3 ms·

I also had a Software Engineering class (actually two them) that were focused on how to build software in real life. This was in '03 and we covered things like

I also had a Software Engineering class (actually two them) that were focused on how to build software in real life. This was in '03 and we covered things like waterfall methodology, requirements gathering, functional specs, etc. If taught the exact same way today it would be woefully out of date but the time we spent on requirements gathering (where the teacher or TA) pretended to be a product owner and purposely gave really crappy answers and we had to extract useful information but by bit was one of the best pieces of prep I ever received. All in all, it was boring and tedious but it certainly wasn't the worst class I ever had in regards to preparing me for a career in technology. I use those lessons to some degree all the time, I rarely directly use all the work I had to do to create my own OS...

learc83 11y ago
> I use those lessons to some degree all the time, I rarely directly use all the work I had to do to create my own OS... I think you probably would have learned those lessons after a few months on the job. You probably wouldn't have picked up the knowledge to build your own OS on the job, however. >All in all, it was boring and tedious but it certainly wasn't the worst class I ever had in regards to preparing me for a career in technology. Did you learn about billing clients, and effectively advertising your services in your CS degree? What about equity versus salary tradeoffs? At least 50% of working in technology is soft skills, why doesn't a CS degree spend 50% of the time teaching you those? The answer is that a CS degree isn't supposed to be vocational training. Vocational training, including learning to talk to clients, should be done on the job, during an internship/apprenticeship, or in a specialized vocational training program. By including it in a college degree, employers have successfully pushed employee training costs onto workers and society (as the article argues).

learc83 11y ago

> I use those lessons to some degree all the time, I rarely directly use all the work I had to do to create my own OS... I think you probably would have learned those lessons after a few months on the job. You probably wouldn't have picked up the knowledge to build your own OS on the job, however. >All in all, it was boring and tedious but it certainly wasn't the worst class I ever had in regards to preparing me for a career in technology. Did you learn about billing clients, and effectively advertising your services in your CS degree? What about equity versus salary tradeoffs? At least 50% of working in technology is soft skills, why doesn't a CS degree spend 50% of the time teaching you those? The answer is that a CS degree isn't supposed to be vocational training. Vocational training, including learning to talk to clients, should be done on the job, during an internship/apprenticeship, or in a specialized vocational training program. By including it in a college degree, employers have successfully pushed employee training costs onto workers and society (as the article argues).