Engineers by Knowledge
Yesterday I presented on “shell and shell programming” at IOE, Pulchowk. The experience was great and I enjoyed a lot - Who doesn’t, topic itself is such an amazing. But I was quite unsatisfied with the students.
Institute of Engineering(IOE) is Engineering departmen of Tribhuvan University which is the biggest university in Nepal. Among 10 colleges affiliated under IOE, IOE-Pulchowk is the best Engineering College in Nepal. Students who aspire to become engineers, undergo a tough entrance examination, and only the top 5% get the chance to achieve there dream in the best Engineering college in country. Engineers passed out from this college are renowned for there excellency and the compassion they show in there profession.
I am concerned about the Computer engineering in IOE Pulchowk, and generally in all Engineering Colleges of Nepal. Majority of the Computer Engineering Students don’t even have a slightest hint on how it differs from Computer Science. If you are thinking its the syllabus; you are thinking the wrong way, the syllabus is right on track. Okay the syllabus if a bit old, but thats a different story.
Basically, I was concerned about their knowledge of Operation Systems, particularly GNU/Linux. Among the students present there, almost all of them have heard about Linux while only few of them used Linux based OS. They are actually imprisoned within the puzzle created by the business giants. Students are offered free serial keys to windows based OS (Why is that even needed? Its free and is available easily, here in Nepal – Pirated though.). That’s great but don’t let yourself swallowed up by that swamp. As a student you need to learn everything in your discipline.
If you are reading Operating System, try to learn how the Operation system works. For those lucky chaps, who got the serial keys, do you even know how Windows-7 loads up? — Lucky because, you consider yourself, You got that for free; Right?. But let me tell you - thats not free, obviously you will pay for that later. You guys are Computer Engineering Students - Learn how things work inside computer. Don’t let the magic of the computer swallow yourself - You guys are the magician. When you were asked about the Facebook yesterday, your energy got refilled within nanoseconds. You are the end user of Facebook, you are at the IO end. Have you ever wondered about the technology behind the Facebook. Do you have any idea what the Facebook processing engine is comprised up?
Most of you guys dream of landing a job at Google (or so). Have you ever taken step towards knowing what Google is made up of? Have you ever wondered how the search engine processes your request in milliseconds.
Okay I don’t want to make it any longer, neither I want to conclude it. I am looking forward to hearing from you in the comments.
