2 ms·

Already exists in Europe, the 'hogeschool' in Belgium & the Netherlands and the 'fachhochschule' in Germany. I attended one and I would not advise anyone to do

by roel_v 15y ago

Already exists in Europe, the 'hogeschool' in Belgium & the Netherlands and the 'fachhochschule' in Germany. I attended one and I would not advise anyone to do so; you're better off with a proper CS degree. I wouldn't (easily) hire anyone who did the studies I did. It's funny in a way, I met a lot of people in the 'underground' scene in the mid to late 1990's, and by the time they were 18-20 many of them started off at CS programmes but many couldn't keep up and dropped 'down' to the fore-mentioned vocational schools. Many of them spend 14 hours a day in front of their computers but all their 'interest' and 'passion' didn't make them great programmers. Yes they had the patience to poke at a stack overflow until they could get the offset to the payload of their shellcode in eax, but that didn't make them (us) great programmers, despite what we thought back then. I'm really torn on the issue - many of them have great careers in IT and programming now, but they're mostly not great programmers. I don't like the current rhetoric of 'don't go to university, you'll be better off with an apprenticeship/vocational school' - experience shows it's simply not true. Maybe I'm just getting old.

stdbrouw 15y ago
That's a little bit unfair. The reason 'hogeschool' studies aren't as good as a proper CS degree has very little to do with vocational studies being inherently inferior to a more theoretically grounded education, it has to do with the fact that these vocational schools are known for being easier than their university counterparts, which attracts a certain audience, which leads to the courses getting dumbed down. Probably similar to how community colleges work in the United States. The core problem is that vocational studies are considered to be inferior, which is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's like how, in Belgium, to get the best language education in high school, you'd choose advanced classes in maths, not language, because pupils who pick a maths focus are considered to be better students all-round and thus get tougher material in anything from geography to French.
- roel_v 15y ago
  Right, but the same thing will happen to vocational schools. It's not like a vocational school is like a proper CS degree but with different courses, equally hard. So the vocational school needs to cater to an audience that, let me say this in the nicest way possible, is not very much interested in fine intellectual nuances. Now it depends on how one defines 'inferior', but vocational training is inherently 'easier' than an academic approach; vocational training is about telling people how to solve certain problems, showing the the steps to take to tackle a specific situation. The Wikipedia article on 'vocational training' says more or less that, although I just learned that it's called 'procedural knowledge' there, which is a nice euphemism. To me, this is the antithesis of the problem-solving nature of programming. I guess one can call widget-plumbing 'programming', but I wouldn't (and don't) hire people who install and maybe, with much effort and pain, customize Wordpress plugins and call themselves 'programmers'. Nothing wrong with Wordpress, but we shouldn't strive for a situation where that is the pinnacle of a programmer's expertise.

by roel_v 15y ago

stdbrouw 15y ago

That's a little bit unfair. The reason 'hogeschool' studies aren't as good as a proper CS degree has very little to do with vocational studies being inherently inferior to a more theoretically grounded education, it has to do with the fact that these vocational schools are known for being easier than their university counterparts, which attracts a certain audience, which leads to the courses getting dumbed down. Probably similar to how community colleges work in the United States. The core problem is that vocational studies are considered to be inferior, which is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's like how, in Belgium, to get the best language education in high school, you'd choose advanced classes in maths, not language, because pupils who pick a maths focus are considered to be better students all-round and thus get tougher material in anything from geography to French.

roel_v 15y ago
Right, but the same thing will happen to vocational schools. It's not like a vocational school is like a proper CS degree but with different courses, equally hard. So the vocational school needs to cater to an audience that, let me say this in the nicest way possible, is not very much interested in fine intellectual nuances. Now it depends on how one defines 'inferior', but vocational training is inherently 'easier' than an academic approach; vocational training is about telling people how to solve certain problems, showing the the steps to take to tackle a specific situation. The Wikipedia article on 'vocational training' says more or less that, although I just learned that it's called 'procedural knowledge' there, which is a nice euphemism. To me, this is the antithesis of the problem-solving nature of programming. I guess one can call widget-plumbing 'programming', but I wouldn't (and don't) hire people who install and maybe, with much effort and pain, customize Wordpress plugins and call themselves 'programmers'. Nothing wrong with Wordpress, but we shouldn't strive for a situation where that is the pinnacle of a programmer's expertise.