What Scala?

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

Georg Wrede wrote:
> dsimcha wrote:
>> == Quote from Walter Bright (newshound1 at digitalmars.com)'s article
>>> Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>>>> If there's one thing my
>>>> school experience taught me, it's that teachers are only interested in
>>>> focusing on the low-to-mid-range students.
>>> That wasn't my college experience at all (Caltech). I was a
>>> low-to-mid-range student there
>>
>> ...Which kind of proves the point that the way knowledge/learning in 
>> college is
>> measured is pretty flawed in that it doesn't predict who will be 
>> successful
>> afterword.  I just finished undergrad a couple years ago and I feel 
>> that the kinds
>> of multiple choice exams you get in huge lecture-based classes are 
>> good at testing
>> rote memorization and superficial understanding and the ability to get 
>> inside the
>> professor's head, where as what's important is the ability to take 
>> your knowledge
>> and apply it to something useful or use it to create more knowledge.
> 
> Yes, one gets the impression that those who do well in exams simply 
> store the stuff in another way in their head. Feels like they've 
> developed methods to store it for easy retrieval and rote memorization, 
> instead of ever trying to internalize the essence of it. (Sure, some 
> kids can manage both, but I wasn't one of them.)
> 
> But then, 20 years afterward, ask the three starry eyed ones, what the 
> price will be if there is first a 10% price hike and then you get a 10% 
> rebate. Since they can't remember the formula by heart anymore, they're 
> at a loss with this one. But what does it matter, they've got good 
> secure jobs, a nice family and a car as good as their neighbor.
> 
> OTOH, to make things really happen, we need the other kind of guys. 
> Those of us who want to understand. They're the ones who advance the 
> state of the art, and without that, we'd still be traveling on steam 
> trains. I just wish there were more schools and pedagogic knowledge (and 
> good teachers, of course) to make things interesting and fun for us 
> others. But without that, many students get by with so-so grades, having 
> invested only 10% of their effort into it. I know I did. What a waste.

I don't buy 10% of this, after another 10% rebate. I'm not sure you 
meant it that way, but it looks quite narcissistic. Not only the kind of 
people who operate like you push humankind towards progress.

We all know stories of lousy-student rise to genius. John Backus, Thomas 
Alva Edison, Einstein... You know why? Because they're spectacular 
stories. There have been plenty of geniuses who also happened to be good 
students, but nobody cares for that detail because it's expected and 
therefore uninformative.

And if anyone is pissed about the quality of higher education in the US, 
they'll have to move to Mars. US has the best in the world.


Andrei