麻省理工学生谈清华和麻省理工的差异

麻省理工学生谈清华和麻省理工的差异
http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4ee63ce90102v5a6.html

Quora上的问题

以下哪个地方诞生了更优秀的计算机工程师，清华，斯坦福还是麻省理工（MIT）？匿名回答者我不了解斯坦福（因为只是短暂访问过几次那里），不过我对MIT和清华都比较熟悉。MIT是我的母校，而我的朋友有很多都来自清华。说实话，我觉得很难比较这两个学校的优劣。在校园文化方面，这两个学校有很多本质的差别。而属于清华的很多特点大多并不源于这个学校本身。很多人问我为什么来自清华的创业公司寥寥无几，而来自MIT的创业公司又那么多？综合考虑所有因素，我认为其中最大的因素是自由。清华每天晚上要熄灯。网络连接也被严格的限制着。每栋宿舍楼的入口处都有警卫。在清华，总体上的校园文化是学习最重要。在Larry Zhang这个回答中可以看到亚洲人持有一个普遍的观点，即：“MIT学生的成功有赖于他们的勤奋学习”。这个观点和事实相差万里。没错，MIT的学生学习是很勤奋。但是这并不意味这能培养出优秀的计算机工程师。我们中间的很多人并不是为了学习而来到这里。这些人来到MIT是想要过来hack我们所能看到的一切东西。在我的本科宿舍里，我们有焊接设备，有木材切割设备，电子仪器，备用的混凝土和木材堆放在走廊。我们很容易就能进入到器材室或者机械五金店，拿到我们所需要的所有设备。而这一切都是为了非学术的私人用途。我们有个叫Reuse的邮件列表，你可以在学校里面到处跑去收集各种别的实验室不需要的奇怪设备，包括挂载机柜的服务器和老旧的杜瓦瓶。我们也有一个没有任何端口限制的开放网络，免费的静态ip地址，全双工的千兆网络接通到每间宿舍。MIT鼓励我们使用这些资源来最大程度的满足我们对未来的想象力。在虚拟化技术普及之前，我自己的宿舍里面放了15台机器。我对门宿舍的哥们弄到了一个工业级激光器自己做了一个激光切割设备。另外一个哥们在忙着搞一个山寨的RF芯片识别设备试图找到地铁和学校的读卡器安全漏洞。还有人在宿舍自己弄了一个二层阁楼，还有人花了200美元把一个相机发射到了太空中只是为了证明这并非不可能，还有人做了个3D显示器，有人在折腾虚拟现实头盔，有人没事自己改linux 内核……这些东西都是什么时候做的？半夜。此刻的清华断掉了他们学生的电。我已经很难想象能有比强行断掉这个国家最聪明的一批学生的电力供应更能阻碍这个国家技术前进的方法了。没有电，你怎么做自己的项目？怎么在项目早期运行自己的服务器？而在MIT，我们的公司脱胎于学生宿舍，卧室即是数据中心和实验室。我们为此牺牲了学习的时间吗？当然。我们中的很多人来MIT本来就不是为了学习，我们来是为了做东西。我们为此打破了很多规章制度吗？向来如此！但幸运的是MIT从来不会监督我们，没人到处盯梢，没有监视摄像头，没人告诉我们什么该做什么不该做，除非我们真的做了些对人身安全造成危险的事情。这样我们才能把整个校园（不仅仅是宿舍）变成一个高科技恶作剧的试验场，正是这些让我学到了从Python到RF设计的所有知识。而在清华，他们甚至不让我在里面照相。在每栋大楼的入口出都有一个静默严肃的保安看守。真希望清华的学生们在那里也能愉快的hack。这些MIT的校友们现在何处？一部分成了主流计算机工程和软件公司的CEO，一部分正准备从硅谷公司辞职实现自己的下一个伟大创意。计算机工程技能首要并且本质上来自于实践经验，而不是课堂。这正是我们在那么多阴暗的夜晚里面学到的事情。请不要误解我的话，清华的学生极其聪明，聪明，还是聪明。他们对于创造未来的渴望并不输于我们。我去过那里很多次，我的很多朋友都毕业于清华。真正的问题不在于学生，而在于学校和学校的氛围，传统的亚洲学术评估制度，以及其他一切阻碍了他们放弃学业投身实现梦想和未来的事物。嘛，我准备去看一眼他们这学期开的新课，虽然我只是打算把它扔一边然后去搞我自己的app……原文链接： https://www.quora.com/Who-produces-better-computer-engineers-Tsinghua-University-Stanford-or-MIT

翻译者：

源地址: http://blog.renren.com/GetEntry.do?id=938052326&owner=252050937

Who produces better computer engineers: Tsinghua University, Stanford, or MIT?

I don't know much about Stanford as I've only visited for brief periods of time. I'm familiar with both MIT (I graduated from MIT) and Tsinghua (many friends from there, and been there many times) and in all honesty I think it's very hard to compare the two schools.

There are many fundamental differences in the school culture, many of which on the Tsinghua side don't stem from the school itself. Many people ask me why there is a lack of startups coming out of Tsinghua and so many from MIT, and of all the reasons, the onebiggest reason I can identify is freedom.

In Tsinghua, they turn out the lights in the dorms at night. The network is pretty restricted. There are guards standing at the entrances to every building. In Tsinghua, the overall university culture is to study first. It's evident in Larry Zhang's answer that people in Asiathink MIT students are successful because of studying hard. It couldn't be further from the truth.

Well, we do study hard. But that's not where strong computer engineers come from. At MIT, studying isn't why we are here. We're here to hack everything we can lay our eyes upon. In my undergraduate dormitory, we had welding equipment, wood cutting equipment, plenty of EE stations, spare concrete and wood lying around the hallways. We had easy access to supply rooms, machine shops, and all kinds of other facilities for non-academic personal use. We had a mailing list called Reuse where you could race around campus picking up all kinds of wacky stuff labs didn't want, from rack-mount servers to old nitrogen dewars. We have an open network without port restrictions, free static IP addresses, gigabit network drops to dorm rooms with unlimited symmetric bandwidth. And MIT encourages us to use these resources to the fullest extent possible and go build the future. I had 15 computers in my dorm room, until the advent of virtualisation. My neighbor across the hall picked up an industrial laser and built his own laser cutter. Another neighbor was busy with home-made RF electronics analysing security deficiencies of the local subway and the school ID system. Another neighbor built a second floor in his dorm room. Another neighbor managed to launch a camera into space for under $200 in parts just to prove it could be done. Another managed to build a 3D display, another was fooling with virtual reality headsets, another was busy hacking at the Linux kernel for fun.

When was all this stuff done? At the dead of the night. When Tsinghua pulls the power on its dormitories. In fact I'm not sure if I can think of a bigger showstopper to a country's technological future than forcefully pulling power on the brightest students. How are you supposed to build projects? How are you supposed to run your servers in the early stages? Over at MIT, we build companies out of dorm rooms and our bedrooms become datacenters and laboratories.

Did we sacrifice study time to build stuff? Totally. A lot of us weren't at MIT to study anyway, we came here to build, and so build we did.

Did we break any rules? All the time! But fortunately, MIT doesn't watch us. No guards standing everywhere, no cameras, nothing telling us what we can and can't do unless we really do something physically unsafe. And so we hack the hell out of the campus too with high-tech (safe) pranks, not just our dorm rooms, and by doing them I learned about everything from Python to RF circuitry to power electronic design. In Tsinghua, they wouldn't even let me take pictures inside; there was a silly guard at the entrance to every building. Good luck hacking anything there.

Where are these people today? Half of them are CEOs of major computer engineering companies, software companies, or hacking away at the next big innovation from a large Silicon Valley company. Computer engineering skills comes first and foremost from practical experience, not from classes. And that's precisely what we were getting in our dorm rooms at obscene hours of the night.

Don't get me wrong, Tsinghua students are extremely intelligent, bright, smart, and in fact no different from us in the passions they have for inventing the future. I've been there many times. I have tons of friends from Tsinghua. The real problem is not the students, it's the environment of the school, traditional Asian academic value system, and everything else that quickly stops them from putting their dreams and future first rather than studies. That's been my general observation over the years.

Anyway, I was going to check out this new class they're teaching this term, but think I'm just going to screw it and get back to hacking at my app instead ...


英文原文链接： https://www.quora.com/Who-produces-better-computer-engineers-Tsinghua-University-Stanford-or-MIT

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