Re: Remember "Bit-Slice" Chips ?

On Sat, 21 Dec 2024, rbowman wrote:

On Sat, 21 Dec 2024 12:23:39 +0100, D wrote:
>

I also thought about it at university but came to the conclusion that my
math skills were not strong enough. But, I would have been too early for
the current AI boom anyway.

>
AI can fall under the cognitive science umbrella but it isn't the whole
discipline. My degree is in psychology which always needed some

Psychology? Would never have guessed! Mine are IT and Philosophy.

explanation. It was experimental psychology heavily influenced by
Skinnerian behaviorism. I know a lot about the brain structure of a white

I like skinnerian behaviourism. It is old, but it has a beautiful simplicity.

rat but you didn't ask the rats what they were thinking. I don't know
squat about the 'Psychology Today' type of crap.
>
The first two year's curriculum was the same for all programs so I had
good grounding in physics, chemistry, math, and programming, if FORTRAN
can be considered programming. After that there was a good deal of
latitude. For example one of my electives was differential equations since
I thought it might be useful but it wasn't a requirement.

I shudder at the memory of differential equations and my electromagnetism course. I quickly came to the conclusion that I found math and physics boring. I was able to push through some of those courses by sheer will power, but I realized, why should I spend 4 years on something that I find is boring?
So after jumping through legal hoops, and proving to the university that my idea was correct and theirs wrong, they let me pick my own courses as long as the course difficulty level (A, B, C, D level) met some pre-specified levels. So in the end the emphasis was on IT and philosophy, with a healthy dose of psychology, business, finance etc.

At the time the degree was as useful as one in modern drama unless you
wanted to pursue an academic career but I found gainful employment. Then
as now unless you were a classical civil or electrical engineer you had to
figure stuff out on the fly as it happened. Eventually programming and rat
running converged.

This mirrors what I have heard from older colleagues.