 minute for me to get my answer. In other words, just because knowledge exists on the internet, it will take me a non-trivial time to retrieve these information. Rote memorization allows me to bypass the latency and allows me to get things done faster. The rest of my brain is focused on retrieving all my experiences on how to debug or knowledge or how the framework I am using interact. I use Google and stackoverflow as needed. My suggestion is to use SRS software like anki or supermemo and build your own deck of things to memorize such as how to get the size of an array, how to capitalize a string, etc. A good rule of thumb is to memorize anything you have to google twice. This will save you many 5 minutes of development time in the future.

silvestrov 15y ago
Even more important: You need to know a lot before you can ask the interesting questions. You need knowledge in advance about algorithms and tools to have an idea about possible solutions and thus what you should Google or ask stackoverflow about.

cdcarter 15y ago

Professors are not obsolete. Professors who spend their students' tuition on research and professional equivalencies instead of teaching and putting a majority of their efforts into their classes are.

msg 15y ago

Facts are the machine language of knowledge. Hopefully you didn't spend university, in whatever major, memorizing long binary strings. You were meant to be climbing the abstraction ladder (say, to higher level programming and language design) and pushing the boundaries of what can be expressed and known. DRY is for every discipline, not just software.

DrJ 15y ago

Going beyond the question, one could say that Professors provide a view into the avenue beyond just business. I have personally found that being able to chat with professors about stuff beyond just Q&A and `what should I do` to be very insightful/helpful.

gatlin 15y ago

No. A good professor (and I'll leave it as a lemma to determine if the majority of professors meet this standard) is able to package up information and ideas in such a way that they take root and flourish in the student. A professor can take years of mastery, introspection, and mistakes and present a simple idea to a student in 5 minutes which will keep that student up all night. I have very rarely found this on the Internet.