> The majority of CS education that I've had so far has been theoretical. There has been a lot of math and pseudo code, and logic. Programming rarely comes into

> The majority of CS education that I've had so far has been theoretical. There has been a lot of math and pseudo code, and logic. Programming rarely comes into it, and when it does, it is (generally) trivial (and it is OK if you get it partially wrong). Here's my beef with this. It's programming. It involves a computer and perhaps an internet connection. Anyone, for essentially no money at all, can sit in the comfort of their own room and start writing programs. There's simply no excuse for students to not be doing this. It's not like a photography student who needs access to a dark room, or a chemistry student that needs an expensive lab, or whatever other types of careers out there that involve lots of expensive equipment. We're talking $1000 that just about every single college student has already spent. When I was in college I read SICP for the heck of it and in my discrete math class where the professor declared we could do our assignments in any language we wanted, I did them in Scheme. I also wrote a Sega Master System emulator, a game engine, a paint program and countless other things. I'm not trying to brag because when it comes down to it I consider myself a pretty average programmer. But it's not at all hard for a student to do this. When I am interviewing college grads I can smell the ones who just scraped by on their classes and didn't explore the field on their own at all a mile away. They always have and always will get a firm "no" from me, there's just no excuse in this field to not take the initiative to learn on your own.