[clug] ACS query

[James Polley]

Blog post about a recent Web2.0 presentation they had:
http://stilgherrian.com/internet/web_20_fail/

On Thu, Feb 28, 2008 at 5:37 PM, James Cherryh <jcherryh at gmail.com> wrote:
> I was a member of the ACS years ago, until I decided they weren't adding any
>  value to me.
>
>  Nothing they were doing interested me. I sort of thought their course
>  offerings might turn out to be a useful way to do a masters, but apart from
>  anything else they have mandatory units on ethics and IT trends. I decided
>  that I was already capable of making my own ethical decisions, and that my
>  own reading on IT trends would be more thorough than their course, and I
>  didn't want to waste a year of my spare time studying those units. At that
>  time their courses weren't interesting to me anyhow; now they have one on
>  software engineering which looks OK on paper, but I can't see it would be
>  more useful than the personal study I do on the topic anyhow.
>
>  They do of course have a mission : they want IT to be a recognised
>  profession, and they want to be the professional accreditation organisation
>  when it happens. While it would be good to get cowboys out of IT, I don't
>  see it ever being a recognised profession like engineering, for a lot of
>  reasons, a few of which include there being so many sub-specialities within
>  IT, only a relatively few jobs needing what I might call 'professional'
>  status, there being brilliant people who aren't degree trained who
>  neverthess get the job done and so on. Contrast to structural engineering :
>  you wouldn't let an untrained person put 50,000 tons of steel and concrete
>  in the air, but few IT people have that level of responsibility. Yes, I know
>  about financial coding and so on, different topic.
>
>  They do (or did) have responsibility for setting IT training levels for
>  skilled migration visa support, don't know if they still do that.
>
>  Anyway, nothing that they did interested me. I had a running email
>  correspondence with the then president for a while, where he tried to get me
>  revved up about contributing and 'putting something back', but I found it
>  hard to see with my limited free time why I should spend it educating IT
>  people without the get up and go to do it themselves like I did...
>
>  There is so much information available now on the web and books that the ACS
>  doesn't fill a necessary role in information dissemination : if you want to
>  educate yourself it's easy to find materials.
>
>  In the unlikely event that job opportunities in IT ever make it necessary to
>  become an ACS member I'll do so, but at the moment I see them as a
>  self-interest lobby group and a bit of a dinosaur.
>
>  Cheers
>  James
>  --
>  linux mailing list
>  linux at lists.samba.org
>  https://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/linux
>
>



-- 
There is nothing more worthy of contempt than a man who quotes himself
- Zhasper, 2004