₦airaland Forum

more jokers

He is not a phony . The number of medals available in Swimming is just ridiculous.

see jokers

this is a copy of my thread

A big fat lie.

Broadband and dial up are totally different. You can only do broadband with ASDL which  i don't think is available in Nigeria yet(I know glo is rolling this out as we speak)

You need to check to see if the wireless network u are talking about is security enabled or not.

If not you are in luck. you can just click on the network and you should be connected.

If it is WEP -security enabled this can be cracked if WPA sorry dude u are out of luck

[quote author=ice_zik link=topic=161774.msg2682443#msg2682443 date=1219234942]The best way to strike up a "good" conversation with a random girl is to stroll up to her to tell that "I'm hot and you're not" while putting on a serious face. [/quote]That is a very stupid chat up line

they are all mere coincidence

that happy black guy in all those Halifax ads drives me nuts

I dont't see how the concept is going to work in Nigeria.

Nigerians just don't invent things. Even if they do . People will prefer cheaper Made in China alternatives

So can someone start the lecture.

This guy needs help

The best movie i have watched this year. Joker was just awesome

I hate that website. Most of the yoruba films don't open and are not updated regularly and that tiny little bee drives me mad.

watever longest time. Where have u been

Hancock is rubbish, Hulk is better

Its a good attempt but can be better.

The author needs to make the city model more nigerian.

you started the other thread on java and i will advice you to read my comments in there.

You have very little chance of getting employed in Nigeria without a degree.

u need to look at investment banks

instead of using a laptop why not build a media center pc instead. Thats a cheaper alternative. If you have an Xbox you could also turn it into a media center by modding it.

I will wish anyone that decides to borne uni and strike it out on his own goodluck but i will not advice him not to because there are inherent advantages in going to uni not matter how wack it is.

This is the whole essence of my posts to this thread and i hope the young man and other doubters will read this.

You might think you don't need school now but there is always one day when u will wish you did. Even the most famous IT drop out(Bill Gates) wished he hadn't dropped out of school.

The original poster asked for an humble advice and i just couldn't stand on the sidelines and watch you give bad advice.

If not going to school has worked for you. Fine ! Good for you! But keep it to yourself. There are probably 99 other people like you that are living from hand to mouth and curse the day they decided not to go to school.


I definately am a salary earner and i have learnt a great deal from working for big organisations which i believe might be very invaluable to me latter on if i decide to go on my own.

There is no better way to learn than from veterans who have been in the field for decades and i quiet enjoy understuding the way they approach and solve problems in ingenuious ways. These are things i will never have known if i had stroke it out on my own .

you are better of buying from lowee since he lives in Lag

I will order the materials from CFAI by end of the month.
Career prospects are very solid here in the UK. Where are you working now.

you keep getting the whole idea of my "attend or don't attend" a nigerian university wrong. Whether the curriculum is the same with oxford or cambridge, the quality of computer science graduates we produce is below par and they contribute little or nothing to the development of our country.  Please i stand to be corrected,

In your very first few posts you categorically said that the young man should not attend uni in Nigeria because they are bad and that if he can't go abroad he should start doing stuff on his own.

You also said the curriculum is outdated and i gave you an assignment to compare the curriculumn of any of these so call wack schools to that of a so called good school and get back to me.

Point to 1 or two things that were done by nigerians (i mean computer science grads) that affect us in one way or the other. All the banking softwares we have are imported, the people who manage them are imported, our ATM clients are imported, even some of the inventory apps used in malls (yes!! u heared me right, inventiry) are imported, the software used for our voting was imported, our phones are imported and sooo on.

When i was still in Nigeria i knew a guy who developed a banking software single handly. This guy was a product of these same wack schools. The product was very ingenoius and the architecture was very simple but effective. This guy went to several banks to demo his product but what happnened ? They said they just don't want a nigerian software. It was too cheap, and stupid excuses like that.

I don't know the kinds of people you role with but when i was in Nigeria i met some very smart IT guys who had never stepped out of the country before. I don't even want to discuss inventory apps or voting software because those are simple apps to develop and even if you google hard enough there is an open source equivaleent somewhere out there.

Also ask youself this question why is NEPA  still using an imported billing system. A billing system is one of the most basic apps u can ever build. There are even open source billing systems out there.  The answer is simple. The IT people heading those organisation are looking for ways of making foreign currency. They are greedy. They don't want to recorgnise anything Nigerian.

That is why they will import stupid indians that don't even know anything to come and run things. It is not that our graduates can't do it.

I have worked with a lot of indians and 99% of them are rubbish and far worse that many nigerian graduates who don't even get the opportunity to learn and gain experience building these things. Outsourced projects from big companies is giving these people exposure somthing that a Nigerian grads lack.

In IT, in case u don't know, u hardly buy materials!!!!!!! The programmer hardly buys materials!!!!! We all charge millios for webapps or desktop apps but which material we dey buy? except to pay liscences here amd there.

Well, we are talking IT here and i beleive u don't need a research institute. The programmer just needs a group of people (likeminds) implemented. With online collaboration and a forum like nairaland, the platform for reaearch is made. The computer scientist needs only to to come up with a project idea and get a group of programmers, engineers or networking experts to get it done. All of these can be done online. Note, the passion has to be there oooo.

Now this is where i see how myopic your view point is.

When i say we need collaboration between Academia and the Public Private sector, i am not talking about building some random web-app or desktop app to solve a problem that is probably already solved somewhere in the world (and probably open sourced).

So you think just gathering some random coders without solid therotical background of things together will solve the kinds of problems we have in IT in this country and in ways that will make us very competitive in the world. You think these kind of people will develop software that will match what Microsoft or Oracle or Google ( who have a lot of professors in their payroll) build

Building some random enterprise app is not enough. Using Java or PHP is not enough.We need people who can do more than that. There are many briliant academics already in our educational system even if all they know is theory.We need to do is to give them the opportunity to practicalize these theory in Government or business.

javalove:
Whether people abroad are spoon fed or not, the environmnt to be a better programmer, network engineer, or computer scientist is readily available. In nigeria, its nottt!!!!!!!!!

I agree with this point. But what if a student does not have the opportunity of travelling abroad.
So what you mean now is that if people want to study IT and they can't afford to go abroad they shouldn't bother going to a local school in Nigeria. Instead they should start selling software in OTIGBA right .

javalove:
What if the uni will make u duller.

Now this is the most silly statement i have ever heard. How in the world will going to university no matter how "wack" it is make you duller.

I have lots of friend that went to the same wack schools you are talking about and studied IT(myself included) and are not in anyway duller as a result of this. I know many who are now heading groups in Microsoft and Oracle. I myself head a Software Group in a multinational company and i manage people who went to Oxford, Imperial college and all these top schools.

javalove:
You agree again that our educational system in IT is backwards and u just fold your hands are watch itrail dwn d ditch. It seems to me we are in an infinite loop of stupidity, all of us.

Listen yeah. The whole educational system especially in the public uni is in a mess not just IT and  the main reason like i have said be4 is not in the entire curriculum itself, but in the content and how it is taught to students. If you pick up the Computer science curriculum of The school you say you are in and compare it with Oxford uni. It will be about 70% the same. Just do that as an exercise and get back to me.

The very bad thing is that our Lecturers are lazy . They don't update their lecture notes most of which are very outdated. students depend too much on Handouts to pass exams and so on.

You asked a question earlier that Theory has done us no good in Africa. Well how will you practicalize the theory you have learnt when there are no research opportunitites. What are the Research Institutes in Nigeria doing. What kinds of research opportunities is the Private sector providing for Academia. Are there any kinds of knowledge transfer between Academia and the Public or Private sector.

Just for your info, Microsoft, Google  and all these innovative companies have loads of Professors in their payrol . That is one of the ways they are able to remain competitive.  Can you tell me how many professors are in Nitel or NNPC or NEPA profeing solutions to our unique problems. Instead you see profs in Nigeria justling for political appointments.

javalove:
No one is bold enough to protest or make a change happen. I'm only doing my own little e-protest. One day one day, uno go hear me voice liveeee!!!!!!!!

Nothing do us, because its naija wher e shit happens. Where u do things opposite of the norm and still make sense

And what exactly is the e-protest about ?

Dude stop deluding yourself.

The solution to the problem is very simple and am sure most school authorities know it but lack of funds might be a hinderance.
Its about provision of infrastructures.
How are students is a Computer science dep going to solve a programming assignment when they don't have a computer lab with the neccessary compilers to work in. I remember back in the days we used to be like 10 on one rubbish PC coding our assignment.

Nobody is disagreeing with the fact that the curriculum is outdated in most nigerian schools.

Nobody is disagreeing with the fact that you can learn programming without practicing

What i am disagreeing with is that because students are not exposed to writing code while in uni then you shouldn't go to the univeristy.

That is just a very bad advice to give to the young man who started this thread.

Personally I have schoolled in Nigeria and abroad and in any of this places nobody spoon fed me into writing code So your advice that he should only think of go to univeristy abroad is very very wrong.

It is a concious effort. Many people are born to like coding while others just don't like it whether they school abroad or in Nigeria

harmless code as codec said. i don't think they were coding for a contest.

@louis400
Guy are u high on gbana or something

read the code and deduce for urself

@javalove

Good to see that we are agreeing now.  

You point is very valid about the Computer science curriculm of uni in nigeria. It needs a lot modernization . And am aware that a few schools are already doing this. Unilag and OAU and some of the Federal universities of technologies to my understanding already have Java and C++ in the curriculum.


Having said that quite a lot of things in there are still relevant. Particularly the theoritical aspects.

You want to  know why ? read this definition of computer science http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_science

A computer science graduate must know the theories by virtue of his training .

It is science and science is all about learning theories and formulating theories.

Practicalizing theories is the job of Engineering not science.

Main problem i see which actually affects all students and not just CS students in nigeria is lack of good books , overrelance on Hand-outs , Low quality of Lecturers and maybe cramming to pass exams.

Ok that was a long post .

javalove:
So if i were to be your son, you would advice me to go into a uni where u yourself know would not contribute much to achieving my set goals and objectives?A whole 4 years!!!! Odun merin gbako!!!!.

Even if you are the son  of my enemy i will advice you to go to uni.

You will be surprised how small 4 years is. It is just a very small portion of someones life

What kind of goals and objectives are you talking about. A goal without space for attaining a degree is no goal at all

My assumptions here are that you the individual has the financial means to attend uni.

javalove:
And what is it with "people" anyway. Nigerians and africans in general are more concerned about what is going on in another person's life than theirs. Whay can't someone embark on a journey he/she feels would make him a fulfilled being? Why are nigerians also lacking the absorptive capacities to understand that IT aint banking or economics? Why do nigerians always choose to neglect the facts that goes along with success an settle for some age-long myths about degrees going along with success, ? Our dear nation will continue to be backwards unless we change our orientation and drop some unnecessary policies thats making our road to success too narrow. "Kirakita o dola oooo".

If he spends those 4 years in a school where he is thorouhly brushed, code-washed and exposed to the real IT world, tell me how would he regret that since that is his dream. If he knows what he's doing with his skill, he's made for lyfe - believe me.

I agree with your first and second sentence above.

Yes IT is not banking or economics. Infact the Banking profession have what they call professional exams  for example ICAN or CIBN which anyone with o'levels can take. You can become a charted accountant for example without stepping into the walls of the uni.

A closer look at their sylabus will show that yes you probably really don't need to attend the uni because you learn almost the same things as in uni. However there are still subtle differences and characteristics of a degree that could probably make you more desirable.

What is real world IT. Fine you probably don't get to practicalize some of the concepts learnt in school but then that is the whole essense of uni education. To prepare you for the real world , by teaching you theoritical underpinnings behind various concepts.

If you know theoritically why the insertion sort algorithm is Quadractic and in uni you were taught how to implement in say Fortran. When you see the same problem  in the Real world and was asked to implement in say Java or another languague that will probably be in existence in 10 year time what do you think will happen?

Your statement is very incorrect because what the Nation and Africa as a whole needs are people with very very Sound theoritical understanding of concepts. When we have this level of understanding we would be able to create innovative solutions to our very perculiar problems.  In anywhere in the world, where is the most likely place you will find individuals that will impact that kind of knowledge ?

javalove:
I'm sure u were also expecting me to dress the truth a little bit and not come out straight. I don't do that. AL-CAPONE said "YOU GET BETTER RESULTS FROM SOM1 WITH A KIND WORD [SUP]AND A GUN[/SUP] THAN A KIND WORD ALONE.Sounds harsh eh? but its the damns truth!!!!!!
We need to change the way we think to the way the world thinks. My friend if u know what u are doing and u believe being a programmer would contribute much to your being successful - as u have planned it - then don't stay here or better still, enroll in any of the good IT skools around. The difference is that you will not be issued a degree, but something that means more to u as an IT expert, the skill.

Uhmm what do you mean skill.
In IT skill = Experience . Sure skill can't be taught it can only be learnt but then the foundations on which skills can be built can be taught.

These foundations like i said earlier are learnt from theories which you know very well are not taught in IT schools offering a 6 month crash programme.

javalove:
Finally,

Decision making is one of the most difficult things in a man's life. One rightfully made decision can be all u need to be who u want to be (coupled with prayers), and one wrong can lead to "career ruin".

All that is needed is proper planning. Plan well oooooooo

Eko o ni baje ooooo

Good point.

Spending 4 years of your life (when you are still young ) in University is almost always a good decision.  But doing otherwise is almost always a wrong decision

There is still plenty of time to acheive all other parts of your dreams.
There is still time to start your career probably at 21 or 22 when u are done with uni .
There is still plenty of time to make loads of money if thats what interests you.
You could probably become a millonare before you clock 30( thats some 8 or 9 solid years of experience).
There is still plenty of time to develop the next Google if thats what takes your fancy. Larry page developed google at age 24 for his Phd thesis.

And don't even think you are going to be the next Bill Gates by not going to school or droping out of school because you are not.
You will probably end up in Oshodi Oke with the beggers begging for =N= 5 make u use buy chop