Novice to Pro in 16 Weeks?

Before I get started I just have to say how excited I am that tomorrow I get to tour a fab at TI called DMOS 6, which was built just a few years ago and is probably one of the most state-of-the-art fabs in the world seeing as how there are no people in the clean room! We had to get special clearance for it, so I'm totally siked for it. Anyway, my topic is based on this article reporting that a company is starting a program in India to train novice programmers to become "experts" within 16 weeks. They claim that these people will be the equivalent of any man or woman in the world when it comes to CS, and I agree with the author in claiming it as an impossibility. First of all, I'm afraid that this will spread to the mass media and cause another outsourcing panic. I think that most domestic businesses value genuine, experience talent quite highly, which is why interviewing for me has been extremely hard. Companies don't buy good grades, they only subscribe to hard results. I think I get a lot from being around people at UT who are as enthusiastic as me and upperclassmen who are much wiser and can't teach me the tricks of the trade. Hell, I learned even more being at TI and realizing how important standards are and using good style when writing code. There are some things you only get with experience, and a lot of concepts that can only sink in over time. There are just so many things to learn about computers that to claim to learn it within the span of a single semester is humanly impossible. It's hard enough just learning architecture, let alone theory or data structures or compilers or OS kernels or any of that stuff. I'd imagine that even the people on this site would require someone with some degree of experience and a little more than 16 weeks of knowledge (which, at the most, is an undergrad freshman's experience). This program may be just fine for workers specifically for that company, but not for the world at large. Not by a longshot. Not even if they are college graduates in another field (which is worse because it's hard to learn these things as you get older).

I've got more Apple stuff for you today. Apparently, Steve Jobs mentioned that there were some aspects of Leopard he wasn't going to cover at WWDC, which makes sense due to time constraints, but MacWorld has decided to ponder it further. Of course, I'd prefer to subscribe to the theory that they're trying to hide future hardware plans. Parallels is working on 3-D acceleration for Mac gamers who want to play PC games, which is great because I think that it'll attract more people than you may think. A lot of gamers steer clear from Macs because of the Windows games they can't play. Levi is planning on selling a new style of jeans that have a special pocket and bright red cord for your iPod that I think looks ridiculous. Just look at the stupid cord! Do we really need more pockets on our jeans? The cell phone one is enough. Gmail has gotten out of beta in Australia, which means that we'll probably see it without invites in the very near future stateside. It really is long overdue! The Yahoo Developer Network has added a section for Python that not only points you to resources for using and learning Python, but also interacting with the Yahoo API. I think it's really cool and makes me want to learn Python! If only I had a web host (and enough time) to play around with it on. Lastly, if you want to create a CG version of yourself, you'll have fun with this.

The big movie news today is that Disney is trying to sell off the distribution rights of Apocalypto, likely because of the controversy around Mel Gibson rather than the content of the movie, which looks pretty weird and possibly awesome. I can't imagine that it'll still be released in early December, but you never know. A lot of movie sites seem to be excited to report the director of the Halo movie, which is some random guy named Neill Blomkamp. This reduced my confidence in this film's production even further. Alex Bledel told IGN that she may be in Sin City 2 since apparently it's a prequel and she didn't even actually die in the first movie (if you haven't seen it by now then you're a loser and deserved that spoiler). I thought she was cast so perfectly that I'd love to see her again in the sequel. A movie I didn't know about until now called The Ten (a parody of The Ten Commandments) appears to have attracted more high-profile actors/actresses including Winona Ryder, Famke Janssen, Rob Corddry, and Jessica Alba. This leads me to believe that this may actually be a comedy movie to look forward to. The Reservoir Dogs video game looks pretty bad, but this commercial for it is so funny that I just had to link it. Anyone who has seen the movie with definitely appreciate it. Lastly, Hostel 2 has been pushed back from its prior January 2007 release date to make a better movie, which is exciting because you rarely hear a movie being pushed back solely so the director can spend more time on it.

Now for the Wednesday Mind Hump:

1. Do you use email much?
Oh yeah. At work I use it all the time, but even at school it's pretty important to me being an officer in two clubs and having to organize stuff and send club-wide communiques all the time.

2. When did you start using email?
Probably back in like 1996 when Juno was free an available on Windows 3.1. I used to send a lot more personal e-mail back then though since I was so bored.

3. How many email addresses do you have?
Right now, four: personal, school, spam, and work. The work one is only for another week though.

4. If you could send an email to your favorite actor or musician, who would it be and what would you say to them?
I'd either ask Jessica Alba to have my baby or tell Chris Cornell how glad I am that he moved on after Soundgarden to help form Audioslave and how much I admire their music.

Be forewarned that I may be missing tomorrow night's post for co-op events, but I'll try to make it since I definitely can't make Friday's post on Friday itself due to a pool party (our last big one, I'm afraid).