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Wet Dream--python to native compiler

Laura Creighton lac at strakt.com
Sat Dec 14 17:48:12 EST 2002 
> On Saturday 14 December 2002 13:53, Laura Creighton wrote:
> 
> > The problem is larger than that.  Ever since people started getting
> > degrees to hold down larger salaries, there has been a big conflict
> > between those people who want degrees to reflect 'completely new
> > original work that advances the field' and those who would just like
> > to get certified as 'being bloody more impressive than a 4 year
> > degree man, and got the wallpaper to prove it'.  
> 
> 
> That's the difference between and Ph.D. and a M.S. :-)

I don't think this works very well. The truly creative people are not
willing to wait 4 years for undergrad and then 2 years for a Masters
before they get to do something cool with their lives.  They just
go ahead and do it anyway, and then flunk out all their required
courses.

I think that we do not want creative dentists to do new dental
techniques practicing dental medicine.  (teaching in universities
is still cool.  I know a guy who is inventing new resins ....)
So if we could get a professional faculty of programming, and
then pitch all the people who want to be programmers out of the
faculty of computer science, wish them the best of luck, then
see what is left over and pack the rest of the room with psychologists
with an interest in computation and some other odd sorts we would
do much better.

But how do we do this without giving the impression that computer
scientists are somehow 'better' than programmers?  First of all it
is not true, and secondly, if that is the belief then the best
programmer-candidates will be mistakenly studying computer science
all the more.

It is a hard problem, I see, especially since programmer-wanna-bes
generate so much hard cash for computer science departments.
<snip
> 
> Dave
> 
> 
> -- 
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Laura
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