Posted on 12/19/2017 2:44:20 PM PST by RicocheT
"The U.S. is about to spend a small fortune on teaching science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM....That’s a good investment in theory, but the American education system is in no position to make the most of it."
"...Students should reach college prepared to take serious science and engineering courses, yet many don’t. Our math teaching is half a century out of date, and without math there is no STEM. Computer science builds on electronics and “discrete mathematics,” as opposed to the classical type leading to calculus."
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
In the homeschool community people who want old school math books buy them from India. The text is English and the math is no fluff pure old math.
Re: “That’s the mentality that put US into this mess in the first place.”
I disagree.
Today, there are close to 1 million completely “average” foreign STEM workers in the USA, under H-1B, under OPT, and under employer sponsorship for Green Cards.
There are also several hundred thousand more completely average foreign STEMS who have already acquired a Green Card.
There is a massive oversupply of completely average foreign STEM talent in the USA, which has crushed the USA wage scale since 1999, and has also crushed the demand for American STEM graduates over 40 years of age.
Average American college students avoid STEM degrees because of the pay scale, and because of limited prospects after age 40.
Re: “Garbage. Only people who can’t code are evicted. I’m 60 and I still get offers for everything from COBOL to Groovy/Grails.”
Just to clarify, are you claiming that your coding skills are completely average?
Please note that my advice was directed to “average” American college students.
In any event, how does your current pay check compare to the check you received 20 years ago?
Unless you are an elite coder, you are lucky if your pay check has kept up with inflation since 1998.
Chemistry degrees should have 2 years of Calculus.
“HALF LIFE of STEM
STEM careers have a half life of only a few years.”
Friend, I’m sorry you experienced this. In STEM and probably most other disciplines, you have to continue learning and innovating. If you dont, you will stagnate, to be sure.
I have recast my career at least a dozen times in 30 years, and continue to do so.
I was unemployed for 45 minutes once.
In STEM there is always something to learn. Adding knowledge from other disciplines even art and literature is fun and interesting.
Sadly I agree. The best earners I know are in a skilled trade(s). Contractors, certified welders, real machinists - not g-code jockeys and even niche specialists. They also have the benefit of being free of $100k in school debt. And they get a three years jump in life earning not accumulating debt.
Blank stares. Maya Angelou. Sojourner Truth. Nelson Mandela.
Happy now?
“Where did you learn to think logically - typing or recess?”
I learned it by trying to understand women
90% of programming is logic and syntax....like Accounting. I couldn’t solve for X with a gun to my head.
My paycheck is irrelevant. I took a massive pay cut to get this job. I work for the government which means I work for a fat pension, not a fat salary. We are grossly underpaid compared to corporate programmers. That’s why people come and go from here so much.
When I retire, the government will pay me while I work at another job. My salary doubles when I retire. Meanwhile, the government allows me to learn any language I want, including the highly marketable ones.
Probably half the programmers I know threw in the techno-towel when they approached 60. They didn’t want to keep up anymore. In the corporate world, that gets you laid off.
But I still get inquiries about COBOL jobs so they are out there.
I have worked with foreign programmers and they have a shelf-life. Corporations love them because they work cheap but hate them for language skills and social behavior. A VP will love them until they get complains about the rude or incomprehensible employee. Then they all get the boot. So it cycles.
They love the cheaper outsourcing to overseas but hate the unwillingness to change quickly. They are used to making last minute changes but foreign sources don’t play that.
We hired a 62 year-old programmer a few years ago and were happy to get him. He punched out at 72 when we tried to get him to learn Java.
Every time you create a variable in your code you are doing algebra. Are you sure you are a programmer? I’ve been writing code for 30 years it is all a form of applied algebra.
Tell them that the government wants to bring in less qualified foreigners to take the STEM jobs so that they don’t have to get paid as much.
You caught me. I’m not a programmer. I play a piano in a whorehouse in Richmond.
At least that is what I tell people when they ask me if I know anything about computers.
99% of code is putting something in a variable so you know what is in it. You don’t have to solve for it. If I want to know what is in it, I display it or stick a Watch on it.
There are more smart math people than there are math jobs. A lot of the smart math people don’t want to teach math because they don’t want to deal with the garbage that goes on in schools, so they find other endeavors.
The day of the super-genius programmer who solved all the problems of a project are gone.
Today, a programmer likely to use a use-case, and a related set of requirements that script exactly what must be written.
Back in the day, it was a much more creative endeavor, and a programmer had much more freedom to solve a problem. The best of them knew all about computer memory structures and algorithmic tricks and approaches. Today, most of the creative work is done in requirements development.
In my own work in the past, I would mostly write algorithms completely independent of a programming environment, and then compare outputs.
I can code, but I try not to - my strength is the math and the algorithm development to model a technical problem.
The best coders that I have ever worked with (and probably because I mostly deal with technical applications) have an intimate knowledge of trigonometry, algebra, geometry, and rudimentary calculus.
Business process coding is (usually) not as challenging.
DSP programming is all about the math.
The more math a programmer understands and applies - the more money they will make, in general.
My opinions only.
This is true for any "hard" science, not just engineering. And even in the "soft" sciences, those who practice (or posess) the ability will be at the tops of their fields.
Mine required more (3) and linear algebra. Later more math taught by a chemical physicist. Two years of physics (with math, of course).
In the old days, we cared about storage. There’s no need anymore. People want results in Excel. They want results on a web page. They want reports emailed to them. All we care about today is writing database queries that run quickly. The days of a batch job running for hours is over.
The Computer engineers are all writing chip applications. They are programming drones and robots. That’s all that algorithm stuff.
The Business IT types (like me) are data experts who produce spreadsheets. I double as an Accountant and Auditor when I am not playing Sysadmin in addition to coding. I have to set up my own Unix environments in VM’s (which hopefully gets replaced by Docker).
A lot of my time is spent googling how to code something. Manuals are also a thing of the past.
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