Too boring, especially macroeconomics. It was quite clear early on that they had absolutely no idea how things actually worked in the real world, and were just dreaming up theories.
I'm not a programmer, but I'm learning. It's so hard to get good programmers that I thought I would learn how.
The trouble with business school is that some students mistake the classes for... well, for anything other than an opportunity to network. If you want to learn about finance, work for a fucking bank! If you want to make contacts, you could do a lot worse than a top MBA program.
An EE friend of mine (who helped me survive PChem, since I taught myself linear algebra and multivariate calculus, poorly) went back for his MBA recently. He began a standard engineering exposition of market forces in terms of structural equations and nearly the entire class glazed over. Afterwards, the professor (a former physicist) told him that, while his math was spot on, you can't use calculus in front of businesspeople and expect them to follow.
He almost cried. I laffed when he told me about this. (We both worked at JGSM and also at the supercomputing center as undergraduates -- even still, I think he was disappointed.)
Scientific programmers (what I was trained as) and everyday build-something-that-works programmers (which is more fun) are as different as FORTRAN77 and Lisp. Just an observation (related to your final sentence), not a tautology. There is, however, a divide between systems/performance-centric programming and logic-centric or symbolic programming, and the latter is more efficient in terms of man-hours IMHO.
There is definitely a difference, and my goal is not to become a scientific programmer - I'm not smart enough for that. I am just curious as to how it all works, and my goal is primarily to better understand the process. So it is just basic CSS, javascript and PHP.
You can't be in this business without being passionate about it. Well...I guess you can, but I think everyone on this site falls into the 'passionate' category. And with that comes the ability to pick things up on your own, which is in any case pretty much a necessity for this field, as many aspects of it change frequently.
One of the wonderful things about this field is how much is possible to do on your own, if you have a computer a decent internet connection.
"I became interested in writing cell phone applications several years ago, after a rainy day high in the Italian Dolomites near Cortina d'Ampezzo - my old phone ended up in a mud puddle and died, leading me to purchase a new phone with J2ME (Java) capabilities. Writing applications in Java was okay, but I thought to myself that it would be an interesting experiment to try and create a scripting language that runs on top of the J2ME (now known as Java Micro Edition or Java ME) environment."
I'm currently on a break from school while I move and get settled with a new job (software developer at a near-Silicon Valley startup). I'm going back this fall to work on my BS in Comp Sci at CSU Fresno.
Another Canuck here! I did my graduate diploma (1 yr) at SFU
I did my undergrad at Canadian Bible College - B.A. in Religious studies (with Music History and ancient Greek). Thought the subject matter doesn't help coding, I think the college work did. I'm also a "started at age 8" story.
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[ 41.8 ms ] story [ 605 ms ] threadToo boring, especially macroeconomics. It was quite clear early on that they had absolutely no idea how things actually worked in the real world, and were just dreaming up theories.
I'm not a programmer, but I'm learning. It's so hard to get good programmers that I thought I would learn how.
An EE friend of mine (who helped me survive PChem, since I taught myself linear algebra and multivariate calculus, poorly) went back for his MBA recently. He began a standard engineering exposition of market forces in terms of structural equations and nearly the entire class glazed over. Afterwards, the professor (a former physicist) told him that, while his math was spot on, you can't use calculus in front of businesspeople and expect them to follow.
He almost cried. I laffed when he told me about this. (We both worked at JGSM and also at the supercomputing center as undergraduates -- even still, I think he was disappointed.)
Scientific programmers (what I was trained as) and everyday build-something-that-works programmers (which is more fun) are as different as FORTRAN77 and Lisp. Just an observation (related to your final sentence), not a tautology. There is, however, a divide between systems/performance-centric programming and logic-centric or symbolic programming, and the latter is more efficient in terms of man-hours IMHO.
One of the wonderful things about this field is how much is possible to do on your own, if you have a computer a decent internet connection.
In terms of Hecl itself, taken from (http://www.hecl.org/docs/j2me.html#javame_tutorial)
"I became interested in writing cell phone applications several years ago, after a rainy day high in the Italian Dolomites near Cortina d'Ampezzo - my old phone ended up in a mud puddle and died, leading me to purchase a new phone with J2ME (Java) capabilities. Writing applications in Java was okay, but I thought to myself that it would be an interesting experiment to try and create a scripting language that runs on top of the J2ME (now known as Java Micro Edition or Java ME) environment."
Tcl is the best lisp tell them the truth, enlighten their braces crippled souls :PpP
But seriously, Tcl is a very smart language, one can only wish it was used more.
I've been programming for about 12, or 13 years now, I think.
- Stanford U, Masters in Engineering - UC-Berkeley, Engineering - UC-Berkeley, Computer Science - UC-Berkeley, Business Admin.
Applied for it after I had started programming professionally. (Already had the credits, so why not? ;-)
BS CECS and MS CS, USC, '07
People don't give 'SC enough credit!
I did my undergrad at Canadian Bible College - B.A. in Religious studies (with Music History and ancient Greek). Thought the subject matter doesn't help coding, I think the college work did. I'm also a "started at age 8" story.
Programmer ... hmmm ... someday I will!