What Scala?

[Georg Wrede]

Sean Kelly wrote:
> Walter Bright wrote:
>>
>> Multiple choice exams were against the rules at Caltech (even though 
>> we did have a few huge lecture-based classes).
>>
>> I'll still hold forth, however, that you're going to get out of it 
>> what you are willing to put into it. If you're only going to target 
>> getting a degree, I wouldn't hire you. If you are in college to get 
>> the most out of the experience (and there are huge opportunities for 
>> that in college), your results will be far better.
> 
> Definitely.  I never understood people who were trying for a degree or 
> job for money or other reasons instead of because they were interested 
> in the work.  If you've got to do it every day then you should enjoy it. 
>  I've never met someone who was good in their field if they didn't enjoy 
> the work either.
> 
>> 90% of the classes I took I selected because they interested me and I 
>> thought they were important. I made sure I understood front to back 
>> every single homework problem, and every exam problem I got wrong. I 
>> also paid for most of it out of a part time and summer job, and I'm 
>> sure that paying the tuition bills influenced my attitude as well <g>. 
>> I wanted my money's worth.
> 
> I'd just like to chime in here that you shouldn't go to college until 
> you're ready go all the way through.  I dropped out after three years 
> the first time (landed a career by accident and couldn't manage doing 
> both), and having that school record when I returned a decade later 
> actually hurt me instead of helped me.
> 
> When I went back to school I didn't have the luxury of taking what I 
> wanted because I had a full-time job as well, and while I managed to 
> find some cool courses anyway, I still wish I'd been able to take a few 
> that simply weren't offered at a good time.  The biggest struggle the 
> second time around were the courses I had to take for distributional 
> requirements that I had absolutely no interest in whatsoever.  Leisure 
> Studies being one such, for example (it was the only course offered 
> online that fit a requirement I had to meet).

Got a similar life. After badly gone entrance exams, round here the 
universities have a joint entrance exam, and the better ones get to pick 
and choose. I never had learnt to seriously work for exams, so I fared 
lousy, so my only choice was to go to a crappy "rural" university. They 
didn't even have a single computer in 1977, although I had already 
written my first FORTRAN programs 8 years earlier. (At home, with no 
computer to run them on. :-( )

The first semester was math and engineering drawing. The math was 
lectured mostly by some 2nd year students, who I think didn't understand 
the math themselves! The drawing was ink on translucent paper. My hands 
weren't steady enough, and all the professor ever cared about were that 
lines meet literally perfectly and that the numbers and text had to look 
printed. I hated every bit of it. And instead of on-campus dorms, we 
lived in large buildings in the middle of woods, with no life around, 
ten miles from town. After the first year I quit.

Then ten years and a a career in telemarketing (where I initially got 
because you didn't need a CV!), I sold my firm and decided to get a 
university degree, no matter what. Sort of, just to get even with fate. 
So I went to study business at a minority university. And I didn't care 
one bit about the crap they were teaching, I only wanted a master's degree.

By that time there were actually computers around. (The 286, if anybody 
today knows what that means.) And the university had a HP 3000 early 
model (with a totally disgusting OS and a text editor that made *vi* 
look like a Ferrari and Lexus combined).

But hey, I got a job at the computer center, took every single class 
that even remotely was IT related, and got a degree. I guess I can say I 
got reasonably even with fate...