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

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

#91

Post by bitwize »

edw519 wrote: post #14

I believe that there are two ways to get good at anything, "push" and "pull". Push: You learn from books, classes, mentors, and studying examples, then apply what you have learned. Pull: You have a problem that you must solve, then you learn what you need, any way you can, to build the solution. I suppose there are pros and cons of each method, and I imagine that many people here have used some of both. For the recor…

Pull: You have a problem that you must solve, then you learn what you need, any way you can, to build the solution.

I call this "lazy evaluation", and it's my strongest learning style also.

When I set out to write a software synthesizer, for instance, I was reading papers and learning signal-processing stuff I wouldn't have otherwise bothered with.

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

#92

Post by hessenwolf »

dominostars wrote: post #90
cletus wrote: post #39

This touches on several issues. 1. Should college teach you to program? This is a philosophical question about whether a CS degree should be educational or vocational . The general consensus seems to be that it should be the former not the latter. It should give you the theoretical foundation that you can apply to almost anything. Therefore, college won't necessarily teach you any programming beyond what you need to…

"Frankly, every good programmer I know started programming long before they went to college or at least programmed outside of college for their enjoyment. If you haven't done that and don't do that then I really have to question if you're in the right profession." This scared me in college, since I hardly programmed before (or even during) my degree. However, I've found that it's simply not true. Not just for myself,…

Everyone you know knew how to program before college? Just curious: A. Were you born after 1990? B. Is nobody you know from even a slightly disadvantaged background?

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

#93

Post by plinkplonk »

stcredzero wrote: post #20
bad_user wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

management didn't understand basic automata theory Do tell more about it; as I feel that's not why they wasted millions. IMHO management isn't required to understand much about CS, as long as the relationship with the developers is as between a customer and an engineer (i.e. customer asks for stuff, engineer explains what he can and cannot do). Most problems with management comes from a disconnect with reality. Even…

management didn't understand basic automata theory Do tell more about it; as I feel that's not why they wasted millions. That company tried to translate code from one programming language to another using only regular expressions. (This was a long time ago when you couldn't almost count on most "regular expression" implementations being Turing Complete.) Perhaps the problem was really that engineers who understood th…

"That company tried to translate code from one programming language to another using only regular expressions."

Ha! I know a guy who essentially got a US patent for roughly the same idea. His non technical bosses were so impressed that they gave him a raise and made him "Director of Analytics" at what was (or rather should have been) an Analytics heavy company.

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

#94

Post by bitwize »

Do you bicycle?

Do you remember learning how to ride?

Knowing rigid-body mechanics, the theory of angular momentum, gyroscopic effect, etc. isn't going to keep your ass in that seat. Contrariwise, by trying and falling many times you learned how to balance yourself atop an unstable structure of wheels and frame when you were five years old.

Programming is the same. To feel confident in your ability to program, you simply have to do it. A lot. And you will write a lot of crappy, crappy code. Just keep doing it.

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

#95

Post by bad_user »

cynicalkane wrote: post #80
stcredzero wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't that still be a finite state automata? The key is the bit about the "recursive call."

It doesn't have to be recursive. Iteration can also be non-finite-state. In fact, all recursive programs can be transformed to iterative ones.

Actually recursion in CS is equivalent to using a stack that keeps intermediate values and that grows in relation to the input.

If you've got an algorithm that does that, then it cannot be called "iterative".

I.e. backtracking is recursive, no matter how you implement it.

In school textbooks they do differentiate between "recursive" and "iterative" backtracking, to teach you how to get rid of the call-stack and manage your own. But that's another story.

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

#96

Post by scott_s »

edw519 wrote: post #14

I believe that there are two ways to get good at anything, "push" and "pull". Push: You learn from books, classes, mentors, and studying examples, then apply what you have learned. Pull: You have a problem that you must solve, then you learn what you need, any way you can, to build the solution. I suppose there are pros and cons of each method, and I imagine that many people here have used some of both. For the recor…

If you continue in the push environment long enough, you eventually have to start taking a pull approach - that's what research is. What's exciting about it is you have no choice but to use the pull approach - no one knows yet what the answers are, you need to figure them out.

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

#97

Post by burgerbrain »

hessenwolf wrote: post #92
dominostars wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Frankly, every good programmer I know started programming long before they went to college or at least programmed outside of college for their enjoyment. If you haven't done that and don't do that then I really have to question if you're in the right profession." This scared me in college, since I hardly programmed before (or even during) my degree. However, I've found that it's simply not true. Not just for myself,…

Everyone you know knew how to program before college? Just curious: A. Were you born after 1990? B. Is nobody you know from even a slightly disadvantaged background?

I got into programming partly because I didn't have a lot of money. My parents were smart enough to recognize that having at least one computer in the household was incredibly important, but that one computer happened to be a good decade out of date. One of those "I saw this at a yardsale and picked it up for $50s" deals", the type of machine I use as personal mailservers/spaceheaters these days... I sure couldn't game on it, so besides using it for word processing and research, I learned how to program on it. I grew sick of win95, and nothing else would run on it, so I learned how to put linux on it and use that.

Anyway, my point is this: My current machine I do most of my work on has 64 GB of ram and 32 cores, but you absolutely can get into computing with the kind of money you can earn on a weekend mowing lawns.

(And yes, I was born before 1990. Not everyone in college knew how to program already, but all the kids who made it through the weedout courses sure did...)

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

#98

Post by scott_s »

markkat wrote: post #57
edw519 wrote: post #14

I believe that there are two ways to get good at anything, "push" and "pull". Push: You learn from books, classes, mentors, and studying examples, then apply what you have learned. Pull: You have a problem that you must solve, then you learn what you need, any way you can, to build the solution. I suppose there are pros and cons of each method, and I imagine that many people here have used some of both. For the recor…

I am a pull-learner as well. My physics undergrad and grad courses occasionally required that we program in Fortran, -that's what our profs used. I once asked the head of our program why our degree didn't require any CS courses, but did require that we learn to code. She smiled and said "Well, we think you should just learn it." That short conversation made an impression on me. It wasn't in college study things, I wa…

A good friend of mine is doing her second postdoc in physics. She does cosmology, and spends much of her time programming. For that reason, she has expressed a regret that she did not get much CS background in undergrad.

I find the attitude you expressed strange. They still insisted you take math courses, correct? Or did they say, "Well, we think you should just learn differential equations"?

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

#99

Post by Androsynth »

ja27 wrote: post #55

I'm graduating with a EE degree but I don't feel like I know how to solder. I'm graduating with a ME degree but I don't feel like I know how to weld.

Except professional EE's don't solder and professional ME's dont weld. CS majors overwhelmingly become programmers.

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

#100

Post by joeycfan »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #73
mike-cardwell wrote: post #72

I was a better programmer at the age of 12 than most of the people who did my Computer Science degree were at the end of the course. A worthless piece of paper. Had a fun three years getting it though.

I find I'm a better programmer every year. I look at last year's code and think "What idiot wrote that?" Or maybe I just never get any better, hm.

Me too, except it's every six months.
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