[quote=svelte]Wow, all those classes (assembly, compiler writing, 2-part data structures, C, etc) were at Cal State Chico when I was there too. It did successfully weed out many people. (btw, at that point in time, HP hired more sw grads from Chico than any other university…not sure if that is still true)
My current company has been able to find quite a few very sharp software grads over the last few years. These people are sharp and dedicated…they’re not coming from UCSD but from other universities from the most part. I’m not saying that UCSD doesn’t create sharp sw people now, just that we haven’t hired much from UCSD as of late.
Also agree that there is a sudden resurgence for people who know raw hardware level coding, thanks in large part to the move to handheld devices. Speedy, compact software is once again king, and that always drives one to write as close to the HW as possible.
Another reason UCSD (and maybe other universities) have moved wholesale behind Java is that the basic tools are cheap or free….costs the university very little to teach Java. Now if they want to add VxWorks or similar to their cirriculum, well now we’re talking more significant licensing fees.[/quote]
Embedded linux is cheap and free (for the most part)…. Not sure why they aren’t teaching this…. And that’s pretty much where the wind is blowing these days…And there’s not enough folks competent in embedded linux (and that’s inclusive…kicking myself right now, because that’s a lot of stuff I can’t possibly become good enough as some of my colleagues are to actually get sizeable projects/products around) to outstrip demand. The great news about these “back to basics” green shoots (and I believe they are green shoots), is they are difficult enough for your non-techie/ MBA only with no tech background to understand…definite added bonus, and added barrier to entry for all the script/php kiddies…)…
What I’m seeing is essentially where some of you older geeks were seeing in the early 80ies when you had big hardware/platform wars in the personal computers…Now it’s happening on the portable/mobility devices. Everyone wants to get an mobile kernel up and running to do xyz, putting a spin on things, and creating huge fragments in the market… Phones and tablets are just the beginning..
GPS companies trying to get into the mobile markets, traditional mobile companies trying to grab market share in the GPS market…Medical devices…Very very interesting times indeed….And everyone wants things ….yesterday….
Looks like all this monkey see/monkey do type of abstraction in software has finally started to fall on it’s own weight, and it seems like the it’s back to basics all over again.
Question: anyone seeing any activity in NFC in meaningful scale?
