GeekSpeak Cheat Sheet

[Troy Rollins]

On Oct 25, 2004, at 10:34 AM, Frank D. Engel, Jr. wrote:

> And no, I never had a class which even mentioned Rev in college...   
> Too bad, they don't know what they're missing.  I'll have to write to 
> one of the teachers sometime and tell them.

As usual, I take on the role of devil's advocate.

This thread makes me wonder what the goal is. It would seem to me that 
the CS students have every right to "roll their eyes." Aren't these 
people expected to go find programming jobs when they get out of 
school? They are more likely to find a want-ad for programming in 
Sanskrit than Transcript. I don't doubt they are looking more seriously 
at M$ tools like .NET. They are probably hoping to be employed, and to 
leave college with skills which make them employable. If they are 
rolling their eyes, I would say they probably have a good sense of 
reality.

Rev, and the like are tools better suited to K-12 learning, and 
independent "problem solvers" (like most of us) than college CS majors 
preparing for the job market.

I have to wonder if this whole thing is meant to serve the teachers and 
acedemia life - because Rev is easy to teach, rather than the students, 
who will likely be mighty PO'd if convinced and coerced into spending 
time and money learning techniques and syntax which simply don't apply 
in the business world outside of the very fringe.

I'm not debating the power that Rev can have... heck, I use it. BUT, it 
isn't going to help me land a job at a corporation's IT department. 
Unless this course is something like "Alternative programming 
techniques 101" and an elective, similar to "music appreciation", I'd 
seriously have to wonder who it was aimed to benefit.

--
Troy
RPSystems, Ltd.
http://www.rpsystems.net