4 ms·

Actually doesn't your experience hint at the opposite trend in the working sector? If everyone (roughly) either fails programming, or aces it, then the working

Actually doesn't your experience hint at the opposite trend in the working sector? If everyone (roughly) either fails programming, or aces it, then the working professionals are the ones who passed AND excelled.

jon-wood 10y ago
Oh if only that were true. I've worked with people in the past who know just enough to hack together a front end on top of a simple database, but who would completely fall apart when presented with anything more complex than that. These are the sort of people who when asked to build an internationalised website "solve" the problem by copying an entire PHP application into directories called "english" and "german" and then proceed to change the text in the German version.
- charlesdm 10y ago
  :D
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  There's that XKCD about asking how novice users solve computer problems. "I save the video to iCloud, then copy the url into this video downloader, then put the download into this transcription site, then upload that to..." I think this is a big chunk of explaining how bad programming goes, too. It's not "too incompetent to build a thing", it's "incompetent enough that everything runs on voodoo and evil".
douche 10y ago
In my experience, there is enough fluff and non-programming, abstract theory classes in a CS major that people who cannot program their way out of a wet paper bag can complete the degree, and even get high marks. These people can get jobs, and coast along for years at sub-mediocre levels of production, in most cases.
- HeyLaughingBoy 10y ago
  I'm going to be a bit more charitable and say that those people find non-programming jobs in the field. One person I interviewed stood out in my mind for having completed a Master's in CS, was able to classify the problem I posed her as belonging to a certain type and told me how it should be approached. She still couldn't even begin to write the (simple) code to solve it, however. This person was obviously smart, and also quite obviously had no programming skill.
mafribe 10y ago
This is an interesting suggestion. However, it is very easy to cheat your way through college and obtain good grades. My assessed coursework regularly shows up on rentacoder.com and similar. There is an industry out there for writing dissertations. Group work is another mechanism that weak programmers use to avoid getting better: they let the good programmers do all the programming and then do documentation, or UI design, or nothing. In addition, there is a pronounced grade inflation, so even weak students look great on paper. Not every organisation has the know-how to filter out weak students that look great on paper.
- vonmoltke 10y ago
  My degree program must have been unusual, then, because my senior project class was the only one where less than 80% of my grade came from in-class tests. Many professors didn't even give a crap whether you actually did the homework or not, because you'd bomb the test anyway if you didn't.
redcalx 10y ago
I believe your comment is missing a /s tag.
nnq 10y ago
I imagine you've never been the one hiring or interviewing developers, have you? There is an amazing bit though: there are the ones that you classify as "surely worthless", but then you see they can indeed get some jobs done, so a non-technical manager or HR-person can easily confuse one of those that "can sometimes program computers to do useful stuff or keep things running" vs someone who can do "software engineering". Oh, and then there's the infuriating third category of those extreeemly smart (IQ through the roof + wealth of knowledge) but extreeeemly unproductive (like even manifesting "negative productivity" and dragging a team down or an entire project into the ground, the "-10x programmer"). People are... complex :)
- random_coder 10y ago
  Lol at the third category - they're at the wrong jobs(for them), perhaps they need to do something on their own, figuring things out themselves!
- extremely_smart 10y ago
  How did your category-three people drag the project down?
  - Bartweiss 10y ago
    I think there are some infamous examples from the old days of Microsoft. Think of the programmer who insists on using an obscure dialect of Lisp because of all the "clever" things they can do in it. Even if they work, and are genuinely clever, it can be a huge pain for the less brilliant/obsessed people to interact with. In general, this seems to be a problem that arises when smart, capable people (who are short on common sense and teamwork) become so valuable that they get to call shots no one else can accommodate. Imagine Mel being on a team of 15 people: http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html
    - Pokepokalypse 10y ago
      Well; what these people have not learned is that the whole purpose of a "programming language" is NOT to tell the computer what to do. It's to tell your team mates what you've told the computer to do. People who don't get this are really the worst to work with.

jon-wood 10y ago

Oh if only that were true. I've worked with people in the past who know just enough to hack together a front end on top of a simple database, but who would completely fall apart when presented with anything more complex than that. These are the sort of people who when asked to build an internationalised website "solve" the problem by copying an entire PHP application into directories called "english" and "german" and then proceed to change the text in the German version.

charlesdm 10y ago
:D
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Bartweiss 10y ago
There's that XKCD about asking how novice users solve computer problems. "I save the video to iCloud, then copy the url into this video downloader, then put the download into this transcription site, then upload that to..." I think this is a big chunk of explaining how bad programming goes, too. It's not "too incompetent to build a thing", it's "incompetent enough that everything runs on voodoo and evil".

douche 10y ago

In my experience, there is enough fluff and non-programming, abstract theory classes in a CS major that people who cannot program their way out of a wet paper bag can complete the degree, and even get high marks. These people can get jobs, and coast along for years at sub-mediocre levels of production, in most cases.

HeyLaughingBoy 10y ago
I'm going to be a bit more charitable and say that those people find non-programming jobs in the field. One person I interviewed stood out in my mind for having completed a Master's in CS, was able to classify the problem I posed her as belonging to a certain type and told me how it should be approached. She still couldn't even begin to write the (simple) code to solve it, however. This person was obviously smart, and also quite obviously had no programming skill.

mafribe 10y ago

This is an interesting suggestion. However, it is very easy to cheat your way through college and obtain good grades. My assessed coursework regularly shows up on rentacoder.com and similar. There is an industry out there for writing dissertations. Group work is another mechanism that weak programmers use to avoid getting better: they let the good programmers do all the programming and then do documentation, or UI design, or nothing. In addition, there is a pronounced grade inflation, so even weak students look great on paper. Not every organisation has the know-how to filter out weak students that look great on paper.

vonmoltke 10y ago
My degree program must have been unusual, then, because my senior project class was the only one where less than 80% of my grade came from in-class tests. Many professors didn't even give a crap whether you actually did the homework or not, because you'd bomb the test anyway if you didn't.

redcalx 10y ago

I believe your comment is missing a /s tag.

nnq 10y ago

I imagine you've never been the one hiring or interviewing developers, have you? There is an amazing bit though: there are the ones that you classify as "surely worthless", but then you see they can indeed get some jobs done, so a non-technical manager or HR-person can easily confuse one of those that "can sometimes program computers to do useful stuff or keep things running" vs someone who can do "software engineering". Oh, and then there's the infuriating third category of those extreeemly smart (IQ through the roof + wealth of knowledge) but extreeeemly unproductive (like even manifesting "negative productivity" and dragging a team down or an entire project into the ground, the "-10x programmer"). People are... complex :)

random_coder 10y ago
Lol at the third category - they're at the wrong jobs(for them), perhaps they need to do something on their own, figuring things out themselves!
extremely_smart 10y ago
How did your category-three people drag the project down?
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  I think there are some infamous examples from the old days of Microsoft. Think of the programmer who insists on using an obscure dialect of Lisp because of all the "clever" things they can do in it. Even if they work, and are genuinely clever, it can be a huge pain for the less brilliant/obsessed people to interact with. In general, this seems to be a problem that arises when smart, capable people (who are short on common sense and teamwork) become so valuable that they get to call shots no one else can accommodate. Imagine Mel being on a team of 15 people: http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html
  - Pokepokalypse 10y ago
    Well; what these people have not learned is that the whole purpose of a "programming language" is NOT to tell the computer what to do. It's to tell your team mates what you've told the computer to do. People who don't get this are really the worst to work with.