Who Will Be The Expert?

I've noticed a disturbing trend as we work to squeeze more and more computing technology graduates out of our universities. It appears we're dumbing the students down. Three quick examples, I have yet to meet a generation Y or Z who knows how:

1. to read and resolve a stack dump

2. how databases store data on the hard drive

3. how a network sends messages from one computer to another

Now I know there are some out there who do know, unfortunately I haven't met you. And I run in a circle of technology consultants whereas if I spent my time at Intel I'm sure more would know. Yet I work with graduates from our top technical schools: Michigan, Cornell, MIT, Virginia Tech, Stanford, Illinois, and Carnegie Mellon to name a few. Why are my expectations important? Here are the answers:

1. The development consultant could not resolve a stack dump and didn't because it was only happening on one developer's machine so they reformatted and reinstalled the software. However the cause of the problem was an automated update which changed the Java Virtual Machine. When the client moved to production the application wouldn't work because the operating system came with the later JVM and could not be downgraded. Downgrading the operating system meant losing crucial updates to improve database performance. Had they traced the stack dump they could have learned the cause months in advance and worked out an alternative instead of calling in all hands for several days and delaying their launch AFTER their public announcement.

2. The data architecture consultant did not understand the relationship of the files within a database so she incorrectly directed the support group to only backup some of the data files believing the rest were "configuration files and stuff". Turns out configuration files are pretty important for interpreting the data and as a result when the primary host went down hard, the data was unrecoverable because it was incomplete.

3. The security consultant didn't understand that Ethernet sends all packets to everyone so he believed the connection between two machines was point-to-point connection and therefore impenetrable. About 30sec of research would have taught him about promiscuous mode. It took the client many weeks and tens of thousands of dollars to define and implement a new architecture (nobody would take my advice to drop in SSL).

I have a cousin who is a developer for Microsoft and has had a lifelong passion for computing. During his degree program in Computer Science he NEVER learned Assembly Language, C or C++ instead being forced to focus on Java and its ilk. Java is ok, but it's got issues among them being it's heft. I spent several years in embedded systems and do not see Assembler being replaced anytime soon. At GM we used Modula, Assembler and C as the languages to program the Engine Control Modules. Lower level languages require you to understand how things like schedulers, pipelines, and memory work in order to maximize performance and sometimes just to make something happen (pointer arithmetic to manipulate memory for example). I encounter few Java developers who understand how memory is allocated and freed, how time-slicing is performed, how the cache operates and invalidates its contents.

I don't know everything. I know how to ask and how to learn. I'm never afraid to admit what I don't know. But I take great pride and work hard to know as much as I can. In each of these cases significant problems were stumbled into because the person in charge lacked breadth and depth. Why? Because none of them ever learned the core elements of computing; they were all one trick ponies.

So what is the solution? Luckily we'll have graduates in my program, Computer Engineering, and other engineering and science disciplines to act as the true experts. And those graduates will be swallowed up by the hardware, networking, telecomm, plant floor automation, aviation and embedded systems companies around the world. For the remainder of the world including consulting firms and corporations in non-R&D roles, I believe it's time to develop computing fundamentals courses to expand their view and understanding of computer technology. Companies today need people with multi-disciplined technology backgrounds to both lead large scale technology efforts and to provide guidance in troubleshooting. Find the good ones, expose them to a wider perspective, and most often they'll start to look at things with a different set of eyes which benefits everyone. Again, in my experience, I've had hundreds of conversations with people which end with "I never knew that. That's so interesting. Thank-you for explaining it to me." I guess that's why I've worked on projects including program/project management, IT strategy, Enterprise Architecture, application rationalization, software development, infrastructure architecture, business intelligence, data warehousing, systems integration, ERP selection, call centers, CRM, SFA, architecture modelling, requirements determination, and many more and in each one been considered the expert.

CRM, ERP, SFA, DW, and BI are not as challenging as operating system development, but they still needs experts!