Oh shut up. Anyone who makes it past the first “weed out” class in a math/science/engineering program is there because they have a true passion for what they are doing, not because they have a better defined work ethic or some other form of moral superiority. I’ll even give you that these fields generally are harder. But the point of life is to become happy and fulfilled and help others. Nobody achieves this by entering a field they suck at and hate.
Cubsfan, speaking as a History/Classics major who could have done her degree in hard sciences, and who did get a minor in Biology, I can tell you this: you have no idea what you’re talking about.
And, MsRobyn, you are making a reasonable point. But it applies only in two circumstances: a) you’re at a school which has low enough standards that coasting is possible and b) you only want to pass the class.
The same can be said for the basics of any subject. You don’t need a college course to teach you how electrical circuits work. Obviously all those electrical engineering courses are just a waste of time!
(Like Helen, I have a mixed background in engineering and the humanities. I did a double major in Electrical Engineering and English Literature and I have a masters in Computer Science. My wife is a professor of music history. You have no idea what you’re talking about.)
Cubsfan’s post reminds me of one of my favorite college English courses. It was Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature. Sounded like a cakewalk, but it was taught by one of the tougher professors in the English department. I took it twice, because I enjoyed it so much. Both times, at the beginning of the semester, the class was overflowing with students from other majors, particularly engineering and computer science majors, who thought it would be an easy way to meet a graduation requirement. Both times, by the end of the semester, there were about fifteen students left, almost all of them English majors. Apparently, it was a bit too “intellectually demanding” for all those folks studying “real” subjects.
One benefit of college is that it shows you have at least a basic level of understanding. Before I started my own business the owner of my printshop hired a woman for backup keyoping and customer service and after a couple of days we realized that she could barely read and couldn’t do basic math. She had a high school diploma and her work experience checked out… she was just a fucking moron.
Hopefully someone with a college degree could be expected to know the difference between 500 and 5000. I’m not likely to ever hire anyone given the nature of what I do now, but I’d be prone to choose college graduates or rock solid work experience at this point.
Another thing my worthless Politics, Philosphy and Economics undergrad taught me…
When I sit down now with people with multiple real degrees, scientists who are often expert witnesses in cases with me, I can listne to and understand what they are saying, even though I have no background in polymer sciences. I can also explain to them how what they are saying might not come across well to a jury, and how we can work towards a better presentation that is more understandable to laymen.
And despite my lack of a real degree, some people think those sort of skills are worth paying me money to perform. And I certainly didn’t have them when I went to college.
I have no real opinion regarding the OP; it was obviously a highly personal experience, one I did not share, so I can’t say whether he’s legitimately ranting about a shitty school, or a doofus who doesn’t know how to be educated, or even an average guy stuck in a mismatched program. But this?
Is wisdom.
I know what laziness and strictness are, but I’m a little confused by this. What do you mean by saying that strictness restricts syntax?
(I have no suggestions for changing the list (although I do also think there is much more usefully generalizable knowledge about modern programming qua programming to be gained from learning to use Parsec than yacc/Bison). But, I do have an anecdote: in my own formative years, way back in my childhood when I was deadset on growing up to make computer games, I wrote to a game developer idol of mine and asked for advice on how to get there, particularly what the next step should be after having already learnt C++. The reply came back with “Expose yourself to new ways of doing things; look at Lisp and Haskell. Expand your mindset like this, and you’ll be much better than most programmers.” So, of course, I dutifully did so right away, and, looking back, it was perhaps the best advice of that sort anyone’s ever given me; he was right about how much of a change in mindset it was, and long after the desire to make games had worn off, that experience was still giving me a leg up in college. Plus, while it’s hard to evaluate counterfactuals, if it wasn’t for that early exposure to Haskell, I probably would not have gone through the particular path of academic interests I did (as Derleth says, there’s no better introduction to type systems). So, that’s a small related slice of my life story, for whatever it’s worth.
Of course, over the years, I’ve also seen many people get frustrated with and abandon their efforts to learn Haskell; I think you really ought to push yourself to keep going, but if you feel you must bail, try Standard ML instead, as Capt. Ridley mentioned, as a sort of starter’s Haskell. Standard ML gets rid of what is probably the biggest stumbling block for experienced programmers trying to accustom themselves to the the Haskell paradigm (monadic IO), while still similar in many other ways; of course, the stumbling block is there for a reason, and it would benefit you to eventually become comfortable with it in all its beautiful glory, but you needn’t let it dissuade you altogether in the beginning. (Conversely, there are things to be found in SML which you won’t get in Haskell, like the powerful module system which has been mentioned, but my bias leaves me less enthusiastic about evangelizing them)
Similarly, when I started learning Lisp, I went with Common Lisp and found myself quickly confused by small things which are silly now but which were difficult to get over then (e.g., the multiple namespaces); you might want to try looking at Scheme instead if you find yourself in a similar situation, though the differences are not that big.)
I was hoping it would be the last time any of us will have to hear any more bitching about it.
Call it a Christmas wish.
Sorry, but being an “adult” student has nothing to do with it. If you go to a crappy school or major in a crappy program, then chances are you will coast. Regardless of your age.
I hold an advanced degree, performed well in all of my coursework, taught a couple of classes, and I’ve worked in my field for almost five years. So I’m not a dim bulb or a neophyte. If I had to do my undergraduate all over again, it would still kick my ass. I wouldn’t do it all over again because those four years weren’t very fun, but I learned a ton.
Enduring a couple of unfulfilling classes, I can understand. But after two semester’s worth of disappointment, I would have transferred to either another program or another school (and as older students, I would think you’d have even more moxy to do this). Sorry, but someone who is complicit to their own boredom doesn’t evoke a whole lot of sympathy.
To me, half of being an adult is taking responsibility for our fate, the other half is knowing how much we don’t know.
Bingo.
From what I can tell from the OP, there was a problem with the student, not the college.
even sven pretty much tied this thread up in one of the first posts, but I’d like to state as someone who has earned a terminal degree and now is a professor helping others reach the same goal, I think the biggest lesson I’ve learned in higher education is that your life is infinitely improved if you approach it as a humble learner. There’s always more to know, another angle to consider, contrasting analyses to ponder. The second you feel as if you know all there is to know, I think a part of you is dead (or asleep).
I’ve been teaching my courses with the same basic syllabi for the past two years. I still learn new stuff, even after studying under the “world expert” (she’d put it in quotes, too) in the field, earning the degree, writing the dissertation, and teaching it.
If you look at higher education as solely a credentialing process, no doubt, you’ll be disappointed. Certainly, there are hoops to jump through, but I’d like to think that there are few places where the primary enterprise is thinking and learning - not just about one topic, but literally millions of them.
It usually forces functions to have a fixed arity, as opposed to currying automatically. That means function foo() (for example) is always a function of three arguments, as opposed to a function of one argument that returns another function of one argument that returns another function of one argument that returns a value which mirabile dictu is usually not a function. 
I suppose I’m needlessly tying laziness with currying, but IME that’s how it tends to work: Haskell holds both laziness and currying sacred, and Lisp has neither without clever macros to explicitly construct the chain of functions.
(Looking over SML, I guess it has both strictness and currying. I’m really not familiar with it.)
Scheme is fun, and if you want to learn it I know of no better text than The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP), which is more about the underlying theory than the language itself. Scheme is a different language from Common Lisp, though, and you should keep that in mind: It enforces a rather stronger notion of hygiene than Common Lisp in addition to some minor syntactic changes, and the guarantee of proper tail-recursion can have a profound effect on your programs’ structure even if you never use first-class continuations.
Even for the embarrassingly “easy” intro classes. . . if a student wanted to learn more than the very passing basics, there’s a lot there, even in that 101 course. Even just in the material the prof covers, if you stop thinking that the important information ends where the material on the exam ends, things change.
Man, since starting to teach I have been learning so much more than I ever did as a student (I guess studenthood gave me the basic armature, and now that I know how it works I can soak up related information like a sponge-- student-me would be amazed at professor-me). Every time I do the bottom-rung basic survey class I learn a shitload more about the same material-- it just becomes a solidified, deeper and more nuanced understanding of the same basic principles-- more detail, more and better examples of epitomes and exceptions, a sense of historiography and how the discipline’s changed, my weak spots get shored up. It’s one thing to sit in the room taking notes well enough to smugly get a B on the exam, but when you’re the one up there spouting it for an hour and a half, your whole concept of ‘knowing this class’ shifts a lot.
The notion of college being the place where you’re trying to get the least for your money is pretty hilarious and sadly spot-on for some students. I did have a moment of joy during finals week when in my upper-div course, during my fairly demanding essay exam, a student joked about preferring another prof’s take-home multiple choice exams, and three other students opined that “well, yeah, you get As in his classes, but you don’t learn anything.”
Environmental Engineer checking in here, I would never say that liberal arts programs are worthless. One of the best classes I ever took for understanding Israel was Jewish History, which many people took because they thought it would be easy and fulfill requirements. 6 papers later, not so many people thought that.
There is a great deal of value in history and related fields. They teach you how to do research, and its alot harder to research something that happened 500 years ago than it is to research something that happens now.
I would also like to say that groo’s line
should be the teaching goal for most schools.
After justifying his OP with this:
Airman hasn’t been back to the thread. Does it seem odd to anyone else that someone who brags that his analytic and communication skills were utterly unimproved by his college experience wouldn’t want to participate in this debate?
Oh, wait, never mind.
I was a chemistry tutor at college and I think I learned as much tutoring as I taught. That was a great experience.
I don’t know USAD and to be honest, it’s hard to judge a person by one post. I’m sure I’d come across as a major league asshole if you picked the right posts out of the thousands I’ve made. (If in fact you think I am a major league asshole, then it’s worth noting I’d come across as a nice guy if you cherry-picked other posts.)
I will say this, though; in every single case I have ever seen where someone criticized a professional educational experience, they weren’t paying attention. It’s a remarkably consistent truth. If someone comes out of a college program, or a professional certification course, or something of that nature, saying “Boy, that was dumb, I already knew it all,” they were not listening and didn’t allow the information to get past their ego. I can tell a great many stories, all of them too boring to relate, but it’s always the same; they may have passed the tests but they didn’t absorb the underlying truth.
It’s possible this case is different, but I know where I’d put my money.