Advice

\_ SMTP quoth Gorman, John on 3/22/2001 09:35 as having spake thusly:
\_
\_ Real experience wins every time over theoretical analysis.

I'd beg to differ, in part, ....

\_ Regardless of the class, schools only teach you the basics.
\_
\_ In school you always create your programs from scratch according
\_ to the school assignment. You never get the experience of working
\_ on a program that is 10 years old, or understand the disciple it
\_ takes to write a program that may take a 6 months to write and you
\_ have to coordinate with a team of others. You never get exposed to
\_ office politics, which right or wrong is a reality that we all have
\_ to work in.

Schooling gives you the tools to discover whey O(n^3) algorithms are
bad. In a workplace, show me someone who won't throw an Intel
solution at slow algorithm rather than try to reduce it's complexity,
hence obviating the need for the degree....

If you can't understand why things are, the large code/products you
build will be hopelessly flawed. I've seen code that didn't even
understand race conditions: "Big Mystery Bug! I can't find it!"
Sure...you look...singly threadedly/processedly...no problem. After I
sprinkled some gratuitous flocks later... bamph...'bug' dead under
real test. If you don't know about race conditions... you'll never
see them.

Education good. Experience good. Both excellent. :-)

David