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My theory: computer programming is awesome, but getting a good job doing interesting work is really hard. A bachelor's degree in computer science won't even ge
by elihu 9y ago
My theory: computer programming is awesome, but getting a good job doing interesting work is really hard. A bachelor's degree in computer science won't even get your foot in the door in a lot of places. However, there is lots of work doing IT for banks or writing Java for insurance companies or creating web pages for doctor's offices. That sort of thing might pay pretty well, but it's not the sort of thing that you would have said when someone asked you what you wanted to be when you grow up.
Maybe a lot of prospective students perceive (correctly or not) that all the best jobs are already filled by talented people and the competition for those is intense. If you didn't get in at the right time when the industry was in a massive growth phase, you're more likely to get stuck in a dead-end job.
- watwut 9y agoThere are interesting jobs in Java, actually. Interesting for me means you have to think to complete task and that you have to often learn. Java was always getting bad reputation, but seriously, people who diss it the most are the ones who tend to produce the same small project over and over (but in cool languages).
- elihu 9y agoI expect there are interesting Java jobs. However, a lot of companies who aren't particularly interested in technology tend to gravitate to Java or .Net because nobody ever got fired for writing a boring application on those platforms. That's not to say that there's anything wrong with Java. I just have trouble imagining an insurance company paying some Java developers to do basic research on fundamental computer science problems, or writing a new operating system or programming language or database.