Slashdot Log In
Are You a Blue-Collar Or White-Collar Developer?
Posted by
Soulskill
on Sunday November 15, @01:24PM
from the what-about-three-moon-wolf-collar dept.
from the what-about-three-moon-wolf-collar dept.
jammag writes "Some developers have gone to four-year universities, where they've also studied subjects like history and sociology, while other coders go to vocational schools and focus purely on writing great software. So why, asks a longtime developer, is there a stigma attached to not having a four-year degree, when 'blue collar' coders might be better trained? Why does the software industry keep emphasizing this difference — and generally giving better pay to four-year grads? Isn't being a developer about real skill level, not the piece of paper on the wall?"
Related Stories
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Slaves wear collars (Score:5, Insightful)
Reply to This
Re:Slaves wear collars (Score:5, Funny)
A telecommuter I hope?
Reply to This
Parent
Re:Slaves wear collars (Score:4, Funny)
Whether you should hope is hard to determine without pics.
Reply to This
Parent
It's about social status... (Score:4, Insightful)
"Isn't being a developer about real skill level, not the piece of paper on the wall?"'
It's really a game of social status, education does NOT ensure someone is smarter or more skilled, it only ensures that, that person had the persistance or was a very good cheater.
Persistance and skill are often confused, the education system is really about handing out status to attempt to justify who gets jobs over who doesn't merit be damned. Anyone who believes education is not mostly about social status is not very bright.
Reply to This
Re:It's about social status... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like you're confusing education with schooling.
-jcr
Reply to This
Parent
Re:It's about social status... (Score:4, Interesting)
>>>Sounds like you're confusing education with schooling.
No. The original poster was right on. The longer you spend time in school (2, 4, or 6-year degrees), the greater value you have to the employer. It's a status thing... like jumping over hurdles to prove how "fit" you are to your boss.
The annoying thing is that having a high school degree used to be good enough to prove yourself competent enough to hold an office job, or technical job. But once everyone was getting HS degrees, suddenly the goalpost moved, and you need two years of college. If college education ever becomes universal, we can expect the goalpost to move even further away (you'll need a six-year masters degree). The Human Cattle...er, Resource people need to filter-out the "hirables" from the chaff somehow.
Reply to This
Parent
Re:It's about social status... (Score:5, Insightful)
The longer you spend time in school (2, 4, or 6-year degrees), the greater value you have to the employer.
Only because the Employer *thinks so*. That's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
In the real world, I've seen no correlation between education and programming ability, or communication skills, or planning skills. Absolutely none whatsoever. Despite that, I've worked at companies that require candidates to have a 4-year degree, a policy I thought was grossly unfair.
Why don't I have a degree? For some reason I've never understood, a CS degree that my University required calculus. I can't hack calculus... my failing that class multiple times destroyed my self-esteem to the point where I dropped out of school rather than try again.
What does calculus have to do with programming? From my experience, nothing. Absolutely nothing.
I don't have a degree because the degree program required a difficult, pointless, and utterly useless class. After a few years, I realized it wasn't me who was dumb. And that was confirmed when I entered the industry and began interviewing candidates who had calculus degrees, but couldn't code worth crap.
Obviously, maybe I'm a weird and special case, but you can see that I really don't care whether a job seeker has a degree or not, I'll give them a shot either way. If they can hack it, they can hack it.
(Oh, sure, there's going to be someone who stands up and goes, "well what about programming video and audio compressors?" But that's not using calculus as a *programming* concept, that's using calculus because it just happens to be relevant to that problem domain. Just like you'd be better off knowing the GAAP if you're writing an accounting application.)
Reply to This
Parent
Re:It's about social status... (Score:5, Insightful)
> I can't hack calculus...
Sure you can be a great programmer (in most areas) without knowing calculus, but still.. there is the fact that you just couldnt figure out something that a lot of people can cope with. As an employer I would have to wonder what else you couldnt figure out. Unless there was something pretty damn significant in your favour to counterbalance this, I would hire the person capable of jumping over the (somewhat arbitrary) hoops necessary to get the degree
Reply to This
Parent
Re:It's about social status... (Score:4, Insightful)
You make a good point.
I'm an engineer, and I too had difficulty with math. In 6th grade I almost failed (the teacher was kind and gave each student one free A - that saved me), but then in 7th grade my understanding of math suddenly "clicked" and I sailed through with A's until 12th grade when I scored a D in Calculus. But then in college I repeated the same material and got an A in Calc 1, an A- in Calc 2, and then a W in Calc 3 (because I again had a D average). So I repeated the course, with a different professor, and got an A. The new professor even called my college adviser and said, "That guy is really bright." (Good thing he didn't look at my transcript.)
Sometimes perseverance matters.
And fair or not, that's what employers look for. As for calc's application to programming, it's pretty rare but sometimes you use computers to recreate real world problems - problems that need calculus to solve. If you don't understand calculus, you can't input into the machine.
Reply to This
Parent
What "those" courses have to do with programming (Score:5, Interesting)
This is an over-simplification, but take a look at the cognitive domain of Bloom's Taxonomy [wikipedia.org]. It lays out 6 "levels" of learning: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. The reason universities require classes like calculus and liberal studies for a computer science degree is they strengthen your abilities in the higher aspects of learning: analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. 2 year degree programs focus primarily on knowledge, comprehension, and application.
Does this mean those with 2 year degrees can't be competent, even exceptional programmers? Not at all. Most day to day programming work doesn't require more than application, with a little into analysis for debugging. Additionally, those with 2 year degrees are often better than university graduates in those areas for a specific toolset, because they've spent more focused effort on it. These are the people we all know with encyclopedic knowledge of APIs. They know every little detail of the standard libraries they use. They know every little compiler quirk along with its workaround. They often code faster than university graduates because they don't have to look as much up.
Ironically, it requires good evaluation skills to see the value of the top three levels of learning. The things you learn in calculus or anthropology don't help much in just applying knowledge of a specific toolset to a specific set of requirements, which is what we spend most of our time doing, but it does help tremendously in the ability to answer questions like, "Would google's new programming language be a better fit than what we're currently using for our next major project?" or "Is this the best way to implement this algorithm?" It's also beneficial when you have to teach yourself a new technology that wasn't covered in school.
Of course, there is significant overlap between the two groups, because schooling is only one factor in one's education, but that's the general difference.
Reply to This
Parent
Re:It's about social status... (Score:5, Insightful)
Only if "Computer Science" is a vocational degree about teaching students how to be computer programmers. Teaching computer science majors source control is kind of like teaching English majors how to use Word - it may be an important tool in making practical use of what one has learnt, but it's not relevant to the theoretical underpinnings of the subject, and university degrees are usually about the latter, not the former.
Which is why calculus is a reasonable prerequisite for a Computer Science degree. Calculus is a fairly important part of higher-level maths, so, first, if you can't do calculus there's a good chance you won't be able to do the non-calculus math that a CS degree needs, and, second, calculus is actually used in a fair amount of Computer Science - I would think some calculus was important in understanding complexity proofs, for instance.
Calculus isn't a good prerequisite for a vocational qualification in software development, but a BA or BSc in Computer Science probably isn't that kind of vocational qualification.
Reply to This
Parent
Re:It's about social status... (Score:5, Funny)
"Sounds like you're confusing education with schooling."
We all know dumb people with degree's, my point is just because someone went through school does not guarantee they are any good at what they do or that they learned much of anything while they were there.
The degree is about handing out marks of status, in my experience with people someone with a masters is not really better then someone with a bachelors. One simply had more persistance, endurance/ability to cheat amd money to pursue a mark of higher status.
Indeed. Do you happen to have one?
Reply to This
Parent
It's a trick question (Score:5, Insightful)
All developers are blue collar. Programming is the IT equivalent of brick laying, it's a trade, not a profession.
Professions have legal status; Doctors, lawyers, accountants have to be certified and approved.
Reply to This
Parent
Re:It's a trick question (Score:5, Insightful)
Plain programmers became obsolete with structured analysis and design. The reason they still exist at banks and other huge bureaucratic organizations is that they have to maintain ancient systems that are both too risky and expensive to replace.
Most modern design techniques focus less on details and more on interactions and flexibility, giving the developers much more liberty to make important decisions.
Truth is, if you're just a code monkey with absolutely no imagination and problem solving skills you're useless for the modern software industry.
Sorry for the lengthy response, but I'm in systems engineering and I get the same 'programmers are brick layers' from all the useless guys that have absolutely no skills and feel the need to bash on good developers to increase their ego. Somehow everyone incompetent enough to code thinks he is above a developer. It makes me rage a little.
Reply to This
Parent
Re:It's a trick question (Score:5, Interesting)
If your development includes tasks that are equivalent to brick laying. I think you should consider automating the tasks. Once all trivial tasks are handled automatically there are no trivial tasks left, and thus it is no longer a trade, but either art or science depending on your point of view.
That said: Developers are often treated as blue collar, perhaps because of this mistaken view you share?
And in some companies hiring untrained programmers, they have never automized their trivial tasks, maybe because their untrained programmers have never thought of the idea, or thought of reading a book that would teach them that idea.
Reply to This
Parent
Re:It's a trick question (Score:5, Informative)
Sure if you use your own made up definition of white collar and blue collar.
The term "white collar" was coined in reference to clerks, which don't need certification and approval and have no legal status.
A blue collar worker usually does manual labor and earns a wage, two things none of the developers I know do/get.
Reply to This
Parent
Re:It's a trick question (Score:5, Insightful)
phd. certified and approved.
Programming is a trade, not a profession.
Now... *Engineering*, is a profession. But you can be a developer/programmer without being an engineer and the number of programmers/developers who pretend they are engineers (without actually following any engineering practices) is astounding.
Reply to This
Parent
Re:It's a trick question (Score:5, Insightful)
A PhD has no more legal status than an MS or BS or even an AA degree.
If you're going to claim that government certification is the distinguishing mark of a "professional", then Einstein was just a "tradesman", while the teenager with the shears at the Hair Cuttery is a "professional". I don't think this fits with the usage of educated native speakers of English. (It may conform to some legal definition, but those often have nothing to do with the linguistic meanings of words -- for example, cocaine is not a "narcotic", but that doesn't stop the law from classifying it as such.)
Reply to This
Parent
Re:It's about social status... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's really a game of social status, education does NOT ensure someone is smarter or more skilled, it only ensures that, that person had the persistance or was a very good cheater.
And who exactly were they cheating off of? You think everybody in Caltech is cheating off of the guy going to DeVry?
Persistance and skill are often confused, the education system is really about handing out status to attempt to justify who gets jobs over who doesn't merit be damned. Anyone who believes education is not mostly about social status is not very bright.
Somebody who believes educational success is all about social status in technical subjects is probably somebody who was lazy and prefers to say stuff like "Persistance and skill are often confused."
In the real world, persistence multiplied by skill gets stuff done. And yes those students who had the social maturity to recognize that even though they may be smart they also have to put in their labor too are the ones who get ahead. As they should.
What level education are you thinking about anyway? My experience is that the level of intelligence and skill at the top level universities is truly very high. Moreover, people from that environment tend to be (mostly) pretty well adjusted and agreeable, especially since they've had enough experience with other very smart people that they realize they're no longer the only sharp fork in the drawer by any means. People who may have been bright but always surrounded by mediocrities can have a pretty arrogant attitude, like "the education system is really about handing out status to attempt to justify who gets jobs over who doesn't merit be damned".
I've now been on the other side interviewing for open positions in my company. In my group we typically take MS and PhD graduates in serious quantitative subjects from major research universities---that works quite well. However I have done some interviews with others who didn't fit that, but tried to convince us that they had the get-it-done-skill. It became apparent quite quickly that they didn't have the fundamental insight and intelligence that we want.
Reply to This
Parent
Re:It's about social status... (Score:5, Insightful)
I do. Most of my friends either have PhDs or are working on one. You don't need to be smart to get a PhD. Most people I know with PhDs, are not, in fact, what I would consider smart. Importantly, however, they aren't stupid. I haven't met any idiot PhDs yet. The most important factor in getting that PhD is motivation (or persistence, call it what you will), and that is what the PhD signifies. It shows you have what it takes to finish the job. If you can show that you can get the job done without getting a PhD (and I know some of those too), you can still be successful (though perhaps somewhat less so in research). Like you said, the degree only helps you on that first job.
Reply to This
Parent
Re:It's about social status... (Score:4, Insightful)
Cute, the old "they laughed at galileo" adage... Every crackpots favorite.
Folks, we all know about Wegener, Semmelweis etc. How they were ridiculed and later vindicated. Now, why do we remember these guys? Because they were the exception. They happened to be right. They were not your ordinary crackpot.
Remember they also laughed at Bozo the clown.
Reply to This
Parent
Re:It's about social status... (Score:5, Informative)
since the "hurdle" set up by Human Cattle department requires a minimum of four years.
In most large corporations, (and I speak from extensive experience here), these requirements are set by the line managers in the actual departments themselves. The Recruiting people generally look for whatever the line managers ask for.
There are always exceptions, but I've found in the majority of the companies where I've worked, every time I've had to hire, they (Recruitment) ask me (line manager) what I want to see. The job descriptions are also written by line managers in most cases as well.
Reply to This
Parent
No, it's not. (Score:5, Insightful)
People who have a university degree are generally more likely to be smarter and more skilled. No, it's not a guarantee; there are plenty of stupid people with degrees out there and there are plenty of really smart people out there without degrees. But what is a guarantee is that if you get a roomful of people with degrees and compare their skill and ability to a roomful of people without degrees, all other things being equal, the people with degress will do a better job.
Also, keep in mind that rare is the job that is only about coding. When I was a developer, my job also entailed things such as writing documentation, holding training sessions for other developers and users, basic accounting and budgeting, and so on. Non-coding things I learned in college while earning my degree are useful skills that I do use today, not just how to write some subroutine. Yes, even social skills you seem to have disdain for come in useful, because I actually work with other people, not just holed up with a computer.
Persistence is a skill. By completing your degree, you have demonstrated that you are willing and able to achieve success with long-term projects, including handling things that, at the time, you might not be overjoyed in having to do. You've also demonstrated the ability to learn new things to at least some minimal degree (no pun intended) of competence that might be outside of your familiar bubble of knowledge.
A college degree doesn't just demonstrate what you've learned, it demonstrates the ability to learn. If I'm hiring someone, I certainly want them to be able to do the job I hire them for, but I also want them to be able to quickly and effectively pick up new things that I might have to throw at them someday.
I'm not saying that a college degree is the most important factor in hiring. Personally, I'll value experience any day. Given a choice between hiring a 10-year veteran of something versus someone who has only been doing it a year or two, I'll take the veteran any day no matter who has a college degree. But a college degree is important. If experience is more-or-less equal, I'd take the college graduate over the non-graduate every time.
Reply to This
Parent
proofreading for the college graduate? (Score:4, Interesting)
Reply to This
Re:proofreading for the college graduate? (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree with acidfast.
Furthermore, Mr. Spiegel, you are keen to use cliche phrases without even putting in the effort to understand their meaning, or know their correct spelling. This helps you come across as a pompous idiot.
For example: "Queue awkward silence."
The correct spelling is "cue awkward silence." It comes from stage and movie production, where the producer will "cue" actors, lights, or special effects. How does one "queue" awkward silence?
I almost stopped reading there. But I kept going, hoping to find some redeeming value.
It was hard to finish your article, as your tone makes it clear that you are a cocky, holier-than-thou ladder climber. You provoke a regular guy eating his lunch into a pissing match, and then you claim to have said things like, "Everyone is making valid points," in actual conversation. Who does that?
God help any of us who may have to work with you, or even worse, for you. I don't care if you have Asperger's or not. You are a douchebag, period.
Reply to This
Parent
Re:proofreading for the college graduate? (Score:5, Funny)
You tell it to get in line behind nervous ball-scratching and red face.
Reply to This
Parent
Algorithms (Score:5, Insightful)
Reply to This
Re:Algorithms (Score:5, Insightful)
The really good "untrained" programmers know where to look for the algorithms. I don't have a degree, but I can use doubly linked lists, sort algorithms, mandelbrot, etc., because when I needed them I learned how to use them.
You're not talking about trained vs. untrained, you're talking about stupid vs. intelligent, and not only do you not need a degree to be intelligent, you can be stupid while still having a degree.
Which I think was the OPs point, masked in a thinly veiled class warfare reference.
Reply to This
Parent
Re:Algorithms (Score:5, Insightful)
yes, the trick with the advance degree is that you learn in advance about them and when to know how to use them. It also depends very much on what you end up doing at the end of it all,if you end up in a job where traditional search and sorting are your bread and butter you'll pick that up quickly, but not all jobs are like that. Linked lists and sorting is a first and second year problem, Greedy algorithms, graph theory, (shortest path stuff), linear programming are 3rd year and so on.
I'm taking a grad course in machine learning, where we learn about the backpropogation algorithm (the first algorithm we talked about in class, in I think the first real lecture or maybe second). If in highschool someone had told me go look up and use the backpropogation algorithm for something I could have. But the guy with the degree is supposed to know which to use. Oh and you know all those big O notations... well we have a grad course in algorithms which is all about trying to calculate the numerical coefficients in front of the n^2 or whatever. In that case when they adverted the course to us, the prof gave this sample of two different implementations of the same O(n^2) sort, one had a coefficient of 1.7 the other was 2.something. Maybe important, maybe not. Maybe more education in this case is diminishing returns, but then you don't offer more education to that many people.
All things that of course you can learn on your own, if it's important, if you have time. The point of having the advanced degree person is they have taken the time, and may know other algorithms as well, and can direct the learning of the other people, who didn't have the time or if at the time it wasn't important. Just the same when you're actually at a company not everyone has time to read the literature, someone has to read, and understand a lot of literature and filter down to the important stuff which is then sent off the relevant people.
Reply to This
Parent
Re:Algorithms (Score:5, Interesting)
Just because someone knows how to use a typewriter doesn't mean they can write a book just as well as an English major.
An english degree helps you write in the same way that a history degree helps you change the world.
Unless, of course, you meant edit, or perhaps write a book review.
Reply to This
Parent
Re:Algorithms (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was 15 someone recommended the second book in "The Art of Computer Programming" series by Knuth. It was "Searching and Sorting". I read it.
I knew more about the common algorithms their order, and other details of when they were and weren't useful than your average college graduate before I even got to college. I wrote my own b-tree indexing system when I was 18.
When I was in and/or hanging around college I ended up helping a graduate level student with their AI homework. He didn't understand what a heap was or why it would be useful in an A* search. He didn't know how to code a linked list.
That stupid piece of paper is nearly meaningless. And when I've interviewed people it was only a minor data point. I usually used their time at college to probe how much they remembered about the stuff they did work on and whether or not they had a fine grasp of the details. I could care less about their degree or their grades.
Reply to This
Parent
Re:Algorithms (Score:5, Insightful)
A degree certifies that you've read and to some degree understood, the book.
Reply to This
Parent
Re:Algorithms (Score:5, Insightful)
Certainly. Experience is good. However, if you're going to hire someone who is fresh out of school and you don't have time to exhaustively test all the applicants, do you prefer someone who has taken and passed courses that are relevant to the skills you want, or someone who has not (but MIGHT have read a book on it once)?
Also, who is more likely to actually DO that "life long learning" thing? Someone who went to school for a year or two or someone who invested four years? Not to say that there aren't two year diploma holders who take professional development very seriously, but the degree holders have demonstrated that they both respect knowledge and are able and willing to invest their time in obtaining it.
Reply to This
Parent
Re:Algorithms (Score:4, Interesting)
Depends on what kind of developing you do.
If you are responsible for the GUI on a large project, then no. Calculus isn't gonna do you a bit of good. If you're optimizing DB calls for a project with thousands of concurrent connections, then yes, you do need that. Advanced math is needed for *some* types of development, not all.
Same goes for algorithms. Yes, you'll learn about all kinds of special algorithms in a formal class. But then you get to the real world, and 99% of the time you're gonna use quicksort, heapsort or merge sort depending on your needs (average vs worst-case sort time, stability, etc). The dozen special sorts you memorized are so rarely required that it is almost a waste of time to spend 16 weeks learning them. Yes, there are fields where those sorts are helpful, but for *most* development projects it is unlikely you would ever use them.
Reply to This
Parent
Re:Algorithms (Score:4, Insightful)
Academic programs often have an unfortunate tendency to turn out people educated like they were going on to be academics.
That said - Unawareness of the wider world of algorithms (and wider world of Computer Science, writ large) is a self imposed glass ceiling in the programming field.
The real key is not whether you went to school. It's whether you care enough about yourself and your career to learn enough to be proficient and eventually excellent. 4-year colleges, and in particular very good 4-year colleges and grad programs, work hard to get proficiency in what they think is relevant (with the above-mentioned proviso that they think a future in academia is more likely than statistics actually support) and open your eyes to the skills and factors for excellence.
I've known curious bright people who never got any 2 or 4 year degree or who got completely non-technical degrees who are world class programmers. They go to conferences, read journals, participate in technical professional development, etc.
If you assume just going to college is going to get you through, and not following up with conferences and journals and technical professional development, you're imposing a glass ceiling on yourself. You will not excel.
If you assume that your m@d l33t code hacking skills will get you through and that you don't need to care about algorithms and computer science topics writ large, you're imposing a glass ceiling on yourself. You will not excel.
If you assume that reading slashdot and a dozen more websites is an acceptable replacement for doing homework (reading actual tech journals, CS papers, etc), you're imposing a glass ceiling on yourself.
Grad students generally never survive to graduate degrees without understanding that, though not all succeed in the real world. A lot of 4-year students don't get that, even ones who went to good universities. Far too many 2-year university students and self taught people don't get it.
Put the video game down and go find out what researchers and cutting edge programmers are doing, what they see as the next hard problems, and find out what's going on which will be relevant to the work you're doing now, what you're going to be doing next year, and what you hope to be doing in your wildest dreams in two to five years. If you aren't actually going out and looking at the advanced stuff coming down the pipe your skills will erode over time, no matter how hot they are now. Widen your scope and look deeper.
Reply to This
Parent
No. (Score:4, Interesting)
The short answer is "no." But by the very nature of asking if there is a stigma attached to something you're suggesting that there is.
Like - "Do you find that there is a stigma about work ethic attached to young men with mohawks?" I have just implied I believe there is and are asking for corroboration.
I don't care what experience someone has as long as they can write great code. Google on the other hand however won't hire you unless you have a Masters or PhD.
Reply to This
Re:No. (Score:5, Funny)
So your evidence that Google hires applicants without degrees is the fact that you don't have a degree and Google didn't hire you?
Hmmm....back to Boolean maths for you!
Reply to This
Parent
I'm what you could call a "blue collar" coder (Score:5, Interesting)
.. but have somehow managed to break through the stigma, now working in an environment where most people have at a minimum a bachelors degree...
And as much as I hate to admit it.. I really regret going the vocational school route. While I always felt I could code as well or better than most uni grads (mainly because I got into it as a hobby long before making a career of it) I've found myself deficient in the algorithm and math stuff.
Now, in most programming jobs this isn't going to matter.. I just happened to land in one of the few jobs that is heavy in the maths. I've managed to "bring myself up" to the required level and found success.. but I think it would have been a lot easier if I'd gone the uni route.
Reply to This
From an adjacent industry... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm a hardware engineer. You want a real engineer for some design and most analysis tasks. History and sociology don't play a part, but dedication to the profession and experience with the underlying principles behind observations are key. A two year grad, or technician, is typically very good for a subset of design, along with a whole bunch of data acquisition.
I imagine code to be the same. If you want high level stuff, architectures, in depth analysis, a full discussion of repercussions of coding choices, a 4 year computer scientist or software engineer is called for. If all that stuff is already laid out and you just need someone to type in a pile of code to do a well defined task, a 2 year would be great.
It's not necessarily the stuff learned in the extra 2 years, but the level of person it takes to invest in their future like that. The 4 year colleges provide a different group of people to "run with" and compete against. College is rarely about the classes, although they're necessary and grades are the common barometer, but it's about the friends made and the level of competition -- you need to compete with people to learn better practices.
Of course, there are prodigies who can do excellent work with self teaching, but separating them from the chaff (and overcoming their egos) is rarely worth the time in my experience.
Reply to This
Re:From an adjacent industry... (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, there are prodigies who can do excellent work with self teaching, but separating them from the chaff (and overcoming their egos) is rarely worth the time in my experience.
This is basically what it all comes down to. There are risks that come with hiring employees. Narrowing your selection to those with 4 year degrees or more minimizes that risk as much as possible.
Reply to This
Parent
Re:From an adjacent industry... (Score:4, Insightful)
What you may not appreciate, as an engineering graduate, is that a computer science degree is a science degree, not an engineering degree. 2-year technical diploma programs are sometimes closer to engineering degrees than computer science generally is.
The (admittedly anecdotal) evidence I've seen is that at least at institutions local to me, engineering programs include training like project planning and estimation, teaching you to keep a log while you're investigating so you can double-check you covered all possibilities, as well as including several practical project courses. Computer science, on the other hand, while it does focus on math and the math behind logic, doesn't include all this practical training that's essential to your actual job as a programmer.
I have contemporaries who tell me that beyond C++ 101 you can get through a CS degree without writing any code -- which is perhaps appropriate for an academic who's interested in group theory, but not for someone I'm going to hire.
So while I'd rather work with someone who's had that rigor and practical knowledge drilled into them, there's no guarantee that's what you're getting when you hire a computer science bachelor's graduate. Which is why I think we need 4-year software engineering professional degrees, but then while we're at it maybe I could get a pony too..
Reply to This
Parent
Why they make a difference? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, probably because computer science is one of the few places where you really go from build to design. Sure it happens that a construction worker becomes a civil engineer or architect, but it's not something that happens by itself. In most lines of work you'll often end up with people doing it some weird way because they've never learned that sort of thing, you can see it in computers too with people that never learned any design patterns and decided to invent their own - mostly poorly. Sure, proven experience beats all but if I was choosing between someone that's learned the theory and has a little experience versus someone that's been busy writing low level procedures all that time it'd be a tough call. If I could have both I'd probably ask the guy with the academic background to draft it and ask the other to sanity check it. Code can be "ugly but works" and it's not really important, people don't touch it much unless they're changing functionality. There's no such as "ugly but works" design, then it IS an ugly design that'll come back to haunt you again and again.
Reply to This
Wow, That's a Loaded Summary (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, those aren't questions in the summary. It's a bunch of statements. When you frame your "questions" the way the summary did, there's not a whole lot for anyone to say. There's nothing else for me to say except to refute the basic premise of what the summary laid out.
I went to a four year college and got my degree in CS. My college is actually very prestigious but for its humanities, economics, and other non-CS related fields. I went there knowing that because I wasn't sure what I wanted to do when I started college. With that said, I did studied a lot of humanities and non-CS subjects because they interested me and my college encouraged me to explore. Nonetheless, I did study computer science rigorously, especially in the more theoretical areas such as graph algorithms and triangulation/localization algorithms. The way the summary is written, it made it sound like people like me don't know what a big-O notation means or what a pointer is. That's really unfair. If someone mistreats you because of your two year degree, the right approach isn't to denigrate people with four year degrees.
I've been in the industry for a while. The times when the degree matters is when the recruiter go searching for candidates. They search for skill sets but also for specific groups of schools when hiring interns or new college grads. Why? It's based on the perception that those who go to prestigious schools tend to be fairly intelligent because the schools themselves do a good job of weeding out bad students. It doesn't mean all students from those schools are good nor does it mean people who go to two year schools are bad. You have to think of it in terms of probability and inference. With that said, schools pay a role mostly when hiring for NCGs and interns. For experienced candidates, we usually don't even bother look at that. In fact, most candidates put that information last on their resume and we glance at it at most. The most important part is the ability to solve problems and write good code.
BTW, the article itself is pretty horrible. It doesn't even say anything of value. It's just a bunch of guys arguing and being judgmental. Grow up.
Reply to This
4 years of college not about piece of paper either (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't being a four-year grad about having gone to college for four years, not the piece of paper on the wall? Like you said, they study other things like history and sociology.
Reply to This
Please no... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the kind of story that will bring out the worst in Slashdot. It has it all:
Slashdot, what the hell happened to you? You used to be interesting and hot, but you gained 400 lbs and started smoking crack. You've really let yourself go. I don't think I can do this anymore. It's hard to say, but I don't love you anymore.
Reply to This
A real C/S education is priceless. (Score:5, Informative)
I'm a blue collar developer but I had some CS in college pursuing a degree in English. Somehow I managed to BS my way into a graduate class on computing theory which I have to say was the most valuable education I've gotten in my life. Even if you do not get a degree, you will be richly rewarded if you make an effort to educate yourself.
I would recommend:
a) learn classic data structures. learn binary trees, learn hash tables. throw away the pre-built collections you get and try building them yourself. You'll gain a better appreciation of what your libraries do and a real sense of which might be appropriate.
b) learn some formal information theory. Learn what Big O notation means and understand the difference between O(1) O(n) O(logN), and so on. If you want to be a real snob, try and learn some set theory, at least relational algebra, and then you'll really get a grip on how to use a relational database effectively, and understand why things are the way they are.
c) I would highly recommend dabbling in assembly language. Writing snippets of code in assembly language is not that hard. You just have to be organized about what you do and keep track of things yourself.
d) If you want to get into it a bit more, it would not hurt to read Turing's classic paper where he defines the Turing machine. The thing about Turing and indeed, a lot of the foundational papers by the greats in computer science, is that they are remarkably readable.
e) Have a crack at an NP complete problem, just write a code to solve one, then ask yourself why, it is so ridiculous, and then read up on that.
f) Try and do a little bit with fractals. Write a mandelbrot set generator... Everyone does it.
All of those things are great things for any developer to do. Indeed, whether you finish college or not, your education in computer science should be a lifelong thing. Like any field, challenging yourself with problems solved and unsolved will not only make you a better programmer, but also, to some degree, a better human being. Your formal training is only the beginning of your obligation to educate yourself, lifelong.
Reply to This
What stigma? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't have a four-year degree, in CS or anything else. Most of my time working as a programmer, I've worked with people, most of whom had degrees (usually CS or math or physics, sometimes something else). There was a time when I was a team lead, and both people working under me had degrees.
I never found it to be a problem for my career, or when interacting with my teammates. Judging by everything that I've seen, the general perception in this industry is that good experience and knowledge always beat formal education.
Reply to This
'Maturity' of CS causes change in education (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm as old as dirt. When I went to college, there weren't any computers available. By the time I got to grad school, colleges were enamored with computers. I actually took a course in BASIC in grad school, something they MAY do in Elementary School today--or not. I learned BASIC via punched cards where ">" was "GT" but, hey! (It was a CDC 6000, same computer as BG used as a teenager.) I thought it was SO COOL!!!! So when the Commodore PET came out I held fire, and when the Trash-80 came out (I loved the wafting plymers of its smell) I just waited, and when the Apple ][ came out, I splurged and by the time I got rid of it, I had spent $7,000 on it with the CP/M card, and all that stuff. And when my boss said, "I think we ought to investigate computers," I humbly suggested an Apple, and she gave me $5,000 to do it. The rest, as they say, is history. I bought one of the first IBM PC's, and by the time I retired, I had purchased several minis and probably on the order of 700 PCs. Also, I might add, I paid my mortgage writing about them for 20 years.
I say this to give background. The point is that when the computer revolution happened, I was there. I lived in it and I loved it, but I was largely self-taught. No one else had a computer at home, and so when our business needed to 'automate,' I was salivating at the head of the line saying "Me! Me! Me!" Who else could they possibly have chosen? Besides, by that time I had learned some Pascal, some dBase, some Fortran and COBOL, not to mention Visicalc. I did the CNE shtick just to try to keep up. And I did. I put in our first Frame Relay Ethernet network, then went to the class to see if I did it right. So that's how I became an IT guy.
But nowadays with the background I had, I could NEVER become an IT person because my industry, when they need an IT person, recruits for one with that amount of knowledge in education. This is simply the maturity of the industry. The same thing happened with electricity, with airplanes, and with any number of fields that simply did not previously exist. They turned from hobbies into professions. Once there was enough background material and a 'recognized body of knowledge' to turn IT into a profession, we folks who learned by doing and pulled ourselves into the field with our bootstraps, and, if I may say, BUILT IT FROM SCRATCH, became outmoded. As someone said, "any profession is a conspiracy against the laity."
I consider myself very lucky to have been able to participate in this field. When I first started there was a computer on one desk: Mine! By the time I retired there were twice as many computers as employees. My work here is done. I am grateful to a lot of people, including BG, for making my career possible. I am now happily retired with no network responsibilities at all, but still addicted to /.
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
Reply to This
Re:Oh come on... (Score:5, Informative)
Reply to This
Parent
Re:gotta filter the applicants somehow (Score:5, Funny)
Let me guess, you inadvertently also found the candidates who eat candy constantly while at their desks.
Reply to This
Parent