I live in a sad town...

[lcowles]

I never took Computer Science I sat multimedia and we worked with various languages including JavaScript, VB, ActionScript and various other languages, being a programmer I wrote my 2nd year stuff in as C++ with in-line ASM connecting to C# & XNA (not covered on my course) I got extra credit for that maybe your universities will promote that kind of forward thinking too.

I know this will probably get me scoffed att not taking a Comp Sci degree but the people in my class watched me consistently beast the Comp Sci class in exercises with shared lectures, I've never sat the course but it did not seem as elite as one would think, I believe it all comes down to individual interest and so I cannot see what is wrong with any of these courses, the theory that you learn t university should be applied to work experience thereafter.

[JamesM]

I know this will probably get me scoffed att not taking a Comp Sci degree but the people in my class watched me consistently beast the Comp Sci class in exercises with shared lectures, I've never sat the course but it did not seem as elite as one would think, I believe it all comes down to individual interest and so I cannot see what is wrong with any of these courses, the theory that you learn t university should be applied to work experience thereafter.

As far as I'm aware the CS course at the university of Essex isn't exactly the best in the country - also remember that many people (myself included) will not put 100% effort into class exercises.

[steveklabnik]

A lot of universities (I would even venture to say the vast majority) are no longer really teaching Computer Science, they're teaching an applied variant that's pretty light on difficulty, but highly tuned towards churning out millions of monkeys.

[Solar]

I wonder when people - students, at universities, and at HR - will finally realize that "Computer Science", "Software Architecture", and "Software Engineering" are three seperate, only partially overlapping fields...

[Combuster]

hmm, and to consider that Software engineering is both a master program (got renamed to software technology recently) and a course you can take for both the CS bachelor and the master program. Software architecture is also one course you can take for either the SE and CS studies... (for those interested: http://www.cs.uu.nl/wiki/Master/WebHome)

Still, IMO a good programmer can't get away without knowing a good share of things about SE and architecture.

[Solar]

Absolutely. The area where those three fields overlap is where students (in the general meaning of the word) from each of the three fields must pay attention.

An architect out of touch with engineering is worthless. A programmer out of touch with architecture or algorithmics is a nuisance. A computer scientist who doesn't spare a thought on how his work is put into product has tossed away the key to his ivory tower.

[gravaera]

True. I certainly second that.

I think that what should be done is this:

All of the professors in the universities should be replaced with REAL programmers from the Pioneer era (That's what I call the programmers of about 30-50 or so years ago, who went around without certification, and sought work by proving what they can do, and were all REAL programmers), and the courses should be unrelentingly purely what they should be.

Then we'd be able to filter out about half of these monkeys running out of Uni now, thinking they are "Computer Experts."

There are too many people in my class who are doing the degree because they "like computers."

They expect to truly understand everything Computing entails without ever developing the Programmer mindset.

I mean: more than half the students in my class don't even know a single line of any programming language. Talk less about them understanding the subtle nuances behind WHY all these strange paradigms exist in computing.

90% of these students have never heard of a "register" before, so talk much less about them understanding CPU architecture, and oh Lord...don't even mention them getting to understand abstract concepts like Data Structures.

In the first year, first Semester, we did a course called Systems Development, which focused on the Software Development Life Cycle, etc. And Stacks, Linked Lists, and other types of Queues were introduced.

About 60 percent of them were clueless, and the rest were somewhere between mapping a stack onto a test-tube (that was the example the teacher gave), and thinking it had to do with the way the Hard Drives were arranged on the IDE cable.

I mean...wow.

And there are tons of these people being spawned daily, going through a computer course, and running out after Three years, waving a certificate, thinking they know, when they have absolutely no idea.

And it's irritating because real programmers aren't being given the recognition they deserve. There are so many of these two-penny-a-piece "Computer Experts" who can be hired, and have saturated the market, and keep getting the jobs that real programmers deserve, and NEED. We are hobbyists by nature, but we DO need money to keep up our activities. :p

[earlz]

I think I agree there...

those just because they like computers people are annoying.. I know a few in my town..

Programming shouldn't be easy. I don't want for my courses in college to be like my class I had in high school. I was happy it was over java so I would learn something new(I on purposely never looked up anything about Java on the internet other than it's bytecode) but it saddened me... by the second semester, I knew things the teacher didn't... not because he taught it to me, but because I could just understand how the compiler would act, because it is C/C++ based, I felt dumb learning about references and pointers cause I already knew. I understood the "abstract" keyword my teacher didn't... because of example code(though I did later look it up to be sure).. This is how our class went(not saying a college class would be like this but still)
1. history over computers. general computer science junk
2. System.out.println and how to create ASCII art(you should not have a test over ascii art!)
3, primitive graphics
4. more graphics
5. OOP and how it coordinates to graphics(a pumpkin face that had a pumpkin.nose and such functions)
6. user input and more OOP
7. more graphics(not covered on AP exam though cause it was something weird.. )
8. arrays or lists or whatever java calls them, and the ArrayList class(finally, something useful)
9. Command line input
10. pointers and references
11. file IO
12. alogrithms such as sorting and finding

and that was it..

It was just 1 year, but graphics should not be the first thing you learn! The book was written by a guy attempting to keep kids interested in Java, even if they weren't programmers. No, they should have had a rude hard section in the beginning so kids could know if they wanted to get out at semester. Not try to keep them in by doing "fun" stuff like drawing houses...

I think I could have learned just as much java over this year as I could in one weekend alone.. of course, it is an introductory course in programming though and stuff, and the algorithm section was interesting, as I hadn't known how there were different sorts and how binary search worked.. but I would have liked to have that somewhere in the beginning..

[gravaera]

And this is where I believe strongly that we should draw a demarkating line between REAL programmers, and the "I like Computers" crowd.

Trying to keep non-programmer-minded people interested in programming concepts is a waste of time.

The most amusing thing, is that anyone who actually IS really interested in programming, normally already understands the right concepts BEFORE they attend Uni. So we just pass through, waiting until we have some piece of paper to wave in employers' faces to get a job.

And that's another sad thing: that programming has reached the "job" stage. We now have to look for "available jobs". How pathetic. There's no way for skilled programmers to be set apart from the rest. Programming is more than just a flecking "job".

It's a way of thinking, and a HOBBY. It isn't something to you get trained in so as to make money. It's not a school discipline!

If you aren't overjoyed every time to you see a new piece of revolutionary code, or get to read up about some new, or even antiquated processor architecture, or some interesting historical programming fact, or an intrinsic, complex, yet altogether simple little byte theory, then you are not a programmer. You should not be saturating OUR skill market.

You don't belong! It's irritating when I have to explain SIMPLE thing like linked lists to people in my class, and they STILL don't get it.

And they ask: "So why do they use that thing, anyway? I mean: Don't they have variables?"
Which means in reality: "Listen: I don't have a flecking clue what all of this is. Effing get it over with, so I can go hang out somewhere."

Then the worst part i that about 80% of my class is aiming to "pass" their courses. How irritatingly PATHETIC. And this is how they go out into the world. they learn JUST enough to "pass" some exam, and then think they can efficiently perform at a job??!! What kind of IDIOTIC thinking is that?!

Programming is going down the effing drain. Too many course-trained monkeys.

[xDDunce]

It's a way of thinking, and a HOBBY. It isn't something to you get trained in so as to make money. It's not a school discipline!

How about painting? Picaso started out paining as a hobby, and then sold his paintings. And because he loved painting, he made more and sold more. The same thing goes for programming. If you love programming, then making money from it is a good thing. would you rather be stuck in a dead end job, that you hate, don't understand, and have no motivation to complete?

If you aren't overjoyed every time to you see a new piece of revolutionary code, or get to read up about some new, or even antiquated processor architecture, or some interesting historical programming fact, or an intrinsic, complex, yet altogether simple little byte theory, then you are not a programmer. You should not be saturating OUR skill market.

This just is NOT true. If i see a "new piece of revolutionary code", i don't get overjoyed. I barely get interested. Unless the code does something i've been looking to do for a while yet couldn't iron out the bugs etc, etc, then why should it matter to me?

When it comes to new processor architectures, sure they're interesting but they're NEW! We don't even know if they're gonna take off into the user market yet, so why should we invest our time in something that's going to just pass us by? Intel architecture has been around for a while, and hasn't passed us by so we have gone out there and used it.

back before i got into OSDev, all i ever cared about was "What should i make next?" instead of "How can i use this code?" because why go out of your way to learn something you're never gonna use again? Sure it's a learning experience, but why waste your time learning redundancies when you could be learning something repetitively required in many applications? Unless you have to read up on it to get to your next goal, then i don't see much point in delving into it.

It's irritating when I have to explain SIMPLE thing like linked lists to people in my class, and they STILL don't get it.

Seconded! But due to more simpler conventions... 10/15 people in my computing class didn't know what the main() function did. Even after 8 months of non-stop program making.

Programming is going down the effing drain. Too many course-trained monkeys.

I don't mind this, up to the point of a 45 year old taking one of those courses you see on tv and all of a sudden they're a million times happier and are loving their job... yet here WE are, going through the pain-staking trouble of learning everything pre-course in order to fly through university only to find there aren't any jobs because they're all taken by those who (IMO) don't deserve them. The only way they would deserve them, is if they had been programming as a hobby for AT LEAST 5 years before they took the course.

Also, I agree with earlz. I had exactly the same experience over the past year, except the book i had to use could never stick to the same facts and yet somehow it's accepted as the basis for the course.

Cheers,
James.

[gravaera]

To clarify, when I spoke about the "hobby" mentality that I believe is appropriate for any serious programmer, and I stated that programming should not be a "job", I meant that it should not become a rudimentary, or routine profession at its core. It should be more than just a professional means for obtaining a paycheck to those who DO program. The money is great, yeah, but I believe that real programmers DO seek out the bucks, and also ENJOY the programming, for the programming's sake, just because.

It shouldn't be just something you went through Uni doing just because you heard that programmers make lots of money.

Although, when I think about it, it does make sense to have the monkeys, though. Today's world is growing RAPIDLY where IT and IS are concerned. There are hundreds of thousands, or maybe even millions of areas of small demand that don't necessarily need a pure programming 'god' to fulfill their everyday IT needs.

It's safe to say that the industry needs the small, penny a piece, Uni manufactured technicals and that having only a small number of highly skilled extreme professionals wouldn't help very much. They need the middle man to distribute the workload and ease the demand at the minor, routine level.

So whatever, I guess. As long as the experienced programmers are able to show that they ARE above the rest, I guess they'll be able to climb higher.

It bugs me, but it's needed.

[xDDunce]

To clarify, when I spoke about the "hobby" mentality that I believe is appropriate for any serious programmer, and I stated that programming should not be a "job", I meant that it should not become a rudimentary, or routine profession at its core. It should be more than just a professional means for obtaining a paycheck to those who DO program. The money is great, yeah, but I believe that real programmers DO seek out the bucks, and also ENJOY the programming, for the programming's sake, just because.

It shouldn't be just something you went through Uni doing just because you heard that programmers make lots of money.

This reminds me of the Braniac experiment where they try to motivate someone to run faster by different means (by fear, money, support etc.) none of it worked, until they gave the test subject the scientific clothing that stream lines the body etc etc.

You need to have specialised "equipment" (for lack of a better word) in order to excel in a programming job. A University diploma doesn't say "you're gonna get a high payed job", it's you're port-folio that gets you that job. Show off what you've made, demonstrating how you can read a datasheet and implement the content (i.e. a small OS is PERFECT!). show that you can meet deadlines, perhaps with time to spare. give examples of documentation, precise commenting etc.

In industry, if you can't comment then you can't program. If you have a team of 15 programmers, and they all have to interpret each others code to make a new function then you're not efficient. if you leave a comment at the beginning of a function explaining it in 50 words, then you won't have to go through 3 screen of code before understanding the function. same goes for naming conventions.

I know a guy who wrote a small Java program that took in 5 numbers, ordered them and printed them out. It had a tiny error in it, all his variables were named after foods and drinks, and no comments what so ever. took him 3 hours to find the error, took me and our teacher about 15 mins. experience is most important, but so is convention. if you have neither, then why would YOU want that person on you team? therefore, why would an employer want them?

It's when employment relies on the computer illiterates that none of this matters, they just go for general traits, and not on code. which i guess explains why all of the IT courses you see on TV are so popular. if someone can pass that course, why shouldn't they be employable? Because they don't have enough experience, yet the employer doesn't understand that programming is a Refined skill. not a Defined skill.

So whatever, I guess. As long as the experienced programmers are able to show that they ARE above the rest, I guess they'll be able to climb higher.

for as long as those, who don't know how much it takes to be successful, are trying to be; the easier it is for us to climb higher. they will rarely get past first base, but we're heading for the home run and we're wearing all the latest gadgetry and technological CR*P we could find. simple as.

Cheers,
James.

[jal]

Any course in CS should start with the obligatory reading of Hackers. Twice. Anyone who doesn't want to be like that, or does not feel affinity towards the people described, should leave and never return.


JAL

[OrOS]

<3 U of Waterloo.

[steveklabnik]

Any course in CS should start with the obligatory reading of Hackers. Twice. Anyone who doesn't want to be like that, or does not feel affinity towards the people described, should leave and never return.


JAL

I've always really enjoyed The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder.