The author needs to relax, it feels like he wrote this rant while under heavy ADHD medication.
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Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already
21–30 of 506 posts
Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already
#22The author needs to relax, it feels like he wrote this rant while under heavy ADHD medication.
The author is keeping it pretty real based on a majority of my experience. Doesn't have to be spot on, but it's real.
Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already
#23I thought this was going to be a list about "life". I was actually pleasantly surprised it was about our industry!
I would still like there to be a list like this about life though.
Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already
#24> Significant advances shipped by the tech industry in the last 20 years include putting the majority of human knowledge in the hands of 40%++ of the world's population, available on-demand, for "coffee money" not "university money." Oh, I didn't realize tech invented the library card.
Libraries are not run with "Access to Information" as their main goal. They're run with service to patrons as their main goal. If you think I'm making a distinction without a difference, how many libraries have subscriptions to Playboy?
Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already
#25> CS programs have, in the main, not decided that the primary path to becoming a programmer should involve doing material actual programming. Well, that's because CS programs are designed to teach CS, not to be a vocational school for programmers.
Yes. I often explained that CS was more like a math degree than an engineering degree.
An engineering degree won't teach you how to do things, either. I have one. Grads aren't able to build bridges, silicon chips, airplanes, or whatever else engineers are supposed to do. (Ok, I built a radio in my first term. But it was a very simple one.) They just have some intellectual tools that are useful precursors to gaining such knowledge.
You can liken CS to something like Chemistry. Is Chemistry about test tubes and HPLC devices? No. Will you learn how test tubes work when you do a chemistry degree? Probably.
It just happens that the practical skill practiced by CS majors is coding. And coding has this unusually large applicability that wet lab work doesn't. Does that mean CS is about coding? No. But you'll probably learn more about coding doing CS than most other things.
Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already
#26> Significant advances shipped by the tech industry in the last 20 years include putting the majority of human knowledge in the hands of 40%++ of the world's population, available on-demand, for "coffee money" not "university money." Oh, I didn't realize tech invented the library card.
It would be interesting to determine how many people in the world have access to a library, how many people have internet access, and how much overlap there is between the two groups.
Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already
#27>Companies find it incredibly hard to reliably staff positions with hard-working generalists who operate autonomously and have high risk tolerances. This is not the modal employee, including at places which are justifiably proud of the skill/diligence/etc of their employees.
I'm not sure if he's saying these hard-working generalists are hard to find, or undesirable to employ?
Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already
#28> CS programs have, in the main, not decided that the primary path to becoming a programmer should involve doing material actual programming. Well, that's because CS programs are designed to teach CS, not to be a vocational school for programmers.
...yet that's not obvious to everyone, hence the inclusion.
Forgot I just had this argument a couple of months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15502022
Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already
#29> CS programs have, in the main, not decided that the primary path to becoming a programmer should involve doing material actual programming. Well, that's because CS programs are designed to teach CS, not to be a vocational school for programmers.
And yet many job listings for programmers demand you have a CS degree…
My first boss once told me that when he looks at hiring, having a CS degree means that you know how to find solution to problems. Being able to code can be learned on the job if needed. Most junior jobs in bigcos are usually code monkey type of work anyway.
Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already
#30> CS programs have, in the main, not decided that the primary path to becoming a programmer should involve doing material actual programming. Well, that's because CS programs are designed to teach CS, not to be a vocational school for programmers.
I've been spending a lot of time lately wondering if people who treat colleges and universities as though their job is worker training are confused, or if I'm naive in believing colleges and universities exist to expand human knowledge through research and education. I suspect the answer is that our culture is confused, we want people who are smart and well rounded to also be useful. And the ugly side of it is, we wa…
I've heard doctors speak of themselves as having a trade skill... albeit one that pays well.