-=> Quoting Sheila King to Charles Beams <=-
 SK> I agree that word processing and other things are valuable as well. It
 SK> is difficult for me to make a value comparison, as it seems to me like
 SK> comparing apples to oranges. Someone else (Rick Pedley?) posted a
 SK> response to Ron suggesting that students will actually need more
 SK> programming skills than we may realize. I don't know about that.
When people think of "programs" they tend to think of Word Perfect,
Excel, or Corel Draw. But the majority of software never appears on
a store shelf. Most of it is written either in-house or contracted
out to a consultant, who writes a very specific, vertical application
tailored to one company's requirements. Engineers, researchers,
and accountants often write their own programs, the reason being it
is much easier to teach a chemical engineer to program, for example,
than it is to teach a programmer chemical engineering. If the program
requires expert knowledge in a particular field, the results are
generally better when written by someone with the specialized
knowledge.
A whole other class of programs are those embedded in virtually
every electronic appliance sold today. Those are real programs in
your microwave oven and VCR, and someone had to sit down and write
them. I often find it frustrating to hear the same people babbling
on about the "information revolution" with seemingly no concept of
how the work force is being transformed into "information workers".
Sure, not all of them will be programmers, but many more than you
think will do at least a _little_ programming (you may recall I
talked about embedded languages inside an application; even creating
a spreadsheet can be considered to be programming). I wish there
were some way to shake this myth that there are two dozen pointy-
headed geeks with greasy glasses and good at math but with limited
social skills churning out every program in the world.
coffeerp@adan.kingston.net  Û] COFFEE MUG SOFTWARE Û]
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