Tuesday, March 07, 2006

The Crouching Tiger and the Changing Representation of the Computing Community

In the March issue of the CACM, Robert L Glass in his Practical Programmer column has expressed his concerns over the changing face of the computing community. With hard statistics he presents the gradual dominance of the Asian community in the computing horizon, including US computer science academic programs. He also laments over the fact that there
has been a 60% decline in the number of U.S. incoming college freshmen considering CS as a major during the period from 2000 to 2004.

This, he looks as a threat to the dominance of the US in the computing profession.
Coincidentally ACM has recently released a report on Globalization and Offshoring of Software, which has also been covered by NY Times. This report, while admitting the reality of a deep connection between globalization and offshoring has expressed an optimism that
(b)oth anecdotal evidence and economic theory indicate that offshoring between developed and developing countries can, as a whole, benefit both, but competition is intensifying.

I personally feel that the above facts are real pointers to the true global face of the computing community. Instead of looking it as a threat of the crouching tiger and end of the dominance of US regime, why can't we perceive it as a phenomenon which will increase the horizon of the computing fraternity. Its really a global world and you need to adapt yourself to the technologies and management issues that underlie the globalization of software in order to survive as the fittest.

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