The limited value of a computer science education

"I hope to see the industry improve in this respect, but in the meantime I'm happy to exploit this imbalance as a competitive advantage."

I wonder how much of requiring a computer science degree is simply because the people hiring have computer science degrees. Seems like a self perpetuating insiders club.

I never thought of that, but seems very possible

This topic comes up regularly. Yes, a CS education is not enough. You also need to learn programming. You also need to build systems and learn to think about how to build others even more. But for me it has been very useful almost daily and it can make the difference between being on solid ground vs. being out of your depth and sometimes not even knowing it.

I may have been lucky, but I don't recognize this statement when I think of my own CS curriculum:

The vast majority of what a programmer does, forming good abstractions and avoiding complexity, is almost completely untouched by computer science curriculums.

That's the majority of what my CS degree covered, in several different programming paradigms. Even the idea that there are "programming paradigms" is something I learned at university, from a great course called Comparative Programming Languages. Granted, it's one thing to study it and another thing to gain years of experience doing it, but it was certainly a big focus. I took a whole course on design and structure of OO programs, which mainly at the time focused on C++, but also covered some alternative OO models and what pros/cons various people have claimed for this style of abstraction. And another one on design and structure of functional programs, which in the case of the one I took was mainly from the ML family perspective. These had some more "theoretical" content as well, especially the functional-programming one had quite a bit on type systems, but the overarching goal of the courses was abstraction and structuring (and even the type-theory stuff was introduced as a means to the end of useful programming abstractions).

When I read these kinds of summaries of computer-science degrees, I get the impression people went to some kind of program that was 100% algorithms courses, proving big-O running times and termination properties and that kind of thing. I thought I went to a pretty theoretical one (vs. one with more of a software-engineering bent), but it was maybe 20-25% algorithms. Where are people going where they are taking nothing but Algorithms 101 through Algorithms 1601 for four years?

I do agree that the standard tech company interview process seems to mainly test the algorithms part of the CS curriculum for some reason. I think tech interviewers love big-O notation tests more than actual CS academics do.

"Whether someone can or cannot solve some cute algorithm problem in a high-pressure situation tells you nothing about that person's ability to write solid, clean, well-structured programs in normal working conditions."

It sure tells SOMETHING.Ofcourse there are better ways to evaluate a person as a programmer but I hate it when people claim something without basis.