unclassified - CCNA vs 'traditional' study at college

[Doug.Palmer at csiro.au]

> Please comment on your understandings and feelings about this.
> (Anyone else with an opinion? But... please keep opinions to 
> under 300 lines
> and/or 5,000 words.....)

It depends what your son wants to do, of course. Learning traditional
computer science won't do him much good if he wants to be a system admin.
But my take has always been "go for the theory".

Computing/IT has a Jekyll and Hyde personality. On the surface, there's lots
of ferment with new software, languages, features and what have you coming
out daily. But the underlying principles tend to remain the same. Hell, this
is the Linux list, devoted to an operating system that has its roots in the
early 70s and built on concepts developed in the 60s. Looking at a career
over 40 years, things will change enormously on the surface. But, if you
have a grounding in the underlying concepts, you can quickly get up to speed
on the latest and greatest.

If your son is interested in programming, it's worth getting a solid
grounding in computer science -- not programming as such. Things like formal
grammars, language design, NP-completeness, algorithms, automata, ACID, etc.
Telephone directory sized books called "Total Vegetable's Guide to RedHat
6.2.1.3.7" come and go, but Knuth goes on forever. Such an approach is
pretty heavy on the math, however, so it's partially dependent on his liking
for that kind of thing.

My $0.02

Doug