Any advice on online postgrad study?
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Matthew Faithfull wrote:
The idea came about having read a couple of Phd thesis on Aspect Oriented Programming a few months back.
Seriously? On AOP? OK, I haven't read these papers, so I am talking with my head up my arse, but my response to a PhD paper on AOP is, metaphorically, flatulence. They don't call it "Piled Higher and Deeper" for nothing.
Matthew Faithfull wrote:
I realised that I had already implemented most of the same ideas and surpassed what they were doing in a few places.
I think you prove my point. That is not intended as a slight against you, but rather that AOP is trivial to anyone with a brain, which you obviously have, and the fact that you've already been implementing most of the same ideas, and better, is illuminating.
Matthew Faithfull wrote:
Where would I go for a good experience and a Phd or MSc worth more than the paper it's printed on?
No idea, because I wouldn't, for two reasons. I don't actually believe that I can get a "good experience" anywhere - I imagine I could teach most of these courses. Second, the paper is worthless to me - it's basically irrelevant to real life experience. Which leads me to the question (and asked in all sincerity because thankfully not everyone thinks like me), why is the paper important to you? Marc
Latest Article: C# and Ruby Classes: A Deep Dive
My BlogMarc Clifton wrote:
Second, the paper is worthless to me - it's basically irrelevant to real life experience.
i think education is pretty much useless for majority of population - but couple specialties do require good deal of math: image processing/recognition with real application in defense, computer graphics (animation, simulation, graphical effects, FEA with application in different fields ... etc) and also quantitative finance/trading. I can imagine there are more places but for most jobs, education is just "Paper work" - experience counts for 90% of what you need to get the job done. This said, I felt a little deflated some moron, in his 40, who's done nothing in his life and never had a job for more than three months, said to me that he wanted to take an MBA because it'd help him understand how to run a business. He's done two master degree and never had a real job for 15 years since he graduated from University. Why'd you need an MBA, or PMP, in order to know how to run a project or a business? To run a business, you need: a. connection in high (or many) places (depending if you want go corporate or retail) b. money c. luck d. common sense e. determination If real estate is (or was) a "Bubble", education is a much more bloated bubble.
dev
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Matthew Faithfull wrote:
The idea came about having read a couple of Phd thesis on Aspect Oriented Programming a few months back.
Seriously? On AOP? OK, I haven't read these papers, so I am talking with my head up my arse, but my response to a PhD paper on AOP is, metaphorically, flatulence. They don't call it "Piled Higher and Deeper" for nothing.
Matthew Faithfull wrote:
I realised that I had already implemented most of the same ideas and surpassed what they were doing in a few places.
I think you prove my point. That is not intended as a slight against you, but rather that AOP is trivial to anyone with a brain, which you obviously have, and the fact that you've already been implementing most of the same ideas, and better, is illuminating.
Matthew Faithfull wrote:
Where would I go for a good experience and a Phd or MSc worth more than the paper it's printed on?
No idea, because I wouldn't, for two reasons. I don't actually believe that I can get a "good experience" anywhere - I imagine I could teach most of these courses. Second, the paper is worthless to me - it's basically irrelevant to real life experience. Which leads me to the question (and asked in all sincerity because thankfully not everyone thinks like me), why is the paper important to you? Marc
Latest Article: C# and Ruby Classes: A Deep Dive
My BlogThank you for your thoughts. You ask
Marc Clifton wrote:
why is the paper important to you?
and the answer is that it isn't that important which is why I'm not prepared to spend a huge ammount or take several years out to achieve it. What's happened is I've already spent several years 'spare' time effectively teaching myself and arriving at most of the ideas and methodologies of AOP pretty independently. I've now got quite a lot of working code and a good understanding of how it could be better so what can I make of it? It looks like I could with a little more work and by going though the necessary official process get a Phd for work that from an intellectual point of view I've already done. It would be an incremental improvement over the work done in Germany a few years ago essentially achieving the same goals but in standard C++ insead of having to break the language to make it work, thereby making it commercial viable. A few enhancements would more or less fall out of the additional compatability without much additional difficulty. Option 2 would be to try and commercialize what I have but because no one buying software understands what OOP is let alone AOP and I don't have a pile of capital the size of Bill Gates' Mansion that would be extremely risky and unlikely to succeed especially with the way things stand at the moment. Option 3 is that I simply publish everything I have in pretty much its current form on Code Project, you may even like it, and then move on and as they say get a proper job.
"The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage." Thucydides (B.C. 460-400)
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I went back to school (PhD candidate in Petroleum Engineering) about 2 years ago, plus a couple of months. I'm a full time graduate student, as well as working about half time. The first year was pretty tough, with homework, exams, and then qualifying exams, but after that it has been mostly downhill. I hope to finish my dissertation by the end of the year - everything else is completed. If you can do it, I suggest going back to a brick and mortar university. The interaction with students and faculty is great. You would have to get past the course work and qualifying exams, but once that's finished, you can pretty much work your own schedule, with approval from your supervisor, of course. I would guess the first thing you need to do is figure out who you want for a supervisor, then find out if they will accept you, etc. I have no idea how they would handle the qualifying exams, dissertation research and defense online. I think it would be pretty hard to make that work.
CQ de W5ALT
Walt Fair, Jr., P. E. Comport Computing Specializing in Technical Engineering Software
Thanks for your input. The concensus seems to be that a 'physical' course for want of a better term is still much better than a remote online one. Unfortunately it's not really an option unless I can do it at Nottingham Trent University which is about 2 miles from me. I hope yours dissertation goes well.
"The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage." Thucydides (B.C. 460-400)
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Yes I guess they've been at it longer than anyone really and I always got on reasonably well with all the OU stuff I used to watch for fun. Maybe I'll look and see what they're doing these days. Thanks.
"The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage." Thucydides (B.C. 460-400)
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Marc Clifton wrote:
Second, the paper is worthless to me - it's basically irrelevant to real life experience.
i think education is pretty much useless for majority of population - but couple specialties do require good deal of math: image processing/recognition with real application in defense, computer graphics (animation, simulation, graphical effects, FEA with application in different fields ... etc) and also quantitative finance/trading. I can imagine there are more places but for most jobs, education is just "Paper work" - experience counts for 90% of what you need to get the job done. This said, I felt a little deflated some moron, in his 40, who's done nothing in his life and never had a job for more than three months, said to me that he wanted to take an MBA because it'd help him understand how to run a business. He's done two master degree and never had a real job for 15 years since he graduated from University. Why'd you need an MBA, or PMP, in order to know how to run a project or a business? To run a business, you need: a. connection in high (or many) places (depending if you want go corporate or retail) b. money c. luck d. common sense e. determination If real estate is (or was) a "Bubble", education is a much more bloated bubble.
dev
devvvy wrote:
but couple specialties do require good deal of math: image processing/recognition with real application in defense, computer graphics (animation, simulation, graphical effects, FEA with application in different fields ... etc)
Yes, I remember in my 20's I was working for a company that built multispectral cameras, and among a variety of applications for these cameras was detecting hydrogen fires (this was after the Challenger explosion). I was out in San Diego where the hardware guys were designing and building the things, and I was writing the camera control firmware as well as writing the image processing code, originally in Fortran! On the east coast were the "math geniuses" of the company, and they developed a complicated algorithm using FFT's and complex translation and mapping routines based on their highly sophisticated (they were all PhD's) knowledge of math and and transforms. The resulting code took five minutes on a (then) 8086 machine to process 5 video frames of separate spectral images. And do you know what all that complicated code boiled down to? A lookup table with scaling and clipping! With the video capture board, I ended up implementing a realtime scaling and clipping for each of the five frames which you could see, again in realtime, on the video output and then processing the five captured frames in about 10 seconds to produce a single composite image. And that's one of several stories. The problem, as I see it, is the tendency to see everything as a nail once you have a hammer. But what surprises me is, how, as you go up the degree level, the ability to think outside of the box declines. Marc
Latest Article: C# and Ruby Classes: A Deep Dive
My Blog -
Thank you for your thoughts. You ask
Marc Clifton wrote:
why is the paper important to you?
and the answer is that it isn't that important which is why I'm not prepared to spend a huge ammount or take several years out to achieve it. What's happened is I've already spent several years 'spare' time effectively teaching myself and arriving at most of the ideas and methodologies of AOP pretty independently. I've now got quite a lot of working code and a good understanding of how it could be better so what can I make of it? It looks like I could with a little more work and by going though the necessary official process get a Phd for work that from an intellectual point of view I've already done. It would be an incremental improvement over the work done in Germany a few years ago essentially achieving the same goals but in standard C++ insead of having to break the language to make it work, thereby making it commercial viable. A few enhancements would more or less fall out of the additional compatability without much additional difficulty. Option 2 would be to try and commercialize what I have but because no one buying software understands what OOP is let alone AOP and I don't have a pile of capital the size of Bill Gates' Mansion that would be extremely risky and unlikely to succeed especially with the way things stand at the moment. Option 3 is that I simply publish everything I have in pretty much its current form on Code Project, you may even like it, and then move on and as they say get a proper job.
"The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage." Thucydides (B.C. 460-400)
Matthew Faithfull wrote:
Option 3 is that I simply publish everything I have in pretty much its current form on Code Project
That's the decision I came to after going through my own thought process about schooling and a degree. I actually don't have degree, just a high school diploma, and when I looked at the prospect of getting a BA or MA, online program options, the cost, the pacing of classes, etc., I ended up having a lot of resistance to the whole idea. It was about that time that I discovered Code Project and figured out that what is more important to me is not the degree but the visibility and community engagement, which has been quite fruitful. As an amusing story, my client hired a programmer for the summer who was still going to college and he mentioned that he had a senior guy doing the architecture (me). On mentioning my name, this college kid replied "You mean THE Marc Clifton who has written all those articles???" Ah, it was glorious! :-D Marc
Latest Article: C# and Ruby Classes: A Deep Dive
My Blog -
Matthew Faithfull wrote:
Option 3 is that I simply publish everything I have in pretty much its current form on Code Project
That's the decision I came to after going through my own thought process about schooling and a degree. I actually don't have degree, just a high school diploma, and when I looked at the prospect of getting a BA or MA, online program options, the cost, the pacing of classes, etc., I ended up having a lot of resistance to the whole idea. It was about that time that I discovered Code Project and figured out that what is more important to me is not the degree but the visibility and community engagement, which has been quite fruitful. As an amusing story, my client hired a programmer for the summer who was still going to college and he mentioned that he had a senior guy doing the architecture (me). On mentioning my name, this college kid replied "You mean THE Marc Clifton who has written all those articles???" Ah, it was glorious! :-D Marc
Latest Article: C# and Ruby Classes: A Deep Dive
My Blog:laugh: That's great, sadly we can't all be as famous as you. Still if I don't get a job soon or get on a course I'll probably end up racking up a mountain of CP points. Now all I have to do is work out how to exchange them for food and I'm made.
"The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage." Thucydides (B.C. 460-400)
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devvvy wrote:
but couple specialties do require good deal of math: image processing/recognition with real application in defense, computer graphics (animation, simulation, graphical effects, FEA with application in different fields ... etc)
Yes, I remember in my 20's I was working for a company that built multispectral cameras, and among a variety of applications for these cameras was detecting hydrogen fires (this was after the Challenger explosion). I was out in San Diego where the hardware guys were designing and building the things, and I was writing the camera control firmware as well as writing the image processing code, originally in Fortran! On the east coast were the "math geniuses" of the company, and they developed a complicated algorithm using FFT's and complex translation and mapping routines based on their highly sophisticated (they were all PhD's) knowledge of math and and transforms. The resulting code took five minutes on a (then) 8086 machine to process 5 video frames of separate spectral images. And do you know what all that complicated code boiled down to? A lookup table with scaling and clipping! With the video capture board, I ended up implementing a realtime scaling and clipping for each of the five frames which you could see, again in realtime, on the video output and then processing the five captured frames in about 10 seconds to produce a single composite image. And that's one of several stories. The problem, as I see it, is the tendency to see everything as a nail once you have a hammer. But what surprises me is, how, as you go up the degree level, the ability to think outside of the box declines. Marc
Latest Article: C# and Ruby Classes: A Deep Dive
My Blog -
I wonder if anyone hereabouts has experience to share of software related online postgrad courses. In about a months time I have to make up mind whether to go for something like this, or back to work full time if I can find a contract. The idea came about having read a couple of Phd thesis on Aspect Oriented Programming a few months back. I realised that I had already implemented most of the same ideas and surpassed what they were doing in a few places. The thought was if they can get a Phd, albeit from a minor German university, for that then I should be able to aswell. Going back to being a student on a campus somewhere is impractical however appealing so I let the idea pass. Now it seems universities are getting very excitable about online courses and offering many more remote places so maybe it could work after all. I have no idea where to start looking given that searching for online-courses will give me millions of hits, most of them not worth following up. Where would I go for a good experience and a Phd or MSc worth more than the paper it's printed on?
"The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage." Thucydides (B.C. 460-400)
There are probably a number of online programs that you'd find suitable, but beware, and check the content and calender before you commit. In my two year experiment, I found that of 30 units of credit required for an MS in Engineering, 12 units were required fluff of no value whatsoever . Of the remaining 18 units, the available courses are rarely offered. I can work around that by taking classes in other disciplines to fill my time while waiting for a relevant course to come available, and I don't mind doing that; I'm in this for learning, not a degree. For now, though, I'm burned out. I've aced Engineering Management, Statistics, Linear Algebra, but I had to draw the line and drop out of Engineering Communications. I've reached my Academic Bullshit Threshold, and can do no more. WTF do any of these required classes have to do with an advanced degree in Structural Engineering? In my day, undergraduate students took classes to be "well rounded" and I agreed with the value of that practice. But when one reaches the point of desiring more in-depth knowledge and a Masters degree, it's time for General Ed and useless fluff to go away. This time should be spent either drilling down more deeply into a specialized scientific field, or expanding one's horizons by exploring and mastering new fields of knowledge which require a solid engineering foundation to master. Adding more Fluff is certainly not helpful... A word of caution - if you're doing this for love of learning, I applaud your effort and encourage you to find a good program and pursue it. But if you're going this route with the expectation that your employer will reward you for having the drive and commitment to build yourself into a far more valuable employee than before, you're going to be disappointed. Bosses don't give a shit, and will not pay for what you've worked so hard to learn. So do it because you love it, not for any other reason. But definitely do it. Good luck to you! :-D
Will Rogers never met me.
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There are probably a number of online programs that you'd find suitable, but beware, and check the content and calender before you commit. In my two year experiment, I found that of 30 units of credit required for an MS in Engineering, 12 units were required fluff of no value whatsoever . Of the remaining 18 units, the available courses are rarely offered. I can work around that by taking classes in other disciplines to fill my time while waiting for a relevant course to come available, and I don't mind doing that; I'm in this for learning, not a degree. For now, though, I'm burned out. I've aced Engineering Management, Statistics, Linear Algebra, but I had to draw the line and drop out of Engineering Communications. I've reached my Academic Bullshit Threshold, and can do no more. WTF do any of these required classes have to do with an advanced degree in Structural Engineering? In my day, undergraduate students took classes to be "well rounded" and I agreed with the value of that practice. But when one reaches the point of desiring more in-depth knowledge and a Masters degree, it's time for General Ed and useless fluff to go away. This time should be spent either drilling down more deeply into a specialized scientific field, or expanding one's horizons by exploring and mastering new fields of knowledge which require a solid engineering foundation to master. Adding more Fluff is certainly not helpful... A word of caution - if you're doing this for love of learning, I applaud your effort and encourage you to find a good program and pursue it. But if you're going this route with the expectation that your employer will reward you for having the drive and commitment to build yourself into a far more valuable employee than before, you're going to be disappointed. Bosses don't give a shit, and will not pay for what you've worked so hard to learn. So do it because you love it, not for any other reason. But definitely do it. Good luck to you! :-D
Will Rogers never met me.
Thanks Roger, If I do it I certainly won't be expecting my employer to be impressed or give me a raise. That's the down side of being self employed, it's even harder to impress the boss. :laugh: I'll look out for the fluff and the stuffing and try to avoid getting bogged down in that stuff.
"The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage." Thucydides (B.C. 460-400)