Ask Slashdot: "Real" Computer Scientists vs. Modern Curriculum? 637
An anonymous reader writes At work yesterday, I overheard a programmer explaining his perception of the quality of the most recent CS grads. In his opinion, CS students who primarily learn Java are inferior because they don't have to deal with memory management as they would if they used C. As a current CS student who's pursing a degree after 10 years of experience in the IT field, I have two questions for my fellow Slashdoters: "Is this a common concern with new CS grads?" and, if so, "What can I do to supplement my Java-oriented studies?"
Beards and suspenders. (Score:5, Funny)
Real Programmers don't use GC (Score:5, Funny)
"Real Programmers don't use GC" is a mantra that is responsible for 90% at least of production bugs, together with "=" being typed instead of "==".
Re:Beards and suspenders. (Score:5, Funny)
Difference is the "real" ones have beards and wear suspenders.
Kids these days with their "showers" and "grooming" and "social media" and whatnot... Where's the *science*?
Re:Why do CS grads become lowly programmers? (Score:4, Funny)
95% of CS grads spend their carrier banging out boring code. Accept it.
"no carrier"
Oh, for... (Score:5, Funny)
Well, in MY opinion, CS students who learned in C or C++ or Pascal or PL/1 are inferior because they use the stack as a crutch, instead of manually keeping track of callback history. If you don't have to write explicit code to keep track of every call, or allocate every local variable, your code will... well, actually, it'll likely be easier to read, easier to maintain, and easier to optimize. But it won't be as good as the code we had to write back in my day.
Re:Why do CS grads become lowly programmers? (Score:4, Funny)
I definitely would not ask a scientist to build an engineer, especially a software engineer. That's how you get Frankenstein's monster.
Re: Real Programmers don't use GC (Score:4, Funny)
Fortunately JavaScript solved that. These days, programmers type == instead of ===! Progress!
Re:Why do CS grads become lowly programmers? (Score:5, Funny)
I'll betcha a current CS grad wrote the auto-correct logic that did that.
Case... fucking...closed.
Re:wow great (Score:5, Funny)
Wow could you please not downvote me please thanks? That's really rude.
Why don't you impose a $500 fine?
Re:Beards and suspenders. (Score:5, Funny)
Write code to count the '1' bits in an unsigned int -- no googling the answer!
Meh. That's easy...
public static void main(String[] a)
{
int x = 0;
for(char c : Integer.toBinaryString(847389).toCharArray())
if (c == '1')
x++;
System.out.println(x);
}
-- and then keep brainstorming for ways to optimize that
I'm sure there's already a framework for that somewhere.
Re:Beards and suspenders. (Score:5, Funny)
I love it when you talk dirty.
Re:Why do CS grads become lowly programmers? (Score:2, Funny)
Software "engineering" can't be considered real engineering until it can produce work output that has the same level of reliability as a properly engineered bridge using repeatable, proven processes. Until then it has as much relation to engineering as a certification mill.
Re:Why do CS grads become lowly programmers? (Score:2, Funny)
I've spent some time doing "computer science".
Computer science IS boring. It's a lot of math and logic and tedium. Once you've gone over Turing's proofs, you either go into Cognitive Science or go full Math Retard (I did the latter) and become one of those boring researchers on campus nobody talks to.
Re:Beards and suspenders. (Score:3, Funny)
Most students I've talked to recently took one semester of "C programming", but just did the sorts of things in C they already knew how to do in Java (except awkwardly in C), and didn't understand the pointers of the class (and perhaps the class was pointerless)
There, fixed that for you.
Re:Real Programmers don't use GC (Score:5, Funny)
– Robert Sewell
Keeeeerhiiist I want to laugh at this... (Score:5, Funny)