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Date:Mon Feb 28 05:27:03 2003 
Subject:Re: forwarded (jlc) Re: worth learning pop11 at university 
From:lucb 
Volume-ID:1030228.01 

Jonathan, of course, is right that the programming language should not 
be the factor to decide on a university. The overall university is not 
that important IMHO. The scope is narrower than that.

I'll tell you a few things about my experience in choosing a university 
professor to work with (Ph.D 1990-1994).  In 1989/1990, I researched 
universities from all over the world for several months, with 
particular emphasis on Commonwealth countries.  By early 1990, I was 
fortunate to have several postgraduate scholarships and my pick of 
universities. There were many factors that influenced my decision.  
Some of my priorities were:

1. To work with a supervisor that is as knowledgeable, intelligent, 
challenging, enthusiastic, rigorous yet open-minded as possible.   As I 
point out on my home page, it's been important to me to try to work 
with the best, brightest minds as possible. (Looking back, my best 
experiences have been in those contexts.) Then one has to turn around 
and give the same opportunity to others. I also wanted to work with 
someone whom I felt was RIGHT. That's a tough criterion and one that is 
not often mentioned. But one does encounter intelligent people who 
unfortunately do not seem to be heading in the right direction.  See: 
www3.telus.net/lucb for details on the foregoing aspects of my choice. 
My undergraduate supervisor (Dr. Claude Lamontagne, 2001 Professor of 
the year at U of O, and also nominated for a major 2002 teaching award 
whose details I can't announce yet) recommended to me a certain 
Professor who met all of these criteria, and who I decided I wanted to 
work with. Claude fondly remembered this professor having the ability 
of attending lectures on any subject and being able, at the end of the 
presentation, to eloquently distill the essence of the presentation, 
raise any ambiguities, and then launch in with a major proposal or 
criticism.

One thing about working with great minds is that one can feel 
comparatively weak and that can impact on one's major decisions (such 
as career choices). See Albert Bandura's work on "self-efficacy" (a 
short-hand term for beliefs about one's competence).

2.  To work in a school (department) that respected the methodology I 
wanted to use.  (See Chapter 1 of my thesis--available from my web 
page--for details.)  I did not want to have to argue frequently and 
extensively about HOW to do my research (in terms of the major, 
coarse-grained parameters). I wanted to be able to get on with the job 
of doing my research. I was offered a position and some money from the 
Psychology department of McGill University. There were some interesting 
people there and my potential supervisor was working on the problems 
that interested me the most at the time (causal reasoning). And I had a 
backup plan of someone else trying to recruit me in that department. 
Both these McGill profs seemed to accept my belief in an "AI type" 
methodology. However, the department was empirical. If I had chosen 
McGill, I would have had always to justify how I was doing research 
with people who "just didn't get it" (i.e., data collectors of the type 
criticized by Popper and others, yet who form the majority in most 
psychology departments).

3. Not to study at a university that emphasized the kind of cramming 
and coursework that I had often experienced as an undergraduate. I 
wanted to be able to launch into research, to be treated with respect, 
and to be given the opportunity to formulate my ideas and to have them 
vigorously critized. (Cf. Popper, Lakatosh and Sloman) That basically 
meant studying in Britain rather than the US, Canada or some other 
countries not to be named.

Aaron Sloman kindly took a chance by accepting me as a Ph.D. student 
and I had the time of my life. My only regret is that I didn't stay 
longer in Birmingham.

I was fortunate in that my choice of principles and their applications 
turned out as I expected them. My years with Claude, Aaron and Steve 
Leach who provided much mentoring "shaped" (for lack of a better word) 
my mind.

This kind of decision doesn't always work out exactly as planned. I's 
difficult to tell from the outside how things will be on the inside. 
The fact that my undergraduate mentor knew Aaron, however, put me in a 
good position to judge. I.e., if you know someone who knows the 
supervisor that can be of help. In any event, success isn't based on 
the supervisor: one has to take ownership of and responsibility for 
one's actions and their outcomes.

On the subject of programming languages, I have an anecdote. I went 
into my Ph.D. thinking that I knew what language I wanted to use: 
Smalltalk. My thinking was: I don't care about the language. A 
programming language to me (a Cognitive Science student) was just a 
means to an end, a tool to express a theory. I didn't want to "waste" 
time on learning another programming language, I just wanted to get on 
with the job of theory building. Aaron challenged me on this point. I 
remember he told me something which I interpreted as "Why did you 
bother coming here if you aren't willing to learn a new programming 
language". To which my response was: I didn't come here to program, but 
to do theory. I don't know if he realized this, but that upset me 
considerably at the time, though briefly. I (reluctantly at first) 
decided to give Pop-11 more of a try. Well, needless to say, I soon 
fell in love with the language! It had so many facilities. One could 
always learn more and more with it! I never reached the expert status, 
but that's a good indication of how long one can keep learning with 
that language. (As I understand it, it's a different story with Java 
and C. Not that I'm expert at Java--and I don't use C.) And the Poplog 
community was very supportive in answering my questions.  When I 
started getting into the virtual machine, I just couldn't contain my 
pleasure. I recall that some of my student friends (C programmers, poor 
things) just couldn't understand what I was experiencing--though I 
certainly was an evangelist.

Another anecdote: My intention when going into my Ph.D. was to study 
causal reasoning. Yet Aaron was studying motivation and emotion from an 
AI perspective. A few months into my programme, I decided that I would 
get more out of my Ph.D. if I worked on the same project as him, which 
I realized also agreed with my previous interests. I fell in love with 
the project. The principle here is: working in a team can often be more 
rewarding than going solo. There are obvious reasons for this.

Another anecdote: I was given advice which to my regret I didn't heed. 
I received in in 1990 from a U of Ottawa Math professor. (who did his 
Ph.D. somewhere in Scotland, I believe.) he said: Take your time to do 
your Ph.D. I took 4 years, but I should have stayed at Birmingham 
longer during and after my Ph.D.  Such is life.


Well, it appears that I've been rambling.

All the best,

Luc