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On 2022-08-23 12:46, Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss wrote:
On Tue, 2022-08-23 at 03:01 +0000, David Schwartz via PLUG-discuss
wrote:
The question that was posed morphed into something about the value of
CS degrees
today. I don’t think they’re worth the time or cost to get one.
I agree. More later...
Pretty much all of the work I’ve been hired to do since then (2005+)
was based
entirely on the fact that I had 10+ years working with Delphi.
How would you like to give an online presentation, on Lazarus, at the
GoLUG meeting
in early October or early November? I think it would be well received.
About CS degrees...
As I've mentioned a few thousand times, I learned to program at Santa
Monica
Community College. In late 1986 I had to hire an assistant programmer
to help take
care of what ten years later would be called the client in what ten
years later
would be called a client/server system. This client was written, by me,
in Turbo
Pascal, which is an easy language, so I was looking for an entry level
person
willing to work cheap. I put the word out, got 750 resumes, and called
a few.
The test part of my interview consisted of the following:
In *pseudocode*, write a program to read lines out of one file,
capitalize every
letter, and write them to a new file. You have 30 minutes, but if you
hand it in
earlier it will count to your credit. Easy, right?
Several applicants had CS degrees from UCLA. Some claimed they could
write a
compiler. Not one of the the UCLA grads could get it done in 30
minutes. Disgusted,
I recruited a couple of students from Santa Monica Community College.
They both did
it in 30 minutes or less. One was ideal, but she and I couldn't come
close to
agreeing on salary.
Yeah, I'm not that impressed with CS degrees for real world
programming, and the CS
grads or undergrads I knew who were good would have been good if
they'd spent the
time clerking at a convenience store: They simply had what it takes,
schooling
irrelevant.
Interesting statement. I think programmers are like sport's players.
Some do really good in high school and go not further.
Some make it to college and go not further.
Others make it to the farm team and go not further.
And then the select few get to make it to the majors.
Technology is a crazy place. So many directions to go and things are
constantly changing. Kind of like being in a blender on high speed.
I've made friends with a guy who works at Walmart who tells me he used
to be a COBOL programmer and his job was sent to India.
About 5 years ago I met a guy at a local car show. He was showing his
1960's Vette. He told me he was a COBOL programmer.
I like technology... No I love technology, however if I had it all to do
again...
SteveT
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