Junior developer woes
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[quote="mikael_svanberg", post:245, topic:8707"]
Ah, this sounds most likely the cause of the abruptness. The other stuff sounds obvious but gradual. It was the sudden (and so far permanent) shift that really stuck out to me.
Three, the course was made mandatory.
[/quote]Which raises the question... did the pass rate change for the cohort of students who would have taken the class anyway?
As I write this, the preview shows boomzilla's avatar with Mikael's name... apologies to either or both of you if you take offense ;)
Slow connection today...so not fighting discurse
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Three, the course was made mandatory.
Ah, this sounds most likely the cause of the abruptness. The other stuff sounds obvious but gradual. It was the sudden (and so far permanent) shift that really stuck out to me.
Oh hey look, an "old man yells at clouds" right here on our very own forum.
So you rant about the "facebook generation"... then turn around and tell us that your school forced a bunch of people who don't give a crap about the subject matter to take the course when previously it was optional and thus attracted only people who gave a crap.
...and this is @Mikael_Svahnberg's fault? (At least it sounds like you're accusing him of this to some degree, I could be wrong.)
In my EET program, a required course was Transform Analysis. In it was a concept called Laplace Transforms[1]. I didn't get it the first time around. You know what? I failed. This was in my final trimester before graduation. Took a trimester off to continue working and save up money to take the class again, in the meantime studied to try to understand what I missed. Needed to borrow some extra money to actually do this, and the second time around I did pass it and earned my degree. This was 1994.
This is a problem with today's youth. Trade school/College/University degrees are earned. While I respect and even applaud teachers at the grammar and high school level for adjusting material to help the students get what was missed or poorly instructed in earlier courses (as these are fundamentals that everyone should learn to survive in today's society), when you get to the University level you are 1) of legal age, and should be expected to take some responsibility for yourself, and 2) just because you pay the teacher's salary is not any kind of guarantee of getting the sheepskin. You're paying to get the guidance through the material to learn something and get examined on it to demonstrate your understanding and ability to apply what you learned (ideally, anyway - don't get me started on fluff courses that are useless in life but required for graduation, that's a separate rant.) This is what builds the reputation of the school and separates the good ones from the diploma mills.
I require them to actually know and apply their fluffy-knowledge and develop a working software architecture/system.
I would expect exactly this from a competent course Instructor/Supervisor/Professor. If this was missing, then as a student I have grounds to demand a refund or other remedy.
Three, the course was made mandatory.
If knitting was made mandatory to graduate an electronics course, and I didn't reject the University and go elsewhere for adding irrelevant material to my path to earning a degree, then I better Belgium well learn to knit to graduate. I wouldn't blame the professor for that.
How much in life is
? Why should college be any different? Seems like preparation for life to me. While it shouldn't be a WTFey experience, one could also say it's good experience for the kidsyoung adults to learn to deal with it. After all, we're all here, aren't we? ;-)[1] Side note: Never used it since, so don't even remember what it is anymore - something about frequencies.
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This is a problem with today's youth.
Youth have always been youth.
Bitching about youth is a result of advancing age. People who have absolutely no sense of self-reflection assume that youth have "changed" somehow while "their generation" was significantly better. People who have absolutely no sense of self-reflection should not be teaching children anything.
People who have self-reflection would realize that the only change was in their own head. (And in this case, the list of required classes. But the fact that he put that, the actual reason, only after TWO "old man yells at clouds" rants makes my point.)
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Youth have always been youth.
Bitching about youth is a result of advancing age. People who have absolutely no sense of self-reflection assume that youth have "changed" somehow while "their generation" was significantly better. People who have absolutely no sense of self-reflection should not be teaching children anything.
People who have self-reflection would realize that the only change was in their own head. (And in this case, the list of required classes. But the fact that he put that, the actual reason, only after TWO "old man yells at clouds" rants makes my point.)
Do you have a better solution to propose?
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Do you have a better solution to propose?
To what? Old guys making the same rant that old guys made 3,000 years ago, when society itself has never changed?
Yes; the solution is for these people to engage in self-reflection and realize that Occam's Razor says it's a thousand times more likely that their mindset has changed and not "youth".
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To what? Old guys making the same rant that old guys made 3,000 years ago, when society itself has never changed?
Yes; the solution is for these people to engage in self-reflection and realize that Occam's Razor says it's a thousand times more likely that their mindset has changed and not "youth".
To getting through to "youth" so they realize when they're wasting their time vs. doing something useful.
If not, then that leaves us in the same place we've been for the last 3000 years - youth being youth, old people complaining about youth and youth complaining about old people. And you bringing up the subject for the sake of bringing it up to try to show up someone as a fool when you don't have a better answer yourself.
Did I miss anything?
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To getting through to "youth" so they realize when they're wasting their time vs. doing something useful.
People learn at their own pace. Most people learn by making mistakes. Forestalling mistakes doesn't improve the speed of learning.
If not, then that leaves us in the same place we've been for the last 3000 years - youth being youth, old people complaining about youth and youth complaining about old people.
Only if people are so weak-minded they never question their own opinions.
And you bringing up the subject for the sake of bringing it up to try to show up someone as a fool when you don't have a better answer yourself.
I'm not even sure what I'm supposed to be answering. Remember? I explicitly said that in my last post which you, apparently, didn't bother to read.
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Old guys making the same rant that old guys made 3,000 years ago, when society itself has never changed?
There's a rather extraordinary assertion here. If you were talking about every generation thinking they invented some way of having sex, I'd agree with you. Are you really arguing that how we raise and educate children is just like 3,000 years ago, or did you not really think through this statement?
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Are you really arguing that how we raise and educate children is just like 3,000 years ago,
No.
or did you not really think through this statement?
Neither?
If he were talking about educatonal techniques and their change through history, sure. But he was bitching about "those damned kids and their newfangled Facebooks and fax machines!" That's worthless fuzzy-brained time-wasting thinking.
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If he were talking about educatonal techniques and their change through history, sure. But he was bitching about "those damned kids and their newfangled Facebooks and fax machines!" That's worthless fuzzy-brained time-wasting thinking.
You were the fuck who was talking about "educational techniques and their change through history." Well, I guess he was, but not on the 3,000 year scale.
No.
So what was your point? The whole thing reads as gibberish now.
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Only if people are so weak-minded they never question their own opinions.
Most people are and always have been.
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People learn at their own pace. Most people learn by making mistakes. Forestalling mistakes doesn't improve the speed of learning.
True. However, this is not the professor's problem. If the student needs more help, they should be reaching for it, not asking the professor to notice and coddle them.
@redwizard said:
If not, then that leaves us in the same place we've been for the last 3000 years - youth being youth, old people complaining about youth and youth complaining about old people.
Only if people are so weak-minded they never question their own opinions.Still don't see the relevance here. How does this relate to your criticism of @Mikael_Svahnberg? That's a very broad accusation against someone over one statement that appears to have at least some merit.
Side note: Belgium you, Discourse, for making quote management such a cluster****!
I'm not even sure what I'm supposed to be answering. Remember? I explicitly said that in my last post which you, apparently, didn't bother to read.
@Mikael_Svahnberg said:
One, we hit the facebook generation coming out of high school; this is a generation who has been taught since childhood that whatever they do is great, and if something goes wrong is Never Their Fault. To bite down and study is simply not their MO; instead they negotiate. When it comes to quality criteria, I don't.
Oh hey look, an "old man yells at clouds" right here on our very own forum.
See above re: your accusation against @Mikael_Svahnberg. While you're at it, keep this in mind: as someone who grew up with Eastern European parents and the standards they tend to expect from you (as Belgium'd as they are in some aspects), it is a stark contrast to what @Mikael_Svahnberg is talking about with the coddled children of today's era. Keep in mind the way we raise kids has changed, and that has changed what our youth is perceiving as important.
Youth will always question the order of the day, and adults will resist that questioning as they don't want the comfortable routines they are in to be shaken up.
Having talked this through, I think I'm getting your point. If we look back at the 60's and 70's (before my time), we had a lot of youth question things like war, not want to go fight in Vietnam, etc. Those were causes, had a purpose to improve the world we live in, and the adults of the era labeled them "irresponsible" (for not wanting to serve their country), etc. BUT THEY HAD A POINT TO WHAT THEY WERE DOING BEYOND SHORT-TERM SELF-INTEREST.
You're applying the adult's misinterpretation of that cause as a "youth being youth" brush-off to today's youth, who are asking for something quite different (in this context, anyway): a free ride through University. A free ride through class is a disservice to the student, doesn't accomplish anything worthwhile - in fact, it leaves the youth ill prepared for life and damages the professor's credibility as well as the University's reputation.
In short, I think you have the right idea, but have misapplied it here. In my earlier example, youth were at least partially right. In the example of getting a free ride through class, they're flat wrong. Now, if the youth that @Mikael_Svahnberg is complaining about have a point here that I missed which you are trying to point out, I eagerly await that explanation from you.
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Old guys making the same rant that old guys made 3,000 years ago, when society itself has never changed?
"Society". There have been many societies in the last 3,000 years and they did change significantly, including doing things like prospering, collapsing, changing social mores, changing technologies, enslaving other peoples, banning slavery...
If you were talking about every generation thinking they invented some way of having sex
Maybe they did. Phone sex was invented only recently. I'm pretty sure it didn't exist before the phone. Before that, maybe they had telegraph sex? Maybe that's similar to text messages?
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Maybe they did. Phone sex was invented only recently. I'm pretty sure it didn't exist before the phone. Before that, maybe they had telegraph sex? Maybe that's similar to text messages?
Yes, and medieval courtly love was all about writing letters. But that's not really having sex, and even if you think it is, it's changing the subject (how and why blakeyrat is wrong) and I think you know that.
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Yes, and medieval courtly love was all about writing letters. But that's not really having sex, and even if you think it is, it's changing the subject (how and why blakeyrat is wrong) and I think you know that.This thread is now about porn.
Some of my fav interracial pics:
https://contemporaryfamilies.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/interracial-couple.jpg
https://thegrio.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/interracial-couple.jpg?w=650
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Never used it since, so don't even remember what it is anymore - something about frequencies.
Sounds like you're thinking of Fourier transforms, not Laplace. Fourier transforms are about converting between the time domain and frequency domain. Laplace transforms are about ... um ... I don't remember either.
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the solution is for these people to engage in self-reflection
I've seen Blakey rant about a lot of things, but flaming Socrates for not engaging in self-reflection has got to be the best ever.
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Laplace transforms are about ... um ... I don't remember either.
I think it was about transforming decent grades into bad grades.
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Laplace transforms are about ... um ... I don't remember either.
They seem to be a generalization of Fourier transforms to handle non-periodic functions, if I've read this right…
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They seem to be a generalization of Fourier transforms to handle non-periodic functions, if I've read this right…
I know engaging @blakeyrat on one of his rants is risky enough, but I never expected to have started this...
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They seem to be a generalization of Fourier transforms to handle non-periodic functions
Sounds reasonable, but in the real world I've had to use them, or pretty much any of the advanced math I quasi-learned in school, exactly never. Fourier transforms are useful (but not in my career path), but that's why FFT libraries exist. No sane person would calculate a Fourier transform analytically. Well, I suppose there might be valid reasons for doing so, but anyone who would do so voluntarily is, by definition, not sane.
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Sounds reasonable, but in the real world I've had to use them, or pretty much any of the advanced math I quasi-learned in school, exactly never. Fourier transforms are useful (but not in my career path), but that's why FFT libraries exist. No sane person would calculate a Fourier transform analytically. Well, I suppose there might be valid reasons for doing so, but anyone who would do so voluntarily is, by definition, not sane.
Laplace transforms are used in controls work and AC transient analysis -- they actually make for a rather handy shortcut way of semi-manually analyzing AC circuits, at least compared to doing it directly in the time domain....
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Don't blame this bullshit on me.
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they actually make for a rather handy shortcut way of semi-manually analyzing AC circuits
That does sound vaguely familiar, now that you mention it, and I'm sure that's why I had to learn them. However, I haven't had any need to analyze an AC circuit since I got out of school mumbldy-mumble years ago.
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No sane person would calculate a Fourier transform analytically. Well, I suppose there might be valid reasons for doing so, but anyone who would do so voluntarily is, by definition, not sane.
I found them rather enjoyable when I was studying. But then I did choose to do a Maths degree specialising in Pure, and I've never claimed to be sane.
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Knowing almost no SQL, I cobbled together something that almost worked in certain circumstances, and management later revealed that such a report was one of their "hardest problems"
Reminds me... Back at my contract, when I was still a total rookie, they tasked me with generating a report comparing two directories (AFAIR, a deployed package and an escrow version), and highlighting which files differ, which are missing and where, etc. A single CSV report, not a reusable solution.
I got handed some weird VB script to "start me up", which I promptly discarded, opened PowerShell and hacked a couple lines together. Took me like two hours, 1,5 of which was researching "how do I PowerShell", since I had almost no familiarity with it.
I finished, handed out the report, and was basically told "WTF, you done already?!"
"Yeah, well, took me a while, but here y'all go"
"Huh. The guy before you took a good portion of the month to do that and didn't even get halfway there..."
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Took a trimester off to continue working and save up money to take the class again, in the meantime studied to try to understand what I missed. Needed to borrow some extra money to actually do this, and the second time around I did pass it and earned my degree. This was 1994.
Never used it since
I like how you didn't even bother with any “became a better person for it” bullshit, just cut straight to the core of the issue: You were made to suffer fr no reason, thus future students should be made to suffer the same way.
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Took me like two hours, 1,5 of which was researching "how do I PowerShell", since I had almost no familiarity with it.
This describes just about every encounter I've had with Powershell. It's an elegant tool that I'm sure I'll learn to use... someday.
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I like how you didn't even bother with any “became a better person for it” bullshit, just cut straight to the core of the issue: You were made to suffer fr no reason, thus future students should be made to suffer the same way.
I'm sure someone out there uses it. I ended up working in a related field that doesn't need it.
I don't agree students should suffer necessarily, but it's consistent with the WTFey world we live in.
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Pretty sure you weren't eligible for any of those jobs after failing it the first time anyway.
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So if I tell you that it was cold today because it's winter and also because of aliens, clearly those two aspects combined to give the effect of being cold?
Would have got more mileage out of a global warming analogy.
Pass through rate remains around 25%. Is this then the fault of the teachers, the students, the students' attitude towards the course, or the preparation by the education system of the students before this course?
You are asking the wrong question. Don't ask who is to blame, ask how to fix the problem. Because regardless of how the students or education system might also have failed, anyone teaching a course that only 25% of people pass has also failed. Failed to teach 75% of the students the required coursework. They should figure out how to succeed, or stop trying, because forcing 75% of students to bang their head repeatedly into a brick wall is not good for anybody.
And in future if you find yourself blaming young people and immigrants for your problems, that's probably a good sign that it's time to take a step back and think about things for a bit.
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Oh hey look, an "old man yells at clouds" right here on our very own forum.
Yes. I am an old fart.
No. I did not invent the facebook generation analysis. This is an active debate in sweden, europe, and in the US.No. I am not blaming neither the kids nor the non-european students. I am trying to understand whence the differences in attitude so that I may get through to them.
Self-reflection: as usual you fail at reading comprehension. Read my previous post again. I scientifically factored out myself from the equation.
Besides, after being clumped together with Socrates my ego is so big I can look up my own arse. That's all the self reflection I need.
Answering @buddy in the same post. I realise that I should perhaps also point out that there is no limit on the number of re-tries a student may use to pass an assignment in the swedish system. They have five attempts within a year. After the second or third retry the pass rate is back to 80%, but the difference still remains that this used to be the pass rate after the first attempt.
Changing a course costs time, and I can only do as much as I am given mandate to do.
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They have five attempts within a year.
Cool, seems like there's no problem then. I was picturing something more like what redwizard described.
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After the second or third retry the pass rate is back to 80%, but the difference still remains that this used to be the pass rate after the first attempt.
The change to Mandatory status is the one that really matters, as that means you no longer have just people who are there because they want to learn it, but rather you've got people there who are only there because it's something that they've got to do to get to their real goal elsewhere. In other words, it means you've got a completely different profile of intake cohort; it's simply not comparable meaningfully.
It's a lot easier with an optional course; the only people who take those are people who want to take them, giving you a pre-selection for general interest in the subject matter.
Changing a course costs time, and I can only do as much as I am given mandate to do.
True, but if you're going to keep giving a mandatory course, you're going to have to invest that time. The fact that the pass rate goes back up to 80% indicates that you've not got too many basket cases, but you might need to look at varying the emphasis of what is taught, or the examples used, so that the less-than-willing realise that this stuff is relevant to them anyway and that this is something where they're going to have to stop fucking around and get on with learning.
Is this their first mandatory course with some real meat to it? The first point where some of them have to figure out that learning stuff isn't just about coasting through life? If so, that's a hard lesson they're learning and you're just unfortunate to be the person in charge of the place where they're learning it. Right now, too many of them are only realising this stuff at exam time, which is a bit late, and some of them only after two exams, which is downright embarrassing for them.
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True, but if you're going to keep giving a mandatory course, you're going to have to invest that time.
I think @Mikael_Svahnberg understands that, but I imagine university PHBs' hair is just as pointing as any other PHB.
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You have to understand, my whole life people have been telling me kids my age will never amount to anything because we're so much more entitled than our parents, and now that we're amounting to something, we're turning around and insisting that the generation behind us is doomed. It pisses me right off to see the Nintendo Generation bitching about the Facebook Generation.
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It pisses me right off to see the Nintendo Generation bitching about the Facebook Generation.
Of course we are! Damn kids! "It's too hard!" Oh, is it? We had Ninja Gaiden you peepsqueak, and we liked it!
Wait... this is not about games, is it?
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It pisses me right off to see the Nintendo Generation bitching about the Facebook Generation.
Those of us who precede both of those generations just think that you're all on our lawns…
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It's the end of the world as we know it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0GFRcFm-aY
And I feel fine.
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True, but if you're going to keep giving a mandatory course, you're going to have to invest that time. The fact that the pass rate goes back up to 80% indicates that you've not got too many basket cases, but you might need to look at varying the emphasis of what is taught, or the examples used, so that the less-than-willing realise that this stuff is relevant to them anyway and that this is something where they're going to have to stop fucking around and get on with learning.
You do realize that he isn't in charge of the entire school, right?
If my school changed how they did business in a way that I ended up with a large number of unqualified students in my class, I would do the following:
- Bring it up to leadership.
- Do the best I could with the time I have for my students. However, I would not consider it my responsibility to make this problem go away.
- Fail anyone who didn't learn the material. Even if it wasn't their fault that they were thrown to the lions without a sword, they will get the grade they earn.
BTW, I've done this. I was an adjunct professor at the time, so my course load was tapered down to zero over a few semesters. Everyone got what they wanted. I went somewhere else to do something I actually enjoyed. The school got more passing grades (the teachers that stayed simply went over actual exam question all semester to make sure the students passed the tests). The student got their pieces of paper. Of course the students learned less, but it's been ten years and no one has complained about that yet.
My experience was extra fun because it was a for-profit educational institution. Do to strict rules, all exam material had to go through a lengthy process that was supposed to ensure that we weren't passing everybody. What it really did was make it hard to change exams, so we gave the same exams every semester. The exams were so riddled with errors that it was very difficult to pass if you knew what you were doing. I was not sad when they decided I wasn't right for them, I had already decided they weren't right for me.
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It pisses me right off to see the Nintendo Generation bitching about the Facebook Generation.
Off by one. I'm the abacus generation.
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You do realize that he isn't in charge of the entire school, right?
Of course. You do realise that the person in charge of the course module (or whatever its called) is supposed to communicate with the head of the school and the overall course director? And that a switch from being an optional to a mandatory module is very much non-trivial? And that the likelihood of it happening without him being aware beforehand should be about zero?
The syllabus of the course module should not change. The exam should not change (other than perhaps in minor things such as the wording and the exact examples chosen). The standards should not change much (though with smarter students it is possible to push them a little harder). But that's not all there is to a course module. It's important to assess whether the method of teaching used is serving the students correctly in their learning of the material; if the students are not learning it, the teacher is doing something wrong.
This isn't to make a grand accusation, particularly as the exam re-sits have the numbers coming up. I suspect the problem is more along the lines of many of the students who are taking the course module now it is mandatory would not have chosen to take it before when it was optional, and have not realised just how hard they have to work.
A lot of students spend quite a few of the later years of their schooling fundamentally coasting — the material they're given is really too easy, but their school doesn't realise this — and so they've got into the habit of drifting through, able to take stuff in faster than their teachers know how to tell them. Then they get to university, which is a much stiffer challenge; even very bright people have to also be hard-working as well to succeed. Some people take longer than others to figure this out.
IME the best indicator of whether someone will succeed is whether they bother to attend tutorial sessions and departmental seminars. Those who don't almost invariably fail. The best students are the ones who push themselves hardest at learning more than they have to. They succeed (or burn out, alas). Exams don't measure those things, but they sure tend to correlate!
My experience was extra fun because it was a for-profit educational institution.
We are most certainly happy to not pass everyone, but if they learn the things that are the objective goals for the course, why would we not pass them? Whether a student fails or succeeds should depend on themselves, not on what the rest of their cohort do.
I have the advantage of working at a very highly rated university. We can effectively just raise our course requirements until we're certain that everyone taking the course should have the intellectual capability to pass it. Doing so makes us more popular, allowing us to be even more selective. It's not fair, but it works in our favour.
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You do realise that the person in charge of the course module (or whatever its called) is supposed to communicate with the head of the school and the overall course director?
That was one of the things in my bullet list of things I did. It was met with "Ok, we'll replace you with a less squeaky wheel".
I have the advantage of working at a very highly rated university. We can effectively just raise our course requirements until we're certain that everyone taking the course should have the intellectual capability to pass it. Doing so makes us more popular, allowing us to be even more selective
Must be nice to be able to succeed by selection. "We're the best educators because we only accept the most capable students!! See how successful our students are after graduation, we did that!!". 95% of the world can't do that. Most of the students that get accepted into MIT were going to succeed anyways.For-profit schools accept any student that will buy the pitch of "Take our classes and you'll get a better job" and can get a loan. The recruiters are actively working against the success of the institution - and they get paid on commission.
My experience showed that quality was not welcome there.
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95% of the world can't do that. Most of the students that get accepted into MIT were going to succeed anyways.
MIT's one of the very few places that are better. ;) And yes, it's totally unfair! Life is hard, but unfair. Sometimes you get to tilt the board in your favour…
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my whole life people have been telling me kids my age will never amount to anything
I've always told the people saying, "This will be the first generation to do worse than their parents" to STFU. Of course, that was before we started convincing kids that they had to take out a mortgage to get a job, but instead of using the mortgage for something useful they gazed at their navels.
Kids these days don't seem to be less entitled than they used to be. We work very hard to keep our kids away from that sort of attitude.
It pisses me right off to see the Nintendo Generation bitching about the Facebook Generation.
Of course, we've also gone from considering kids independent when they were 18 to 26.
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Of course, we've also gone from considering kids independent when they were 18 to 26.
Huh. We're trying to go the other way…
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Huh. We're trying to go the other way…
So are we, personally, but officially, that's how stuff is going. You read the occasional story about how lots of 30 year olds are moving home to live with parents. I've had some cousins who've done this, in fact.
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When would this function be used exactly?? I can't imagine any college graduate -- regardless of their experience level -- writing something completely useless.
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@Maciejasjmj said:
...researching "how do I PowerShell"...
This describes just about every encounter I've had with Powershell. It's an elegant tool that I'm sure I'll learn to use... someday.
I've done enough with PowerShell to know that:
- Most of the time, if you're not online researching the specifics of PowerShell syntax, you're online trying to figure out the specifics of calling into .NET from PowerShell.
- I'd call PowerShell a lot of things, but 'elegant' is probably not high up the list.
Filed under:
Windows PowerShell Copyright (C) 2013 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. PS C:\Users> $users = @('Maciejasjmj', 'Groaner', 'tar') PS C:\Users> $users | %{ [System.Console]::WriteLine($_) } Maciejasjmj Groaner tar PS C:\Users> foreach($user in $users) { echo $user } Maciejasjmj Groaner tar PS C:\Users> ConvertTo-Json -InputObject $users [ "Maciejasjmj", "Groaner", "tar" ] PS C:\Users>
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Laplace transform - Wikipedia
