Saluting Northern Illinois University

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Saluting Northern Illinois University

Via Lindy Mayfield and IBM-MAIN we learn about Dr. Robert Rannie's sage advice to budding professional developers studying at Northern Illinois University, one of the premier higher learning institutions participating in the IBM Academic Initiative. For example, in the course syllabus for CSCI 468 he writes:

In this course programming will be carried out under a number of rules that, if you have not already discerned them, are those used in the 'real world' and which you may be assured you will encounter shortly after graduation. One of those rules is that a program which does NOT DO WHAT IT IS SUPPOSED TO DO -- REGARDLESS of how long or how hard or how much you 'sweat blood over it', is still, just, and only, a pile of chicken scratchings. It is NOT 50% or 10% or ANY percent a program! IT IS AN UN-PROGRAM!

AFTER you graduate you won't get paid by an employer for a program that doesn't work and BEFORE you graduate you won't get a grade in this course for a program that doesn't work. Don't ever forget that folks won't pay for parachutes that 'almost' work!


If you're one of Dr. Rannie's students, how fortunate you are. He speaks wisdom. Understand well, Grasshopper. And if you would like to meet Dr. Rannie you can attend a version of his "Mainframe Boot Camp" at the SHARE conference in Austin, Texas, in March, 2009.

by Timothy Sipples November 21, 2008
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