Re:Debunking the Myth of a Desperate Software Labor Shortage
by tokenadult on Wednesday May 06, 2009 @01:18PM
(#596207)
What is your basis for saying this?
Thank you for asking the follow-up question. I appreciate anyone on HN who asks another HN participant a follow-up question to clarify the factual basis for a statement.
To briefly respond to your question before I take my child to a doctor appointment, what has always jarred me about this FAQ is the line
"The main answer to this question is that the vast majority of high-tech H-1Bs are programmers, not engineers, and programming does not use math."
If this professor of computer science truly believes that it doesn't take much math to produce a competent programmer, he has a different definition of competent programmer from that found at some other computer science deparments, including most computer science departments overseas. There is a lot of industry demand for computer programmers who can program in a way that best takes advantage of what a computer can do best, by reducing a problem to its most mathematically correct representation.
I don't think a professor at MIT would dream of writing a FAQ with a statement like that in it about the computer science major sequence at MIT. There does seem to be a shortage of MIT-level programmers, even if there is not a shortage of UC Davis-level programmers.
Re:Debunking the Myth of a Desperate Software Labor Shortage
by costan on Wednesday May 06, 2009 @10:55PM
(#597325)
I was about to add a new comment quoting this exact phrase (programming doesn't require math). Thanks for expressing my thoughts in a better way than I would have.
Thank you for asking the follow-up question. I appreciate anyone on HN who asks another HN participant a follow-up question to clarify the factual basis for a statement.
To briefly respond to your question before I take my child to a doctor appointment, what has always jarred me about this FAQ is the line
"The main answer to this question is that the vast majority of high-tech H-1Bs are programmers, not engineers, and programming does not use math."
If this professor of computer science truly believes that it doesn't take much math to produce a competent programmer, he has a different definition of competent programmer from that found at some other computer science deparments, including most computer science departments overseas. There is a lot of industry demand for computer programmers who can program in a way that best takes advantage of what a computer can do best, by reducing a problem to its most mathematically correct representation.
I don't think a professor at MIT would dream of writing a FAQ with a statement like that in it about the computer science major sequence at MIT. There does seem to be a shortage of MIT-level programmers, even if there is not a shortage of UC Davis-level programmers.