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10000 things all CS students should do before graduating

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Re: 10000 things all CS students should do before graduating

#101

Post by phxrsng »

I'm a CS student, near the end, and let me add at least one or two things to this list:

- Meet a lot of interesting students outside of CS

- Go to at least one random social even that has no connection to CS

- Minor in something non-technical, or at least take a few classes

Not to detract from CS at all, but it discourages me how many of my classmates spend 4 years doing nothing but computer science and never think/learn anything else and become even the slightest bit well-rounded. So many of them barely socialize at all for 4 years, even within CS, much less outside of it.

There's more to being a good student and having a good life than knowing the ins and outs of programming languages and kernels, and your career will benefit from being a little rounded.

Re: 10000 things all CS students should do before graduating

#102

Post by mattdeboard »

zheng wrote: post #66
mattdeboard wrote: post #45

First step for anyone who actually WANTS to be a skilled programmer is, in my opinion, find a mentor who: 1). is really really good at programming; 2). is even better at teaching complex matters in understandable ways. Made all the difference for me.

So, where does one find said mentor?

Have to talk to people and network. Make friends and so forth.

Re: 10000 things all CS students should do before graduating

#103

Post by quanticle »

endtime wrote: post #38
quanticle wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not, and that's the point. I've seen computer science students struggle at basic system administration tasks - even things like moving files and directories. I maintain that half the trouble we have deployment is that developers don't know anything about how configuration and setup works in the real world. This list helps to bridge some of that divide by having programmers deploy software, not just build it. EDIT…

While I'm surprised someone got through four years of CS without learning to use mv, if you are looking for 'developers' then you should look for software engineering majors, and if you are looking for sysadmins then you should look at people with two year associates degrees in information systems or something. CS is a branch of mathematics; expecting fresh CS grads to make good sysadmins is like expecting comparativ…

This isn't "expecting comparative literature majors to win spelling bees." This is, "expecting comparative literature majors to be able to spell."

I don't think that programmers should be sysadmins. There's room in the organization for both roles. However, I do think that programmers need to understand the practical difficulties in deploying and maintaining a running application. The more difficult it is to deploy an application, the greater the chances of someone screwing it up. By putting some forethought into how their application code is organized and by making some small investments in automation up-front, programmers can save endless headaches for themselves and the sysadmins supporting them when it comes time to go live.

Re: 10000 things all CS students should do before graduating

#105

Post by dpritchett »

KirinDave wrote: post #94
potatolicious wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Why is the rule restricted to LAMP? And why should the P = PHP & Python? What makes these special? Both are poorly designed languages (since I assume we're not talking Python 3k here)?" Hehe, I think this is the exact attitude the author is trying to prevent. Far too many CS students become too enamored and obsessed with language purity, the perfect design, etc etc, that they end up never building anything. The LA…

> Hehe, I think this is the exact attitude the author is trying to prevent. Far too many CS students become too enamored and obsessed with language purity, the perfect design, etc etc, that they end up never building anything. I build plenty of things. I just don't get why you'd focus on PHP, which has little business value anymore (no NEW, serious project is going to use it) or Python (which is itself less questiona…

Wouldn't C# and Java be the two obvious choices for employability? Neither seems to show much sign of slowing down at the enterprise level, where there are huge numbers of jobs.

Edit: I live 1800 mi. from the Valley.

Re: 10000 things all CS students should do before graduating

#108

Post by presidentender »

pvarangot wrote: post #91
presidentender wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stuff on the list gets you jobs. Your stuff doesn't.

I think you are being a little shortsighted. You may mean it doesn't get you jobs in the specific area that employs most of the people you share online/offline time with. I'de bet most of the guys that programmed the operating system you were running when writing that post got paid for they job. The same goes for people developing compilers or VMs, like, you know, the one Python/PHP runs on... and don't get me starte…

That is definitely true. But how many compiler and VM jobs are there? How many web monkey jobs are there? It's like automotive engineers, as opposed to mechanics and drivers.

Now, I realize that we're being trained as automotive engineers, but most of us get jobs driving. I think the blog post's advice is much more useful for that.

Re: 10000 things all CS students should do before graduating

#109

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

illumin8 wrote: post #97
natural219 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but if you had to configure LAMP, could you? What I said was, "every CS student SHOULD be able to configure LAMP." If you graduate with a degree and you can't configure the easiest web stack possible, then something went terribly wrong. edit sub LAMP with WISC# or whatever you want. The specific technologies aren't the point of the article. It's far more useful for him to say, "Do this in Python" for somebody…

I think that's a very valid point. I've had some wtf discussions with software engineers that were widely respected in their careers (usually Microsoft MVPs, for some reason) yet didn't understand something as simple as how to configure a web server, or what the significance of a subnet mask was to their ability to have a functioning network connection. It was "beneath them", yet to me that's like an airplane pilot t…

Difference in specialties. I'm in my mid 40's and I've been programming since I was 18. The very first time I had to configure a web server was about 5 months ago when I got nginx running on my laptop.

Ask me about microcontroller programming or writing code to control the real world and I'll talk your ear off. Ask me about web stuff and my knowledge stops at PHP.

Re: 10000 things all CS students should do before graduating

#110

Post by presidentender »

urwrong wrote: post #83
presidentender wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stuff on the list gets you jobs. Your stuff doesn't.

Umm... I don't think so. If you are thinking of CS as in Computer Science then that is CS and what the list mentions is what someone who wants to work in IT would need to know. Computer science is much more than just web technologies and many many people on HN will testify they got jobs because of knowing what this list mentions I am not denying that there are many others who would say they got jobs by knowing stuff…

Indeed, university professors, programming languages researchers, compiler and IDE developers and others do certainly need theoretical knowledge.

Could you speculate for me as to the number of job openings for compiler writers as opposed to the number of jobs for web monkeys like me?

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