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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

#81

Post by the_snooze »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #61

Here's a thought. Imagine there's another new way of doing things that quickly becomes pretty much ubiquitous in programming (containers may be a good example?). For those who have already graduated long ago and thus didn't learn that new thing in university are you seriously concerned about the people graduating not being rote taught this particular technology? Git isn't even 20 years old. I graduated before that. I…

>When i read things like this I'm extremely concerned and embarrassed for the people demanding new graduates be rote taught specific tech stacks.

I think that's too narrow of a reading. There are some foundational practical tools and concepts that are broadly applicable to all computing tasks: version control, command line file-and-folder navigation, quick-and-dirty sripting. These don't (and shouldn't) need to be "rote-taught." But they can absolutely be integrated into existing coursework so students learn how to use them in context. In a data structures class? Run the lab work in Linux and C++ with basic makefiles. Have a compilers course? Offer the skeleton code for the parser as a git repository and submit via merge request.

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

#82

Post by seadan83 »

DougN7 wrote: post #62
seadan83 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VCS is something that is interacted with multiple times a day in any codebase. It is a basic tool, not too far apart from being able to traverse a file system. The next step after viewing files, is being able to commit to and view the history of those files. I dont know if that answers "who cares", but a mechanic that does not know how to do something they need to do multiple times every day - there is a skill gap. W…

Any code base?? I question your depth of exposure.

Second response after having thought about your question a bit longer, re: "any code base"

First, VCS is a generic term. Saving files to a backup is a VCS, zipping and sending files via email is a VCS.

What kinds of system use VCS as their underpinnings? Build systems, disaster recovery systems, deployment systems, more... Without VCS, you can't have those systems, and which code bases require none of those systems?

Perhaps we are talking mostly demo projects, small ad-hoc scripts. Would you posit other examples perhaps? My perspective is that it is so trivially damn easy to get a VCS set up locally, even a distributed one, that while - yes - you can live without it - in what cases should you really be living without it? Particularly in light of all the downstream dependencies of a VCS.

Maybe we disagree on the ROI of VCS? I can understand someone not building a CI/CD pipeline because it is kinda costly and maybe won't be used enough to justify it. With Git (VCS), there was a time period where I was new to it and was corrupting files left and right. Getting past that, the cost to set up & use is absurdly tiny, my daily workflow has had no issues for years now. Perhaps there is a difference in perspective there? That you view the ongoing cost to be really large? So much so, that a cat walking across your keyboard is so rare and the daily pain so large, that you have a different perspective on the ROI?

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

#83

Post by ehxxn »

cellis wrote: post #35
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…

As someone who has used GIT a fair amount over the last 15 years, it has literally one of the worst developer experiences, right up there with C, python’s package management, cuda kernel development or shader debugging, ffmpeg, Scala, MongoDB, and Rust. All of those tools are very useful in todays world but they’re not necessary to do the job,and unless I’m specifically hiring for that skillset I wouldn’t ding anyone…

[flagged]

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

#84

Post by stale2002 »

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.

Ok.

And source control is an extremely important general concept in the space.

The idea of "programming with other people, on the same codebase" is not some industry specific skill set.

It is important and useful for a thing that involves programming and working with other people.

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

#85

Post by [deleted] »

iainmerrick wrote: post #23
vunderba wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Graduates of a computer science program don't know specific commands around versioning software that they can learn in 10 minutes on the job. Gasp. Algorithms, mathematics and logic are timeless, tooling is not, and it baffles me that people can't distinguish between the two. EDIT: Furthermore, where did they pull this statistic from? I didn't realize that the census also included questions around git knowle…

But if they aren’t teaching Git, are they at least teaching about source control in general? What it does, how it works, how it should and shouldn’t be used. That would be pretty useful.

[deleted]

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

#87

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#88

Post by yukinon »

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 who committed what and then hammered us on good commit messages, clean coding style, testing, etc.. I feel that a large part of my career success was due to the early start I had from that course.

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

#89

Post by redprince »

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.

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

#90

Post by TheLoafOfBread »

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.
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