Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

threadreaderapp.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 506 posts

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#241

Post by extra88 »

patientplatypus wrote: post #232
wnoise wrote: post #3

> 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.

Ugh...I hear this sort of thing all the time and I find it sooo obnoxious. Look, the reason that all the students go to university is to make money. Like 90%+ of undergrads go there to make money so whether it "technically" should be a monastery of cloistered academics pondering the universe (based on some high minded notion of what learning "ought" to be for) is besides the point. University costs a shit ton of mone…

> the reason that all the students go to university is to make money. Like 90%+ of undergrads go there to make money

Which is it, "all" or "90%?" I went to a private liberal arts college so maybe that automatically puts me and my classmates in the 10% but I did not think the overwhelming majority of us were there to make money. The fact that lots of students still major in subjects that can be very worthwhile and valuable but lack obvious paths to financial success (e.g. most of Humanities and a lot of Social Sciences) indicates "making money" is not why they're there.

You think universities should basically be trade schools. They're not and they shouldn't be. Trade schools should be trade schools but the U.S. has a dearth of them and many that fit the description aren't good enough.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#242

Post by Y7ZCQtNo39 »

tikhonj wrote: post #83
wnoise wrote: post #3

> 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.

To be fair, they do a pretty bad job teaching CS too. Your average undergrad program is almost entirely learning about CS, not learning CS. A non-trivial of students get through a CS degree never doing anything novel in CS —a real shame because, unlike math, research-level CS problems are eminently accessible to undergrads. It doesn't even have to be "real" research: I just expect more than classes which have you reg…

I don't think industry needs every CS graduate to produce something novel. The work of many is just building upon the work of others.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#243

Post by cschep »

blurbleblurble wrote: post #191
eightysixfour wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the anecdote and OP’s statement support one another - companies have a hard time reliably staffing generalists and one of the reasons for that is that they are bad at identifying them and determining how to use them. Parent showed them a generalist skill set and they saw a lack of professionalism.

It'd be straightforward to find/get a programming job that'd more than take care of my material needs. There are a buttload of entry/intermediate level jobs out there that'd provide more money than I even know what to do with. If I wanted a job really bad, I could study up for it, put the technologies they're looking for on my resume and apply. The hard part is giving in to a job . I think my hesitancy in this area s…

The idea of failing at "giving in to a job" resonates so much with me. Thanks for taking the time to formulate this thought into words.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#244

Post by FLUX-YOU »

rhaps0dy wrote: post #92
blurbleblurble wrote: post #73

> 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. This one. Every job I see when I go looking is 40+ hrs a week, likely with plenty of idle time and projects I don't believe in. Part of this is…

I think you framed your anecdotal evidence as supporting the OP's statement, but also that you misunderstood such statement; and you actually present evidence against it. If companies find it hard to reliably staff generalist positions, _and_ you're a generalist as you claim, then you would find it _easy_ to get a job.

Companies sometimes aren't honest about their job postings asking too much, and instead blame the worker population on not having the skills they need.

The more skills you are trying to get filled for one position, the less likely a candidate will match all of those skills.

Take any job posting with 20-30 lines of skills or requirements and it's really no wonder they can't find someone that meets all or even half of that.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#246

Post by analyst74 »

brucephillips wrote: post #231
claudiulodro wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The insightful part for me is that you can get better or novel products in areas where the "when , use " is the dominant habit by optimizing or changing the habit. Some more examples: - Keurig coffee makers fundamentally changed the coffee habit for many people. - Netflix fundamentally changed the "going to the video store" habit. Making coffee and watching movies were already habits for many people, but it was possi…

Is there any product that doesn't fit this pattern?

many of the failed ones

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#247

Post by jknoepfler »

patientplatypus wrote: post #232
wnoise wrote: post #3

> 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.

Ugh...I hear this sort of thing all the time and I find it sooo obnoxious. Look, the reason that all the students go to university is to make money. Like 90%+ of undergrads go there to make money so whether it "technically" should be a monastery of cloistered academics pondering the universe (based on some high minded notion of what learning "ought" to be for) is besides the point. University costs a shit ton of mone…

There are two things wrong with this perspective.

First, if you walk out of a four year degree in computer science without a strong foundation in discrete mathematics, algorithms, data structures, and at least one of distributed systems theory, stochastic systems theory, control, statistics/machine learning, AI, data visualization, or design, you've stunted your horizons for growth as an engineer pretty badly. I use three of those every day at work. I wouldn't be able to read the research, do the math, or write the software to implement what I work on without a very strong education in fundamentals. The only CSE course I took in University that I haven't made active use of was an advanced matrix computation course. I mean, if you're just shitting out web services and REST APIs or converting COBOL to Java, fine, but that's something you can train a monkey (and in very short order, a computer) to do.

Secondly, we invest in Universities as a public good. You should come out of a four year program able to write well, critically analyze difficult material (not "Catcher in the Rye"), articulate complex ideas persuasively, and understand the world you live in and how to live in it substantially better than when you went in. You might be surprised to learn that with the benefit of hindsight, many people find the time they spent reading and learning to be incredibly useful later in life, as it provided a foundation for dealing with conflict and complexity. If that's wasted on you, then it's wasted on you, but understand that you have shot yourself in the foot in terms of your ability to mature as a human being. I personally think public University education should be substantially more rigorous and should fail people aggressively, and should also be free. I wish we separated the whole "whoo look at me I'm 18-22 let's party" thing from the thought of University. If that's where you are in life at 18, there's nothing wrong with that... go work as a code monkey or a barista and get it out of your system, and when you're ready to level up as a human being give University a try, go. That's more or less what worked for me, anyway.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#248

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

patientplatypus wrote: post #232
wnoise wrote: post #3

> 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.

Ugh...I hear this sort of thing all the time and I find it sooo obnoxious. Look, the reason that all the students go to university is to make money. Like 90%+ of undergrads go there to make money so whether it "technically" should be a monastery of cloistered academics pondering the universe (based on some high minded notion of what learning "ought" to be for) is besides the point. University costs a shit ton of mone…

> University costs a shit ton of money and people (the vast majority) pay it so they can have a decent life.

First of all, no one is forced to go to university, so if people pay that much money, it's probably because they feel it's worth it, regardless of its supposed "cloistered academicism".

Secondly, maybe the main problem is that something that is needed (or at least very convenient) to have a decent life shouldn't cost a shit ton of money at all. As is the case in countries like Germany, etc. (if your parent post is from one of those, your reply doesn't even make sense).

Finally, I would rather hire a coder with a strong CS background that one from vocational school. The former may not know the language du jour and the framework fad of the day, but can pick them up easily because they know the fundamentals. The latter will likely adapt much slower.

Post reply on HN