Win 1000JDs

Ammar, man, you reminded me of those days at University of Jordan. The humiliation of standing in the registration lines, waiting for the registration guy to finish his coffee or even more important, his cigarette. (It is worth mentioning that these guys come to work to drink coffee and smoke their cigarettes, not to serve us, the students, because as you said Ammar, at UoJ a student is an insect.

Going back to your point, a few years ago back when I was in dental school, the university hired some software development company to develop an online -self registration system for students (much like most good universities in the modern world). Such a system would save students the humiliation and agony I just described.

Now this system was basically a web application of really basic functions (data entry, retrieval, and comparison). Of course the system was not accessible from outside the uni campus, which meant you had to use the university labs to register. Now the university labs are limited and cant accommodate all students, so they set a specific date, before which and after which you cant register, and if you miss it, you will have to go down to the registration guy and beg him to register you.

Q: why not make it web accessible?

A1: because they don't care about your convenience.

A2: because they know the system was probably in-secure and prone to hacking, because the development was sloppy.

A3: because they simply don't have the mentality to think ahead.

A4: because it seems the uni does not have anyone with enough knowledge to write the basic requirements for a web application.

(Choose any answer you like. multiple answers are allowed)

It's not over yet. When you finally get your turn to register, you discover that the system is full of bugs. And when you ask the lab supervisor -there is no tech support at the university- you get the golden answer: "the system cant take a lot of pressure" (in Arabic of course).

Another Q: Why didn't the brilliant IT professors bang on their chests and pledge to design and develop this system (or more logically have their students develop it).

A1: because web development is something so new, that the good old professors didn't study about back in the 70's.

A2: because the good old professors aren't willing to or "can't" keep up with new technologies as they emerge.

A3: maybe because the good old professors are under-paid and it's not worth it for them to do anything more than give lectures and grade exam papers (mostly assembly, Pascal, COBOL and some C)

A4: because the good old professors don't want to expose their lack of knowledge in the most common and fastest growing mode of app development.

A5: because they simply won't know where to start.

(Same rules apply for this question)


Some may think I'm being too harsh, so here are a few facts:

1- I personally am not a CS or IT major. In fact, I'm a dentist.
2- I taught myself web design and development starting in 97.
3- I have built many web applications for mass online usage, each catering to hundreds of thousands of users.
4- I am head of software development in my own company "jeeran.com"
5- Jeeran.com provides an array of web applications, catering to around 500,000 registered members.

THE question: "What do I have that those professors don't?"

A last word, and this is to the people who hire the people who run our universities: "People can become obsolete if they don't upgrade themselves, just like PCs"