Comments on: Are there any good, dedicated and passionnate developers in Montreal?

By: Arach Tchoupani

Arach Tchoupani — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 01:40:08 +0000

Heri: Good post. I wanted to point out that efforts like Blitzweekend, Barcamp, demoCamp, facebookCamp, MontrealOnRails and others like it :) have an incredible impact in creating awareness and reaching out to new people (incl. students). Each of these initiatives reinforce a growing tech scene. I love that.

I’m the first to point to Universities for their faults, but I know that the constructive attitude is to help them see “the light” on this issue. In the near term, we should put together a serious communication channel with Universities and work w/ them to improve their curriculum with regards to … the real world. As you pointed out by saying “I hope we’d get in touch with McGill teachers one day, and include events like Blitzweekend in the cursus”. That’s a good idea! I would add to that École Polytechnique, Concordia, ETS and Université Sherbrooke.

BTW. I always knew there was something better than what was portrayed in Uni. and I found it :)

By: Heri

Heri — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 22:47:49 +0000

Stephane, I think what’s important is also the way teachers present technology. They should present it as a field where one should always be curious, challenged, trying out new ventures. I know however that most teachers in cs have the same courses over and over, each year, without changing the content, and this brings a very dull image of technology.

LP, I hope we’d get in touch with McGill teachers one day, and include events like Blitzweekend in the cursus. Who knows… technology might be exciting once again in Montreal universities

By: Louis-Philippe Gauthier

Louis-Philippe Gauthier — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 23:43:15 +0000

Hi, I’m a second year CS student at McGill and I fully agree with you.

I’m one of the few that want to go work for a startup and eventually start one. The problem is that we don’t learn the tools/technologies to build/work for a web/software startup.

What we do is mostly theoretical and not applied so that anyone that would want to go and start a startup out of university as a huge learning curve.

For of my classes I had to do a website in html/css/c/cgi/perl/java applet to learn how to integrate stuff but when you’ve used rails you know how ridiculous that is and how this exercise is pretty useless.

Anyways, I hope I can get an internship for this summer in one of montreal statups to learn real applied technologies.

By: S.Hamel

S.Hamel — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 13:11:53 +0000

What you are talking about is far from new. When I got into college for a DEC in computing some 24 years ago, most youngster wanted to develop computer games… or work on mainframes in a bank.

When they got out of school, students headed for banks in big companies to work in Cobol on mainframes, wear suits and ties.

I was an intern on Unix and C and everyone was telling me Unix would die and C would not pick up… that led me straight to the Internet and I was using Mosaic and installing NCSA HTTP server(for those who don’t know, the first ever web browser and server) the day it came out.

Everyone agrees schools needs to be more “connected” to employer realities. It’s a struggle between teaching long lasting concepts or coaching apprentices for what is needed at this time in companies. What Ubisoft is doing is great and there should be more initiatives like this one.

By: Montreal Tech Watch

Montreal Tech Watch — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 02:54:30 +0000

Are there any good, dedicated and passionnate developers in Montreal? http://tinyurl.com/3yd8oa