Tag: Computer Science

Alan Turing’s 100th Birthday & Gay Rights


Today I honor and thank the eminent Alan Turing for the seminal contributions he made to computer science.  Without him, I may very well be not typing on this computer.  The tragic death of Alan Turing also brings up a prescient political issue of today, Gay Rights.  Homosexuals should not be made second-class citizens in any society, especially one like ours in the USA that is supposedly based on equality.

Say what you will about gay marriage, but if the government is to recognize marriage as a legal event, then it should be recognized for all citizens.  No one, especially people such as Turing who contributed so much to humanity, should be driven to suicide by a feeling that they are ostracized from their own society.

I have never posted anything political on this blog and rarely discuss my politics in professional life.  But the 100th birthday of the founder of my profession forces me to look at these two things and lament that he would still be treated as an outcast by some if he were alive today.

Software Education in the 21st century


It is unfortunate that today’s software practitioners are put at such a disadvantage by spending four years of their lives studying things that are totally irrelevant to creating software (i.e. a BS in Computer Science).  I have yet to use any calculus in my career.  Discrete Mathematics was also a total waste of time.  P = NP is nifty, but not really relevant to my profession.

That is why there is such a brazen turn against the term software engineering.  This is where things such as the Agile Manifesto come from.  It is the pent-up frustration of software developers finally saying “ENOUGH”!  I want to get things done, I don’t feel like studying so much theory that I forget why I started Computer Science in the first place.

This era in time is analoguous to the late 1800’s in which established universities such as Harvard, et. al. were still teaching Latin and other useless subjects.  What came out of this was MIT, all the A & M schools, Virginia Tech, Texas Tech, etc.  Universities that actually prepared there graduates for the real world.

The big universities are so large that they cannot be turned quickly and today’s software profession changes every month.  A new model of education needs to be developed lest these big university programs are replaced.  There is a vacuum right now for certifying and educating software developers.  Either universities need to change, and change quickly, or the industry will find another way.   But time is running out….