u/itfllow123-gmail-com

IT education sucks 😭

I don't know how to start this rant but I believe I would start with my experience in high school computer science which really just is IT at this point. Computer science in Cambridge o level's is one of those things that's given more credit than it deserves in under developed countries that have spent a fair share of time under colonial rule. The reason I say this is because in the name of computer science, I was taught:

How bar codes work

How printers physically work

How touch screens physically work

Different types of storage devices

Keywords used for the application of IT in different domains

An inaccurate view of AI

A terrible introduction to networking and cryptography.

Inventing keywords for psuedo code, keywords that literally no one uses aside from our curriculum

And the only useful things: some sorting algorithms, flow charts, and logic gates (truth tables and stuff), the very basics of some programming languages.

Making us memorize SQL (without even telling us which flavor or for which SQL engine, this syntax is for)

A break down on how bad it was:

1.Now teaching bar codes is fine, but making us memorize exactly how it works in theory, at this level is useless and is the wrong way to introduce one to computer science.

2.knowing the types of printers and touch screens is useful, but teaching us the exact physical steps is useless unless you also teach us the physics behind it and even then the utility would be null. All we were thought were abstract steps, rather than the process in terms of physics.

3. We were taught storage devices in terms of utility and speed, and that was in abstract terms rather than concrete speed based on different generations, and whether a device is SATA, makes use of PCIe, and the moving parts and other possible points of failures of each one.

4. The keywords that were invented out of nowhere and the definition of AI was "an imitation of the human brain through artificial neurons".

5. Introduction to networking and cryptography was also terrible, like in networking we were shown a IPv4 packet format as an "internet packet", and we skipped over everything except for looking at diagrams and classifying them as half duplex or full duplex, or filling in a missing device like a router or a switch, while in cryptography, it was just public key and private key in assymetric encryption, and private key in symmetric one, again a terrible incomplete introduction. We were thankfully atleast taught about data integrity techniques like checksums, but even that was purely theoretical, and quite outdated for practical usage.

6. Psuedocode keywords that we had to memorize so we could pass an exam was their way of introducing us to problem solving.

7. The SQL part is self explanatory.

A levels:

A levels (which comes after o levels) isn't any better either, except for a project that you must complete at the end, but even the project is a joke, since any trash computer game made with Pygame or something would pass, but a computer driver won't since there aren't enough people to check those stuff.

Additional words: Again, the reason I believe that they were teaching the wrong things were because: 1.Most of the concepts that did come in exams were utterly useless and not useful at all. Like I would like to know how a printer works but not a abstract overview that I can't use to really work with a printer practically. I also don't like being asked what's the fullform of MAC address is, Writing SQL by hand, and similar questions (I don't remember all but trust me, they were bad) 2. The other concepts (these usually didn't come in the exam (and weren't taught) but we're in the book) that had detailed that could be called useful were too abstract and at a o levels level, you simply can't understand them and even if you did, it's given child a weapon and expecting them to know how to use it, like a 14 year old guy can not use those things, even if he wanted. These are concepts that include a high level overview of cyber security, some outdated introductions to computer architecture, high level overview of certain protocol. These things are high level overviews of a range of these that aren't useful for a 14 year old, maybe they are useful to a 30 year old guy who wants to summarize the list of things the industry, and even to him it's only an abstract summary, but atleast these things have some use.

Conclusion:

1.If they want to teach us computer science theory, then start with the theory of computation, and from there take us to data structure and algorithms.

2.If they want to teach us theory about IT then start with teaching us what a shell is, the directory layout of Linux systems, different file systems, different boot systems, configuring the different types of init process, managing users, managing network interfaces, managing ip tables, and then slowly taking us to networking, from managing a small networks with a single router, to managing a network with many routers using IGPs, the moving to managing autonomous systems using BGP, and so on. All this while also teaching some details about ways to specify hardware specification for different components(clock speed, ppt, tdp, instructions per seconds, etc for CPU, and similar specs for other important components) , cryptography(a proper introduction this time, and improving data redundancy using some data integrity techniques and teaching how to design them.

Final words:

I guess the main goal of this kind of "education" is easy marking and for certain types kids to feel smart. In my case, four years ago (when I was 14), I simply couldn't learn those stuff. My parents thought, I was failing because I didn't try hard enough, but every subject in school was either highly abstract or there to brain wash me. Like the only subjects that functioned the way they are supposed to were the once meant to brainwash me, while the rest were easy to mark placeholders with abstract concepts that maybe helped a teaching business boom, but at the cost of my grades and education. Atleast, the other kids who are good at abstract/unconnected ideas passed, so good for them.

I was excited to install DSL 2024 while I was installing Gentoo on my new PC, but I got blurry display in certain themes, GitHub was red, and the whole thing was a mess, like the long in manager was blurry and ugly, and it took me to cause an error to remove the wallpaper itself, unlike Gentoo, DSL is really closed source to me, like it's prebuilt, so I expect some convinience but got none. I have 8gb of ddr3 ram but it was detecting 2.9, and the hard drive usage was 8gb, which is crazy for "damn small Linux"

I really hope the person who ruined DSL's name takes notice and find something better to do than to create unwanted artificial hype. Please guys, don't install it.

Right now am trying to install antiX, but DSL is just hard to use like how tf do I install antiX using DSL to make my bootable USB, like legit gonna crash out cuz I couldn't sleep in anger.

Forgive me if I am wrong (just a 18 year old guy who bought a new am5 PC): I think at 2035-2040(near am6s peak), we will stop noticing performance gains in newer computers. Like if you think about it: Intel core gen 3 processors were a thousand times faster than 8086 or similar processors, but mine is 3 to 4 times faster than gen 3 processors(12 to 14 years older). In my case, there is a massive catch that turns this small difference into a big one:

1. As hardware goes on, developers try to use features that they assume hardware provides (for a better cypher, encoding/decoding, etc). These features are heavyweight and are only usable on hardware that supports it(since hardware supports instruction caching, instruction pipe lining, and this is just the tiny tip of the iceberg). Imagine ray tracing on a strong GPU that dosent support ray tracing natively vs a weak GPU that does. These features should exist since they make computing exciting and useful (imagine looking at a game that has ray tracing).

2. Essential high priority background tasks that are lightweight but require constant context switching. These tasks are usual event driven and cause circular chains, and are made worse by essential virtual devices.

This however only aplplies to the 2010 to 2025 (mine is 2024(8400F)) era.Once am6 is out, I think the boost will just be 1.3 to 1.7 tikes compared to my current am5 platform, and that little boost won't really be a lot in practice unlike the gap between my PC and my old leptop because:

1. The kind of instructions that do what a lot of instructions would normally do will decline, since wires sizes will stop decreasing, hence it would be hard to add more wires without increasing the size and powering. Essentially unless you want to power a large server drinking electricity. You wont get higher performance. Maybe CPUs start getting big, just like GPUs are, but again, that would be a nightmare to cool, unlike a GPU which is still easier to cool. Again, even with better cache layout and dividing the chip into prices, you can't really go far except by just increasing bandwidth instead of adding those fancy instructions and operating systems related features that actually make them magnitudes faster, and such things are much hardware to infinitly modularize, power, cool, and manage. Even if you do so by some smart engineering (lowering temps and watts) the new instructions and operating systems features will eventually stop being generally purpose and useful, and might just require a different type of hardware device altogether, probably something that's cheap and easier to update/upgrade for a consumer. For example, the "feature of adding AI inside a CPU"(not to be confused with integrated npus)is simply tech for the sake of tech and is honestly requires it's own motherboard or device, rather than being flushed into the CPU, like if you want a AI pc, then just give AI an exclusive cpu or something, even if putting it into the CPU is way better, who cares? Most people don't buy PCs to run AI, only openAI, google, Microsoft, and others do. It's highly theoretical and it's most probably gonna be a failed experiment. Basically, no one wants a 2x boost, unlike previously, where you could see that 3x boost be way more in practice.

2. Essential high priority tasks are already taken care of by the current amount of cores, threads, and other related hardware for those context switching. Infact some am4 CPUs may already have solve it before am5.

All of this means that the small boost will be a small boost rather than a small boost (primarily due to just better ddr6 ram and better nvme), but not come with a many many times higher boost using hardware optimizations (as in my PCs case).

Basically, there might be a time when personal computers become a long time investment since companies stop trying to invest more in performance, but rather in durability.

Women, women, these women, these women are so weak (2)

These women cry so much, these women whine so much (1)

Women are women, women are weak (2)

Women, women, these women, these women are so weak(1)

It's just so ridiculous, just so ridiculous, women are just so weak.

Sometimes you just can't stop, just cant stop, asking why they are weak. (1)

Women, women, these women, these women are so weak(1)