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Agreed, I remember in first year our engineering professor teaching us all these abstract concepts about robot controllers and the philosophy behind them and th

Agreed, I remember in first year our engineering professor teaching us all these abstract concepts about robot controllers and the philosophy behind them and then finishing the lecture by telling us, "Also, when you get to your first job, just read the manual to figure out how your specific controller works so you can do your job" :/. P.S: Also Waterloo grad here. Co-op FTW.

badpun 8y ago
Hah. Our numerical methods professor once remarked during a lecture that programming is a technician’s job and if we want to just learn it, we should be be in a vocational school, not in univeristy learning CS. He was not wrong IMO.
- jeena 8y ago
  The supervisor of our bachelor thesis said something similar, interestingly he was Pakistani and said "Sure you can try to program this thing as your thesis, or you could do something more stimulating like research of this topic. The implementation you should give to some Indian programmers, they are far better, faster and cheaper in it than you guys anyway." And as racist ad bad it sounds, now a couple of years later, in the real world, that is exactly what happens. We, the ones in Sweden, we do the research and design of the system, and then our customers more often than not find teams in India who with our mentoring implement it.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    I don’t disagree. But you have to start somewhere. I’ve seen so many computer science majors who couldn’t get their foot in the door because they knew “theory” but couldn’t compete with developers from other countries that actually focused on learning what they needed to get a job, had experience and they are willing to work for less. Of course that’s not meant to be a knock against them. I agree with them. Yes in theory, I’m a “developer”, but I don’t compete in the market by studying leetCode and algorithms. I compete by being able to discuss architecture. I’m actually in the weird position that half my learning agenda for 2019 is getting caught up on the cool kids front end frameworks of the week. I’ve been focused so much on higher level “architectural theory” and the back end for the last few years, I haven’t been keeping up on the front end. It’s weird because yeah, I make more than most “full stack developers” in my market, but if I had to get a job tomorrow, I don’t have the table stakes to outcompete a developer with four years of experience when a company wants someone that can hit the ground running now. Especially if they are looking for contractors. Sure, I am qualified for an over paid “digital transformation consultant”, “cloud consultant” type of role, but those aren’t as plentiful.
- barry-cotter 8y ago
  But he was a judgmental snob.

badpun 8y ago

Hah. Our numerical methods professor once remarked during a lecture that programming is a technician’s job and if we want to just learn it, we should be be in a vocational school, not in univeristy learning CS. He was not wrong IMO.

jeena 8y ago
The supervisor of our bachelor thesis said something similar, interestingly he was Pakistani and said "Sure you can try to program this thing as your thesis, or you could do something more stimulating like research of this topic. The implementation you should give to some Indian programmers, they are far better, faster and cheaper in it than you guys anyway." And as racist ad bad it sounds, now a couple of years later, in the real world, that is exactly what happens. We, the ones in Sweden, we do the research and design of the system, and then our customers more often than not find teams in India who with our mentoring implement it.
- scarface74 8y ago
  I don’t disagree. But you have to start somewhere. I’ve seen so many computer science majors who couldn’t get their foot in the door because they knew “theory” but couldn’t compete with developers from other countries that actually focused on learning what they needed to get a job, had experience and they are willing to work for less. Of course that’s not meant to be a knock against them. I agree with them. Yes in theory, I’m a “developer”, but I don’t compete in the market by studying leetCode and algorithms. I compete by being able to discuss architecture. I’m actually in the weird position that half my learning agenda for 2019 is getting caught up on the cool kids front end frameworks of the week. I’ve been focused so much on higher level “architectural theory” and the back end for the last few years, I haven’t been keeping up on the front end. It’s weird because yeah, I make more than most “full stack developers” in my market, but if I had to get a job tomorrow, I don’t have the table stakes to outcompete a developer with four years of experience when a company wants someone that can hit the ground running now. Especially if they are looking for contractors. Sure, I am qualified for an over paid “digital transformation consultant”, “cloud consultant” type of role, but those aren’t as plentiful.
barry-cotter 8y ago
But he was a judgmental snob.