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How much cs fundamentals would you want to teach during a basic education? When I was 16 I did a 4 year IT apprenticeship in Switzerland. 2 years in school and
by smoe 11y ago
How much cs fundamentals would you want to teach during a basic education? When I was 16 I did a 4 year IT apprenticeship in Switzerland. 2 years in school and 2 at a company. We learnt imperative programming with c, object oriented with Java, web development in php and databases with MySQL and Oracle. Plus a bunch of general cs, system/network administration and electronics courses. At the company I worked mostly with Python, Javascript and the object-oriented database ZODB. I would say, it made me quite able to adapt rapidly.
This was about 10 years ago and I don't know how much has changed since. I do like the system, but looking back the first thing I would change is getting rid of all the vendor/Microsoft specific courses and add stuff like algorithm design and analysis, data structures etc. Also some international recognition of the degree would be a nice to have:)
- Kalium 11y agoHow much? Enough to last a lifetime. Discrete mathematics, algorithmic analysis, the Church-Turing thesis, the foundations of computational theory, and so on. These "apprenticeships" are little better than bootcamps. They skip all the fundamentals in favor of whatever the language du jour is. Oddly enough, the changes you suggest would bring your apprenticeship roughly in line with the four-year Bachelor's program I did here in the US. Perhaps this isn't a coincidence.
- smoe 11y agoThat they skip all the fundamentals in favor of the language du jour is simply not true for apprenticeships in Switzerland. Yes my suggested changes would bring it roughly in line with a Bachelor but while working in an actual company and earning money.