Why Learning To Code Won't Save Your Job (fastcompany.com) 155
Over the years, several governments and organizations have become increasingly focused on teaching kids how to code. It has given rise to startups such as Codecademy, KhanAcademy and Code.org that are making it easier and more affordable for many to learn how to program. Many believe that becoming literate in code is as essential as being educated in language, science, and math. But can this guarantee you a job? And can coding help you save that job? An anonymous reader cites an interesting article on Fast Company which sheds more light into this: Looking for job security in the knowledge economy? Just learn to code. At least, that's what we've been telling young professionals and mid-career workers alike who want to hack it in the modern workforce. Unfortunately, many have already learned the hard way that even the best coding chops have their limits. More and more, 'learn to code' is looking like bad advice. Anyone competent in languages such as Python, Java, or even Web coding like HTML and CSS, is currently in high demand by businesses that are still just gearing up for the digital marketplace. However, as coding becomes more commonplace, particularly in developing nations like India, we find a lot of that work is being assigned piecemeal by computerized services such as Upwork to low-paid workers in digital sweatshops. This trend is bound to increase.
skills (Score:5, Interesting)
Learning to code at school isn't just about gaining employability, any more than physical education is about becoming a professional athlete.
An understanding of how to write software will teach skills around how to approach complex problems (decomposition, logical thinking, planning, separation of responsibilities, etc), how to troubleshoot systems (not just IT systems but other workflows), how to identify opportunities for optimisation and automation, and so on.
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Learning to code at school isn't just about gaining employability, any more than physical education is about becoming a professional athlete.
An understanding of how to write software will teach skills around how to approach complex problems (decomposition, logical thinking, planning, separation of responsibilities, etc), how to troubleshoot systems (not just IT systems but other workflows), how to identify opportunities for optimisation and automation, and so on.
They didn't specifically mention in schools, more for people looking for a career, which could be upper high school or college as well. And, they're right - many people seem to get the impression that programming is an easy career that pays really well. If you're going to program, you have to put the same amount of effort into it as any other career, and I think that's what the point of the article is. It's much more competitive nowadays than the magical surveys suggest.
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Learning to code at school isn't just about gaining employability, any more than physical education is about becoming a professional athlete.
An understanding of how to write software will teach skills around how to approach complex problems (decomposition, logical thinking, planning, separation of responsibilities, etc), how to troubleshoot systems (not just IT systems but other workflows), how to identify opportunities for optimisation and automation, and so on.
Which is why it doesn't necessarily apply to the workplace. Whilst it may be beneficial for a sysadmin to learn a bit of code (DevOps jobs are going for stupid money here in London) for an accountant not so much. In fact it may be counter productive in some professions that aren't based solely on computing/mathematical logic, like marketing, medicine or law.
I honestly dont expect most kids to come out of school with any coding skills what so every. Definately not if they haven't done any extra curricular
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And if you look at no-so advanced mathematics taught in school, it is blatantly obvious that most people cannot benefit from any coding "skills" at all, because they never learn them well enough. On the other hand, those capable and motivated (and both are critical to ever become a good coder) will teach themselves far better.
Teaching everybody to code is about as useful as teaching everybody to sing opera.
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And if you look at no-so advanced mathematics taught in school, it is blatantly obvious that most people cannot benefit from any coding "skills" at all, because they never learn them well enough.
What's holding a lot of students back from learning Math in school is that they never get to apply the Maths. They never get their hands dirty with it. But programming will allow them to do that, and a lot of Math concepts click, once you've done some programming. Programming in school is to shore up the foundation of the Math that's already being taught.
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You are kidding yourself. Most people are not able to see that writing and running code is "applying" anything. Most people are not smart enough for that. I have seen it time and again while teaching.
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Agreed.
Importantly it also exposes students to the general field of software and some may discover they have a natural talent for it and like and excel at it. Some will of course figure this out on their own, but in lower income, lower education households/cultures, such "self discovery" is probably less likely due to limitations of their environment.
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but can you sort, find, retrieve, loop, branch, recurse, encapsulate, isolate, simplify? And i am stunned that many programmers today are horrible at this - they know how to use libraries and write bloatware. I am so glad I learned algorithms in the 80's with 64k of RA
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The worst thing you probably can do is to use Simulink for coding.
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In large complex enterprise systems with multiple features being introduced, I've found that most of the stabilization effort goes to addressing design not coding quality. Usually during design, someone didn't think of or fully understand an interaction between components in some uncommon cases (such as simultaneous hardware failure and session abort)
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This is a problem. They have some sort of "Computer Science" in Fourth/Fifth grade in a school I'm familiar with. What is it? Excel and Word! I've not met the teacher, but I suspect they have no idea what "Computer Science" is (of course it doesn't help that in High School the AP "Computer Science" test has virtually nothing to do with Computer Science).
I'd like to see most of what is claimed as "Computer Science" in K-12 be properly labeled either "Application Usage" (sort of like shop classes of old) or "
Bad logic (Score:4, Insightful)
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That doesn't follow.
Wanting to learn stuff doesn't actively preclude learning it at a university in lecures. Hell, I went to extra lectures that weren't on my course (or were optional, unexamined material) simply because they sounded interesting.nJust because some people only want to learn in lectures they have to attend and want them to be over fast doesn't mean learning in lectures is bad, neither does it mean one shouldn't do it.
TL;DR, university is a great place for learning stuff.
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Unfortunately, these terrible people make something like 85% of the whole. But I agree, telling these people to stay the hell away from coding (or STEM in general) is a far better idea than the converse. These people often end up having negative productivity because the few competent people get bogged down cleaning up after the incompetent ones instead of being productive.
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Institutions are very good at teaching a lot of things. Some things can be taught quickly (ever participate in corporate training?), some take time. In a good school, people who know more of the subject than you do know what things you really need to know and the best order to learn them in. If you have difficulties understanding things, there are people who understand them deeply there to explain things to you. In contrast, learning stuff on your own is likely to lead to patchier understanding at best
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> You go to school and college to prove you know something.
Which shows that, in your case, you should have stayed in your mom's basement and saved her a lot of money.
I, however, got to learn programming from Jerry Sussman, physiology from Jerry Lettvin, and Calculus from Bob Rose. Sussman was one of the authors of Scheme, Lettvin discovered how color vision really works, and Bob Rose was a co-author of the calculus text book we used. And you had better *believe* I learned a lot from those people, along with a lot from the students I got to study with and work. And I was expected to return that teaching, in spades, which I did. Class participation, tutoring with other students, and quite a lot of bleeding edge medical research after college paid off that hefty investment.
Hahaha. I founded an urban warfare robotics company and dropped out of college with only my masters degree to pursue it. The worst people we had in the robotics lab and at the company had straight A averages and were only concerned about grades. The best performing ones may have had an A average but all learned on their own time and had those interests outside of work or school.
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I hope you have worked out that part about detecting when someone has dropped a gun, by now.
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Over the years, I've probably learned a lot more on my own than I have in any classroom, but that doesn't mean that formal study and training weren't extremely valuable to me. I learned things that I would have never taken the time to investigate on my own, only to find that that knowledge was very useful down the road.
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> If you like to stand between the feet of these giants (at the lowest level of this pyramid of giants), feel free.
Sure but then there is both the pride of having been the giant and the need for new giants all the time as our overall knowledge and skills increase.
Though, I suspect that, at a deeper level, even those giants we stand upon stand upon giants themselves. It's giants, all the way down.
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Aaaaaaand....FAIL! Nobody will be fluent after "learning" to code without passion, dedication and talent. Incidentally, programming languages are not a communication tool and have no use as such. The most you can get is a data-description functionality (e.g. LUA), but even that is very, very restricted as communication tool.
Congratulation, you just added more insight-less bullshit to the pile.
What are you driving? (Score:4, Interesting)
Because there are many different types of drivers, the ones can control a bicycle, a motorcycle, a small economic car, a big family car, a construction truck, a tractor, a small ship, a big petroleum container, a plane, a space shuttle, etc.
So, it is right to know how to drive "well", but it is what happens after this basic knowledge what could or not to help you to have and to keep a job.
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My analogy is slightly different.
Understanding how to use a computer, is like being able to drive. The more complex the computer, the larger / more complex the vehicles (supercomputers, etc. equate to pilots in some cases).
Being able to make the computer do what you want, that's like being a mechanic. There's a range of skill here too, from people who can change the brake pads (most programmers who only touch the one language they've been taught) up to someone who can dismantle and rebuild any vehicle or
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But those who can learn to code effectively enough to improve or change their career? That's a whole different kettle of fish. Like the guy who progresses from occasionally topping up the oil to someone who can strip down the whole engine to diagnosis the fault and make the car safer or faster or more efficient on the way.
No one skill is a panacea. But another skill never hurts.
pr0nbot (313417) includes something interesting also:
... how to identify opportunities ...
We, as humans, need to adapt to survive. Before was important, when trying to catch a deer or to escape from a tigger, to learn how to use an arrow or to locate the wind direction, skills that could make a life/death difference; but now one of the basic skills is to "control" a computerised device (more than to learn now to code), because these computers became ubiquitous.
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Why would you want to escape from a tigger? They're wonderful things.
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Horseshit. You can live your entire life quite sucesfully in the "digital era" without knowing anything about coding or writing a single line of code.
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On the other hand, if you think you can "code", you may have learned just enough to be dangerous to yourself and others.
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Well, there is a hole system of cops and laws to keep bad drivers in check to some degree. No such thing for coding and coding is far, far more difficult. To be fair, while entirely possible, it is also more difficult to kill people with code than with a car. And then there is the additional problem that while driving is ephemeral, code may stay around fro a long, long time.
But I see your point. Possibly we just need a few additional really huge IT disasters before bad (and cheap) coders will be out of work
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Washing machines always have a dozen programs, and it's dealt with by only ever using 40C, color or mixed white/color.
TVs are little computers, even those of the 90s. You "program" them by hitting 1 to get channel 1, volume up button to get the volume up, etc.
By definition, seems everyone is a coder. We can train a rat to turn on/off the lights and say the rat is a coder versed in simple state machines.
There's only one word for that spew (Score:2)
There's only one word for that spew - horseshit. Words mean things, and if you have to make up definitions and blow smoke to make them mean something different to prove your 'case' - that shows the falsehood.
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Ever discussed that belief with a linguist? Language changes. If there's no good word to fit a definition, one will be adapted or coined, regardless of what Grandpa's dictionary says.
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Hahahaha, that so far removed from reality, it is really funny!
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So you think reality is a shared fantasy or hallucination? Possibly, but not a model I favor. It seems to not really explain quite a few observable things.
Protectionism (Score:2)
Or we could just roll over and die. Pretend like the market can somehow be free and do nothing as workers to protect our quality of life as we hang desperately onto the principles of Lai
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I have news for you. I live in a country that used to be social democratic. It worked somewhat up until the 70-ties. Then it began to not work as well because of the first globalization movement.
After the fall of Soviet union, it stopped to work completely. The richest people in the world then got to run the world, through especially your country. They implemented total globalization - a scheme to transfer wealth from the average working man/women to the ruling 1 per mille that now decides (there is no "one
Instead of giving up (Score:2)
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The Left, as it is practiced today, is apparently all for "immigration" programs.
Take a look at Europe. I'm not sure what the agenda is there, whether it's importing cheap labour, increasing the pool of left-leaning voters, a guilt-driven attempt to right their wrongs, or an insidious attempt to induce instability in the countries in order to further the police state and control fetishes of the elite. America is doing the same, but with the primary source being Mexico.
Regardless, makes it damned hard to tak
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Dear Trump voters:
The enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend.
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Our non-protectionist policy's are more effective diplomatic and aid tools than sealing ourselves off from the rest of the world and hoping that USAID donations will pull the third world into prosperity.
So true... Just take the trade between the US, EU and China, it makes war unthinkable for all parties, that's nice :)
(despite what anyone says war is not good for the economy unless you are neutral and selling to both sides - and we can't all be neutral)
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Find a balance, yes, you need to reduce abuse of VISA programs. But you also have to recognize that a place like the Bay area would not exist if it weren't for the steady influx of talent from around the world.
When people can't get an H1B for San Francisco they end up in Toronto or London instead. Don't think there isn't a line of cities trying to become the next tech hub
Besides America needs to sell produ
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Use protectionism as a negotiating tool, not as an end-goal. Threaten to tariff trade of low-wage countries if they don't encourage local consumerism, have labor/safety/pollution laws, and/or increase their exchange rate.
They often artificially tilt things toward low wages so that their population doesn't riot. Jobs are more important to their populations than cheap stuff. We seem to have it reversed.
Seems like a junk article (Score:1)
It's all about solving problems (Score:3, Insightful)
There is a very simple formula for getting and/or keeping a job:
problems_you_solve > problems_you_create
Keep this equation in balance by minimizing the right-hand-side (RHS) and maximizing the left-hand-side (LHS).
As an employee, you will inevitably create problems for your employer. Most notably you will expect to be paid. Other unavoidable problems include the onerous government paperwork that is required for each employee and the legal liability of keeping you as an employee. These problems are unavoidable. To help minimize the RHS, however, you should avoid creating unnecessary problems. This means being reliable, honest, and getting along with other employees and with customers.
There is only so much you can do to minimize the RHS of the formula. But there is no bound on maximizing the LHS.
These days, many employers think (rightly or wrongly) that they have programming problems that need solving. So if you are able to write code, then that might help increase the LHS of the equation. Note, however, that this only works if you are good enough of a programmer to actually solve real problems. Having completed a coding bootcamp, or having a diploma in computer-science, helps but does not guarantee that you can solve real problems. And that is the crux of the issue. Employers want problems to be solved. They don't really care about your credentials, they care about capabilities and your willingness to apply those capabilities to productive ends.
So, yes, the article is correct in pointing out that learning to code is not a magic recipe for making you more employable. To the extent that learning to code can help you become a better problem solver, then it is valuable. But if you emerge from boot-camp with no new problem solving skills then you have indeed wasted your time.
On the flip side, learning to code usually involves doing lots of problem-solving exercises. And the best way to become a better problem-solver is to practice solving problems. So learning to code may well make you more employable even if you never touch a computer again.
It comes down to focus: If your reason for learning to code just so that you can say that you have learned to code, then that is probably not going to help you are anybody else. But if you are learning to code as an exercise in improving your problem-solving skills, then that are likely to benefit both you and society.
a pinch of propaganda and dollop of supply/demand (Score:1)
These stories have been around forever. There are armies of minions going around canvassing for kids with developer skills. It's tosh.
I have a degree in Computer Science and just finished a post grad in same and I can assure you I can develop. Despite thousands of applications for developer jobs over the years, all I ever got was one developer interview and even though I completed the programming challenges they asked of me, I still didn't go any further.
I work as a business analyst at present under contrac
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I can assure you I can develop.
Not to be a pest, but... what did you develop?
Ridiculous (Score:2)
"Looking for job security in the knowledge economy? Just learn to code."
This is like telling a farmer to learn aircraft engine maintenance for job security. Or telling a plumber to learn knitting to ensure he keeps his job.
NOT EVERY JOB REQUIRES KNOWING HOW TO CODE. Stop telling us that it does.
If they taught coding, it could be useful (Score:2)
I'm concerned that they'll teach coding the same way that many schools teach math. Reinvent the paradigms every few years, require extensive retraining of all the latest teachers in the latest paradigm, and care more about the fad than about the basic skills.
For reference, I've linked to Tom Lehrer's "New Math" song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
And one must remember:
The important thing is to understand what you'
It will still make you more valuable (Score:2)
Learning to code might not "save" your job directly, but (for certain fields, anyway) it can definitely make you a more valuable employee.
I've lost count of the number of times I've come across a coworker doing something that's taking forever, and a little time spent automating the task (even if it's a one-off) saved gobs of time.
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That is bang-on. I've seen hours wasted as someone tries to pair names and addresses from a spreadsheet that has gotten mis-aligned in some way or countless other tasks that can be achieved with a few lines of throw away python or awk.
I see coding as a form of communication, maybe a way to communicate intent to a machine but also a reasonable way to communicate domain-specific knowledge to an expert outsider.
There would be far fewer screw ups in procuring complex systems if the people that have been doing
Ask you butcher (Score:2)
Unfortunately, many have already learned the hard way that even the best coding chops have their limits.
It all depends on your butcher and if you picked lamb, pork or veal chops.
Learning Coding is the Most Trivial part of System (Score:3)
Probably, because our Legislators, largely still ignorant about computer "innards" can't understand it. We need population-wide, overarching understanding of systems, and how to design them. Coding is just capturing design in code. I'm amazed at the number of people who think "feedback" is either your critique of their latest ill-formed idea, or the sound that speakers make when the sound gets into the microphone. They have no concept of how "feedback" is--in the language of systems design and cybernetics--a much broader concept. The notions of sequence, iteration, conditional execution, and formal definition of values are utterly beyond most of today's adults, but second nature to those of us who'd learned how to translate those system implementations into reliable code. Teaching coding is about giving kids a tool set, and an old car, and say, "Go to it, kid!" They don't understand what the transmission is for, or the principals behind a crankshaft, no matter how many times they unbolt parts, and bolt them back on. Sure, they know that you're supposed to used a "torque wrench," but they seldom understand the concept of "torque" and why it's important...which is why the "shade tree mechanic's" only wrench is a pipe wrench.
If our electorate is to understand governments, and businesses, and economies are systems, they need to understand what systems are, and how they work, and how they can go wrong. Teaching them coding is just rote learning, and it imparts a false sense of "understanding" what systems are all about.
Somebody get me a vogmask (Score:2)
Try learning your job first (Score:2)
Then learn to code. If you do not know what you are doing coding is pointless.
Because the pie is limited? (Score:2)
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Except that most jobs involving computers don't require any programming.
That's going to depend upon your definition of programming. Yes, it probably won't involve compiling C, to create binaries; but at some point the person who gets the computer to do something which it hasn't done before, for that business, is going to be considered to be 'programming' the computer. And knowing how different kinds of programming works, will help inspire lots of people at different levels, on what is even possible.
New Opportunities (Score:3)
I always figured teaching everyone to code was to enable a future where everyone earned money by hacking ATMs, the few people that could not learn to code would have jobs refilling ATMs.
It's not about the coding, it's about the job (Score:4, Interesting)
I keep reading everything here commenting on the paradigm that your job becomes coding; that you're just in competition with generic coders in India or the IT department for that matter. It's all about "coding" as a specialty, as a job in itself.
That's the problem. That has to stop. It's hurting corporations terribly, keeping them from realizing the full benefits of personal computing.
We acquired personal computing technology, but corporations remained in a paradigm of corporate computing development, where the corporation develops all applications as a body corporate, using specialists to do all the coding. It was actually an *offense* in my old employer for non-programmers to program. People had tools taken away, accounts cancelled.
You don't learn to code so that you can become a coder; you learn to code so that you become an accountant, technician, engineer, salesman, secretary...who can code and script their job. How much more productive is an engineer who can do Excel VBA from one who only knows your basic spreadsheet formulas? How many more documents can a secretary manage who can put together a small, three-table database? She becomes the *key* secretary everybody goes to, the one who gets things done, the one who gets the promotion, is the last one fired.
It worked for me; I actually got a CompSci degree but only ever called myself an engineer; I was just an engineer who knew EXACTLY what he wanted from IT and could insist on it...or do it myself if they weren't agreeable (which tends to make them more agreeable). I only ever wrote bash, Perl, and SQL scripts, but automated vast amounts of my job with just that. Oh, yeah, and Excel VBA, of course, which probably doubled my engineering productivity. I taught every engineer who worked for me to do SQL and basic scripts and sent them off all able to automate basic tasks. I believe they all see themselves as more productive and employable for it.
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Sorry, not clear. I got my Civil Engineering degree first and practiced as a licensed professional engineer at all times. Dang! I thought the entire point I was getting across is that I was an *Engineer* who could program; I was inciting one and all to add "programming" to their skills of accountant, technician, salesman, etc...
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Exactly. My engineering job was taking care of 10,000 miles of pipes and related water infrastructure. My core skills were understanding pipes and corrosion and water flow. The IT component was designing the database that held them all - and had a structure that met the needs of the guys who abstract out the pure network for simulation, the guys I worked with who pulled out the pipe records for comparison and writing work orders, and the guys who had to work on those maps day-to-day. Then there was mor
Sure, but also learn to (project) manage; or sell (Score:2)
As has been depressingly reprised here ad nauseam, your coding, admin or support job is just another H1B away.
I got into project management, then sales, then management, then consulting.
Still enjoy getting into the tech now and then, but that's not what pays the bills.
If your value-add is up-front visible you're never out going to be out of a job.
Yet another scare (Score:2)
Ok, coding != software development, ...
But considering that it's usual to expect a new software developer to take 4-8 weeks to start being productive, I somehow don't see tickets being distributed via Amazon Turk to some Indian coders, ....
most programmers are useless (Score:2)
Since the 90's programming has become about minutiae, and not about problem solving. "Programmers" strive to please web forums full of their socially-awkward-but-now-connected peers, rather than their bosses. They test each other during interviews to make sure they are hiring someone autistic who has learned some useless facts rather than looking for people who can solve problems and talk to people. They saddle their employers with flavor-of-the-week technologies because they are so afraid of doing somethin
same players behind the scene (Score:2)
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I fail and pass applicants not so much on the ability to code, but the abilities to attack problems and to maintain code.
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Don't forget to include the ability to understand what the customer really need. Essentially the unspoken part of the requirements.
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Matches my experience. Example: Just recently about 5 "engineers" from 3 different teams at a customer failed to find out for more than a week that the source of their problems was their test server not running. Took me about 20 minutes to get approval to look at it (I am an external consultant and wayyy more expensive), 5 minutes to look at it and 20 minutes to write it up with evidence so they could understand it. This is not a rare or unique situation. That is the level of people you routinely find in t
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To know how to design you need to know how to code. Otherwise you will end up with horrible designs because the designer don't know the abilities and shortcomings of the platform they design for.
But coding alone doesn't make you useful, it's knowing the business for what you design and code for that makes you useful.
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Design has nothing to do with code. A good coder can code any design as good or bad as it is. Designers should be programmers that are so good they can see the whole project but typically designers these days are the managerial types that have no idea what they want to begin with. They then outsource the design and get what they asked for, in those terms outsourcing to India is cheaper.
The problem comes in when what they want is not aligned with what they say they need or are so dense in what they work up t
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A designer is someone who understands the requirements well enough so that they get translated into reality. That can benefit from being a very experienced coder, but there are many cases where you need to know more than simply how to code. Design and code are complimentary, but different skills. I don't think you have to be a coder to be a designer, although I think you will be better off if you have a designer who is a good coder as well. What should happen is that one picks the hybrid over the dedica
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I agree that design and coding is different. I also agree that the only way to get a good design is when you know coding on a level that you could code that design well. If people without such skills do designs, you often end up having to guess what they meant and having to re-do the design.
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That's like saying that designing a house as an architect doesn't have anything to do with knowledge of building materials and how they are used.
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Yeah, the guru part of your name is totally justified.
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for vs while is a decision that is made because of the code. Need to iterate N times? for loop.
Don't know how many times a loop needs to execute? while loop.
These aren't the sort of decisions that are made by "software designers", nor should they.
They work at a much higher level.
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I fully agree. That is why I keep doing some coding work. Otherwise, after 5 years or so, your designs begins to be disconnected from reality. And there are enough opportunities to do it on the side or as part of a larger job. Outsourcing, say, 10 days of coding to India does not make sense.
Re:Design (Score:4, Funny)
3 days of coding at home or 3 weeks of coding in India yields the same result. This because people in India don't have a clue about why we in the western world do some things that are natural to us but unknown to them.
I want a snowflake to be displayed in the instrument cluster when it's between +4 degrees C and -4 degrees C. It's logical to anyone living where snow and ice appears every year. But to explain why that's wanted to someone in India can take a few hours.
Re: Design (Score:5, Insightful)
It's generally more efficient for design and execution to happen close together. If coding moves to India, watch the design work follow shortly afterward.
On the other hand, most code is written to be used, not sold. We're a smallish financial institution, and we have an in-house software development group the gives us a key competitive advantage over the industry's behemoths. Putting developers in the same office as business users shortens development times, improves the quality of deliverables and increases flexibility.
If programmer productivity doubled, we'd probably hire more developers, not fewer, as the cost-benefit of various projects would improve.
Whatever the Twitterati say, we will continue to need a steady supply of high quality, intelligent, adaptable, proactive IT professionals for the foreseeable future.
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You reckon? I'd say it's about the same level.
However a bridge is equally useless whether it's the first span or the second that's down. Or indeed the third...
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93% of communication is non-verbal(tonal 38% and body language 55%, which differs by culture) and 60% of knowledge cannot be communicated because it is too nuanced for natural language to handle. You can write all of the documentation you want, but you'll at best communicate 10%-50% of the 40% that you can communicate, and probably miss-communicate a larger portion if working with people from another culture. The best projects are analyzed, architected, designed, and coded by the same team who have domain expereience.
Which was exactly the point that I was trying to make. I suspect that offshoring of coding has reached its peak: it's impractical for very many projects.
Re: Design (Score:2)
But but look at the excel spreadsheet! Half the costs??!
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Have you seen code coming from India? No smart Indian engineer is working in outsourcing there and many of the smar ones leave the country to work someplace else. That means only the inexperienced and the not-smart ones do outsourcing work. Coding there is already an almost unmitigated disaster, having these people do design can only result in utter failure.
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To create a spec that a bad engineer can deliver a well-working product on is much more effort and much more difficult than to create the well-working product directly.
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Hehehehe, nice. And they followed the letter of the contract, but not the spirit.
Good engineering cannot be formalized. It needs understanding, insight and experience on the part of the person doing it. That is why so much bad engineering is around these days, but software is by far the worst offender.
Re: Design (Score:2)
If I read advice here from 2005 most Slashdoters thought there would be 0 IT jobs here by now.
Guess what? We are still employed and get paid alot!
The only jobs are non important entry level work. Any Indian who knows his shit is here on h1b1 visa making the same. Yes same as senior engineer because of his skillset.
Once you pull in 3 years you go visa and work 2 more. After 5 you are no longer cheap.
Employers found a steal in 1999 but that went away in 2016. The cheap talented worker is rare indeed.
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Who says anyone cares about talented? Cheap is what counts.
As for cheap talent being rare, ask the folks at Disney. Among other places.
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Disney kept their senior IT staff.
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The cheap talented worker is rare indeed.
They're easy to get.
In the crash of 2008, quite a few very good people were thrown out on the street. And many are grateful to get a job. I'm getting people who used to be paid $80K/year for $65K. New grads for less than $40K.
Many unemployed IT workers and developers have never recovered because of the asinine hiring practices of people. My neighbor, who was also a developer, was shit canned because the new 20 something who came in to run the place told him that he was too old to know anything and he didn't have a degree from Stanford - as far as he was concerned, no Stanford degree == you're stupid. And even though age discrimination is illegal, just try to prove it. "You don't have the skills." goes a long way.
I had a discussion with recruiter recently who bitched and moaned how they have to get into these bidding wars for new CS grads. I was incredulous. I told her that I don't see that at my local university. She said that she only recruits from top schools. Which to her, GA Tech is a top school.
So, you have one guy who thinks Stanford is it and some other person who thinks GA Tech is it.
In the meantime, they bitch how there aren't enough "good" people when the reality is that they are just snobs.
Gimme a hard working sharp kid who went to state and I get a value with no bullshit ego crap. I get kids from state who commuted to school, have no student loans. Are ambitious, creative and smart - but they just don't have the name recognition of a good school. They work harder to overcome the prejudice.
tl;dr: the IT employment practices are fucking retarded.
It may not be 1999 anymore, but it is not 2008 anymore either. No one cares where you went to school unless it is your 1st job. If you suck on your resume a degree from harvard won't save you. If you rock on your resume with 7 years experience showing more responsibility any degree will help and sometimes an employer will ignore the degree requirements.
Sounds to me from your post you are new. Yes, it sucks in the real world but realize who you are. You are a kid with no real world experience so your first j
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I prefer the Disney her to "engineers", "imagineers". as in "Imagine if I could get this code to work".
Design, Architecture, Business Analysis... (Score:2)
You cannot have a steady job as a Coder or Programmer in the United States. You will end up as just an expensive worker bee. You need to widen your skills across the organization. Most of the time they may call you a programmer, but need a consultant, someone who can look at what they are doing and come up with solutions. Understand their business and find ways to make it better or more efficient. If you just want to sit there and wait for your next program you will need to make, chances are you may be
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Indeed. The main reason I code these days is that my architectures and designs would be way more expensive to describe on the level needed to have somebody else implement them than to implement them myself (at full consulting rates). Another reason is that they are mostly C and some Python (often with embedded C modules), and that is something basically nobody that learned to code just to get a job is capable of handling.
Make no mistake: If you are a really good coder (hint: if you are just a coder in one o
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Fortunately we are approaching situation especially simple cohders are not as
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In a way "designing your own website" might be a skill on the level of "write a letter to someone" was in the last century. Public education should prepare you to be able to do it in a pinch, but you can't really make living out of that.
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There's a lot that can be done one the back-end that makes me think that we really haven't got time for teaching all of that. Are you saying we should teach 'em all PHP, AJAX, Ruby, MySQL, MongoDB, etc? There's more to a website than slapping up Joomla and throwing a theme on it. Also, plenty of people make money doing this. Hell, Twitter, Slashdot, and Facebook are websites. There are others that are far more complicated.
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"WTF is wrong with this country and it's politicians?"
You mean that people don't know the difference between "It's" and "its"?
"Don't these corporate idiots realize that society(Country) can't function without employment."
Or that questions finish with a question mark?
"The point of employment is to keep people busy, give them some meaning in life, and as well to evolve into a better species."
Really? I usually only hire people because I don't have the time or the skills to do it myself.
"The purpose of money(va
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Indeed. Scalability, reliability, efficiency, security, being fit to be deployed, maintainability, KISS, etc. all things that are not for beginners. You begin to understand these after maybe 10 years (if you are dedicated, smart and talented), and become good at them later.