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The number of CS grads who don't even know basic Git commands is astounding

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Re: The number of CS grads who don't even know basic Git commands is astounding

#91

Post by time4pho »

TheLoafOfBread wrote: post #90

I will rather work with somebody using Source Tree and clears his code before committing from unnecessary, irrelevant or outright wrong changes, than with somebody who knows 3 commands (git add ., git commit -m "some changes", git push) and repeats them without thinking the moment code on his side is "finished", thus committing also changes which are completely irrelevant to what such person was working on.

yes. so much this. many times unnecessary changes are getting pushed because people blindly run these commands. i always use SourceTree to check my changes before pushing.

Re: The number of CS grads who don't even know basic Git commands is astounding

#92

Post by noway421 »

jmull wrote: post #50
knighthack wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Git is not just a fad; it's a literal underpinning of most serious software development these days, especially if you need to work with others. That a CS grad doesn't even know basic Git is telling not of their degree, but of the individual themselves - that they have no desire to learn beyond what's taught, and couldn't even be bothered to look into the requirements of the industry that they want to work in. I argue…

A couple things... First, git doesn't especially solve problems that CS majors have until they are near the end of their courses. The need to manage collaboration, organization, and change in a code base is trivial until pretty late in a CS program, and typically never gets past basic. Second, the context here is the git command-line interface. People can and do use git extensively without it. Third, git's not exactl…

> git's not exactly perfect

Somewhere in an alternative universe, we're building all of our version control tooling on top of Pijul... Maybe even with AST-aware diffing.

Re: The number of CS grads who don't even know basic Git commands is astounding

#93

Post by uncletaco »

qludes wrote: post #78
Apreche wrote: post #31

Yep. When I studied CS in early ‘0X the lecture material was only about programming. Everything else you were on your own. The labs all had Solaris machines. Most students had never seen Unix or a terminal before in their lives. The instruction on how to use it was extremely minimal. There was a very wide gap between the students who were huge nerds who already knew, or learned in their own, and those who didn’t. The…

I was a TA during that time. A part of the students that came in weren't familiar with concepts such as files and directories or desktop UI metaphors because they were used to mobile OS or in rare cases didn't have any actual exposure to computers. But because the last case used to be the rule and traditionally students mostly used the provided thin client labs and Solaris servers the basic intro to actually using a…

The iPhone came out in 2007, the ugly brown android in 2008 or 2009, what mobile OS were students using during the time period mentioned in OP’s comment?

Re: The number of CS grads who don't even know basic Git commands is astounding

#94

Post by noway421 »

serf wrote: post #24

who cares? git is a tool, not a discipline. It's made to facilitate work, not to create a whole knowledge domain unto itself. I wouldn't fault a seasoned and well trained mechanic for not knowing the specifics of a specialty tool necessitating the need to find the manual; similarly although git is the current VCS-ish thing of choice right now, it doesn't represent all of computer science.

VCS is an applied project management and communication system in the context of software engineering. Both project management and communication are disciplines.

CS grads don't need to know VCS, but software engineers do.

Re: The number of CS grads who don't even know basic Git commands is astounding

#95

Post by whitfieldsdad »

yukinon wrote: post #88
whitfieldsdad wrote: post #68

This has proven to be an extremely controversial topic, but, in my opinion, it's perfectly okay to use git in college or university, and we should encourage, not discourage people from using technologies like distributed version control software. You could substitute git with WhatsApp, Google Drive, or e-mail for small projects, and get by just fine, but, why not spend 15 minutes learning the basics of git? As far as…

The university could even setup their own private self-hosted Gitlab and use it as part of assignment submission. 10 years ago, my no-name college had a CS degree that required us all to take a "Software Engineering" course that covered the fundamentals needed once you graduated, including Git. We did group-style large coding projects where teams had to submit their GitHub repo at the end. The prof was able to review…

I think that this would be a great idea, and could also help combat students not doing anything in group projects.

I lone wolfed most of my group projects in college, and don't have any regrets, but, of the projects that I didn't loan wolf, most people didn't write a single line of code, or only contributed in relatively inconsequential ways.

I think that adopting distributed version control systems in higher education would be mostly good.

Re: The number of CS grads who don't even know basic Git commands is astounding

#96

Post by simonblack »

"And the number of CS grads who don't even know basic MSDOS commands like ASSIGN is equally astounding."

Such hubris in that original statement! As if Git is the be-all and end-all of all computer programs. Yes, Git is important. No, it's not the only version-control program in the Universe.

Re: The number of CS grads who don't even know basic Git commands is astounding

#97

Post by Apreche »

redprince wrote: post #89
Apreche wrote: post #31

Yep. When I studied CS in early ‘0X the lecture material was only about programming. Everything else you were on your own. The labs all had Solaris machines. Most students had never seen Unix or a terminal before in their lives. The instruction on how to use it was extremely minimal. There was a very wide gap between the students who were huge nerds who already knew, or learned in their own, and those who didn’t. The…

> There wasn’t even YouTube, or Stack Overflow, or anything much to help in those days. That's right. We would have been completely lost were it not for... books.

Love me some computer books.

Re: The number of CS grads who don't even know basic Git commands is astounding

#98

Post by coredog64 »

mr_mitm wrote: post #34
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #13

CS degrees aren’t meant to teach any particular skill. They should be teaching general knowledge that helps you adapt to whatever the FOTM is in industry. Realistically you can learn to use git in less than one day. It just shouldn’t be a significant barrier to hiring someone. None of the specific languages or software I learned during my degree do I even use now in my current role.

To expand on that, and maybe my view is a bit too traditional, but my understanding is that universities ought to prepare you to become a scientist. At least that's how it was historically. They are not meant to be "vocational training plus" or to subsidize the industry by training the work force for them. (It might be different for colleges, I'm mainly speaking from a European perspective.) I know times have changed…

> You teach graph theory and then many operations in git should become clear after reading the documentation

Never have I needed to understand the underlying Merkle tree implementation of git to use it. Instead, I need to know when to branch, how to reset, and what makes up a good commit working set and message.

All of this would be the same if I was sullying myself by learning vocational skills or just being able to effectively and efficiently work by myself on a research project.

Re: The number of CS grads who don't even know basic Git commands is astounding

#99

Post by nsinreal »

9659 wrote: post #19
cranberryturkey wrote: post #3

I've worked with hundreds of CS grads, the worst programmer I ever came across (as far as readibility of his code) had a master's degree in CS from stanford.

It could be they are working at a level higher than you understand. Not being snarky, but the elite schools are significantly advanced. Imagine learning algorithms from Knuth (yes, I know he hasn't taught undergraduates in 50 years). Looking at the results after being taught by Dr. Smith at Generic State University, you might be unable to recognize the genius.

You can't be serious. This is a bad joke.

Are you trying to defend a software engineer who is bad at writing readable code by... bringing Knuth to the table?

The same Knuth who published "Literate Programming"? "Instead of imagining that our main task is to instruct a computer what to do, let us concentrate rather on explaining to human beings what we want a computer to do"?

Re: The number of CS grads who don't even know basic Git commands is astounding

#100

Post by 9659 »

nsinreal wrote: post #99
9659 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could be they are working at a level higher than you understand. Not being snarky, but the elite schools are significantly advanced. Imagine learning algorithms from Knuth (yes, I know he hasn't taught undergraduates in 50 years). Looking at the results after being taught by Dr. Smith at Generic State University, you might be unable to recognize the genius.

You can't be serious. This is a bad joke. Are you trying to defend a software engineer who is bad at writing readable code by... bringing Knuth to the table? The same Knuth who published "Literate Programming"? "Instead of imagining that our main task is to instruct a computer what to do, let us concentrate rather on explaining to human beings what we want a computer to do"?

I have worked with people that have a command of a given programming language, and algorithms such that it appears to be magic to me. (C++ is common for this problem).

The readability problems may be the reader.

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