So the topic of this post first started during my morning cup of coffee while wading through my Google Alerts on relevant topics, and continued a few days later with a lunch conversation with a former co-worker and friend.  The first link that caught my interest was an article from a web site in Zimbabwe titled “Give ICT teaching top priority” and the quote in the article from Mr. Brian Sedze “It should be an agreed fact to all of us here that without ICT our children fail to access better paying jobs, investment possibilities and opportunities to use technology as a tool to deliver better standards of living”.  The very next link I clicked on was an article from South Africa titled “Is the education system on the wrong side of the digital divide?” which described the current situation of technology education in South Africa.  These articles stuck with me for a few days because I have often struggled with the right way to begin to introduce my 2 girls (age 4 and almost 3) to technology and what “Daddy does”.  A good portion of my technology days were spent in Information Security and I’ve been exposed to the very nasty side of the Internet and I guess as a typical Generation X parent have been very protective of introducing the Internet and computers to my girls.

The reason why this event took shape into a blog post, however, was the conversation that happened between my friend and I over lunch a couple days later.  We got talking about how the current generation of technology professionals lacked the fundamental skills we had been taught early in our technology career.  The banter went back and forth around not understanding what an nslookup was, or what ipconfig /flushdns did, or why the new crop of technologists never looked at the Event Log on the server.  The decision we both arrived at was that there is a huge lack in critical thinking and troubleshooting skills in current millennial generation of technology professions.  Sure they can come out of school writing apps for the iPhone, but troubleshooting simple network and DNS issues confound them.

The more I considered these events the more I realized that things I learned early on have given me that foundation.  Scientific method anyone?  I have through out my career seen a very strong tie between engineering training and and successful IT/ICT professionals.  Understanding how and why things work is just as important as making them work, sure we have all waved our magic IT guy wand and made problems disappear but we always wonder why (at least I do).  Now don’t get me wrong I am not taking a shot at teachers (especially because the wife is a former teacher!), because teaching is one of the best ways to reinforce knowledge and promote learning, but the move away from teaching fundamentals and more of a focus on mainstream technology “solutions”.  Think about it if you have a good sound knowledge base around software development it is pretty easy to pick up and learn a new language.  The language is just a tool, but the architecture, requirements, business analysis, approaches and methodologies are the key to long term success.  What are you going to do in say 10 years when a new hot language comes out that everyone starts using?  Wait this is technology.. forget 10 years.. try 6 months (the half life of knowledge in this profession).

I have always said that I can teach technology to anybody that has a desire to learn, constantly asks “why?”, and understands the fundamentals of problem solving.  At the end it reminds me of the last time I built a computer, I spent days researching the technology  understanding which motherboard type, processor, memory speed, hard drive interfaces, video cards I wanted.  The specific purpose of this new computer was to run my new media center reality and digitize my DVD movie collection.  I didn’t open any of the boxes until all the components had arrived, I cleaned my entire workspace so I had enough room to work, installed extra lighting, organized my tools, and read all the documentation I could about the components I had purchased.  I spent days assembling the computer (yes I know it doesn’t have to take that long but I wanted it PERFECT) and make sure every connection was made well, the case was well ventilated, the CPU thermal paste was applied properly, and wore a wire around my wrist the whole time (grounding to the case).  All this work and effort and I go to power the computer on for the first time and.. NOTHING.  Yep all that work and it didn’t even post.. recheck all my connections, power, everything still won’t post.  Two hours on the Asus motherboard forum and I discovered my problem, the memory I had installed couldn’t be installed right out of the gate.  I needed to install slower memory in the computer for the first post so that I could get into the BIOS and configure the motherboard to accept my newer, faster memory.  I grabbed some older memory I had out of another system, installed it into the new system, and presto it posted like a champ.  Reconfigured the BIOS, shut the computer down, installed the faster memory and I was in business.  Fundamental training, troubleshooting, Internet research, and a don’t quit spirit where the recipes for success.  Every time I tell that story someone always says.. “Dude why didn’t you just buy a Dell”, and I answer “Passion to learn and build things”.  I guess I should start answering that question with the following “Just wanted to exercise my fundamentals”.