University Undergraduate Computer Science Majors: From Playing Videogames to Starting Work at $100,000+

Cathie: I know you adore the limelight, and being #1 out of “2,329 professors, lecturers and Graduate Student Instructors for the fall 2009 and winter 2010 semesters” at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) definitely puts you in the limelight, but…
Elliot: … #1 for being the EASIEST GRADING instructor at the University of Michigan!  But I can explain!
Cathie: Explain? Explain? Let’s see… the courses you teach are not required, so the students are there because they want to be there, and while you do set a high bar, the students do manage to make it over the bar. Is that right?
Elliot: Yes!! Last semester, in my seniors-only mobile app development class, to get an A+ you needed to publish a mobile app on the Android Marketplace or the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace or the iTunes App Store…  And darn if the 48 kids didn’t all do that!
Cathie: Didn’t you tell me that some had just submitted their apps…
Elliot: Picky, picky… submitted is good enough given how slow…
Cathie: … and picky …
Elliot (gesticulating wildly, a trademark): … the iTunes store can be. It was amazing – at the start of the semester the majority of the students voiced their concern that they would never be able to build an app that could really be published and purchased. But, over the course of the semester, they learned; they learned that WE CAN create publishable code. Creating a commercially viable software product – an app – in one semester is simply unprecedented; when we were in school we certainly weren’t able to create publishable apps in our FORTRAN class or in our assembly language class.
Cathie: Careful, careful – you are dating YOURself!
Elliot: Oh yes, that’s right, YOU don’t remember assembly language and FORTRAN classes…
Cathie (with a sheepish grin spreading across her face): Oh, well, hmm…
Elliot: But the “kids these days” are…
Cathie: … different! Did you read that article about the 21-year-old, high-stakes, online poker players who literally win and lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in an afternoon playing online poker against world-class poker pros?
Elliot: Yes, yes, in the New York Times, the article said that Daniel Cates was able to play 16 simultaneous hands of online poker…
Cathie: … because of the physical skills he learned playing video games for hours and hours…
Elliot: … as well as the mental agility to make zillions of lightning fast decisions …
Cathie: … again, a byproduct of playing all those hours of video games as a youngster. Daniel is a millionaire – and he says the money doesn’t mean anything – it’s just points in a game.
Elliot: And, speaking of money, these kids are tying down BIG BUCKS…
Cathie: … yes, Silicon Valley is hiring them straight out of college…
Elliot: … straight out of MY CLASSES…
Cathie: … at starting salaries over $100,000 with $50,000 worth of stock options, $15k signing bonuses, $10k worth of moving expenses…
Elliot: … all they have are t-shirts and shorts…
Cathie: … which they wear all-year-round even in Michigan…
Elliot: … they’re not that bad… well, most of them aren’t….
Cathie: Right, the article pointed out that Daniel Cates, himself an undergraduate computer science major, routinely plays Texas Hold’em with the top professional players in the world – and wins …
Elliot: … and loses …
Cathie: … hundreds of thousands of dollars in one hand, yet he didn’t understand why a restaurant in which he was meeting with the reporter would be especially busy for dinner on February 14.
Elliot: Yup, those are the kids …
Cathie: … boys, not girls…
Elliot: … yes, boys, but don’t go there now.. that’s another blog posting…. Yup, those are the boys in my classes who are writing mobile apps! They are sweet kids, they really are, and when needed, they do have the discipline to spend umpteen hours straight at coding, just like they did playing video games… I see that behavior during the 48-hour Mobile App Hackathon’s that I run every semester.
Cathie: And I’m sure they spend the requisite hour plus per day social networking on Facebook….
Elliot: … yes, but working in a team setting is still a major challenge for a healthy percentage of them.
Cathie: Which brings us back to you being the easiest grader at the University of Michigan. It’s not like you were in the top 10… you were THE TOP ONE…
Elliot: … ohhhhh, ohhhh… that gives ammunition to my colleagues…
Cathie: … to say that the reason you won the Golden Apple Award for being the Best Professor at the University of Michigan in 2002 ….
Elliot: … was all because I gave students A’s. But the class that nominated me for that award did so before they received their…
Cathie: …. A’s.
Elliot: …. Yeah…. I suppose they were expecting A’s. But,
Cathie: … yes, you set a high bar and your students met or exceeded that bar.
Elliot: That’s right!! And blog-readers, I must point out that my blog-posting colleague, the George Burns to my Gracie Allen also received a Golden Apple award for Distinguished Teaching while she was a math teacher in the Dallas Public School System. And, no way would she EVER have been awarded an “easiest grader” award – not Miss Simon Legree…
Cathie: Easy now… yes, I was hard, but I was fair; I set high expectations and students earned their marks, unlike some …
Elliot: Touché! Sorry, I apologize… You aren’t Miss Legree… and I am who I am… I am the easiest grader at the University of Michigan, I’m #1!
Cathie: … and you love it!
Elliot: … shhhhhhhhhh