[Beowulf] A press release

[Ellis Wilson]

Gerry Creager wrote:

> The kids (whose language experience 
> ranges from Java to PHP, with C# thrown in for good measure) looked at 
> me like I was reciting either fiction or lore.

Hey!

Lets remember not all of us (such as those of us who are turning 21 
today) were around to help change out vacuum tubes when they burned out 
and remove moths remains from the shorts between them.  Either way, 
while I do know the three languages listed above (plus C, MPI, Fortran, 
and other more good ol' god-fearing languages) I have to complain about 
the way we youngin's are taught today.

For instance, I put up with having to learn those better languages out 
of classes on my own (because all they taught in class were Java and C#) 
my whole collegiate career and when the capstone course comes they 
continued to screw me.  I thought it would be a class where you could 
choose the topic of your research (I wanted to develop my own package 
management software to understand the process a little better) and the 
language of implementation - NOPE.  They (LaSalle Professor's) forced me 
to write an IT oriented business-type C# and MS SQL Server program.

What is the world coming to?  We might as well call Computer Science 
Business Science with a Little Computing.

Hopefully PHD-land is better.

Ellis