Re: Case study for interviewing Oracle DBA

I'm going to have to cut from this or I'll get bounced for overquoting..... inline

> Just to be painfully clear, I wasn't in computing 30 years ago... I got
> in a mere 28 years ago, but I hope you'll find me qualified nonetheless.

I was -- a "mere" 30 years come August, if you don't add in my time in HS and college taking computer classes.  

> Back in the Dark Ages of computing the "system" such as it was, was a
> bunch of companies and universities spending big bucks to put in
> hardware in the hopes that it would someday pay for itself. Back in
> those days, there was no such thing as a CS degree. I was in a National

um, sorry but yes there was -- and I have one to prove it. Second class at my college to have a real honest-to-god degree in Computer Science (used to be part of the math department). But we were an anomoly and the Computer Science department was run from one of those Quonset hut type buildings -- the college didn't know what to do with us :)

> Science Foundation study for young engineers, and, if you wanted to go
> into CS, there were two ways to go: via Mathematics or via Electrical
> Engineering. Oh, and there was a third way: not getting a degree. The
> vast majority of really good CS people back then didn't have one, and a
> lot of the old geeks still don't. What they were, what *we* were, was
> clever with an insatiable appetite for driving the technology to do
> more, go further, faster, better, than it was able to. =20
>

many of my friends. LOTS and LOTS of my friends which is one of the reasons I get so worked up about the meaningfulness of OCP etc (and I'll save that rant for another time, it's old news).

Some of the smartest people I know don't have a college degree. What they have is a seemingly unquenchable thirst for knowledge. Good marks in school and on standardized tests don't necessarily prove how smart you are or how well you can problem-solve.

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