> IMO it’s a waste of potential — smart kids are bypassing Computer Science or Engineering for a much less rigorous education. There are some opposing forces a

> IMO it’s a waste of potential — smart kids are bypassing Computer Science or Engineering for a much less rigorous education. There are some opposing forces at play that students and new grads may not quite understand: Computer Science and Software Engineering (boot camps by extension) are basically branching paths to the same entry entry level job, but where you go beyond that can have a stark difference. I always ask our interns a few questions about their education when they start. One of the chief complaints for CS students is that they don't learn enough practical knowledge to enter the work force. They talk about people who went to a boot camp or were self-taught, and they always express that those people are much more prepared for a given position. Thus we have students who are looking for SWE courses but are taking a CS curriculum. In my experience, no one bothers to make the distinction until it's too late. True story that drives this home: Our client hired an intern who didn't think a CS degree was practical. He clearly had gaps in his skill set, but I chalked it up to him being a college junior. He was given a small task to parse some text, and I suggested regular expressions (the programming construct) - something he said he had experience with. He came back to me a hour or so later utterly confused on how people could catch all of the edge cases and branching paths that a small regex can generate. Turns out he hadn't taken formal languages yet. I sat him down to build a DFA and talk regular expressions (the formal language concept) with JFLAP[0], and it blew his mind. That conversation changed his entire outlook on CS degrees. [0]: http://jflap.org http://jflap.org