> It's hard to imagine someone doing well at courses like algorithms, statistics, and compilers, and not being a decent programmer too. Sure, but are those who

> It's hard to imagine someone doing well at courses like algorithms, statistics, and compilers, and not being a decent programmer too. Sure, but are those who did poorly in those classes less likely to be good programmers? I aim for slightly over a 2.0. I limit myself from going lower because that puts me on probation, which does irritating things like prevent me from being on paper as a club officer (I'm unofficially the president of our LUG for this upcoming year). I don't aim for higher grades because I find that the amount of work required is on an exponential order - the difference between a D and a C is far less than a B and an A. Doing fewer assignments gives me time to work on all sorts of projects that there aren't any classes for. As a result, I've got a basic understanding of quite a few different things, enough to realize if one of them is a good solution for a problem. But that's what I am - the guy who knows a little about a lot. My role in a recent team project was essentially that of technical advisor: when my teammates weren't sure of how to approach a problem, they came to me for suggestions. Now, will this bite me in the butt later? Quite possibly. Edit: I suppose my question is this: would you rather hire someone with a good GPA but little programming experience outside of school, or someone with a rather poor GPA but contributions to open-source (with code quality being roughly what you would expect in order to achieve the first candidate's GPA)?