(07-03-2020 02:20 PM)golf4501 Wrote: (07-03-2020 09:03 AM)georgia_tech_swagger Wrote: A Facebook datacenter will do a few things:
- Consume an enormous amount of electricity
- Lend permanent job security to a few local HVAC technicians
- Create a small pool of 50-150 well paid jobs
- Wipe out your local supply of enterprise focused geeks
I wouldn't look for "Facebook Stadium". A much better idea is to seek FB investment in the NIU CS Department. Facebook will be chronically short of local talent to fill their positions and NIU won't be teaching actual real world enterprise technology because no CS department outside of a tiny handful of the most elite do. That's part ignorance, part faculty stagnation, part due to the rapid pace of change in the field, and part due to the cost in keeping the curriculum up to date with constantly churning technology.
How does the Facebook Applied Computer Sciences Lab sound instead?
That's not exactly true. There has been a change in direction in the CSCI department to teach more real world business technology by partnering with companies and doing actual projects. Covid-19 probably stopped some of the Spring initiatives, but I know it's on the docket as the head of the department was a grad student classmate, and a personal friend.
I haven't talked to him about what the Facebook Data Center means to the department, but I'm sure he is in tune and already has proposals started.
I'm telling you CS departments don't teach real world enterprise technology. They just don't.
http://www.cs.niu.edu/courses/Spring2020.pdf
The only Linux-y thing in the entire CS department is CSCI 330: UNIX Systems and Networks. Description: "UNIX system usage and commands. Shell script programming. Network programming concepts and protocols. System call level and basic network programming in C++. Extensive laboratory work."
So you learn a near-dead language (C++). They just say UNIX so who knows what the hell it is. I've seen no shortage of places still teaching UNIX on OpenSolaris. You find me any of the following in the CS department at NIU and get back to me:
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux / Debian Stable
- MySQL / MariaDB / Postgres
- Snort / Wireshark
- Nagios / OpenNMS / ZenOSS / Cacti
- ZFS
- VMware / Docker / KVM
- Chef / Puppet / SaltStack / Ansible
- Cisco Routing (CCNA certification or equivalent)
- ElasticSearch / Solr
- Kubernetes
- DevOps / Infrastructure As Code / Just about everything Hashicorp makes
This is just a drop in the bucket. How much you want to bet NIU CS grads never touch Cisco routing equipment in their degree path? At the very least Cisco doesn't appear in any course descriptions (you can search on the NIU site). What will they always be asked to use in an enterprise environment like the Facebook datacenter? Cisco routers.
I'm not dunking on NIU here. Most CS departments are simply not connected to actual reality when it comes to graduating developers, anything on the enterprise side, and anything on the networking side.