[TriLUG] ECPI opinions?

[Kevin Gamiel]

Carl Schaefer wrote:
> I'd appreciate hearing any opinions of ECPI (a private technical college
> with a campus in Raleigh), their training programs and/or the graduates,
> especially compared with public community colleges like Wake Tech.

I can't speak to ECPI, but wanted to share some related thoughts.  There 
is no formula that works for everyone, of course, so I would challenge 
any simplistic dismissal of any particular track.  I attended Wake Tech 
way back in 1986 and received a computer engineering technology degree. 
  I later attended Carolina and dropped out of the CS program.  I have 
been fortunate over the last 20 years to have had great jobs doing 
interesting work in research programming, robotics, and now some 
management.  My experience at Wake Tech was outstanding.  For me, 
learning applied electronics, applied mathematics and digital logic, 
through building computers from discrete components in the lab, writing 
code in hex, etc, gave me a solid understanding of the machine.  At this 
point in my career, I highly value that foundation and have a hard time 
believing I could have been as successful as I've been without it.  It 
would be foolish of me to project that to others, though, it's all a bit 
of trial-n-error.

In the final analysis, though, I would say the reason things have worked 
out for me has less to do with any particular school, but with the 
countless hours I spent doing something I was passionate about.  Of 
course, if one's passion is making farting noises with his armpit, he 
may need to use a log scale to measure relative success;-)

Kevin

-- 
Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI)
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University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Duke University
North Carolina State University
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