Subject: Re: CLL statistics for 2002 (was: Looking for Lisp compiler)
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no>
Date: 02 Jan 2003 21:35:15 +0000
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3250532115226900@naggum.no>

* Tim Daly, Jr.
| Credentials are of extremely limited value.  Unless he's willing to
| demonstrate, don't trust a man presenting papers which state that
| he can do backflips.

  This misses the point of the qualification completely.  Nobody is
  interested in what you did to achieve your degree -- whatever it was
  will have become irrelevant by the time the degree is useful, if it
  ever was relevant.  In most cases the only important properties of a
  degree are to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the person holding
  it is able and willing to make personal and financial sacrifices in
  order to obtain a higher goal and be a small part of something much
  greater than himself, to follow bizarre rituals and orders to do
  amazingly meaningless tasks for several years because he is told it
  will lead to the higher goal, to submit his entire image of self-
  worth to the judgment of an authority who not only gets paid for
  crushing it, but will keep the money regardless of the outcome, for
  which he accepts all blame, and, finally, to realize and come to
  terms with the realization that he is not the smartest person on the
  planet regardless of how smart he is.  If you /pay/ for following
  orders and for being judged harshly and placed among increasingly
  smart people until you are no longer smart enough to keep moving
  upwards, imagine what the person hiring you will be /relieved/ of!

  The flip side of a degree thus granted is of course that anyone who
  has one associates learning with pain, and not just ordinary pain,
  but prolonged, excruciating pain and humiliation and sacrifice, and
  considers the prospect of learning anything new about as inspiring
  as the full set of root canals in a row without anesthesia.  Most
  degree-holders are thus one-degree ponies.

-- 
Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway

Act from reason, and failure makes you rethink and study harder.
Act from faith, and failure makes you blame someone and push harder.