Agreed. Especially since University of Waterloo seems to be churning out more talent than ever.
A little more info for those interested:
University of Waterloo has the generic Computer Science program as part of the Math faculty, as well as an another Software Engineering program as a joint program between the Math and Engineering faculties. Both programs offer co-op all year around. For more information, check out: https://uwaterloo.ca/jobmine/employers
No, I don't think it's backwards thinking to me, but I do agree with you. People loving hacking because it's a fun thing to do. And most of the times, building a business isn't even the point of it all.
The problem I have with this article and your comment, is the generalization of the term "hackers". Is anyone that codes in their free time, a "hacker"? Is a software engineer that works full time at a company, a "hacker"? What about UI designers that write CSS? What about business guys who throw something together in HTML and jQuery? Are they hackers as well? Different people have different goals for what they are building or hacking on. I really don't understand how we are still throwing such vague terms around like we all fit in this one category of people, and we all want to achieve the same things.
> Back in May 2013, the German-French team of Fraunhofer ISE, Soitec, CEA-Leti and the Helmholtz Center Berlin had already announced a solar cell with 43.6% efficiency.