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If the issue is as clear-cut as you claim, why don't you found a company that provides this kind of education? Why aren't there more students chosing other path

If the issue is as clear-cut as you claim, why don't you found a company that provides this kind of education? Why aren't there more students chosing other paths? Why are bootcamps struggling lately? https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bootcamps-enterprise/some-u-s-coding-boot-camps-stumble-in-a-crowded-field-idUSKBN1AP2D7 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bootcamps-enterprise/some... College is supposed to give you strong foundations so you can build on that. This means that college grads should be able to pick up "applicable skills" in short time (they certainly should be able to become productive at any company in less than 6 months), and from there they should be able to improve faster than their non-graduate peers, eventually surpassing their skills. If that wasn't your case, sorry mate, you are surrounded by exceptional non-graduate peers, or you are an exceptionally bad graduate (which may be your university's fault or your own). In any case, those parents and students coughing up loads of money for graduate education seem to disagree with you.

la_fayette 8y ago
i don't think you can discuss only one direction (theory > practise). i went back to academia after several years working in the industry. i would conclude practical experience allows you to gain a deeper understanding of theoretical knowledge, also if it comes to teaching. As one can present better and more real world use cases. if you consider statistics, machine learning, etc this is absolutely the case. learning just formulas etc without real use cases is mostly a waste of time for a student. only with good examples this goes to long term memory and deep understanding...
- kilburn 8y ago
  I think most people would agree here. Nearly all CS college courses include practical projects, precisely to try to provide these good and memorable examples. It is also true that practical projects in 12-week long courses just cannot compare to the amount of problem insight you get if you spend N years working on it from the business side. There many courses that I would enjoy (and benefit from) much more now that when I did them some ~15 years ago!
  - scarface74 8y ago
    The original post was arguing against a practical project. > So having the "let's build something" experience is useful in the real world afterwards. It is, but it’s not the job of academia to teach it. You have side-projects, internships, and your whole life to learn practice. Have you never encountered a junior Dev fresh out of college who could talk theory all day long but couldn’t write an implementation of FizzBuzz?
    - kilburn 8y ago
      > The original post was arguing against a practical project. As I understand, it was arguing against business-oriented teaching (i.e.: teaching to experts in the current fashionable web framework/language/ML system/whatever) instead of teaching the basics. It hardly said anything about practical projects. > Have you never encountered a junior Dev fresh out of college who could talk theory all day long but couldn’t write an implementation of FizzBuzz? Out of college? No. I've encountered a few who couldn't write FizzBuzz, but they also couldn't talk any theory either!
      - scarface74 8y ago
        I also went to graduate school for an MBA (I didn’t finish). We had real world case studies to discuss. Why shouldn’t CS do the same? I taught myself how to program in Applesof Basic in 6th grade because I wanted to write a game. Then I learned assembly and how the interpreter worked, how the extension cards mapped memory, the OS etc. Get them interested in the high level first and then drill down.
scarface74 8y ago
How many parents know enough about the computer industry to know whether a curriculum will give their children real world experience? On the other hand, how many students go into CS because they look at the starting salaries and expect to get a job paying well? they certainly should be able to become productive at any company in less than 6 months) Most companies aren’t willing to do on the job training even for juniors who don’t at least know the language they are using or a similar language on a junior level.

la_fayette 8y ago

i don't think you can discuss only one direction (theory > practise). i went back to academia after several years working in the industry. i would conclude practical experience allows you to gain a deeper understanding of theoretical knowledge, also if it comes to teaching. As one can present better and more real world use cases. if you consider statistics, machine learning, etc this is absolutely the case. learning just formulas etc without real use cases is mostly a waste of time for a student. only with good examples this goes to long term memory and deep understanding...

kilburn 8y ago
I think most people would agree here. Nearly all CS college courses include practical projects, precisely to try to provide these good and memorable examples. It is also true that practical projects in 12-week long courses just cannot compare to the amount of problem insight you get if you spend N years working on it from the business side. There many courses that I would enjoy (and benefit from) much more now that when I did them some ~15 years ago!
- scarface74 8y ago
  The original post was arguing against a practical project. > So having the "let's build something" experience is useful in the real world afterwards. It is, but it’s not the job of academia to teach it. You have side-projects, internships, and your whole life to learn practice. Have you never encountered a junior Dev fresh out of college who could talk theory all day long but couldn’t write an implementation of FizzBuzz?
  - kilburn 8y ago
    > The original post was arguing against a practical project. As I understand, it was arguing against business-oriented teaching (i.e.: teaching to experts in the current fashionable web framework/language/ML system/whatever) instead of teaching the basics. It hardly said anything about practical projects. > Have you never encountered a junior Dev fresh out of college who could talk theory all day long but couldn’t write an implementation of FizzBuzz? Out of college? No. I've encountered a few who couldn't write FizzBuzz, but they also couldn't talk any theory either!
    - scarface74 8y ago
      I also went to graduate school for an MBA (I didn’t finish). We had real world case studies to discuss. Why shouldn’t CS do the same? I taught myself how to program in Applesof Basic in 6th grade because I wanted to write a game. Then I learned assembly and how the interpreter worked, how the extension cards mapped memory, the OS etc. Get them interested in the high level first and then drill down.

scarface74 8y ago

How many parents know enough about the computer industry to know whether a curriculum will give their children real world experience? On the other hand, how many students go into CS because they look at the starting salaries and expect to get a job paying well? they certainly should be able to become productive at any company in less than 6 months) Most companies aren’t willing to do on the job training even for juniors who don’t at least know the language they are using or a similar language on a junior level.