back to article BrainAcademy 2007: are you smart enough?

BrainAcademy, the competition that hands out bursaries to promising computer science students, is kicking off again this summer. Last year the challenge proved too tough for the entrants: no one managed to survive all three elimination rounds to claim the prize. The contest runs on three levels: postgraduate, undergraduate, …

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  1. Robert Grant

    Do they want new talent?

    Checking out jobs generally, IT companies don't really want new talent. They all want people with 3-5 years of experience, they don't want someone they have to train.

    If you want to start off, you generally grab a junior role, often in PHP, SQL Server, HTML, Javascript or Flash. Only then can you gain any experience to land you a job in a field which you can't just pick up without a degree anyway (e.g. C/C++/.NET/Java are slightly harder to learn to program well in than the above, and it matters more that you *can* program well in them).

    New talent? Going green? It all sounds good, but it's nothing like my experience, and sounds more like science fanboyism, if I may be so bold. Basically:

    o Computers can get slightly better at replacing human jobs.

    o Software writers do their best to up the number of CPU cycles needed to complete a certain real-world task, just ahead of the curve of Moore's Law.

    o Computers will not make life better, really. Hal Draper's "Ms Fnd in a Lbry" view gets ever closer: "Although hardly anybody knew anything any longer, everybody now knew how to find out everything!"

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Some idea of where to apply to take part would be nice

    You know.. those IT thingies... um.. email addresses, and er.... url's

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    If you can't find out where to apply....

    The lack of links to the application might be a way to filter out those clearly unable to think to the level required ;-)

  4. andy

    re: Some idea of where to apply to take part would be nice

    May you've heard of a little thing called err, umm Google...

    http://www.brainacademy.qmul.ac.uk/

    Found in about 5 seconds...

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It's part of round one ...

    ... the lack of "IT thingies" is to weed out competitors who are too stupid to use Google :-P ...

    bring on round two !

    http://www.brainacademy.qmul.ac.uk/

    :-)

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Some idea of where to apply to take part would be too easy

    Let's face it, if you can't figure out how to google "BrainAcademy 2007", you really might as well not bother entering... you don't stand much chance of success.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    RE: Some idea of where to apply to take part would be nice

    er...if you can't type BrainAcademy 2007 into google, then perhaps this isn't the competition for you...

  8. daniel

    Lucy's done it again...

    If you report somthing, especially IT related on an IT related site, please cite verifiable sources and please give links - if we wanted to hunt for information, we would have become reporters instead...

    I remember an article on El Reg about a scientist get together and their creation of a list of 100 technology items that would change the future, but no links to any site about this subject, no mention of the technologies, no mention of who the scientists were... Oh, and that was one of Lucy Sherriff's articles too...

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Re: Some idea of where to apply to take part would be nice

    ...

    If I have to go search google to find out where the full information is...

    ...

    ...I might as well go there for the rest of my technology news too.

    I was attempting to help improve the quality of *this* web-site; smart-arses.

    PS: I know where Queen Mary College is -- I went there in the 70's, so I'm probably overqualified and/or too old for the competition.

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