EEVblog Electronics Community Forum
Electronics => Beginners => Topic started by: House91320 on September 03, 2011, 10:19:53 pm
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I'm just curies where all the EE in this forum went to collage?
ps. I know it in the wrong part of the forum but the general section seams to have disappeared.
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I studied Pure and Applied Mathematics (and some undergraduate Computer Science), but there was a big Engineering Faculty there which included Electrical Engineering. That was the University of Waterloo in Ontario Canada. ... C
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NJIT = New Jersey Institute of Technology (USA)
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University of San Francisco (www.usfca.edu (http://www.usfca.edu))
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I didn't bother with any of that college / university stuff.
I started work in an engineering environment when I was 16 years old.
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De La Salle University - Manila
BSECE 1986 - 1991
MEP-ECE 2003 - 2006
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University of South Carolina for both the BA (Administrative Information Management) and MAT (Business Eduction). My specific intent was to end up a non-pointy-haired (or less pointy, in any case) manager of technical folk. So far, that has not particularly worked out.
USC has a good EE program, but I was never in it. :-)
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Wassa Motta U. :)
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Spokane Community College, Spokane, WA for their Electronics Engineering Technology associate's degree. I had not the money for a university, and probably not the patience or prerequisite education, either. I am very happy as a technician though, so it all worked out :)
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I haven't attended uni yet, and I really have no desire unless I get into some Ivy league school, I can't really find a school that can challenge me as much as I can myself, and I'm just out to seek knowledge, not some degree to bring in more money. I also feel that once EE becomes a chore, it might lose it's hobby sort of feel. Luckily I have some business ideas, and that would be full time CS and EE with my hobby projects (I feel anyone can agree that personal projects/ideas are much more thrilling than assigned tasks).
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I haven't attended uni yet, and I really have no desire unless I get into some Ivy league school, I can't really find a school that can challenge me as much as I can myself, and I'm just out to seek knowledge, not some degree to bring in more money. I also feel that once EE becomes a chore, it might lose it's hobby sort of feel. Luckily I have some business ideas, and that would be full time CS and EE with my hobby projects (I feel anyone can agree that personal projects/ideas are much more thrilling than assigned tasks).
I'm not sure about that, my assigned tasks are often challenging, and I find that thrilling.
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I'm not sure about that, my assigned tasks are often challenging, and I find that thrilling.
Fair enough point. My ideals take quite a long time to describe, and my summary really doesn't hit them well. I guess that's what happens when tired and with a headache. Off to bed for now!
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I haven't attended uni yet, and I really have no desire unless I get into some Ivy league school, I can't really find a school that can challenge me as much as I can myself, and I'm just out to seek knowledge, not some degree to bring in more money.
How can you really know whether an engineering degree program will challenge you without having experienced it? If you are not challenged by the academic program at the institution you attend, then I agree you would be wasting your time there. But I assure you, a reputable engineering degree should challenge you, however smart you think you are. If you are scared that studying EE might destroy the romance of it, then consider studying something else to broaden your horizons (for instance I studied Chem Eng and it has led to a very satisfying career).
Lastly I would mention that there are enormous benefits to a formal education in any given field. I notice this sometimes with the self-taught Jeri Ellsworth--reading her blogs and watching her videos I sometimes notice gaps in her education where she struggles a bit, gaps that would have been filled in by a formal training.
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How can you really know whether an engineering degree program will challenge you without having experienced it? If you are not challenged by the academic program at the institution you attend, then I agree you would be wasting your time there. But I assure you, a reputable engineering degree should challenge you, however smart you think you are. If you are scared that studying EE might destroy the romance of it, then consider studying something else to broaden your horizons (for instance I studied Chem Eng and it has led to a very satisfying career).
Lastly I would mention that there are enormous benefits to a formal education in any given field. I notice this sometimes with the self-taught Jeri Ellsworth--reading her blogs and watching her videos I sometimes notice gaps in her education where she struggles a bit, gaps that would have been filled in by a formal training.
I'm just going by what I've heard from other people at uni (and my own experience at HS, I know it's different, but when I see what HS was like for me, and what it was like for others, then see how they are doing in uni, is a decent comparison). It's not like I turn my head to uni and then assume that it will be something I wouldn't like. I've looked at curriculums, read numerous uni level textbooks (math, CS, EE), and I've 'taken' numerous uni courses online from the open-source lectures/course materials available from numerous unis.
I do completely agree with the whole 'gaps' issue, I have the same issue myself, but I don't blame myself as I'm too young to have attended uni yet anyways.
Finally, the one big issue I have with trying to talk about uni (to or to not) with people, they always say 'How would you know what it's like?' I guess the exact same can be said for not going to uni. If you did go to uni, you have no idea what kind of challenges and knowledge you could have came up with yourself.
(By no means am I trying to argue. I like having this conversation with people in the field I'd be studying (like on here). I'm just trying to figure out if I should go to uni or not, so don't take anything I say as offensive, I'm just trying to figure myself out a bit)
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Finally, the one big issue I have with trying to talk about uni (to or to not) with people, they always say 'How would you know what it's like?' I guess the exact same can be said for not going to uni. If you did go to uni, you have no idea what kind of challenges and knowledge you could have came up with yourself.
A university degree is not the end of your education, it is just what might be called a formation, a beginning. You continue to learn theory and practice and face new challenges throughout your working life. There is of course no limit to what you can learn by yourself; where a university education comes in is that it provides a broad coverage of what you ought to know and it provides a training in how to learn even better.
I can know what kind of challenges and knowledge I could have come up with as it has been nearly 30 years now since I graduated. And in that time after leaving university I have learned vastly more than I could have dreamed of then.
It must be said as well, of course, that you may need the professional accreditation that a degree gives you. Without that piece of paper many doors will be closed to you, and many career options unavailable.
I notice that you refer to "uni" rather than college. Do you happen to have a British background perhaps? There is actually a big difference in the educational philosophy between British and American universities. An engineering course at a British university will tend to get you much faster and deeper into core engineering topics than an engineering program at an American university. This might affect your perception of what you can learn there.
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I am not from Britain, I'm from the US, but I have so many friends in Europe who get confused when I say college, so I've just grown used to saying uni. You do a great job summing everything up, I do really see how I need the degree to open doors, I guess I'm testing my feet in the water first before I jump on something.
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One thing I would suggest, if you are thinking about an engineering degree, is to pick one of the "hard" disciplines like electrical, mechanical or chemical engineering. Avoid the the "soft" disciplines like software engineering. Software honestly doesn't gain much respect in business or industry and considering the costs involved a software engineering degree is not good value for money. If there is one subject that is easily self-taught, it is programming.
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I have an EE degree from one of those Ivy League colleges (U of Pennsylvania, 1981), after waltzing through my primary education. It was plenty challenging, though not always in interesting ways. There were "honors" classes, grad classes open to undergrads, work and/or research opportunities. The hardest part was fitting in the things I wanted to learn, in a way that still resulted in a degree in 4 years (EE and CS were quite separate in those days.) But an Ivy EE degree is (was?) not particularly hobbyist-satisfying. There is a lot of theory, and math, and physics; stuff that fills in the gaps that would otherwise be left (as Ian says.) Not much "actually making stuff."
OTOH, the idea that I'd be able to take extra classes every semester (as I'd done in HS) fell by the wayside REALLY quick... (On the third hand, there was a semester or two where physics, math, and EE classes were all actually using the same math, and that was pretty cool.)
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School of Hard Knocks and life experience...... I don't recommend it but to paraphrase Jerri E 'Failure is good' and you NEVER forget the smell of magic smoke 8) :)
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University of Auckland - BE in Computer Systems, really more like embedded systems.
University of Queensland - ME in Engineering Science, didn't really want to go but I made a deal with my mother that if I would if I couldn't find a proper job by Jan last year. Job market in NZ was shit.
Doesn't matter what you think of a degree, 99.999% of the time without that ticket your application will get tossed straight into the recycling bin by HR.
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Lehigh University - BSEE - back when I went there we were called "The Engineers" in sports
paul
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Virginia Tech - BSEE '10, focus in power Electronics
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Texas Tech - MSEE - Pulsed Power and Plasma Physics
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One thing I would suggest, if you are thinking about an engineering degree, is to pick one of the "hard" disciplines like electrical, mechanical or chemical engineering. Avoid the the "soft" disciplines like software engineering. Software honestly doesn't gain much respect in business or industry and considering the costs involved a software engineering degree is not good value for money. If there is one subject that is easily self-taught, it is programming.
This is the kind of BS you'll get from hiring people if you apply for a position sans degree. The gap between a true software engineer and a programmer is the same as the difference between an electrical engineer and a bench tech or a mechanical engineer and a mechanic. A lot of people call themselves "Software Engineers" because they've taught themselves Java, or because they're experts at writing C# apps, but have no real concept about how the code they produce actually fits into the bigger system - that's where engineering comes in. And you can get a head start on that through boring course work - even if it isn't at an Ivy League school. And anyway, if you're good enough to get into Harvard, why didn't you get into MIT, which is just across the yard? At least with a degree (a Master's is even better), you'll get past the initial weeding process faster and have a better chance to do interesting stuff sooner once you land a position. Of course, all this is immaterial if you have a brilliant idea and start your own company.
To me programming is the reward I get for all the other chores I have to do as a software engineer.
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Trying tell that to the loads of super well paid brilliant software engineers at Google and Microsoft. Software engineers are one of the most sought after and well paid engineers in this day and age. It will probably only continue to increase as well.
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One thing I would suggest, if you are thinking about an engineering degree, is to pick one of the "hard" disciplines like electrical, mechanical or chemical engineering. Avoid the the "soft" disciplines like software engineering. Software honestly doesn't gain much respect in business or industry and considering the costs involved a software engineering degree is not good value for money. If there is one subject that is easily self-taught, it is programming.
This is the kind of BS you'll get from hiring people if you apply for a position sans degree. The gap between a true software engineer and a programmer is the same as the difference between an electrical engineer and a bench tech or a mechanical engineer and a mechanic. A lot of people call themselves "Software Engineers" because they've taught themselves Java, or because they're experts at writing C# apps, but have no real concept about how the code they produce actually fits into the bigger system - that's where engineering comes in.
It took software engineering a long time to get accepted within a number of engineering organizations because of the scepticism with which it was/is viewed. I think probably the OP was thinking in terms of the requirements within many companies where the software exercise is not so complicated as to require all of the skills that a software engineering degree may provide - but rather a somewhat more straightforward programming exercise to complement a bigger system design. All engineering degrees require that the student study some level of programming, but without the breadth you will find in a software engineering program.
But these are the types of arguments I've seen surrounding various 'new' types of engineering ever since I can remember. I have come to the sad conclusion that engineering is no longer a profession, just a wide disperse vocation. When you hire someone with an engineering degree you never know what you are going to get, its just a pot shoot. Most are just hackers who know alot about one very narrow thing - usually programming microcontrollers, cutting some code or some similiar embedded system. I've seen everything from botanists to biologists hacking code and embedded systems. Finding a good engineer that could properly design a mildly complex transistor circuit or god forbid a $2 transistor radio without hacking an existing circuit is as rare as you like, let alone know how to also code or layout an embedded controller as well.
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This is the kind of BS you'll get from hiring people if you apply for a position sans degree. The gap between a true software engineer and a programmer is the same as the difference between an electrical engineer and a bench tech or a mechanical engineer and a mechanic. ...
This kind of "BS" is however the prevailing reality in the market today. Many employers want only to employ mechanics or or techs at a lowly tech salary, but think they are getting the skills of an engineer. You don't want to be competing in that job market (unless you are happy to sell your skills for a minimum wage).
The reality is that software engineering does not have recognition or pedigree. There is no recognized professional institution for software engineering comparable to the IEEE, and few U.S. states have a software engineering P.E. qualification.
Trying tell that to the loads of super well paid brilliant software engineers at Google and Microsoft. Software engineers are one of the most sought after and well paid engineers in this day and age. It will probably only continue to increase as well.
This opinion is truly delusional. Please try getting a job at Google or Microsoft and report back to us on how that works out for you. Those companies and their ilk take on only a small fraction of the people looking for employment. Furthermore the likes of Google and Microsoft select for exceptionally smart people with good interview skills. A software engineering qualification is somewhat secondary when it comes to getting through their interview processes. (But being brilliant helps enormously.)
It took software engineering a long time to get accepted within a number of engineering organizations because of the scepticism with which it was/is viewed. ...
The trouble I think is that software engineering is still immature. What is worse, the industry gives little impression of knowing how to do what they are supposed to do. There is a never ending stream of ideas about how to fix the mistakes of the past and finally do software right, the latest being the whole raft of Agile methodologies. Other engineering disciplines don't have this problem. They know what they are supposed to do and how to do it, and they just get on with doing it.
Therefore I stand by my opinion. If you want to do software engineering, that's great. Working with software can be rewarding and fun. But don't make a software engineering degree your sole qualification and your only entry to this field. Study something stable and mature with professional recognition, and branch out from there. Make your foundation "software + X" rather than just "software", where "X" is an application domain that appeals to you.
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The trouble I think is that software engineering is still immature. What is worse, the industry gives little impression of knowing how to do what they are supposed to do. There is a never ending stream of ideas about how to fix the mistakes of the past and finally do software right, the latest being the whole raft of Agile methodologies. Other engineering disciplines don't have this problem. They know what they are supposed to do and how to do it, and they just get on with doing it.
Therefore I stand by my opinion. If you want to do software engineering, that's great. Working with software can be rewarding and fun. But don't make a software engineering degree your sole qualification and your only entry to this field. Study something stable and mature with professional recognition, and branch out from there. Make your foundation "software + X" rather than just "software", where "X" is an application domain that appeals to you.
I largely agree with you however I also think that 'electronic engineering' is in somewhat similar trouble, having splintered badly to the point as I said above - you never quite know what skillset one might have. And the IEEE/IET/IEAust appear clueless as to recommend a minimum design skillset that graduates should be required to express. The IEAust was that bad IMO that it appeared to ditch the whole concept that an engineer should actually be able to design anything at all instead focusing on basic science and management. In addition I have often worked with Mechanical Engineers who appear to me to have learn't little more than CAD and project management - but I suspect at least in that degree there is somewhat more of a standardized curriculum/educational outcomes.
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Very few people graduate with ANY degree that makes them immediately valuable in ANY industry. At best they understand enough basic concepts, tools, and "background" to become useful in "not too long", with training. Not that there is a lot of unity about what constitutes "useful." There are whole industries where knowing how to program in assembly language (ANY assembly language) is completely irrelevant, and you can probably learn one programming language per quarter and still be expected to write in something else when you get to your first employer...
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I guess watching Microsoft and Google wage insane job offer wars over several of my college and gradschool buddies would make me delusional. Seems pretty common place to me.
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It great to be able to hire people whose previous experience is exactly what you need, and it's great to be hired for a job where what you already know is valuable enough to have an employer offer you big bucks, but those aren't the usual cases.
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I didn't attend college but joined the RAAF (http://www.airforce.gov.au/) straight out of high school. There I studied electronics and became a radio technician working on airborne equipment. I got into computers as a customer engineer for Sperry Univac where all training was in house.
I got into software almost by accident. I was between jobsas an electronics technician and a software support position came up. This was in the early days of personal computing (Tandy TRS-80). The requirements of that job were an electronics background and a proficiency in BASIC. I read a book on BASIC the night before the interview and bluffed my way through it. That was over 30 years ago and I've been doing software support, mostly operating systems, since then. All software training was on the job or self taught.
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Hello everyone, I love studying, I have already finished school, I want to study in college in New York, I think there are some of the best colleges in the world, I need to write an essay for postgraduate at PapersOwl (https://papersowl.com/essays-for-sale) , this is a very important stage of work.
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Heriot-Watt. (https://hw.ac.uk) Nice campus out in the country. When I started it was in the city, and the new campus was just being built.
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I haven't attended uni yet, and I really have no desire unless I get into some Ivy league school, I can't really find a school that can challenge me as much as I can myself, and I'm just out to seek knowledge, not some degree to bring in more money. I also feel that once EE becomes a chore, it might lose it's hobby sort of feel. Luckily I have some business ideas, and that would be full time CS and EE with my hobby projects (I feel anyone can agree that personal projects/ideas are much more thrilling than assigned tasks).
I think you have no idea of just how challenging a real engineering program can be. Just the concurrent math curriculum is a challenge: Calc I, Calc II, Differential Equations, Linear Algebra, Fourier and Laplace Transforms and Field Theory (Maxwell's Equations). I know I forgot something...
To these you can add with Physics I, Physics II, Statics, Dynamics and Heat Transfer plus, of course, the actual Electronics courses. There are a few General Ed courses but, these days, engineering degrees take about 150 semester units or about 10 semesters (5 years) to complete. Be thankful for the GE courses because they are the only easy courses on the list. Unfortunately, they often have term papers involved.
My grandson is just getting started in ME and it's just about to get real. He thinks he is going to have time for outside adventures and I keep telling him that there's a reason engineering students don't socialize and often wander around with glazed eyes mumbling to themselves. All those engineer stereotypes that people laugh at? They're all true!
And, yes, it IS about the money. More money is better than less money. It's really as simple as that!
The best part of all is knowing how stuff works. Once you take Statics, you never look at a truss bridge or steel frame building the same way. Newton's Second Law of Motion just keeps showing up!
Heck, I had to work through Bernoulli's Equation for stagnation pressure just to calibrate a speedometer (pressure gauge) for my small hydroplane. Engineering shows up in the darndest places.
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rstofer, the user in question hasn't been active in 2-1/2 years and the post is eight years old... I suspect he won't be able to hear you... ;)
To the main topic at hand... EE at UnB (Universidade de BrasÃlia (http://www.ene.unb.br/)) and incomplete EE MSc at Unicamp (Universidade de Campinas (http://www.fee.unicamp.br/))
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rstofer, the user in question hasn't been active in 2-1/2 years and the post is eight years old... I suspect he won't be able to hear you... ;)
My bad... I NEVER look at the dates and, clearly, I should.
The forum should also refuse to reactivate zombie threads. Anything over about 30 days should be left behind. Alas, that probably won't happen. And I'll continue to overlook the dates and I'll be right back in this situation.
A new user's very 1st post is to reactivate a 7 year old thread...
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To the OP: So, why don't you start it off by saying where you are from (no flag) and where you went to college?
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Universidad del Trabajo del Uruguay - Engineer
Warsaw University of Technology - MSc
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Trying tell that to the loads of super well paid brilliant software engineers at Google and Microsoft. Software engineers are one of the most sought after and well paid engineers in this day and age. It will probably only continue to increase as well.
This opinion is truly delusional. Please try getting a job at Google or Microsoft and report back to us on how that works out for you. Those companies and their ilk take on only a small fraction of the people looking for employment. Furthermore the likes of Google and Microsoft select for exceptionally smart people with good interview skills. A software engineering qualification is somewhat secondary when it comes to getting through their interview processes. (But being brilliant helps enormously.)
I haven't worked at Google or Microsoft, but I've worked for Mozilla and Samsung R&D and had an offer from Google (but I picked Samsung). I left Samsung earlier this year to join a chip designing startup.
Education: I was having a hard time deciding whether to do EE or computer science. In the end the decision was made because I didn't like Auckland or Auckland University[1] and so I decided on Computer Science with a good bit of maths and physics (including electronics) at University of Waikato in Hamilton, 1981-1984.
[1] programming assignments were done by submitting PUNCHED CARDS for the Burroughs 6700 and picking them up the next day .. ugh. At least Waikato had a couple of PDP-11s with lots of video terminals, and a VAX on order.
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To the OP: So, why don't you start it off by saying where you are from (no flag) and where you went to college?
rstofer, the user in question hasn't been active in 2-1/2 years and the post is eight years old... I suspect he won't be able to hear you... ;)
My bad... I NEVER look at the dates and, clearly, I should.
that was gamozo he probably find himself a challenging stuffs he got no more time posting. the OP otoh, that was 7 years ago and his last post was 5 years ago, he probably have 7 children by now. have you been bitten by the undead? you should meet project alice.
[1] programming assignments were done by submitting PUNCHED CARDS for the Burroughs 6700 and picking them up the next day .. ugh. At least Waikato had a couple of PDP-11s with lots of video terminals, and a VAX on order.
urrgh thats cheap and "unchallenging". i thought it'll be something like theory of string algorithm.
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Oklahoma State University :)
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I studied Pure and Applied Mathematics (and some undergraduate Computer Science), but there was a big Engineering Faculty there which included Electrical Engineering. That was the University of Waterloo in Ontario Canada. ... C
Yeah, me too - class of '77. As crazy as a time for me it was (it took me 6 2/3 years to do the 4 2/3 year curriculum) it was the best experience of my life.
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It's a bit mind-boggling that the people graduating from college today were just starting high school (~14y old) when I first registered on EEVblog...
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It's a bit mind-boggling that the people graduating from college today were just starting high school (~14y old) when I first registered on EEVblog...
I haven't been on EEVblog for long, but my domain name and email address are old enough to vote (or drink in NZ/Aus/UK).
I was on BYTE magazine's "BIX" message board more than 30 years ago and even turned up in "Best of BIX" in the back pages of the magazine from time to time.
It's over 25 years since I posted a list of funny MPW C error messages on comp.sys.mac.programmer https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/comp.sys.mac.programmer/UkCjFPL4zEM/-lM87bJxPUcJ
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It's over 25 years since I posted
You can find me (while I was at school, just to stay on-topic!) in here https://amaus.net/static/S100/MESSAGE%20BOARDS/SIMTEL%20CPM%20Message%20Archive/CPM/8105-1.TXT (https://amaus.net/static/S100/MESSAGE%20BOARDS/SIMTEL%20CPM%20Message%20Archive/CPM/8105-1.TXT)(same username. Although thoughout my work-life I had something different...)
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It's over 25 years since I posted
You can find me (while I was at school, just to stay on-topic!) in here https://amaus.net/static/S100/MESSAGE%20BOARDS/SIMTEL%20CPM%20Message%20Archive/CPM/8105-1.TXT (https://amaus.net/static/S100/MESSAGE%20BOARDS/SIMTEL%20CPM%20Message%20Archive/CPM/8105-1.TXT)(same username. Although thoughout my work-life I had something different...)
May 1981, nice. I didn't have access to any international network until five years later.
I wonder if there's any publicly accessible archive of BIX from those days.
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My tech cert. was at DeVry 1977-8 (oh well, the school no longer exists (http://www.emeryvillagevoice.ca/A-history-of-Devry)..). They said I was youngest to enroll at 16 years old.
After burning $9,000 I failed by smoking too much pot and had to resume 2 years later at a place called Durham college (https://durhamcollege.ca/about/history).
Some people only learn well in the "real school" of "hard knock's" |O
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I worked with a guy and every time we got someone new in he would ask...Where did you get you get your education? They would rattle off schools. He responded... I didn't ask where you went to school, I asked where did you get your education.
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Rose-Hulman: https://www.rose-hulman.edu/ (https://www.rose-hulman.edu/)
I've crossed paths with a number of people who are self-educated and have a mature understanding of engineering - and I wouldn't hesitate to work with them. Sadly, there are also quite a few who think they can learn everything they need to know about engineering by wiring a few pre-designed circuits together. Having started out by doing just that, it was an interesting step when I started learning the fundamentals of physics, electronics, etc. There is quite a bit of content involved in laying the foundation of engineering; math first of all, then a basic knowledge of the physics of electricity: conductors, semiconductors, magnetic and electric fields - all essential if you are to see engineering as a discipline rather than a collection of assorted skills.
One of my friends pointed out that we attend a higher institute of learning not just to acquire knowledge, but to learn how to acquire knowledge. That's a skill of its own, and much harder to get by following other peoples' instructions in a DIY book. A mark of a good engineering education is that you can teach yourself things instead of needing a mentor or instructor; this is not something that most secondary schools emphasized - and certainly not today. If you are well grounded in the basics, you can often build on top of that. A good university/college level framework makes the path much easier. I know, there were people who graduated with me who never really "got it" either, but they were at least exposed to the fundamentals.
And yes, "education" is a slightly different concept from "the courses you took in school". The biggest part of my education came from being surrounded by people smarter than I was. Being able to absorb the collective "cloud" of knowledge and abilities, and to get answers from people who were where you are years ago, is the true advantage of that environment. Except in the very best jobs, you get more of that opportunity in school than anywhere else - and the better the school, the more you absorb.
And again, not to criticize the very capable technicians I worked with, but I could always tell when someone had engineering training (not necessarily schooling). There was an overriding awareness of the full design evident in every aspect of their work - rather than just sticking together a bunch of working circuits. I had the opportunity to chat with Steve Wozniak (the real brains behind Apple) a few times; while not formally trained in engineering at the time, he had a mature grasp of what engineering was about, at an early age. His designs are efficient, complete and thoroughly debugged because he was capable of seeing the big picture before he started the design. A good engineering program should endeavor to produce people like Woz, instead of people like Steve Jobs (met him too, not impressed).
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Trying tell that to the loads of super well paid brilliant software engineers at Google and Microsoft. Software engineers are one of the most sought after and well paid engineers in this day and age. It will probably only continue to increase as well.
This opinion is truly delusional. Please try getting a job at Google or Microsoft and report back to us on how that works out for you. Those companies and their ilk take on only a small fraction of the people looking for employment. Furthermore the likes of Google and Microsoft select for exceptionally smart people with good interview skills. A software engineering qualification is somewhat secondary when it comes to getting through their interview processes. (But being brilliant helps enormously.)
It is, however, the case that there are far more opportunities these days for software people than hardware people. In organisations employing both hardware and software people I have never seen the hardware people paid as well as the software ones.
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I wonder if there's any publicly accessible archive of BIX from those days.
A lot of stuff didn't get archived nearly as much as one would hope.
In the early days, the available storage was "small", even compared to text. IIRC the default school disk allocation was "200 pages" (512words*36bits), or about 0.5MB. The mainframe's total disk capacity was something like 300MBytes, and that had to be shared by hundreds to thousands of users, mainframe disks were horribly expensive. Even when things were "backed up" to tape, it was common for those tapes to sit around until the equipment to read them was no longer available :-( (I've got a DECTape from High School, and several 9-track tapes from college. Sigh.)
There is a bunch of early ARPANet mailing-list mail that has just been lost, AFAIK. Google archives only go back to 1982, I think, when stuff started to be gatewayed to UseNet (most of it from Henry Spenser's "utzoo" site.) Sigh.
I guess I'm an example of the value of "real" universities. I have my BSEE and took more CS classes than average, and that's all swell and helpful. But I owe most of my career to the part-time job, its associated "other computer" account, and the rather unofficial access to ARPANet... I even got my first job after college via eMail. I might have been able to study all the same things, take the same finals and get the same grades, just from book learning. but I would not have had access to the array of **stuff** that was ultimately highly "formative." ("Dude! I was like THERE when they had to invent the email-list "digest" format!") (now, I'm not quite sure how to go FIND that stuff at a typical college...)
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Michigan State University BS and MS in Geology, Texas Womans University MS in Physical Therapy.
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Lehigh University - BSEE - back when I went there we were called "The Engineers" in sports
paul
Same here - BSEE '88. I've always said I'll donate if they change the name back. Mountain Hawks, indeed.