I'm glad you said this! My boss gets mad when I say it, but I agree
completely. CS grads rarely have any "design" skills. It's hard to fault
them however, it's the schools that let them graduate without any real
design skills or concerns for quality. There are good profs and schools that
teach these skills, but they are rarely in the CS departments. Give me EE's
(hell, any engineer (even an ME or CE)) with a little SW training any day.

JTA

-----Original Message-----
From: S. Ron Oliver [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Thursday, December 05, 2002 8:57 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Future of Ada


At 03:17 PM 12/3/02 +0000, Peter Amey wrote:

A very well-written reply to Clyde's question.


>My thoughts are that we should continue,

. . . .

>  At Praxis, we solve the skill shortage by recruiting good engineers
> (even if they don't have that common non seqitur: "10 years experience of
> the latest fad")  and teaching them the languages we need to use.  We
> don't allow our engineering judgements to be dictated by what is
> currently "cool".

I particularly want to comment on this part.  This "solution" to the skills
problem is precisely the conclusion of my software sucks! lecture.  Don't
even bother trying to work with C.S. grads, unless they also happen to be
good engineers or scientists.  This is a depressing situation, but it is
unavoidable.  The overwhelming majority of C.S. grads are little more than
certified hackers - because the majority of C.S. faculty are little more
than sanctified hackers.  (OK Mike, flame on.)

sro

S. Ron Oliver, the U.S. representative for Top Graph'X, developers of high
quality software components, using Ada, including OrbRiver the
multi-language ORB.  A single distributed programming environment for all
developers.  Supports Ada95, Java, and C++.

For more information, check out www.topgraphx.com.

Semi-retired professor of Computer Science and Computer
Engineering.  www.csc.calpoly.edu/~sroliver