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People go to universities to learn how to tackle real world programming problems. But then the universities teach them CS bullshit where 90% of it is unapplica

People go to universities to learn how to tackle real world programming problems. But then the universities teach them CS bullshit where 90% of it is unapplicable to the real world. Why would you go to such an university which is so disconnected from the real world?

dilyevsky 4y ago
I maybe in minority here but I regularly use CS, networking, OS internals statistics, discrete math (I could go own) knowledge I was taught in school and I work in infrastructure. Ofc if you let that knowledge falter and forget all this stuff you’re never gonna use it bc you won’t even know when it was useful
- SoftTalker 4y ago
  I have a CS degree, and the main thing I developed that stuck with me is the ability to pick up most any programming language and separate the syntax from the fundamental concepts such as objects, functions, loops and flow of control, lists, arrays, other data structures, etc. Pretty much every class in my degree program used a different programming language. You had to develop the ability to learn a language and be productive with it in a semester (~4 months) or at most an academic year. Sometimes you'd be learning two new languages along with the course material. The CS theory I use far less. I think if you are in a job that boils down to implementing CRUD functionality (even if dressed up a bit on the UX side) you don't really find yourself thinking about CS theory very often.
  - dilyevsky 4y ago
    That’s how you get all those apps that are dog slow bc developers didn’t know better and implemented everything with squared or worse complexity where it wasn’t necessary
    - SoftTalker 4y ago
      Not really. If the app is essentially pulling data out of the UI and calling a SQL query to put some fields into a database (or vice-versa), there isn't much to it. Yes, if it's doing something more complex, algorithmic complexity can be a factor. The vast majority of "enterprise" or business apps aren't.
- scarface74 4y ago
  I still don’t understand the disconnect that many posters on HN have from the real world. Most of the 2.7 million developers in the US are working at banks, insurance companies, etc writing boring line of business CRUD apps.
  - dilyevsky 4y ago
    Maybe you should try EnterpriseNews then ;)
    - scarface74 4y ago
      Just because you are in one sub field doesn’t mean you should lack a general understanding of the overall industry.
oneplane 4y ago
> People go to universities to learn how to tackle real world programming problems. That's your problem right there. Also, the term 'university' seems to be overloaded in so many different ways (multiplied by different countries and cultures). To me, it seems that the American descriptions and their derivatives are pretty bad, same with the "poly"-prefixed educational institutions. There are so many factors that should be irrelevant (i.e. the "name" of the institute, the cost, the location) where only the subject matter and accreditation should be the actual factors. If I were to categorise it, you'd have to split it in three directions: - Academia, scientific research (University) - High-level education, scientific principles and theory, but with application of said principes and theory in mind (College perhaps?) - General or vocational education, aimed at learning how to do a job (Trade school?) But it is of course much more marketable if you call that middle tier a "University of Applied Sciences" as that sound much cooler and more advanced. The reality is that there are many more people needed in the world that actually perform the work than the amount of people that mostly think about the work that others might do. The world needs people in all sorts of varieties, but the real-world workload is overwhelmingly one of execution, not one of theory. Of course, when people are stuck in the (rat) race, one must go to university because that is the best, and only the best is good enough. So even if going that far risks people into diving headfirst into their own Peter Principle, it is what people do anyway. The end result are a bunch of people that barely made it through university and aren't all that useful in the real world right away (not advanced enough to propel the entire field or niche forward, not practical enough to perform less theoretical work). Of course, FAANG only wants the best, and since they can't go screen the 100k+ applications in their inboxes in detail they just start filtering based on paper promises or previous experience, with the end result being a stack of people who either already did the job, or who came out of university with advanced enough results to be malleable into the positions that are available. And thus the path is biased towards "if you want to make a ton of money so you can rent a broom closet in the bay area, you have to work at a FAANG and you can only do that with a university background". Ironically, as large and advanced as those companies may be, most people in the world don't work there. And trading in 80k for half the amount of work and normal living arrangements really isn't a bad deal when working anywhere else that's not a FAANG.

dilyevsky 4y ago

I maybe in minority here but I regularly use CS, networking, OS internals statistics, discrete math (I could go own) knowledge I was taught in school and I work in infrastructure. Ofc if you let that knowledge falter and forget all this stuff you’re never gonna use it bc you won’t even know when it was useful

SoftTalker 4y ago
I have a CS degree, and the main thing I developed that stuck with me is the ability to pick up most any programming language and separate the syntax from the fundamental concepts such as objects, functions, loops and flow of control, lists, arrays, other data structures, etc. Pretty much every class in my degree program used a different programming language. You had to develop the ability to learn a language and be productive with it in a semester (~4 months) or at most an academic year. Sometimes you'd be learning two new languages along with the course material. The CS theory I use far less. I think if you are in a job that boils down to implementing CRUD functionality (even if dressed up a bit on the UX side) you don't really find yourself thinking about CS theory very often.
- dilyevsky 4y ago
  That’s how you get all those apps that are dog slow bc developers didn’t know better and implemented everything with squared or worse complexity where it wasn’t necessary
  - SoftTalker 4y ago
    Not really. If the app is essentially pulling data out of the UI and calling a SQL query to put some fields into a database (or vice-versa), there isn't much to it. Yes, if it's doing something more complex, algorithmic complexity can be a factor. The vast majority of "enterprise" or business apps aren't.
scarface74 4y ago
I still don’t understand the disconnect that many posters on HN have from the real world. Most of the 2.7 million developers in the US are working at banks, insurance companies, etc writing boring line of business CRUD apps.
- dilyevsky 4y ago
  Maybe you should try EnterpriseNews then ;)
  - scarface74 4y ago
    Just because you are in one sub field doesn’t mean you should lack a general understanding of the overall industry.

oneplane 4y ago

> People go to universities to learn how to tackle real world programming problems. That's your problem right there. Also, the term 'university' seems to be overloaded in so many different ways (multiplied by different countries and cultures). To me, it seems that the American descriptions and their derivatives are pretty bad, same with the "poly"-prefixed educational institutions. There are so many factors that should be irrelevant (i.e. the "name" of the institute, the cost, the location) where only the subject matter and accreditation should be the actual factors. If I were to categorise it, you'd have to split it in three directions: - Academia, scientific research (University) - High-level education, scientific principles and theory, but with application of said principes and theory in mind (College perhaps?) - General or vocational education, aimed at learning how to do a job (Trade school?) But it is of course much more marketable if you call that middle tier a "University of Applied Sciences" as that sound much cooler and more advanced. The reality is that there are many more people needed in the world that actually perform the work than the amount of people that mostly think about the work that others might do. The world needs people in all sorts of varieties, but the real-world workload is overwhelmingly one of execution, not one of theory. Of course, when people are stuck in the (rat) race, one must go to university because that is the best, and only the best is good enough. So even if going that far risks people into diving headfirst into their own Peter Principle, it is what people do anyway. The end result are a bunch of people that barely made it through university and aren't all that useful in the real world right away (not advanced enough to propel the entire field or niche forward, not practical enough to perform less theoretical work). Of course, FAANG only wants the best, and since they can't go screen the 100k+ applications in their inboxes in detail they just start filtering based on paper promises or previous experience, with the end result being a stack of people who either already did the job, or who came out of university with advanced enough results to be malleable into the positions that are available. And thus the path is biased towards "if you want to make a ton of money so you can rent a broom closet in the bay area, you have to work at a FAANG and you can only do that with a university background". Ironically, as large and advanced as those companies may be, most people in the world don't work there. And trading in 80k for half the amount of work and normal living arrangements really isn't a bad deal when working anywhere else that's not a FAANG.