Date: Sat, 9 Apr 2005 14:41:20 -0700 From: Norm Matloff To: Norm Matloff Subject: why Johnnie can't...wait, hold on a minute To: H-1B/L-1/offshoring e-newsletter Enclosed are two articles on the recent results of the annual ACM Programming Contest, an international collegiate event. Their theme is that "Johnnie can't program (anymore)," i.e. that American programmers are now not as good as those of some other nations. Of course, the industry lobbyists will use this to excuse their importation of H-1Bs and exportation of work to programmers abroad. Since I am a strident opponent of the overhiring of H-1Bs and offshoring, I am open to the charge that my dismissal of the theme of the two enclosed articles is biased and defensive. For that reason, I must point out that I have dismissed programming contest results even when they were being used to support views that I share on H-1B/offshoring. Last August, the Lou Dobbs Show ran a show on the Top Coder programming context. The Indians didn't do very well in that contest, and Dobbs tried to claim that that implied that Indians must be poor programmers. I objected strongly to that implication (see my posting at http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/DobbsTopCoder.txt). Here are excerpts of my comments at the time: First, I've never put much stock in contests. Some of you may recall that I am very critical of the Westinghouse (now Intel) high school science contest, which in my opinion became quite a sham over the years. And though what little I know about TopCoder indicates that the contest itself is pretty rigorous, a major problem is that the contestants are self-selecting. The claim that the contestants in TopCoder are the only super-programmers in the world is laughably absurd. And once it gets a bit of a reputation, it becomes something like the Olympics, manipulatable. For example, I wouldn't be surprised if the governments of some countries are paying excellent programmers to participate, even though they may not have done so without the incentive. I guarantee you that if the Indian government decides to get its best programmers active in the contest, you'll see many more Indians do well in it. Having said that, I find the opening line in the first article enclosed below, written by a Ed Frauenheim, a journalist I've generally admired, to be highly irritating and irresponsible, just plain yellow journalism: In what could be an ominous sign for the U.S. tech industry, American universities slipped lower in an international programming contest. The implication is that there is "something wrong" with the American schools/students, or in short, "Johnnie can't program." Statistically, there is no reason why the U.S. should dominate, or even be a major player in, this contest like it used to. There are bright computer science students all over the world, and participation in the contest is way, WAY up--it has more than QUADRUPLED in the last 10 years. Over 3,800 teams from around the world competed this year, compared to only 900 teams 10 years ago. It's not that the U.S. has "slipped," as claimed in the article, but simply that the number of competitors has quadrupled. There is then the additional factor that many of these countries, or individual universities in those countries, are anxious to get the publicity from doing well. They thus may give their teams a subsidy, say allowing them to take a reduced course load so as to engage in regular practice. But even without that, again statistically there is no reason why the U.S. should be as prominent is this contest as it used to be. Granted, the point being made by the reporter is that the contest results show that programming can be done all over the world, not just in the U.S., with adverse implications for the jobs of American programmers. But come on, no one ever questioned that. I can't recall ever seeing anyone who is critical of offshoring (tech people, i.e. excluding Dobbs) say that we shouldn't send software work offshore because people in other countries are incapable of programming. Instead, what we critics have been saying is that (a) offshore development is bad for U.S. firms because communication problems etc. result in serious project delays and other problems, and (b) a general offshoring of professional work will undermine U.S. society, greatly reducing the size of the middle class. Even if the size of the competition had not quadrupled, it still would be wrong for the reporter here to claim that the results of the contest indicate that American schools/students are "slipping." If one used the contest results as a guide, Peking University and Tsinghua University, both considered far stronger schools in China than Shanghai Jiaotong University, the winner here (as well as in 2002), must be "slipping" too, since they didn't do as well as SJTU. Obviously, the contest is not a good measure of quality of the university. (I don't mean that the contest itself is meaningless, though. It's a good exercise, and I support ACM for having it. Actually, many years ago I served as a coach for a UCD team, which did pretty well.) I had originally suspected that both of the articles below had arisen because industry lobbyists had contacted them. The articles quoted the same people saying the same things, which seemed to be to much to ascribe to coincidence. But it turned out that the first article had come about because the reporter had seen something about the contest results on the programmer news site Slashdot (www.slashdot.org), and the second article had come about because the reporter's editor had read the first article! I apologize for so quickly suspecting that the articles were "plants." I do have to fault both reporters, though, for only interviewing lobbyists (and in the second reporter's case, for mainly interviewing the same people as were quoted in the first article). Speaking of lobbyists, here's something that the first reporter, Ed Frauenheim, should have seen was fishy: The relatively poor showing of American students is a red flag about how well the United States in general is doing in technology, compared with its global rivals, said Jim Foley, chairman of the Computing Research Association, a group made up of academic departments, research centers and professional societies. "This confirms concerns expressed by the Computing Research Association about the U.S.'s status in the worldwide race for technological leadership," said Foley, who is also a professor in the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. First of all, Foley is indeed a lobbyist and the CRA is certainly a lobbying organization. As I've pointed out many times (including twice this week, e.g. in http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/ActionAct2.txt), U.S. universities strive to research funding "empires." They lobby to increase the funding itself (mentioned in the article below), to increase the number of foreign students who serve as cheap labor (also mentioned below, as well as in my link earlier in this paragraph), to expand the H-1B program (for reasons I've explained before), etc. CRA has been extremely active in pushing for all of these. As they state on their Web page, "CRA's mission is to strengthen research and advanced education in the computing fields, expand opportunities for women and minorities, and improve public and policymaker understanding of the importance of computing and computing research in our society." Now, concerning Foley's remark, let's compare it to what he told the same reporter, Frauenheim, just last September (see the article and my critique of it at http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/CSAcadEstablishment.txt): CNET News.com recently spoke with Foley about computer science education, the flow of programming work offshore and how the computer science profession in America can weather the trend toward offshoring. ... Q: Let me then ask about the offshoring issue, because a lot of people would look at it and say, "It doesn't make sense to get into computer science and then to become a programmer." Right. It does not make sense to become a programmer. But there is a lot more to computer science and computing than programming, and that's part of our challenge. There is this stereotypical image that computer science education leads to heads-down programming jobs, and it's those heads-down, isolated-from-the-problem jobs that are going to some extent offshore. I think the trend of pure programming jobs will continue to go offshore, because in many ways, our computers and communications technologies enable that to happen. So, last September Foley was saying programming is not a big deal, but now suddenly he is saying that programming is nothing less than a measure of a nation's mettle. These lobbyists are never careful to be consistent, nor is the press very careful in calling them on their inconsistencies. And of course when Foley said in September that "programming jobs will continue to go offshore, because in many ways, our computers and communications technologies enable that to happen," he was referring to the fact that labor is much cheaper abroad (also mentioned by the reporter in the article below). He did NOT say the reason was that the quality of programmers is better abroad, like he is implying now. Foley's hypocritical behavior really makes me ashamed to be an academic. I've enclosed a second article below, from today's San Francisco Chronicle. There, Intel's Tracy Koon, their top lobbyist, once again brings up the issue of science and math scores, as usual very misleading. As I (and others) have explained before, the fact that American kids look only mediocre in international comparisons of math and science scores, relative to kids in Asia, is that the U.S. must deal with a large and neglected underclass. The test scores in states like Utah, Iowa and Nebraska, which don't (yet) have a large underclass population are similar to those of the top Asian countries. (See David Berliner, "Averages That Hide The True Extremes," Washington Post, Jan. 28, 2001, http://courses.ed.asu.edu/berliner/readings/timssroped.html.) And by the way, the biggest offshoring countries, India and China, refuse to participate in those international test comparisons. Norm http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-5659116.html?tag=nl.e539 U.S. slips lower in coding contest By Ed Frauenheim, CNET News.com Published on ZDNet News: April 7, 2005, 2:04 PM PT In what could be an ominous sign for the U.S. tech industry, American universities slipped lower in an international programming contest. The University of Illinois tied for 17th place in the world finals of the Association for Computing Machinery International Collegiate Programming Contest, which concluded Thursday. That's the lowest ranking for the top-performing U.S. school in the 29-year history of the competition. Shanghai Jiao Tong University of China took top honors this year, followed by Moscow State University and the St. Petersburg Institute of Fine Mechanics and Optics. Those results continued a gradual ascendance of Asian and East European schools during the past decade or so. A U.S. school hasn't won the world championship since 1997, when students at Harvey Mudd College achieved the honor. "The U.S. used to dominate these kinds of programming Olympics," said David Patterson, president of the Association for Computing Machinery and a computer science professor at the University of California, Berkeley. "Now we're sort of falling behind." The relatively poor showing of American students is a red flag about how well the United States in general is doing in technology, compared with its global rivals, said Jim Foley, chairman of the Computing Research Association, a group made up of academic departments, research centers and professional societies. "This confirms concerns expressed by the Computing Research Association about the U.S.'s status in the worldwide race for technological leadership," said Foley, who is also a professor in the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. A number of developments in recent years suggest the world's tech leadership could shift from Silicon Valley and other U.S. locales to Asian nations such as China, Korea and India. One sign is the way American technology companies are conducting some of their research and development activities in Asia. The U.S. educational system is another area of concern. Technology leaders, including Intel's Craig Barrett, have pointed to education woes as a major problem for the U.S. tech industry. Student interest in computer science departments in the United States has waned in the wake of the dot-com collapse and amid reports that companies are shipping some of their technology work to low-wage countries like India. Also alarming to some is a dip in applications from international students to U.S. graduate schools. Many observers have said that U.S. elementary and secondary schools should improve their ability to boost interest in technology, with proposed reforms ranging from higher pay for teachers to education tax credits that let parents pay for private-school tuition. Other proposed steps to foster U.S. tech leadership include higher pay for positions in the field and more federal funding for computing research. While those in the United States may be fretting over their tech future, some in China are celebrating. A photo on the Web site of the programming contest seems to show students from Shanghai Jiao Tong University tossing someone into the air in the wake of the school's victory. San Francisco Chronicle American universities fall way behind in programming Weakest result for U.S. in 29-year history of international technology competition Birgitta Forsberg, Chronicle Staff Writer Saturday, April 9, 2005 American universities -- once the dominant force in the information technology world -- fell far down the ranks in a widely watched international computer programming contest held this week. The University of Illinois tied for 17th place in the world finals of the Association for Computing Machinery International Collegiate Programming Contest. That's the weakest result for the United States in the 29-year history of the competition. This year, the contest was held in Shanghai, where a home team, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, won. Two Russian institutions, Moscow State University and St. Petersburg Institute of Fine Mechanics and Optics, came in second and third. Canada saved North America's honor, as Ontario's University of Waterloo took the No. 4 spot. In one problem, contestants were asked to calculate the minimum number of cellular base stations needed for a mobile phone to be moved from one city to another with no loss of reception. Competitors were given a map with cities, roads and base stations. Another problem challenged contestants to determine how much sunlight a Shanghai apartment management company could promise tenants on April 6, 2005. The students were provided information when the sun rises and sets on that date, as well as a drawing of the buildings and apartments. Asian and Eastern European schools have been scoring increasingly well in the world championship. A U.S. school hasn't won since 1997, when students at Harvey Mudd College proved best. "After World War II, the U.S. was ahead, as all other countries were recovering from the war," said UC Berkeley computer scientist David Patterson, the association's president. "We had a head start and we were a leader by default. But now they have caught up with us." Patterson noted that, in many high-scoring countries, governments are in the vanguard of technology research. In the 1970s and 1980s, he said, the Defense Department's research arm, DARPA, invested in academic research and supported work in industrial centers such as Xerox PARC and Bell Labs. That public/private cooperation helped develop the personal computer and the Internet. "When there is more and more competition in the world, the U.S. government is spending less on research than before," he said. While the United States slips, China's technology skills are rising, South Korea is the leader in broadband data transmission, and India is becoming the world's programming hub. Europe, which also did well in the contest, is ahead of the United States in online mobile telephone service. "The educational system has done a demonstrably poor job of (teaching) technical, scientific and computing," said Georgia Institute of Technology Professor Jim Foley, chairman of Computing Research Association, a group made up of academic departments, industrial labs and professional societies. Chip-making giant Intel says it is also worried. "Our students in K-12 don't do well in international tests in math and science. We have too few students entering degree programs in math and science, " said Tracy Koon, director of corporate affairs. "If you assume science and math drive innovation and innovation is the soul of technology and technology drives a large part of the global of economy -- and any particular nation's ability to be competitive -- we have a problem." _________________________________________________________________ E-mail Birgitta Forsberg at bforsberg@sfchronicle.com. Page C - 1