>> students there can graduate in CS on a course based on Java at his institution without ever having to demonstrate a program actually That is absoluteley not

>> students there can graduate in CS on a course based on Java at his institution without ever having to demonstrate a program actually That is absoluteley not limited to China. There are some CS grads that can't write code, and that doesn't mean they are idiots. I studied with some of them. Some are actually more inclined to abstract theoretical problems and are not very good at implementation. Others just learn by memorizing everything and never gotten the hang of analyzing and solving a problem. >> Apparently it’s all theoretical Well... yes, for me that is what CS really is about. You don't need a computer to do CS at all. All you need is a pen, a paper and some knowlegde of formal systems. In my opinion, a college/university is not the place to go to for learning how to code.