On Tue, 6 Jan 2004, Declan McCullagh wrote:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-407043,curpg-3.cms
"Today, Bangalore stands ahead of Bay Area, San Francisco and California, with a lead of 20,000 techies, while employing a total number of 1.5 lakh engineers." ek lakh = 100,000 I am sure that there are a lot of good engineers in India. However, the educational system has to be seen to be fully appreciated. When my wife and I last travelled in north India, admittedly quite some time ago, what began as a riot at the University of Lucknow -- students protesting over invigilation of exams, I believe -- escalated into a conflict that eventually involved the armed police on the one hand and the military on the other. The university campus was destroyed, burned down. I spent several months in Calcutta over a couple of years. During at least one visit there were riots at the university; the papers reported bodies hanging from trees. Many had been shot. Same story: students protested because they were stopped from openly exchanging papers, consulting books, or just chatting with friends during examinations. Many were also angry because invigilators were actually checking the identities of those writing the exam papers. The going rate for a degree at the time was several hundred dollars. Knowledge of the subject was not much relevant. Such education as occurred largely involved rote learning, often based on texts many years out of date.
Moreover, it is found out that the Americans are shying away from the challenges of math and science. A recent National Science Foundation Study reveals a 5 per cent decline in the overall doctoral candidates in the US over the last five years.
No telling what this actually means, given that a large percentage of doctoral candidates are foreign. It is becoming much harder for foreign students to get into the US, so many are going to universities in Europe. This change has occurred in the last five years -- more precisely, since 9/11.
The India side story: India produces 3.1 million college graduates a year, which is expected to be doubled by 2010. The number of engineering colleges is slated to grow 50 per cent, to nearly 1,600, over the next four years.
My impression is that India has a few excellent institutions and a vast number of unbelievably bad schools. It seems likely that the flow of money into Bangalore and a few other centers will gradually improve this situation, but it is likely to take decades, and per-capita convergence with the US and Europe seems unlikely within the century. While 1.5 lakh (150,000) engineers may sound like a lot, you have to bear in mind that there are about 100 crore (1 billion) people in India. -- Jim Dixon jdd@dixons.org tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
"Today, Bangalore stands ahead of Bay Area, San Francisco and California, with a lead of 20,000 techies, while employing a total number of 1.5 lakh engineers."
I live in bangalore,those figures are correct.
However, the educational system has to be seen to be fully appreciated. I spent several months in Calcutta over a couple of years. During at least one visit there were riots at the university; the papers reported bodies hanging from trees. Many had been shot. Same story: students protested because they were stopped from openly exchanging papers, consulting books, or just chatting with friends during examinations.
Lets be a little fair here, just copying and just chatting during exams are malpractices, the students have much political support and relegious support in these places. As for openly consulting books durin exam,most of the universities don't conduct open book exams,except may be at the iit's.Its a malpractice,elsewhere. The university sends special squads appointed by the university itself to check exam malpractices, how ever if the students counter the squad with sickles and knifes and swords-it becomes a common practice that the invigilators get armed police protection. So,in a riot when the students are out to kill,very little can be done to protect themselves and people sadly,get killed. There are a few sensitive spots in india but where I am and in South India,we had no such encounters as yet.
Such education as occurred largely involved rote learning, often based on texts many years out of date.
We learn the fundamentals of enginnering,the basic books of engg. are always the same,we may miss a few updates and advances,thats all.
My impression is that India has a few excellent institutions and a vast number of unbelievably bad schools.
We dont the have resources like you have in the U.S. Sarath. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus
On Wed, 7 Jan 2004, Sarad AV wrote:
"Today, Bangalore stands ahead of Bay Area, San Francisco and California, with a lead of 20,000 techies, while employing a total number of 1.5 lakh engineers."
I live in bangalore,those figures are correct.
Meaning that 150,000 engineers are employed in Bangalore? Does this include software engineers, HTML coders, programmers, computer scientists? Does it include say railway engineers, truck mechanics, the guy who fixes your air conditioning? The term 'engineer' is far from precise; in the UK most people who work with tools can be called engineers but people who write software generally are NOT called engineers. There are further complications: for example, in certain parts of the United States (Texas comes to mind), you cannot describe yourself as an engineer without being certified as such by the state. You can be a mechanical or civil engineer, but not a software engineer, because there is no relevant test. One of the consequences of this is that Texas vastly undercounts its engineers. The civil/mechanical/etc engineers have lobbied successfully for such restrictions on the use of the job title in other states (and Canada?). There are frequent articles in ACM journals complaining about this; people who have been software engineers for decades are breaking the law if they describe themselves as such in Texas. In the same vein, what does 'techie' mean in the article quoted? When the article says that Bangalore has a lead of 20,000 techies over California, exactly what is this supposed to mean? For years Japan led the world in the use of robots because they counted as robots devices that were not counted as such in the USA and Europe, simple pick-and-place arms. I suspect that much the same thing is going on here. -- Jim Dixon jdd@dixons.org tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Jim Dixon wrote:
The term 'engineer' is far from precise; in the UK most people who work with tools can be called engineers but people who write software generally are NOT called engineers. There are further complications: for example, in
I have had jobs as a "software engineer" in the UK and since the dot com bubble this hasn't been an uncommon job title. The UK tends to follow US fashions very closely importing in titles like CEO and CTO and the term "software engineer" is no different. As for your comments that "my impression is that India has a few excellent institutions and a vast number of unbelievably bad schools" I suspect this is true but applies equally to the UK and USA and indeed any country with a university system. Neither is graduating from a top engineering school such as Stanford any automatic guarantee of quality as anyone who has worked with these people knows. India has an excellent tradition in mathematics and some of the best software engineers I have worked with in the UK have been Indian graduates, since it's the most enterprising and highly qualified ones which tend to emigrate. O Reilly Associates recognise the importance of the Indian market by suppplying special low priced editions of their books to the Indian market. They are occasionally available as "grey imports" in the UK. -- 1024/D9C69DF9 Steve Mynott <steve@tightrope.demon.co.uk>
On Wed, 7 Jan 2004, Steve Mynott wrote:
The term 'engineer' is far from precise; in the UK most people who work with tools can be called engineers but people who write software generally are NOT called engineers. There are further complications: for example, in
I have had jobs as a "software engineer" in the UK and since the dot com bubble this hasn't been an uncommon job title.
Go to Jobserve and count. I did, about a year ago. I found 612 references in a 5-day period, as compared with 1651 for Java and 1889 for C++. My point is not that there are no software engineers in the world, but that the term "engineer" is often used quite loosely and means vastly different things in different places.
The UK tends to follow US fashions very closely importing in titles like CEO and CTO and the term "software engineer" is no different.
The term 'software engineer' is becoming less common in the States these days. I have watched the job title wax and wane for more than twenty five years. I think that it was most fashionable in the early 1980s. If it isn't clear, I usually describe myself as a software engineer. I belong to the ACM (www.acm.org) and follow their articles discussing software engineering as a profession with a mild interest.
As for your comments that "my impression is that India has a few excellent institutions and a vast number of unbelievably bad schools" I suspect this is true but applies equally to the UK and USA and indeed any country with a university system. Neither is graduating from a top engineering school such as Stanford any automatic guarantee of quality as anyone who has worked with these people knows.
You don't understand. I have never ever heard of any school in the UK or the United States, no matter how bad, where degrees are routinely and rather openly sold, or where riots on campus, usually in response to examinations, frequently involve lethal weapons and deaths. "Unbelievably bad" means just that. I have visited India many times and have spent at least two years there in total. I went there of my own free will, travelling. And I spent enough time in various places (at least several months each in Calcutta, Delhi, Bombay, Madras, as well as many smaller and less well-known places) to have a decent overall understanding of the country.
India has an excellent tradition in mathematics and some of the best software engineers I have worked with in the UK have been Indian graduates, since it's the most enterprising and highly qualified ones which tend to emigrate.
India tends to stunning extremes. Many amazingly good mathematicians have come out of India; my experience is that this is strongly regional, with the best coming from Bengal in the north and then the Bangalore/ Madras/north of there region in the southeast. But you have to see those extremes. There is nothing like stepping out of a Calcutta coffee house, after having a wonderfully intelligent conversation, into the appalling streets. I think that any attempt to describe life in Calcutta as I knew it would be met with disbelief. Go there. Don't stay in a tourist hotel. It takes at least a few weeks for your eyes to adjust, for you to take in just how very very different the subcontinent is. Then you might go a little mad and run away, or you might just decide that you like the place ;-)
O Reilly Associates recognise the importance of the Indian market by suppplying special low priced editions of their books to the Indian market. They are occasionally available as "grey imports" in the UK.
Yes. This has been going on for a long long time. Most major publishers do it. I used to buy cheap technical books myself in India, Hong Kong, Japan, etc. Although they tend to be out of date, there are often very good buys. I still have some on my shelves. I am not India-bashing. I just think that the people who are so concerned about the threat of India wiping out the US software industry are uhm let's say a bit unrealistic. It might be a concern 30 years from now, although I am skeptical even of that. -- Jim Dixon jdd@dixons.org tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Jim Dixon wrote:
On Wed, 7 Jan 2004, Steve Mynott wrote:
The term 'engineer' is far from precise; in the UK most people who work with tools can be called engineers but people who write software generally are NOT called engineers. There are further complications: for example, in
I have had jobs as a "software engineer" in the UK and since the dot com bubble this hasn't been an uncommon job title.
Go to Jobserve and count. I did, about a year ago. I found 612 references in a 5-day period, as compared with 1651 for Java and 1889 for C++.
What to call people who write software is problematic. "software engineer" is a job title like "programmer" or "developer" (often with senior or junior as a prefix). Senior meaning that you get paid a little more since you have more experience rather than being a manager. I never had a programming job where the language was specified in the title. I am talking here of permanent work rather than contract style. Searching on jobserve (the main UK IT job site) I get 3123 hits for developer 2009 engineer 806 software developer 803 software engineer 766 programmer 201 software programmer So programmer is the unpopular job title not engineer, probably because it seems to have a bit of an outdated 1970s punched and magnetic tape type reputation.
My point is not that there are no software engineers in the world, but that the term "engineer" is often used quite loosely and means vastly different things in different places.
Agreed
The term 'software engineer' is becoming less common in the States these days. I have watched the job title wax and wane for more than twenty five years. I think that it was most fashionable in the early 1980s.
Any Americans care to comment on this?
You don't understand. I have never ever heard of any school in the UK or the United States, no matter how bad, where degrees are routinely and rather openly sold, or where riots on campus, usually in response to examinations, frequently involve lethal weapons and deaths. "Unbelievably bad" means just that.
I think people can still get a good education even in unstable and poorer nations. You don't need to spend many dollars to run Linux and print out downloaded PDFs. There were campus deaths in the American and French student riots of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Oxford and Cambridge Universities openly sell masters degrees. The examinations systems in many British influenced countries in the east resemble 1950s UK ones in their high standards and there doesn't seem to be much doubt that British examinations have been dumbed down since the 1980s to improve pass percentages. It doesn't seem to me likely a doctor's son in Bangalore is automatically going to get a worse education than the average street kid in South Central LA or Hackney. The Asperger enhanced asian engineering, physics and maths geeks shut in their rooms with an internet link won't be the ones running around killing people. They are more likely to be hacking NASA via abuse of their local inband trunk signaling and gaining an excellent education in C buffers, UNIX and international telecommunications systems. And hopefully subscribing to this list and reading Murray Rothbard.
I am not India-bashing. I just think that the people who are so concerned about the threat of India wiping out the US software industry are uhm let's say a bit unrealistic. It might be a concern 30 years from now, although I am skeptical even of that.
Agreed. They will get a bigger slice of a bigger pie but still a smaller serving than the US. I remember the Americans being scared about the "Japanese Are Coming With Their Expert Systems" hype of the early 1980s. And they never came despite many yen being wasted by MITI. The only currently popular Japanese computer language Ruby is pretty much a copy of a European one (python). -- 1024/D9C69DF9 Steve Mynott <steve@tightrope.demon.co.uk>
On Wed, 2004-01-07 at 18:36, Steve Mynott wrote:
Jim Dixon wrote:
The term 'software engineer' is becoming less common in the States these days. I have watched the job title wax and wane for more than twenty five years. I think that it was most fashionable in the early 1980s.
Any Americans care to comment on this?
In the mid-1980s, the US Department of Defense, at the time the largest software customer in the world, told its vendors that 10% (I think) of their software development staff must be software engineers. Along came the HR fairies with their magic wands and poof! almost all software developers were software engineers. The SE job title has ebbed and flowed, as Jim said. It means little other than "programmer" in the US. As Jim said in another message, almost all states restrict the use of the term "engineer" to those who are licensed. But most don't really enforce that rule, so HR departments are free to give their programming staff the glorious title. However, contrary to Jim's statement, Texas does license software engineers. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering .) I don't know if any other states license SEs. Regards, SRF, degreed Software Engineer (hooray, me)
On 7 Jan 2004, Steve Furlong wrote:
contrary to Jim's statement, Texas does license software engineers. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering .) I don't know if any other states license SEs.
Quoting your own source: "Donald Bagart of Texas became the first professional software engineer in the U.S. on September 4, 1998 or October 9, 1998. As of May 2002, Texas had issued 44 professional enginering licenses for software engineers. "The professional movement has been criticized for many reasons. "* Licensed software engineers must learn years of physics and chemistry to pass the exams, which is irrelevant to most software practitioners." This is exactly what the ACM gripes about. In order to use the title "engineer" in the Great State of Texas you have to pass examinations relevant to classical engineering (civil, mechanical, etc) but wholly irrelevant to software engineering. -- Jim Dixon jdd@dixons.org tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Steve Mynott wrote:
Jim Dixon wrote:
The term 'engineer' is far from precise; in the UK most people who work with tools can be called engineers but people who write software generally are NOT called engineers. There are further complications: for example, in
I have had jobs as a "software engineer" in the UK and since the dot com bubble this hasn't been an uncommon job title.
The UK tends to follow US fashions very closely importing in titles like CEO and CTO and the term "software engineer" is no different.
Yes, but... the word "engineer" as used here by most people measns someone who fixes machines. If I go to somebody's ofice and they say that I'm "the engineer" pride makes me say no. I'm not an engineer, I'm a programmer. Different think entirely If I had to describe what I do I'd call myself a "systems programmer", even though that isn't exactly what my job title is. I'd avoid the word "engineer" because to most people it implies the bloke of the street who knows how to put a replacement PC card in, but to a few it implies some professional status and formal discipline, neither of which I have had anythign to do with.
--- Jim Dixon <jdd@dixons.org> wrote:
Meaning that 150,000 engineers are employed in Bangalore? Does this include software engineers, HTML coders, programmers, computer scientists?
Computer scientists are very few. Most engineering colleges and teachers emphasis simple on coding. If you know c/c++/oracle etc.. and good analytical skills and communication skills- one can get a job in bangalore if you have a computer engg. degree. The math education system from schools to colleges is pathetic. They simply give us the final formula,they dont bother to derive the equation or give any insight or intution of the problem. Most south indian students are weak at math. I see Steve Mynott's comment. Thats the cream,who usually emigrate. You get to see some of the very best.
Does it include say railway engineers, truck mechanics, the guy who fixes your air conditioning?
no,they don't.These are usual who do diploma. These people in india have better practial experience and aptitude than engineers. Software engineers are given a proper degree by the university.
In the same vein, what does 'techie' mean in the article quoted? When the article says that Bangalore has a lead of 20,000 techies over California, exactly what is this supposed to mean?
It would mean that bangalore has around 16000 to 17000 programmers.The other 3000 would be computer scientists.By computer scientists,I mean those people who has indepth knowledge of theory of algorithms,more of theorotical computer science.They can present you with the final algorithm and all the others have to do is code it. Sarath. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus
participants (5)
-
Jim Dixon -
ken -
Sarad AV -
Steve Furlong -
Steve Mynott