Trent's projects

[Carruth, Rusty]

I’d like to gently disagree with this one statement, leaving the rest for others to worry about:

From: PLUG-discuss [mailto:plug-discuss-bounces at lists.phxlinux.org] On Behalf Of Stephen Partington
Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2018 7:12 AM
To: Main PLUG discussion list
Subject: Re: Trent's projects

​​….

Schooling is best for people who have no idea where to start in an industry they have interest in. And there are some roles that strongly benefit from a degree, and others that I feel require a degree. There are other roles that lend themselves better to on the job training with supplementary education (certification courses and the like).
…

First, a bit about me.

I was recently told ‘oh, just shut it off’.  They were referring to the fact that I’m always thinking, always problem solving.  They thought that was something I could turn off.  No, that’s something I am, not something I do.  So, I did all I could, which was keep it to myself.

When I started high school, I had my career all figured out – I was going in to electronics.  So, I took the most advanced electronics class they had in my high school.  (Now, by this time I’d already built a heathkit oscilloscope and other such things, so this class was… well, not very helpful)

I realized pretty quickly into the year that I needed to do other things to prepare myself for my career in electronics.  At that time, I was NOT interested in math, and in fact nobody in my math class would have considered me as a person to ask for help.

Well, I realized I needed to know math, so started to pay attention and such.  Ended up liking it.  Took ‘math analysis’ as a senior, which was an honors class.  Needed to do a project to get the honors grade, so I decided I’d write a program to do electronic music (ok, now remember this was, what 45 years ago?).  My teacher probably laughed at me for thinking I was going to do that…  Anyway, I didn’t even start on writing a program, but somehow that launched me into a deep interest in software development.

After that, I ended up at ASU in the math track for software.  (Long-ish story, won’t run down that rabbit trail today)

The first year, I took FORTRAN.  I already knew FORTRAN, so I taught myself C.

Guess what the next year was?  Yeah, C.  (Ok, the names may not be right, but the concept is true)  So I learned something else  (Might have been security hacking, don’t remember that’s too long ago)

A lot of what I learned was useful along the lines of what others have said – giving you a knowledge base of stuff to choose from (or even just a wider view?)  Much faster than I’d have gotten by flailing around on my own.

So not sure of my point any more.  Perhaps I’m saying that, for me, ‘schooling’ was (at least partly) about learning as much about my area of interest as possible as quickly as possible, and as a side benefit, getting that piece of paper (diploma) that would open up many possible positions (I’m amazed at how many places require a degree, even if you’ve been working 40 years in the field)..

(As it ended up, my primary interest areas were near-real-time and hardware/software interfacing.  Often on the same project ;-)
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