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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 prac

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.

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.