[NA] Which programming language is the worst?

What is the worst language you've had to code in?

  • Perl

    Votes: 5 13.5%

  • C

    Votes: 1 2.7%

  • Cobol

    Votes: 6 16.2%

  • Fortran

    Votes: 6 16.2%

  • Assembly

    Votes: 4 10.8%

  • LISP

    Votes: 6 16.2%

  • Java

    Votes: 4 10.8%

  • C++

    Votes: 3 8.1%

  • Some proprietary non-sense

    Votes: 14 37.8%

  • Basic

    Votes: 4 10.8%
  • Total voters
    37
schmookeeg said:
Was your HR director a F'ing B? I'm trying to think of HR personnel I would describe any other way -- that or "self-loading potato" or "failed realtor" :)
Click to expand...
I guess I've been lucky, the HR folks at our firms have all been surprisingly good, reasonable people.
The compliance people on the other hand... *shakes head disapprovingly*
 
I'm not sure why, but I have a deep-seated hatred for Java. Resource whore without peer.
With the exceptions of Cobol and Fortran (both of which I have written and maintained code for a living), I was there for the birth of all the other languages.
Wrote massive amounts of C and C++.
I'm embarrassed to say that to this day my favorite language, which I still use almost daily is REXX and Visual REXX, depending on what platform I'm working on.
I can put together prototypes for products while you are describing what you want.
I used to write a lot of assembler, but not in years.
Oh, and Forth. I co-wrote an entire system for the old VS-1,2,3,4 Electron Beam systems in Forth. How many of you have even heard of Forth?
Not a fan of APL.
 
Shepherd said:
I'm not sure why, but I have a deep-seated hatred for Java. Resource whore without peer.
With the exceptions of Cobol and Fortran (both of which I have written and maintained code for a living), I was there for the birth of all the other languages.
Wrote massive amounts of C and C++.
I'm embarrassed to say that to this day my favorite language, which I still use almost daily is REXX and Visual REXX, depending on what platform I'm working on.
I can put together prototypes for products while you are describing what you want.
I used to write a lot of assembler, but not in years.
Oh, and Forth. I co-wrote an entire system for the old VS-1,2,3,4 Electron Beam systems in Forth. How many of you have even heard of Forth?
Not a fan of APL.
Click to expand...
Forth was like RPN...stacks and all that. You're digging deep into nostalgia. Work on ENIAC, too?
 
Piperonca said:
Forth was like RPN...stacks and all that. You're digging deep into nostalgia. Work on ENIAC, too?
Click to expand...
Not quite THAT old!
The oldest machine I had to code for was the IBM 1130. It still had plug boards.
Forth was fun. Mostly.
 
Shepherd said:
I'm not sure why, but I have a deep-seated hatred for Java. Resource whore without peer.
With the exceptions of Cobol and Fortran (both of which I have written and maintained code for a living), I was there for the birth of all the other languages.
Wrote massive amounts of C and C++.
I'm embarrassed to say that to this day my favorite language, which I still use almost daily is REXX and Visual REXX, depending on what platform I'm working on.
I can put together prototypes for products while you are describing what you want.
I used to write a lot of assembler, but not in years.
Oh, and Forth. I co-wrote an entire system for the old VS-1,2,3,4 Electron Beam systems in Forth. How many of you have even heard of Forth?
Not a fan of APL.
Click to expand...
Fair amount of redundancy but still funny. Helps if you know some of the languages.






Most recently I've been indulging in haikus:

Chaos reigns within.
Reflect, repent, and reboot
Order will return.

Website has been moved
We'd tell you where, but then we'd
Have to delete you.

The web site you seek
Cannot be located but
Countless more exist.

Windows crashed.
I am the blue screen of death.
No one hears your screams.

A crash reduces
Your expensive computer
To a simple stone.

First snow, then silence.
This thousand dollar screen dies
so beautifully.

Error messages
cannot completely convey.
We now know shared loss.

The program does not work.
I do not know why.
The program does work.
I do not know why.
 
murphey said:
Fair amount of redundancy but still funny. Helps if you know some of the languages.






Most recently I've been indulging in haikus:

Chaos reigns within.
Reflect, repent, and reboot
Order will return.

Website has been moved
We'd tell you where, but then we'd
Have to delete you.

The web site you seek
Cannot be located but
Countless more exist.

Windows crashed.
I am the blue screen of death.
No one hears your screams.

A crash reduces
Your expensive computer
To a simple stone.

First snow, then silence.
This thousand dollar screen dies
so beautifully.

Error messages
cannot completely convey.
We now know shared loss.

The program does not work.
I do not know why.
The program does work.
I do not know why.
Click to expand...


My favorite lab sing-along:

95 software bugs in the code,​
95 software bugs.​
Fix one bug,​
Compile it again.​
98 software bugs in the code.​
.​
.​
.​
 
I miss compilers. I could swear I've heard a development team manager say that their people made too many mistakes to use a compiled language.

Maybe we should make programmers serve a year apprenticeship working with a residential plumber or electrician. Then, if they can wire or plumb a building without it flooding or catching fire we hire them to write code. And I'm not blaming the people as much as the college education they're getting. I don't think 50% could do it.
 
Shepherd said:
I'm not sure why, but I have a deep-seated hatred for Java. Resource whore without peer.
With the exceptions of Cobol and Fortran (both of which I have written and maintained code for a living), I was there for the birth of all the other languages.
Wrote massive amounts of C and C++.
I'm embarrassed to say that to this day my favorite language, which I still use almost daily is REXX and Visual REXX, depending on what platform I'm working on.
I can put together prototypes for products while you are describing what you want.
I used to write a lot of assembler, but not in years.
Oh, and Forth. I co-wrote an entire system for the old VS-1,2,3,4 Electron Beam systems in Forth. How many of you have even heard of Forth?
Not a fan of APL.
Click to expand...
Definitely heard of forth! Had a co-worker who as a hobby was writing a Forth system for the Mac. I managed to get access to his system and replaced his "sad mac" (frowny faced Mac indicating a severe error-which he saw a lot writing this) startup icon with a dead mac icon (laying on it's back, eyes replaced with x's, tongue hanging out). Good times.
 
Definitely in the "what's old is new again" vein -- I am inheriting some "prompt engineering" projects from within my client company and having to, ah, improve them.

The amount of secret sauce that was being forked over to an LLM prompt was a bit scary, but it was by non-engineers. Apparently nobody in the mainstream understands the Bobby Tables ramifications. I'd hate to be a compliance wog. People are just begging to fork over every secret they can if it makes their job 5% simpler.

I found this bit of nerdery quite poignant. My life this week. :oops:

1746216095923.png
 
Shepherd said:
I'm not sure why, but I have a deep-seated hatred for Java. Resource whore without peer.
Click to expand...
I understand why. I always thought Java let lazy programmers write really bad code much faster than anyone could fix them.
 
Albany Tom said:
I miss compilers. I could swear I've heard a development team manager say that their people made too many mistakes to use a compiled language.
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They’re making a comeback. Rust is quickly becoming the darling child across a lot of modern development and Go is also quite popular. I feel we are definitely on the back end of the interpreted and “everything is dynamic” craze as we’ve seen type systems hacked onto to languages like Python and JavaScript (with Typescript). I know type systems are not strictly a compiled vs interpreted thing but still.
 
If we're reminiscing, did anybody else ever use CSMP?

Back in the mid '80s I was writing a lot of servo control simulations, mostly for this beast:
1746216784588.png​
​
There were multi-loop servos for many axes of control (turret, launcher, targeting system, beam director, etc.) which required multiple coordinate transforms. We used CSMP to model each servo loop individually. CSMP generated FORTRAN code, which then had to be compiled and linked. That allowed us to write a master FORTRAN routine which simulated a target and then did all the coordinate transforms using direction cosines and generated the commands for the individual servo routines.

Clunky, but good for the time period, and it worked. But man oh man, did it take forever to run. Kick off a simulation of a 15 second target engagement, then go get coffee for six hours while waiting for it to finish.

Later came MATRIXx and then Matlab Simulink, but by then I was mostly doing engineering management.
 
Albany Tom said:
I miss compilers. I could swear I've heard a development team manager say that their people made too many mistakes to use a compiled language.

Maybe we should make programmers serve a year apprenticeship working with a residential plumber or electrician. Then, if they can wire or plumb a building without it flooding or catching fire we hire them to write code. And I'm not blaming the people as much as the college education they're getting. I don't think 50% could do it.
Click to expand...
Many computer science degrees are moving over to a Bachelor of Arts so that the students don't need to take math classes.
 
Corin said:
Many computer science degrees are moving over to a Bachelor of Arts so that the students don't need to take math classes.
Click to expand...
Hmmm. I have a BA Comp Sci degree. Since I have kids in school, is this considered inferior?
 
Mahneuvers said:
Hmmm. I have a BA Comp Sci degree. Since I have kids in school, is this considered inferior?
Click to expand...
That's fine. You likely still had to take calculus classes. Some schools offer both a science degree and an arts degree, specifically so students don't have to take math classes. If you took any calculus classes, I would consider your degree very real.
 
Mahneuvers said:
Hmmm. I have a BA Comp Sci degree. Since I have kids in school, is this considered inferior?
Click to expand...

In itself, no, but they might be less suited for certain jobs. CS careers in aerospace would likely require math skills that would be less necessary in banking, for example. Picking up some math courses as electives, or maybe even a math minor, would mitigate any concerns there might be.
 
Again whether something is a BA or BS does not tell you anything about the amount of math required for that degree. Only the curriculum does. Berkeley offers only BAs and MAs in physics. You think those kids aren’t taking more advanced math than someone with a BS in CS? I guarantee you they are.
 
AKiss20 said:
Again whether something is a BA or BS does not tell you anything about the amount of math required for that degree. Only the curriculum does.
Click to expand...

Probably true. I have no idea what the criteria for BA vs BS are (does a BA have a foreign language requirement?).

Back in 1984 when I got my undergrad EE degree, Ga Tech awarded neither a BA nor a BS; I received a BEE degree. I assume that once upon a time there was a difference of a class or two among the degree types, but I don't know what it might have been.
 
Half Fast said:
Probably true. I have no idea what the criteria for BA vs BS are (does a BA have a foreign language requirement?).
Click to expand...
AFAIK I know there is no body that dictates such things, so whether a BS or BA is awarded is entirely driven by the university. ABET provides accreditation for engineering specifically but that is independent of the BA and BS label (and there are non-ABET accredited universities awarding both afaik).

My Alma mater was one of the few US institutions that still grant a ScD. When I was finishing up I simply had to check a box whether I wanted a ScD or a PhD.
 
I just describe what I want, specify the language, and just have ChatGPT write the code for me. I even have it generate the README.DOC. :stirpot:
 
mcdewey said:
I just describe what I want, specify the language, and just have ChatGPT write the code for me. I even have it generate the README.DOC. :stirpot:
Click to expand...
No question I use GPT a lot for coding. But I always make sure to QC it!
... it's usually for boilerplate crap I could write, I just don't feel like doing it.

This week I probably used it 20x to write create table statements for me based on an Excel doc I gave it that showed the table names and types. Coulda typed all that stuff in, but I'll let GPT take a swing at it first :)
 
Half Fast said:
If we're reminiscing, did anybody else ever use CSMP?

Back in the mid '80s I was writing a lot of servo control simulations, mostly for this beast:
​
There were multi-loop servos for many axes of control (turret, launcher, targeting system, beam director, etc.) which required multiple coordinate transforms. We used CSMP to model each servo loop individually. CSMP generated FORTRAN code, which then had to be compiled and linked. That allowed us to write a master FORTRAN routine which simulated a target and then did all the coordinate transforms using direction cosines and generated the commands for the individual servo routines.

Clunky, but good for the time period, and it worked. But man oh man, did it take forever to run. Kick off a simulation of a 15 second target engagement, then go get coffee for six hours while waiting for it to finish.

Later came MATRIXx and then Matlab Simulink, but by then I was mostly doing engineering management.
Click to expand...
JOVIAL!
 
Corin said:
Many computer science degrees are moving over to a Bachelor of Arts so that the students don't need to take math classes.
Click to expand...
We're still requiring discrete math and 1 semester of calculus with the prereqs of algebra and trig. One of my favorite "how to solve a problem" in first semester CS is the quadratic equation. I put the polynomial & the solution on the board and the students have to tell me what can go wrong. Then they have to write, step by step, how to solve it in english. Amazing how many students, even after a semester of algebra, still don't know what a 2nd order polynomial is. Or how to write english sentences. Or even how to spell.

bah humbug.
 
TL-DR, learned assembly long ago and it messed up my ability to use "words" in programs. :rofl:

Way back in the early 80's when I lived in NH, I worked at a small company where I designed, built and programmed machines that wound rotors and stators for guidance systems. Usually for misslies and rockets. We got most of our jobs from Draper labs and other defense contractors. They would show up with a part for a new system and say something like "It took our people 140 hours to wind this prototype by hand. Can you make a machine to do it?"

We'd sit down a figure if the winding schedule was compatible with doing it automatically and if it wasn't, propose changes. Once that was worked out, I would start designing the machine that would hold the core and rotate it. They had a machinist to build any parts I needed. Next add a mechanism that would move a the needle with the wire back and forth across the core. Then program the Motorola 6805 CPU to control all the movements in assembler. When it was done, the part could be wound it a couple hours.

Assembly was the first language I ever used. Saved the files during development on a cassette tape and had to keep track of the counter to know which version. But you could make some impressive programs that were extremely small. Which was important since you only had 64K of memory to work with. Started out programming using the mnemonics: LDA for Load the Accumulator, STA for Store the Accumulator, LSL for Logical Shift Left, etc. After a while you memorize the hex codes and just enter most of the code in hex one handed.

I was back in NH one day and found out they were still in business and stopped by. They said that one of my machines was still in service!

Since then I learned Basic, Pascal, C, Java, etc. I could put together small, working programs but it always felt weird using real words and having so many variables in programs. So for me, my first language is the best and all others aren't. Then again, controlling what is basically a single task robot is different than making complicated calculations or things happen on a screen.
 
I love Perl. Did some work in C and struggled with pointers and memory management. And constantly waiting for it to recompile after making a change felt like a huge waste of time.

Now I do & did (been using it for 30 years) keep my Perl code structured like C. There are a lot of weird Perl ways to do things, but I refuse to do it that way. I also try to minimize my use of other modules/libraries and have rewritten many things for more maintainable code.

In my testing and use cases, I found the performance to be very close to C.

The worst language I’ve used is Java or C++. Probably because I can’t follow the callbacks.

I’d like to try some assembly sometime. I think mostly in honor of the original way of doing things. When it was still new and exciting.

Seems like there is a new language all the time now just because we can. Not because it really does anything better.
 
Corin said:
Many computer science degrees are moving over to a Bachelor of Arts so that the students don't need to take math classes.
Click to expand...
Back in the day, the math departments were the original computer science departments.

My University offered a BA and a BS in CS. Both were through the College of Liberal Arts. A year or two after I left, they offered a BS in Computer Engineering through the Engineering school.

I really don’t remember the differences in the BA and BS in CS. The BS did require more hard science classes, so the additional math classes had to happen.

My recollection was the BA grads were getting hired by business and financial companies (payrolls, databases, whatever) and the BS grads were going into industry (embedded systems, machine controls, labs, and similar).
 
murphey said:
We're still requiring discrete math and 1 semester of calculus with the prereqs of algebra and trig.
Click to expand...

I'm sure it's industry dependant, but in my world that seems pretty light. For the real-time processing used in a missile or a fire control system, I'd like a prospective hire in software to have had math through diff eq's, as well as Laplace, Fourier, and Z transforms.
 
Matthew said:
Back in the day, the math departments were the original computer science departments.
Click to expand...

Yep, that's how it was for me in the early '80s. Lots of the same professors teaching both math and CS courses, and some classes (Operations Research being one that I recall) could be taken for either math or CS credit.
 
Half Fast said:
I'm sure it's industry dependant, but in my world that seems pretty light. For the real-time processing used in a missile or a fire control system, I'd like a prospective hire in software to have had math through diff eq's, as well as Laplace, Fourier, and Z transforms.
Click to expand...
I agree but I'm not on the curriculum committee. My dept has changed focus to cyber security/machine learning (AI)/data science because those are the "most wanted" by students and our industry committee. I'm not tenure track (not fond of research) - altho I have more industry experience most of the dept put together as well as the academic qualifications (BS/MS Math, MS/PhD abd CS which is why they keep me around, I can teach any of the courses) my suggestions are ignored. I don't even bother anymore. I teach the fundamental CS material and the tenured faculty teach their favorites. I don't remember when any of them taught a 1000/2000 level course. So we have part-timers (qualified but still...) and "lecturers" (full-time but not tenure-track) doing all the lower division courses.

As a disclaimer - most students serious about aerospace or hard science industries are not coming to this school, they're going to CU Boulder (one of the top aerospace schools in the nation) or Colorado State or School of Mines. Some of our students start here, get the "required crap" classes (we're cheaper than the other state schools) then transfer.

Every student is required to take "Math for Liberal Arts Students" if not majoring in one of the sciences (30 sections on the schedule for next fall). But there is zero requirement to take any computer course. The school makes the arrogant assumption that entering freshmen already know MS Office and a browser. They forget some of our students don't have decent or any internet at home, many don't have a computer or share the family computer (meaning they can't bring it to school). There are computer labs in every building (except the one with CS in it....don't ask) but what happens (covid) when we went entirely online? Those students lost the entire year.

The school has maybe 6 laptops to loan out. My dept. is getting 4 loaners of our own. I loan out my backup WinTel laptop every semester. It started as 4 GB, so we did an after class project to upgrade to 8 GB memory. None of them had ever seen the inside of a computer.

Want to have a lot of fun? Bring popcorn and watch my students
1) try to understand virtualization then
2) install a VM, then install Ubuntu on top
3) [huh? what is the "command line" of which you speak?!?],
4) install more software because none of this runs native mode on Windows.

The Mac people have an advantage but I still make them install a VM. None of the "point, click, download, wait".

sorry for the rant. This isn't on the syllabus but I go thru the agony so when the students get to the more advanced classes, they're slightly more prepared.

Hm...Sierra Space has been emailing me about a summer contract, split time between remote and the office, which is 15 min from home.....
 
Half Fast said:
Yep, that's how it was for me in the early '80s. Lots of the same professors teaching both math and CS courses, and some classes (Operations Research being one that I recall) could be taken for either math or CS credit.
Click to expand...
OR was fantastic! took it in grad school.
 
Matthew said:
Back in the day, the math departments were the original computer science departments.

My University offered a BA and a BS in CS. Both were through the College of Liberal Arts. A year or two after I left, they offered a BS in Computer Engineering through the Engineering school.

I really don’t remember the differences in the BA and BS in CS. The BS did require more hard science classes, so the additional math classes had to happen.
Click to expand...
Similar here, but the difference between BA and BS at my school was incongruous, to say the least. I majored in Mathematics, CS concentration, with a minor in Physics.....and got a BA. How it's possible to get a BA after acing quantum physics, DiffEq, linear systems, etc....??? IIRC, Somewhere along the way there was one entry level math course that my advisor told me would be an unnecessary waste of credit hours, so I skipped it and went straight to the next level....and that course apparently was a requirement for the BS.

Engineering grad school solved the problem.
 
Last edited:
StraightnLevel said:
Similar here, but the difference between BA and BS at my school was incongruous, to say the least. I majored in Mathematics, CS concentration, with a minor in Physics.....and got a BA. How it's possible to get a BA after acing quantum physics, DiffEq, linear systems, etc....??? IIRC, Somewhere along the way there was one entry level math course that my advisor told me would be an unnecessary waste of credit hours, so I skipped it and went straight to the nexr level....and that course apparently was a requirement for the BS.

Engineering grad school solved the problem.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it's all gotten so cockeyed that I guess the "B" is all that really matters anymore.

Still, as a hiring manager I would have liked to know that certain fundamentals were covered. It drove me nuts to find recent EE graduates who didn't know how an electric motor worked. I had one young lady tell me, "I can write some great firmware to control your house, but I have no clue how electricity makes it to your wall socket." I had to run a series of training courses to teach our new-hires things that should have been covered in college.

Personal opinion - a 4-year bachelor's is no longer adequate for engineering. We really need to move to a 5 or 6 year program. But as long as industry is willing to hire engineers with only 4, students will go to schools that offer the programs and get hired. A change would have to be forced by ABET, phased in over time, but I don't see it happening.
 
Half Fast said:
Yeah, it's all gotten so cockeyed that I guess the "B" is all that really matters anymore.

Still, as a hiring manager I would have liked to know that certain fundamentals were covered. It drove me nuts to find recent EE graduates who didn't know how an electric motor worked. I had one young lady tell me, "I can write some great firmware to control your house, but I have no clue how electricity makes it to your wall socket." I had to run a series of training courses to teach our new-hires things that should have been covered in college.

Personal opinion - a 4-year bachelor's is no longer adequate for engineering. We really need to move to a 5 or 6 year program. But as long as industry is willing to hire engineers with only 4, students will go to schools that offer the programs and get hired. A change would have to be forced by ABET, phased in over time, but I don't see it happening.
Click to expand...
The academic system doesn't reward the intellectually curious who wish to retain and appreciate the knowledge, it rewards flash cards and memorization for test day. I imagine EE suffers the same thing. Cuz I would think those EE kids definitely learned how an electric motor worked at some point, there are just no points awarded for retaining that knowledge after exam day, even if it's fundamental knowledge for your field. I saw that all the time in college and after.

On that note, it wasn't long after graduating I realized I have a deeper respect for people who are self-taught in many of these subjects, largely because it means they actually wanted to know it. They wanted to know how things work and they learned it despite no academic/tangible career track benefit conferred by acquiring a degree. Especially the case in compsci/engineering and even finance.
 
murphey said:
I think I've told this story before....on a classified USAF project DEC computers, late 80s. DEC had just introduced FORTRAN with 32 character, upper/lower case variable names. But DOD specs still lived in F66 and insisted on 6 character variable names. As the technical lead, I assured the contracting officer we would absolutely follow the policy, altho I pointed out that the 32 characters provided for much better documentation.

The first occurring variable would be named AAAAAA, the next would be AAAAAB, the next AAAAAC and so on. As the developers, however, we would create a dictionary that explained and described in detail the variable AAAAAA, etc. But it would be DEC property and not part of the delivery. The contracting officer, who really was a good guy, looked at me with panic then started laughing. "You made your point, 32 character descriptive variable names works".

I try not to get into these types of discussions unless I know I have a 90% chance of winning.

I impress this on my students - that variable names should be descriptive, and make sense in context of the system. In my advanced classes, I make the students trade off programs and make changes without being able to talk to anyone.
Click to expand...
I worked with someone who did exactly the same thing with naming conventions. Curiously also on Dec’s in the 80s. Debugging that code years later was impossible and easier to just rewrite it.
 
ArrowFlyer86 said:
The academic system doesn't reward the intellectually curious who wish to retain and appreciate the knowledge, it rewards flash cards and memorization for test day. I imagine EE suffers the same thing. Cuz I would think those EE kids definitely learned how an electric motor worked at some point, there are just no points awarded for retaining that knowledge after exam day, even if it's fundamental knowledge for your field. I saw that all the time in college and after.

On that note, it wasn't long after graduating I realized I have a deeper respect for people who are self-taught in many of these subjects, largely because it means they actually wanted to know it. They wanted to know how things work and they learned it despite no academic/tangible career track benefit conferred by acquiring a degree. Especially the case in compsci/engineering and even finance.
Click to expand...
I had the great fortune to start my first job working with a lot of EEs that had been radio or radar guys in WW II. After the war they went to engineering school and were beginning to retire from that career about the same time I started. Those were the guys that could, literally, do the design work and calculations in their heads.

One guy was the RF genius. He’d read the sports page while a new EE would ask him an antenna question. He wouldn’t even look up, just give the answer. New guys never believed him so they’d spend the rest of the day working it out on their own. They would always end up saying, “Son of a …! He’s right!”
 
ArrowFlyer86 said:
Cuz I would think those EE kids definitely learned how an electric motor worked at some point, there are just no points awarded for retaining that knowledge after exam day, even if it's fundamental knowledge for your field.
Click to expand...

Oh, I wish it were that simple, but such things are really missing from the undergrad curriculum. I discussed my concern with the head of the EE dept at UF during a recruiting trip a few years ago, and he told me that all that material had been removed from undergrad training and turned into graduate courses. Undergrad was heavily devoted to microprocessors and logic design.

And it's not just UF. I conducted a survey around 2018 or so of all our folks who had graduated within the previous 5 years and asked whether their college undergrad program had covered such basics as electrical machines, op amps, amplifier design, data converters, and several other fundamental other topics. Overwhelmingly the answer was either no or very limited. Based on those results, I got funding to develop a series of short courses to address the knowledge gap. The courses were still being taught when I retired.

There is so much new technology and so much demand from industry that the colleges don't really have much choice other than cutting some fundamentals to wedge it all into 4 years, but that puts a burden on industry to provide additional training. It also means that when companies have a need for skills in any of the analog disciplines, they have to look for experienced personnel rather than new grads.

I'd really like to see the engineering curriculum expand to a 5-year program. Going to 6 would be even better and would allow additional practical training as well as some ancillary courses in contract law and technical specifications, intellectual property, engineering ethics, etc.

But it ain't gonna happen.
 
Matthew said:
I had the great fortune to start my first job working with a lot of EEs that had been radio or radar guys in WW II. After the war they went to engineering school and were beginning to retire from that career about the same time I started. Those were the guys that could, literally, do the design work and calculations in their heads.

One guy was the RF genius. He’d read the sports page while a new EE would ask him an antenna question. He wouldn’t even look up, just give the answer. New guys never believed him so they’d spend the rest of the day working it out on their own. They would always end up saying, “Son of a …! He’s right!”
Click to expand...

Yep. The loss of hands-on experience is real, and that may be a bigger gap than we realize. Twenty years ago I could ask a roomfull of EEs how many were ham operators and five to ten hands would go up. Nowdays it's zero. Kids don't grow up tinkering with stuff the way we did.

Now get off my lawn.
 
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