British Computer Society Is Officially At Civil War 275
An anonymous reader writes "A vote of no confidence against the current board of directors has erupted in what is possibly the first nerd war, raging throughout the British Computer Society. More financial- and spreadsheet-related fixations and less computer science have made a few members cross; plus they don't like the new name 'The Chartered Institute of IT.' Here are more specific details on the extraordinary emergency general meeting on July 1, where members will vote to decide the fate of the board of directors."
Re:I was asked to join this .. (Score:5, Interesting)
Basically, you can attain levels of experience that you can then use to demonstrate to potential new employers that you have experience, and skills used in industry. Unfortunately, it's all very management biased, and anti actually doing any computing biased. For example, IIRC, the various programming skills start at level 1 qualifications max out at level 6, while management skills start at level 5 and max out at level 10.
Nothing beats a good CV (resume) (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Civil war? (Score:5, Interesting)
Slow.. (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the no confidence voters have been a bit slow to get their message out, the BCS has already sent out shiny information packs explaining why you should vote for them (I abstained due to this information shortage). I voted no about scrapping the rule of 50 members for a vote of no confidence though, seems like a nice democratic safeguard to me.
Definitely the BCS has been dumbed down successively over the past 16 years I have been a full member, I suspect that this is because they basically want more members so lower the entry bar, in order to get the membership funds in their coffers. I definitely did not like the CITP membership level, it is the British COMPUTER socienty, that should cover anything in the field of computing and not just information technology.
Anyway, I think a rocket up the ass like this is good for any organisation so we will see what comes out of it.
The BCS is an irrelevance (Score:5, Interesting)
Its a society run by and for people who cut their teeth on 1950s and 60s mainframes. Nothing wrong with that, but people seem to assume it has any relevance or authority today. It doesn't. No one I know in IT belongs to it or is even the slightest bit interested in it. Its the computing equivalent of a historic car club with similar types of people as members.
I had the similar concerns with the I.E.T. (Score:1, Interesting)
The final straw was when I realized that they were hand in glove with Microsoft (they call MS a "Business Partner"). I resigned.
Re:Civil war? (Score:4, Interesting)
Seconded.
I was a member for a while, I cancelled the membership when I figured I was paying £80/year for the privilege of putting MBCS after my name and... er... that was about it.
The only way I can see it being important is if the computing industry ever reaches the point where there's a real benefit in being able to call yourself a "Chartered IT Professional" or somesuch (much as you can be a Chartered Engineer, Chartered Accountant or Chartered Surveyor and if you are, you're legally allowed to do some things you wouldn't otherwise be able to).
Re:As an outsider, the "war" seams lost (Score:2, Interesting)
Most uni courses are an absolute waste of time. Anything real/interesting is saved until the MSc / PhD years, at least in the UK. By then, if you *don't* know your stuff, you're dead in the water anyway. Learning is 99.9% to do with user motivation... if someone doesn't want to learn, no course in the world can teach them. Other people, though, will absorb knowledge like it's going out of fashion and be far ahead of the class before they even start.
I have a CS degree from a good London university. I can honestly remember two courses that were worth my time (in my opinion) and providing me with useful CS knowledge... Graph Theory and Coding Theory - both technically taught by the mathematics department. The Java programming courses? I never even bothered to attend the lectures or classes, I just emailed my coursework in from home - I'd never programmed in Java before, but I'd been programming in one language or another since I was 8. Some of the MSc students didn't know simple things, though, and ended up dropping out. The Windows/Linux dual-boot computers baffled most people and I was the only one who ever used the Linux side for any non-coursework tasks (in fact, I used it almost exclusively). Some of the people on the pure-CS courses had never programmed a single line of code. Some of them couldn't do binary arithmetic. Others were clueless as to how to even operate a computer for everyday purposes.
That was 10 years ago, when people *didn't* generally have their own machines (or if they did, it probably wasn't a laptop), had to take paper-notes in lectures, etc. - I don't suppose it's got any better since. I used to sit and help final-year and MSc students with their Java projects because I could spot optimisations and problems in their code from a million miles away. To me, it was just something I did for them while I was browsing the web and waiting for a page to load - to them, it was their final-year projects that had taken them all year to get to a compilable / prototype stage.
The only thing a degree proves is that you had the dedication to learn things you didn't necessarily need to learn. It's a recognition of X number of years of hard work, not a certificate of a particular achievement. When you get into the workplace, even the "relevant" skills crop up only once or twice a year, if that, and aren't anything that you couldn't research online nowadays. My degree got me my first job, every subsequent job, and a well-paying, stable career doing what I want (which isn't the usual rat-race) - without it I wouldn't have been considered. But relevant to real-world computing of any kind? Nope. The people who *KNOW* their subject are in a vastly disjoint set to those who *STUDIED* their subject or even those who *WORK* in their subject for a career.
If you weren't taking things apart and programming before you left school (in the UK, that means age 16/18), the chances that you *KNOW* your subject are greatly reduced. A good degree proves nothing about capability except dedication and ability to learn.
Re:Civil war? (Score:3, Interesting)
Two three month spells out of work in 20yrs says that regardless of what they want, they need skilled people.
Re:0.1% of the membership = vote of no confidence? (Score:2, Interesting)
As a Pom who has been developing software professionally for 20 years, and who did a fair amount of academic CS too, I've looked repeatedly during that time at joining BCS.
Damm right it needs modernisation. They barely seem to know what a computer does. The question is whether the current track will make that worse or better. And from where I sit, as an interested outside observer, it looks worse. The active distain for anyone who actually programs, rather than (genuflect) manages has always been there, and now the management types are running the asylum it's getting worse. In BCS-land, DMR (say) would be heavily outranked by anything in a suit, and I don't want to be any part of an organisation like that.
For us /.ers, BCS is and will remain completely, utterly and spectacularly irrelevant. And if BCS is irrelevant and hostile to us, what the hell business does it have proclaiming itself as the institute for the industry of which we are the engine room?
By the way, you have checked the credentials of those calling the EGM? They are far from random members. And the vilification and threats heaped on those who dared to question the current course has been shameful.
I'm sticking happily in ACM, which does still manage to pay serious attention to the technical side of life.
Re:Brilliant! (Score:3, Interesting)
Student's in the UK are in an awful catch-22 at the moment. If they do well, people complain that their exams were worthless, and that they've only achieved what they have because everything's so much easier than "back in the day". If they get a mediocre (what might once have been considered "normal") grade, they're made to feel like failures, as A*s are supposedly so common.
It's lose-lose.