[Beowulf] A start in Parallel Programming?

[Joe Landman]

Richard Walsh wrote:

> As far as what you CS department is teaching (from what you described
> and from the point of view of modern high-performance scientific
> computing), I would be careful not to fall in love with CS departmental
> fads ... cross check all local CS-temporo-sectarianisms here on this list.
> Time makes fools of us all, but especially CS departments ...
> 
> ;-)

Heh... so any bets on what CS departments will be teaching in 
1,2,5,10,20 years?  I seem to remember after my joyous year with Pascal 
in the early 80s that they quickly caught the Modula fad (Niklaus Wirth 
could do no wrong), dabbled a bit in other things, and came out strong 
in C++ around late 80s early 90s.  This has been largely subsumed by Java.

In many universities there are core major courses, and "service" courses 
which are needed by non-majors.  Most profs like teaching the core major 
courses (ok, the profs who *like* teaching that is).  The service 
courses are not viewed as ... rewarding, though quite often they provide 
the bulk of the teaching revenue to the department.  In Physics, there 
are lots of engineering types in the lower level courses.  I have seen 
more service oriented departments (read as less of a research focus) 
have lots of pragmatic courses available.

> 
> rbw
> 
> 
> 


-- 

Joseph Landman, Ph.D
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