5 ms·
Half of my graduating class could barely program.
by vips7L 6mo ago
Half of my graduating class could barely program.
- spacechild1 6mo agoWhat did you study?
- vips7L 6mo agoComputer Science.
- spacechild1 6mo agoI see. Computer Science is not an engineering degree and it is not about programming. That's what Software Engineering degrees are for.
- LtWorf 6mo agoSoftware engineers graduates I've met are usually much worse at programming than computer science graduates.
- traderj0e 6mo agoThat too
- whstl 6mo agoI'm gonna strongly +1 on this. Most of the "Software Engineering" curricula I've seen is catered towards "getting a job as a programmer", and is mostly focused on languages, frameworks and outdated processes. As an engineer in another discipline, there's no engineering there. I would rank like this: Computer Science > Self Taught > Software Engineering.
- a96 6mo agoI might go as far as saying that SE is dogmatic. And the dogma is usually very outdated. Not necessarily useless, though.
- traderj0e 6mo agoI remember people in college bragging that they're learning Angular. I was like, is this an engineering or physics thing, angular dynamics? No, it's a web framework with a ton of boilerplate that my LLM deals with now.
- whstl 6mo agoToday it's just React, but there was a small window where Angular was the #1 framework and some courses were teaching it. I even saw a "post-grad in React" lately. Backend-wise it's the same, it comes and goes with fashion and whatever company has influence in the university recommends.
- traderj0e 6mo agoMany of the top schools don't have software/computer engineering degrees, rather people who want to be SWEs get CS degrees.
- spacechild1 6mo agoYes, you're right. And that's a problem.
- traderj0e 6mo agoWell idk what an actual software engineering program would teach that you can't learn better on your own or on the job. Formal CS education teaches things that simultaneously help with the job and also can't be learned there. But some people just don't have grit, whichever path they took.
- nunez 6mo agoMost CS programs have software dev in their curricula; I don't think it's wild to expect a CS student to code FizzBuzz.
- spacechild1 6mo agoYes, but overall it's still a science degree and not an engineering degree.
- traderj0e 6mo agoSome of them aren't even BS, they're BA
- jazz9k 6mo agoI graduated in 2006 in CS, and I had at least 5 or 6 software development classes. We also had electives, which included DB design and algorithms. Many of the higher-level classes allowed us to use any language of our choice as well. I was self-taught since I was 15, so most of these classes were just review for me. I met lots of people that didn't know how to code as seniors (and never ended up getting a job in their field).
- whstl 6mo agoYep. Way more than half of the people I interview can't even do a very basic FizzBuzz, even with guidance. Those are people with a degree, job experience and reference letters.