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I had in my teams people without any college degree or college dropouts, some gave up after one year and some close to graduation. They were good developers, th

I had in my teams people without any college degree or college dropouts, some gave up after one year and some close to graduation. They were good developers, the only difference I saw between college graduates and the other developers was that the college graduates were less flexible and tending to apply what they learned in college to the letter, even where it did not make sense. A few days ago I was talking to one of these people doing some informal code review, he found a very formally correct explanation for a constructor that had no value in that context, something like "it is a good practice to do it because in case X it can be used for y", where x and y were completely not applicable in that code. As a recruiter I never looked too serious for credentials, knowing myself going through the college only for that piece of paper at the end, working full time and knowing a lot more from the job than what the other students learned. From my former class in college I think I am the only one practicing IT, the others too other directions, including one that was a quite successful music band leader.

OkayPhysicist 6y ago
I've had the opposite experience working with a mix of uni-attendees and not. Compared to their university-attended coworkers, the straight-to-industry folk were far more likely to cargo cult design patterns, languages, and frameworks.
- sanxiyn 6y ago
  This is not my experience at all, and people without a degree I worked with were better learners.
- toomanybeersies 6y ago
  A bit orthogonal to the actual discussion at hand, but I've become a big proponent of cargo-culting in a pragmatic fashion. I definitely ensure that everything is done in the "Rails Way" for any Ruby on Rails code, despite not necessarily agreeing with what's considered the "Rails Way" by rubocop or general rails developer consensus. If I'm doing code review for my colleagues I'll force them to refactor their changes into idiomatic Rails code, even if it's perfectly functional code. I'm less strict on JS or other languages, purely because I lack the experience to say what's the "right" or "wrong" way. If your codebase follows a well-recognised style and pattern, it becomes a lot easier for new hires or contractors to get on their feet and start productive work than if you have some kind of brilliant idiosyncratic codebase that takes 3 months for a new hire to get their head around (as was the case when I joined my current company).

OkayPhysicist 6y ago

I've had the opposite experience working with a mix of uni-attendees and not. Compared to their university-attended coworkers, the straight-to-industry folk were far more likely to cargo cult design patterns, languages, and frameworks.

sanxiyn 6y ago
This is not my experience at all, and people without a degree I worked with were better learners.
toomanybeersies 6y ago
A bit orthogonal to the actual discussion at hand, but I've become a big proponent of cargo-culting in a pragmatic fashion. I definitely ensure that everything is done in the "Rails Way" for any Ruby on Rails code, despite not necessarily agreeing with what's considered the "Rails Way" by rubocop or general rails developer consensus. If I'm doing code review for my colleagues I'll force them to refactor their changes into idiomatic Rails code, even if it's perfectly functional code. I'm less strict on JS or other languages, purely because I lack the experience to say what's the "right" or "wrong" way. If your codebase follows a well-recognised style and pattern, it becomes a lot easier for new hires or contractors to get on their feet and start productive work than if you have some kind of brilliant idiosyncratic codebase that takes 3 months for a new hire to get their head around (as was the case when I joined my current company).