4 ms·

Pretty damning "There are currently more than 3,500 engineering schools across the country, and about 90% of graduates do not have the programming skills to wor

Pretty damning "There are currently more than 3,500 engineering schools across the country, and about 90% of graduates do not have the programming skills to work in software engineering, according to one study." That said, I'm curious how you could talk to someone about programming for four years and at the end of that 9 out of 10 of them could not actually do it.

CosmicShadow 7y ago
I taught intro web dev courses at a "highly rated" college in Canada in a program that was specifically for a post-grad, international audience. It was 99% people from India who finished 4 year university degrees in computer science and the like. Out of a class of 35 students who were already in their 2nd, 3rd or 4th term of this program, no one knew to press F12 to see the console in a browser. This was a web development program. I basically had to teach these kids as if they just walked off the street. No matter which new batch of kids I had, it was like this. I asked them how they could know so little about anything development wise if they took 4 years of CS, like literally what did they do. They'd always just answer that they learned "Theory" and something about learning out of a book, not actually developing or anything. I still didn't understand how 4 years of theory or book learning couldn't teach you the most basic programming concepts. I'm pretty sure the schools were just mills or scams or something, it was sad. Most of the students had no real interest in actually learning how to code or doing any learning either, they seemed to believe that just by showing up they'd pass, get a degree and a good job, which was bizarre, especially in a university town and tech hot bed. The amount of cheating, copying, lying, begging, etc. didn't help. A few folks were genuine, but the program seems like it's just a legal loophole to get into the country where if they get at least a technical support job after 2 years of grad they can legally become citizens. This is the fastest growing and most profitable sector of this college.
- HeyLaughingBoy 7y ago
  My MS (Software Engineering) classmates usually didn't have that problem but interestingly, someone pointed out to us that it was possible to go through the entire MSSE program without writing a single line of code if you chose the right classes. I sometimes wonder if they did that by design...
- ChuckMcM 7y ago
  Ouch! That is so sad on so many levels. To be fair, I can understand when someone doesn't know that the shortcut key for the dev console is F12, but I would hope they would at least start at the "hamburger" menu to see if they could find it. Your anecdote reminds me of the dot com days when I was trying to hire some network engineers. Their only qualification appeared to be they passed some certification test on Cisco gear. The only questions they asked about the job were "how much stock will I get?" and "when do you think the company will go public?" It was easy to not hire them, even when we were really in need of people.
  - CosmicShadow 7y ago
    I don't even think they knew what the console was...
- johntiger1 7y ago
  Yikes, I guess this changes my opinion on Canada's immigration system...
HeyLaughingBoy 7y ago
To follow up on what CosmicShadow said, one of my most memorable interviewees was the candidate with an MS Comp Sci who, upon being shown the problem for our team effort design exercise was able to categorize it (something in CS theory I had never heard of), explain what the canonical solution would be, but was completely incapable of writing the for{..} loop that comprised the first part of the solution. I honestly don't know how it happens. She clearly wasn't an idiot, and she certainly learned a lot of theory but couldn't program her way out of a paper bag. And this was not for an entry level position, either.
- svachalek 7y ago
  Reminds me of the first PhD CS I worked with. He asked me for some problem he was having with his system and after poking a bit, I said the quickest solution would be just to reboot it. He gave me the blankest of blank looks, so I rebooted it and he watched the process like the computer just grew horns. How can you get all the way through a PhD program without even encountering the concept of rebooting a computer?!
  - gbjw 7y ago
    These stories are genre in themselves. Next I'll read about how some CS PhD didn't even know what a computer was.
mesozoic 7y ago
After conducting enough interviews to not be able to do them anymore because they depress me. I believe it.
prepend 7y ago
I’m curious how they wouldn’t just start small shop programming companies. 4 years should teach you how to make apps, or make web sites, or automate some arbitrage situation, or tons of other things that I can do on my own with programming skills.

CosmicShadow 7y ago

I taught intro web dev courses at a "highly rated" college in Canada in a program that was specifically for a post-grad, international audience. It was 99% people from India who finished 4 year university degrees in computer science and the like. Out of a class of 35 students who were already in their 2nd, 3rd or 4th term of this program, no one knew to press F12 to see the console in a browser. This was a web development program. I basically had to teach these kids as if they just walked off the street. No matter which new batch of kids I had, it was like this. I asked them how they could know so little about anything development wise if they took 4 years of CS, like literally what did they do. They'd always just answer that they learned "Theory" and something about learning out of a book, not actually developing or anything. I still didn't understand how 4 years of theory or book learning couldn't teach you the most basic programming concepts. I'm pretty sure the schools were just mills or scams or something, it was sad. Most of the students had no real interest in actually learning how to code or doing any learning either, they seemed to believe that just by showing up they'd pass, get a degree and a good job, which was bizarre, especially in a university town and tech hot bed. The amount of cheating, copying, lying, begging, etc. didn't help. A few folks were genuine, but the program seems like it's just a legal loophole to get into the country where if they get at least a technical support job after 2 years of grad they can legally become citizens. This is the fastest growing and most profitable sector of this college.

HeyLaughingBoy 7y ago
My MS (Software Engineering) classmates usually didn't have that problem but interestingly, someone pointed out to us that it was possible to go through the entire MSSE program without writing a single line of code if you chose the right classes. I sometimes wonder if they did that by design...
ChuckMcM 7y ago
Ouch! That is so sad on so many levels. To be fair, I can understand when someone doesn't know that the shortcut key for the dev console is F12, but I would hope they would at least start at the "hamburger" menu to see if they could find it. Your anecdote reminds me of the dot com days when I was trying to hire some network engineers. Their only qualification appeared to be they passed some certification test on Cisco gear. The only questions they asked about the job were "how much stock will I get?" and "when do you think the company will go public?" It was easy to not hire them, even when we were really in need of people.
- CosmicShadow 7y ago
  I don't even think they knew what the console was...
johntiger1 7y ago
Yikes, I guess this changes my opinion on Canada's immigration system...

HeyLaughingBoy 7y ago

To follow up on what CosmicShadow said, one of my most memorable interviewees was the candidate with an MS Comp Sci who, upon being shown the problem for our team effort design exercise was able to categorize it (something in CS theory I had never heard of), explain what the canonical solution would be, but was completely incapable of writing the for{..} loop that comprised the first part of the solution. I honestly don't know how it happens. She clearly wasn't an idiot, and she certainly learned a lot of theory but couldn't program her way out of a paper bag. And this was not for an entry level position, either.

svachalek 7y ago
Reminds me of the first PhD CS I worked with. He asked me for some problem he was having with his system and after poking a bit, I said the quickest solution would be just to reboot it. He gave me the blankest of blank looks, so I rebooted it and he watched the process like the computer just grew horns. How can you get all the way through a PhD program without even encountering the concept of rebooting a computer?!
- gbjw 7y ago
  These stories are genre in themselves. Next I'll read about how some CS PhD didn't even know what a computer was.

mesozoic 7y ago

After conducting enough interviews to not be able to do them anymore because they depress me. I believe it.

prepend 7y ago

I’m curious how they wouldn’t just start small shop programming companies. 4 years should teach you how to make apps, or make web sites, or automate some arbitrage situation, or tons of other things that I can do on my own with programming skills.