better courses

[m.naveen]

hi .........i m doing MCA second year .............i would like learn java to get the job in good companies ........is java the correct decision if any other options please siggest me.................

[finito]

you can't go wrong with Java. C++ is also a good strong language to learn.

[jwenting]

Any decent company wants people who can think, not monkeys who learned a trick and can repeat it over and over again.
Learning C++ or Java would hardly matter to them, they'd know full well that any fresh graduate knows nothing whatsoever and needs to be taught everything from scratch.

[daviddoria]

jwenting - You are exactly right about employers needing to start from scratch. However, this doesn't seem like any inherent problem, it is just a bad (read "old") educational system!

I write (read "whine") about this every once in a while -

SNIP

Dave

[jwenting]

it isn't. The educational system is incapable of keeping up with the speed at which the industry moves, as well as with the breadth of the technology used within the industry.
This is I think not something that can be rectified without stifling innovation and technology development in the industry.

That's not to say the educational system isn't in serious trouble, but that's for other reasons.
The fact that the majority of schoolkids (and even supposed university students) posting to sites like that seem to be borderline illiterate as well as terminally lazy and disinterested in studying (and I have a strong suspicion a lot of teachers encourage such attitudes, give them urls of forums with the instruction or at least suggestion they can dump their assignments there and someone will do the work for them) shows just in what serious trouble the educational system is.

Not only are kids not stopped from advancing in it who are clearly incapable of even reading and writing correctly, but they seem to be actively encouraged by that system to be slackers, incompetents.
The massive emphasis on physical activity and "social studies" over the sciences is no doubt a big part of that.
As I noticed myself at that age (30 years ago or more), anyone who doesn't excel at sports yet likes the sciences if turned into an outcast with the tacid (at that time, not I think active) approval of teachers, is bullied and beaten up regularly while teachers look on and do nothing.
In such an environment academic prowess is discouraged, laziness and incompetence rewarded.

[daviddoria]

jwenting -

I agree with all of your points here. So how do you suggest we fix it? I noticed you had private messages disabled, but if you'd like to take the discussion "offline" I'd like to continue it. You can find contact info in my profile (since I think it will get "snipped" if I post it here).

Dave

[jwenting]

First thing that needs to be fixed is the attitude of schoolkids who for decades (if not longer) have considered all academic pursuits as being the mark of the "nerd" or "geek", socially disrespectful.
Anyone seen to be interested in the sciences is outcast from society.

Hollywood had a major influence in this, but the "mad scientist" of course has existed for a long time.

And it's getting worse of course, with now everything that's in any way being related to science and industry being described as "evil" by the press, politicians, pressure groups, and the entertainment industry.

During WW2 and into the 1950s scientists and engineers were highly regarded, and cartoons and novels hailed their great contributions to society.
In the late 1950s this started to change as the problems with nuclear fallout and radition became known (and massive exagerated), to the point where now anything scientific is regarded as dirty (not helped of course by so-called "scientists" perverting the scientific process for political purposes in the name of "the environment" in the whole "global warming" hoax.