L' Eomot Inversé (9/13/2013)
patrickmcginnis59 10839 (9/13/2013)
Maybe it would be interesting to consider what phd's were available at the time that many of these folks did NOT choose and instead pursued studies in mathematics, engineering or other non CS studies. For example, should we wonder why Mr. McCarthy or Mr. Turing did not pursue their education in the field of computer science? Would that help us determine whether all the present day companies are mistaken in desiring job candidates with academic credentials in relevent fields?Perhaps you didn't notice that my text which you quoted contained this:
Do you think that no-one should have been recruited to work on computers before about 1958, since there were no academic qualifications in Computing or IT way back then?
That should have made it clear that I am well aware of what the situation was way back then. Incidentally, I think 1958 may be a few years earlier than the first first-degree course in CS; MU started theirs in 1965, that was the first in the UK, and I don't think the USA was much earlier.
When I view this as a reply to Mr. crick's comment, it doesn't seem to make sense to me especially with your additional commentary:
L' Eomot Inversé (9/12/2013)
simon.crick (9/11/2013)
Why not base your decision on the candidate's academic qualifications?Because we know that many of the really great people in computing/IT/database had not a single academic qualification in computing or in IT or in database. Surely we shouldn't restrict ourselves to people who have more academic qualifications in the field than Alan Turing or Fred Williams or Grace Hopper or John McCarthy or Tony Hoare or Ted Codd or Cliff Jones or Chris Date - if they hadn't been allowed to work in computing we wouldn't have got anywhere near where we are today - they might never have been a relational model to give rise to an RDBMS like SQL Server. Do you think that no-one should have been recruited to work on computers before about 1958, since there were no academic qualifications in Computing or IT way back then? :hehe:
Now that you have acknowleged that there weren't more appropriate fields in your more recent reply (or did you?), who then would be more qualified than say Alan Turing, Grace Hopper or John McCarthy for instance? Why does this reply look like Mr. crick would have rejected these candidates because they didn't have an appropriate set of credentials, when in fact we're now seem to be fairly well in agreement the appropriate set of credentials didn't exist or more preferrably for me, they actually had the best set of credentials to do the pioneering work they did? Ie., it reads like you would hold up Mr. crick as not preferring these eminent pioneers as able to work in the field, heck, the very field they were instrumental in creating.