Re: [tlug] Fortran --> Python (was linux engineer)

[Attila Kinali <attila@example.com>]

On Thu, 7 Jun 2012 22:32:27 +1000
Jim Breen <jimbreen@example.com> wrote:

> On 7 June 2012 15:46, Attila Kinali <attila@example.com> wrote:
> 
> > And how many PhD students do you know, who actually have programming
> > skills?
> 
> I share a lab with about 20 of them. Most of them are scarily
> good programmers.
> 
> > My experience tells me, that even those who write code on a daily basis,
> > heck, even those whos PhD is based on writing code, are very poor programmers.
> 
> That's not my experience at all. In this country you can't get a
> "PhD is based on writing code", but the people I am talking about
> are CS graduates in the top few percent. As it's a computational
> linguistics lab there's quite a lot of programming involved. These
> days it's mostly C/C++/Python/Perl.

I meant people doing "computational science" like writing chemistry
simulations or similar stuff. Those PhDs are 99% writing code and
maybe 1% things of their actual field. Sure, you have to know how
your field works to be able to write code that makes sense, but most
of what you do is really just putting that 1% into c/c++/java/python/whatever.
So i would expect those people to know the programming language they use
together with the simulation system well... but i have not yet met anyone
who does something like that who actually knows a bit about computers...

As for CS PhD students. Unlike regular CS students, CS PhD tend to be those
who actually care for their field and what they are doing (getting a job
outside research would give them a lot more money) and thus are also
more likely to know what they are doing.

				Attila Kinali

-- 
It is upon moral qualities that a society is ultimately founded. All 
the prosperity and technological sophistication in the world is of no 
use without that foundation.
                 -- Miss Matheson, The Diamond Age, Neil Stephenson