I'm graduating with a CS degree but I don't feel like I know how to program

#1

Post by dangrossman » Fri, Feb 04, 2011, 11:20 AM UTC

I'm graduating with a CS degree but I don't feel like I know how to program
stackoverflow.com

Re: I'm graduating with a CS degree but I don't feel like I know how to program

#2

Post by chopsueyar » Fri, Feb 04, 2011, 12:02 PM UTC

Maybe the guy has gotten a job in the past 6 months since this was posted?

Re: I'm graduating with a CS degree but I don't feel like I know how to program

#3

Post by rabc » Fri, Feb 04, 2011, 12:27 PM UTC

You can't expect college to teach you how to program. It's more experience and try-and-fail than anything else.

The college will teach you the basic, it will give you a ground to know how to start building. They won't tell you how to put the bricks together.

Re: I'm graduating with a CS degree but I don't feel like I know how to program

#4

Post by Ernestas » Fri, Feb 04, 2011, 12:29 PM UTC

Previous post/discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1345281

Re: I'm graduating with a CS degree but I don't feel like I know how to program

#5

Post by Ygor » Fri, Feb 04, 2011, 12:31 PM UTC

chopsueyar wrote: post #2

Maybe the guy has gotten a job in the past 6 months since this was posted?

Yes, it would really be interesting to hear his experience in the following months, and how he now feels about college and his own knowledge.

Re: I'm graduating with a CS degree but I don't feel like I know how to program

#6

Post by zaidf » Fri, Feb 04, 2011, 12:34 PM UTC

Similarly, I did not graduate with a CS degree, have been programming since 5th grade and yet feel I cannot program 'professionally' for a big firm that is loaded with CS geeks while I'm just an amateur programming for 13 years.

In this case, a lot of it is what you tell your brain.

Re: I'm graduating with a CS degree but I don't feel like I know how to program

#7

Post by arethuza » Fri, Feb 04, 2011, 12:38 PM UTC

zaidf wrote: post #6

Similarly, I did not graduate with a CS degree, have been programming since 5th grade and yet feel I cannot program 'professionally' for a big firm that is loaded with CS geeks while I'm just an amateur programming for 13 years. In this case, a lot of it is what you tell your brain.

Most hiring is based on the idea that it is far worse to employ a bad candidate than reject a good one - which favors an approach of choosing fairly arbitrary filters to whittle down the mountain of applications that any decent job has these days to a manageable quantity.

Requiring a degree is popular as it is an easy to implement filter rather than any correlation with ability. (Note that question of whether a CS degree is relevant or not is an other question entirely - I'm a CS graduate and I think the maths & theory heavy course I did is irrelevant to 98% of development jobs even if it has been pretty useful for me).

Re: I'm graduating with a CS degree but I don't feel like I know how to program

#8

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Feb 04, 2011, 12:42 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: I'm graduating with a CS degree but I don't feel like I know how to program

#9

Post by stcredzero » Fri, Feb 04, 2011, 12:48 PM UTC

zaidf wrote: post #6

Similarly, I did not graduate with a CS degree, have been programming since 5th grade and yet feel I cannot program 'professionally' for a big firm that is loaded with CS geeks while I'm just an amateur programming for 13 years. In this case, a lot of it is what you tell your brain.

Just study the following:

    - Understand time & space complexity
    - Security & Encryption
    - Concurrency & why ACID transactions are hard

That will save you from most of the most embarrassing and costly mistakes of programmers without a formal education.

I've actually worked at a company that wasted millions on a fruitless project because management didn't understand basic automata theory:

    - Finite State Machines / Regular Expressions
    - Stack Machines / Context Free Grammars
    - Turing Machines / Anything Computable

I've been thinking of doing a presentation: Everything I still actually use from my CS education in less than an hour. (It will take you a bit longer to study and really absorb, but it will probably take a lot less than 4 years of college and cost much less.)

EDIT: Another good thing to study, though I'm not sure if there's a good single source: Why distributed systems are Hard and why distributed transactions are Really Hard. I really didn't care for the teaching style of the professor who staked out that whole area as "turf" so none of my materials were particularly memorable or good, but the information was valuable.

Re: I'm graduating with a CS degree but I don't feel like I know how to program

#10

Post by stonemetal » Fri, Feb 04, 2011, 12:53 PM UTC

rabc wrote: post #3

You can't expect college to teach you how to program. It's more experience and try-and-fail than anything else. The college will teach you the basic, it will give you a ground to know how to start building. They won't tell you how to put the bricks together.

That is how it is right now, but run into a brick wall until you conquer it isn't the best approach. Guided practice would be much better. For that to happen though we need to get better at being able to describe what we learned by running into that brick wall.