5 ms·

German here. Austerity? Over-regulation? An oligopoly of tech-incompetent local enterprises? Just guessing here. As a student in 2007, I started being an avid

German here. Austerity? Over-regulation? An oligopoly of tech-incompetent local enterprises? Just guessing here. As a student in 2007, I started being an avid follower of what Big Tech was doing and was flabbergasted that local tech enterprises didn't seem to notice or change anything. In CS at university they didn't teach programming (only as an aside) but all the funny theoretical OOP fluff that the community rightfully started ditching and frowning upon. Given software is slowly eating everything, I am not surprised in the result. Probably 7/10 of my fellow CS students will not be remotely able to explain how a given software works under the hood.

Aperocky 3y ago
> In CS at university they didn't teach programming That's quite alarming.
- lnsru 3y ago
  There is a myth at German universities, that programming is too practical. So basically you brew there computer scientists with couple internships where they see how programming works.
  - duxup 3y ago
    My career coding was a product of a bootcamp. Bootcamps have a well deserved reputation for pumping out unqualified candidates. Having said that the bootcamp I was a part of was hosted at (not really run by...) a local US university. I've worked with computer science graduates from there, good people, capable ... but man many of them should have had a semester of a bootcamp IMO, on top of their more traditional comp sci education. I would jump at the chance to get a formal comp sci education, but I think all universities could use a heavy dose of “practical application” type courses.
  - Tade0 3y ago
    > There is a myth at German universities, that programming is too practical. Am I understanding this correctly that students don't get programming assignments?
    - hooli_gan 3y ago
      This is false. In Germany there are Universitäten and Hochschulen. Hochschulen are more practical, at one of these you have programming assignments or projects in nearly every subject. Universitäten are more about the theory but they still have some programming assignments, maybe one subject every semester. At some Unis CS is just a part of the Mathematics department so that is also a factor which makes them even more theoretical.
      - nforgerit 3y ago
        That is the theoretical construct in the German system. However the differences are fading and to me it does not seem to be like German universities, as actors of (self-proclaimed) highest art in their topics, are doing very well. Btw: Though I enjoyed Maths much more than CS, I wouldn't have understood Linear Algebra without watching the MIT Open Courseware thingy by Gilbert Strang. I think that's saying a lot about the German art of teaching (at least at that time).
    - icelight 3y ago
      I'm not sure which university they are talking about, but both the universities I went to had both smaller (like weekly) programming assignments and large projects.
      - nforgerit 3y ago
        Sounds like a dream. They didn't have that at my time (2007) at Karlsruhe. Programming was negligible and could be overall circumvented by picking the according courses.
    - nforgerit 3y ago
      They do, but at least 15ys ago at university of Karlsruhe (which they laughably renamed to KIT at that time) people could circumvent most of the programming tasks. I looked up the current curriculum a couple of months ago, and they at least seem to have expanded from "3 weeks Java embedded into another course" to a full-blown one semester long programming course. If you ask me, they should make programming the fabric of almost all exercises/tasks, be it in math, cs or sth else along the lines. This would, however, require professors who are in to that kind of stuff and most preferred singing powerpoint-karaoke.
partiallypro 3y ago
Germany is an economic lion held back by its inability to digitize (even when it does it's half measure still attached to the past) and its development of deep relationship with untrustworthy countries (Russia being the prime example.) Trying to buy the 49 Euro Ticket can be done online but still requires approval by a human and an IBAN. That's my current favorite recent example of Germany making absolutely no sense relative to its peers.
- RandomLensman 3y ago
  The Bahn app has a human approver in the loop when buying the 49 Euro ticket?
  - nforgerit 3y ago
    I didn’t hear about this certain case but I’d not be too surprised here. Given Germany has been unsuccessfully trying to digitize their government services, there’s been many cases where people filled out PDFs online, which got printed on paper on the other side, sent by fax to another authority, there scanned and then worked on to finally send paper mail to the initial requesters.
- lispm 3y ago
  Strange, I bought mine via an app and paypal.
  - partiallypro 3y ago
    The official Bahn and even the MVV require an IBAN. To get my ticket, I had to wait 3 days using the MVV app to get a person to approve it.
    - lispm 3y ago
      I used also an official app of a public transport provider and I pay via paypal. The ticket is immediately active. 'IBAN' is a bank account number. So you had to have a bank account - most people have one. The 'ticket' is actually a subscription. There are now 11 million owners of a subscription of a Deutschlandticket. Start was 1st May 2023.
locallost 3y ago
None of the above. The true reason is that Germans are too conservative to invest in tech. You cannot have startups without investors and Germans will keep money in the bank, buy real estate, even invest in index funds, but startups give them too little of a guarantee of a return. You can remove overregulation, whatever it may consist of, but there will still be no funding at least not when compared to the US. But German economy is actually fine, moving slow and steady is their way and it works for them. I also don't really think universities should spend so much time on "programming", they are not vocational training programs. I wrote software and got paid for it before I studied, and didn't go to a university to learn that. If there's one thing German society can do with young people it's to teach them to take more risks. But programming can be learned from a book.
- Aperocky 3y ago
  That would have been true for most majors. The universities and colleges around the world have not adopted to the new reality where knowledge up to Master Degree level is essentially freely available to everyone with an internet connection. But colleges are still needed - if only for human reasons. And that's where I believe they should emphasize. A place where young people discover what they want to do and weigh their options. Instead of being assigned a major and mostly determined coursework.

Aperocky 3y ago

> In CS at university they didn't teach programming That's quite alarming.

lnsru 3y ago
There is a myth at German universities, that programming is too practical. So basically you brew there computer scientists with couple internships where they see how programming works.
- duxup 3y ago
  My career coding was a product of a bootcamp. Bootcamps have a well deserved reputation for pumping out unqualified candidates. Having said that the bootcamp I was a part of was hosted at (not really run by...) a local US university. I've worked with computer science graduates from there, good people, capable ... but man many of them should have had a semester of a bootcamp IMO, on top of their more traditional comp sci education. I would jump at the chance to get a formal comp sci education, but I think all universities could use a heavy dose of “practical application” type courses.
- Tade0 3y ago
  > There is a myth at German universities, that programming is too practical. Am I understanding this correctly that students don't get programming assignments?
  - hooli_gan 3y ago
    This is false. In Germany there are Universitäten and Hochschulen. Hochschulen are more practical, at one of these you have programming assignments or projects in nearly every subject. Universitäten are more about the theory but they still have some programming assignments, maybe one subject every semester. At some Unis CS is just a part of the Mathematics department so that is also a factor which makes them even more theoretical.
    - nforgerit 3y ago
      That is the theoretical construct in the German system. However the differences are fading and to me it does not seem to be like German universities, as actors of (self-proclaimed) highest art in their topics, are doing very well. Btw: Though I enjoyed Maths much more than CS, I wouldn't have understood Linear Algebra without watching the MIT Open Courseware thingy by Gilbert Strang. I think that's saying a lot about the German art of teaching (at least at that time).
  - icelight 3y ago
    I'm not sure which university they are talking about, but both the universities I went to had both smaller (like weekly) programming assignments and large projects.
    - nforgerit 3y ago
      Sounds like a dream. They didn't have that at my time (2007) at Karlsruhe. Programming was negligible and could be overall circumvented by picking the according courses.
  - nforgerit 3y ago
    They do, but at least 15ys ago at university of Karlsruhe (which they laughably renamed to KIT at that time) people could circumvent most of the programming tasks. I looked up the current curriculum a couple of months ago, and they at least seem to have expanded from "3 weeks Java embedded into another course" to a full-blown one semester long programming course. If you ask me, they should make programming the fabric of almost all exercises/tasks, be it in math, cs or sth else along the lines. This would, however, require professors who are in to that kind of stuff and most preferred singing powerpoint-karaoke.

partiallypro 3y ago

Germany is an economic lion held back by its inability to digitize (even when it does it's half measure still attached to the past) and its development of deep relationship with untrustworthy countries (Russia being the prime example.) Trying to buy the 49 Euro Ticket can be done online but still requires approval by a human and an IBAN. That's my current favorite recent example of Germany making absolutely no sense relative to its peers.

RandomLensman 3y ago
The Bahn app has a human approver in the loop when buying the 49 Euro ticket?
- nforgerit 3y ago
  I didn’t hear about this certain case but I’d not be too surprised here. Given Germany has been unsuccessfully trying to digitize their government services, there’s been many cases where people filled out PDFs online, which got printed on paper on the other side, sent by fax to another authority, there scanned and then worked on to finally send paper mail to the initial requesters.
lispm 3y ago
Strange, I bought mine via an app and paypal.
- partiallypro 3y ago
  The official Bahn and even the MVV require an IBAN. To get my ticket, I had to wait 3 days using the MVV app to get a person to approve it.
  - lispm 3y ago
    I used also an official app of a public transport provider and I pay via paypal. The ticket is immediately active. 'IBAN' is a bank account number. So you had to have a bank account - most people have one. The 'ticket' is actually a subscription. There are now 11 million owners of a subscription of a Deutschlandticket. Start was 1st May 2023.

locallost 3y ago

None of the above. The true reason is that Germans are too conservative to invest in tech. You cannot have startups without investors and Germans will keep money in the bank, buy real estate, even invest in index funds, but startups give them too little of a guarantee of a return. You can remove overregulation, whatever it may consist of, but there will still be no funding at least not when compared to the US. But German economy is actually fine, moving slow and steady is their way and it works for them. I also don't really think universities should spend so much time on "programming", they are not vocational training programs. I wrote software and got paid for it before I studied, and didn't go to a university to learn that. If there's one thing German society can do with young people it's to teach them to take more risks. But programming can be learned from a book.

Aperocky 3y ago
That would have been true for most majors. The universities and colleges around the world have not adopted to the new reality where knowledge up to Master Degree level is essentially freely available to everyone with an internet connection. But colleges are still needed - if only for human reasons. And that's where I believe they should emphasize. A place where young people discover what they want to do and weigh their options. Instead of being assigned a major and mostly determined coursework.