Our education system: the zombie, the academician and the hacker
Posted by Felix Enescu on November 6th, 2006
There are three types of computer science students: the zombie, the academician and the hacker.
The zombie
He feels early the need for more real life action and go out in the wild for a job. Usually they get a job as junior programmers and starts spiting out forms in VB (or Java or .NET or whatever). With little fundamentals they transform soon into zombie programmers. In the extreme version, the zombie knows nothing about algorithms, about system analysis, about how to learn. They may become stuck with a specific technology or programming language.
Eventually they end up as master programmers writing programs like this one (see the master programmer section).
The academician
He takes great pride on their theoretical knowledge. The academician loves to build cathedrals: huge applications, with mountains of specifications and documentation. Unfortunately, a hundred years later when the cathedral is finished, the city is no longer there. Remember La Sagrada Familia? The cathedral construction started in 1880 in an empty field over a mile away from urban Barcelona. Today it’s not finished and stand in the centre of modern Barcelona.
The same thing happens with huge applications: they are never truly finished, and moreover the business changes condemn them to irrelevance.
The hacker
He never really understands “Waterfall” methodologies. He learns and program using “Extreme” methods. He hates cathedrals and love bazaars. He takes college as an opportunity to learn many new things. If teachers do not provide the hacker learns on its own.
He knows the world is changing every day. First thing he learn is how to learn. He is natural born lazy: always looking for simpler ways to accomplish results (see “Guru Hacker” here). If you have the guts, always hire hackers. They will come with solutions, with prototypes, with code reusability.
Our education system does not provide enough real life connections for those in danger of becoming zombies.
Our education system does not provide enough “extreme” learning for academicians and they become cathedral builders.
Our education system does not provide enough challenges for aspiring hackers and they may fail their career by becoming zombies.
PS: What am I? Just an executive…
PPS: This was inspired by excelent post of Kathy Sierra about education on Creating Passionate Users:
The Waterfall Model of education is failing like never before. We need Agile Learning.