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A better title: "Academic omputer science is (should be) fun". The main points are that discovering analogies, philosophical contemplation, debugging problems,
by photochemsyn 2y ago
A better title: "Academic omputer science is (should be) fun". The main points are that discovering analogies, philosophical contemplation, debugging problems, coming up with good ideas and gaining clarity are all fun activities - but this is mostly the luxury of the academic professor, who is paid to engage in such activities, and doesn't seem applicable to 'the customer wants this at the end of the week!' world, other than the debatable joys of debugging.
The majority of "programming" should probably be thought of like "welding" - essentially a vocational school subject. If you want to develop a new welding technology, sure that's a graduate school-level academic/research undertaking, but the vast majority of welders - like programmers - will work with well-characterized tools and fairly simple systems. A vocational student doesn't want to waste any time learning MIT/GNU Scheme and then never use it again in their professional career - but an academic student might find it rewarding, rather like learning to read and write in Linear B as a linguistics major.
Certainly any work can be 'fun' - I worked in biotech labs for years, some were fun and some were terrible, but that had little to do with the nature of the work - it came down to quality and emotional stability of co-workers and managers, whether the workspace was well-designed and adequately supplied and safe to work in (sloppy labs are dangerous and unhealthy), if the pay was high enough to live a decent life outside of work, whether there was a corporate culture of cutting corners and letting shoddy work slip by (assuming you want to take some pride in doing a job right) - and it's the same in any other professional situation like programming industrial control systems and so on.
- jcgrillo 2y agoHave you ever worked as a welder? I think you'll find that people who are curious, thoughtful, and educated (whether autodidactically or otherwise) do better work than those who aren't across all professions. When I worked as a welder a long time ago the people who were smart, motivated, and curious did better work than those who were just punching a clock. So I do think that programming is like welding, but not in the way you meant it.
- photochemsyn 2y agoWhen I think 'welding' I'm thinking of high-tech welding systems, aluminum TIG welding, or the laser-welding assembly-line shop I worked in before going to college. The people running such shops are skilled professionals, certainly, even if they didn't hold graduate degrees in materials science or applied physics. Maybe your view of welding is that it's comparable to digging ditches? And one doesn't have to go into hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt to attend some exclusive college to be smart, motivated and curious.
- jcgrillo 2y agoMaybe I misunderstood, I was responding to your characterization of welding as a "vocational school subject" whose future practitioners wouldn't want to waste their time learning anything that isn't the direct application of various welding processes to their first job in the field. In fact, though, folks who are the best at actually doing the welding are those who are most interested in developing their craft as welders--whatever that takes be it attaining theoretical knowledge, experimenting with obsolete or rarely used processes (e.g forge welding), etc. Analogously, computerers who are best at computering aren't the ones who just want to learn enough jquery to get that computer gig. So what's the point of education? Is it to illuminate the path to excellence for those who choose to follow it, or is it to try to land someone a job and no other thing?
- photochemsyn 2y agoIdeally, people with the intellectual capability to get into MIT wouldn't have to go into massive debt that would drastically curtail their future choices in life, which is what higher education has sadly meant for many people: > "To attend Massachusetts Institute of Technology for four years, the cost, based on 2022-23 numbers, would be $319,400, including tuition and fees, books, and room and board."
- jcgrillo 2y agoYeah, that's completely messed up. And probably completely unnecessary, given the income from their endowment. OTOH, someone who can get into MIT can probably also get into a university in a civilized country that doesn't view education as a profit center.