[Beowulf] What can a HS student do with a small Beowulf?

[John Hearns]

On Tue, 2006-05-23 at 15:52 -0400, Todd Patton wrote:
>  Is it the norm for the list that the cluster manager, 
> administrator, builder, programmer, and user roles are played by the 
> same person(s)? Should a high chool student that really wants to pursue 
> a career in computational clusters follow a programming path in computer 
> science or major in engineering or science, - with a minor in computer 
> science?

Heck no. Go to college (university) and do something that INTERESTS you.
If Kyle wants to do comp sci, and it interests him, go ahead.
Make sure to keep up with the maths and physics courses, and take any
options you can related to scientific applications of computers.
If you get the chance to do a summer placement (etc.) try to get one in
a relevant lab or industry which is using computers to do simulations.
Then fresh out of college you can aim for an interesting job.
Remember than most of us these days change career track over our
lifetimes. You may find some unexpected field which takes your interest
while at college (and that's partly why we go there).

And as regards 'majors', one of the best programmers I know originally
started in linguistics. He now works for Redhat - and was actively
recruited by them. 
So I'll reiterate - follow your heart at college. Your enthusiasm for 
computing will show through.

I agree though - most of the people on this list, and people I work
with, are physical science types who converted to being computer
acolytes after graduation. Pure comp sci types get too involved with
programming Haskell (whatever the heck that is).
So yes Kyle, take Comp Sci if you must, but resist the snake oil of
the Pascal programmers. Go over and hang out with the engineering geeks.
Remember, real programmers don't eat quiche.
http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/real.programmers.html