I'm waiting for the 31st in which I'm going to delete my Facebook account. Honestly, there are many other open and closed social networks out there that let you keep in contact with others ... I don't see why anyone should feel they need to stay in a closed and dangerous (they keep having security issues most of which are not rocket science to avoid) network. I am happy to see my non-technical and non-FLOSS friends actually saying similar things.
I can't disagree more with his statements. I write code not because of some college project or due to anything I learned in college. In fact, I could say I write code in spite of my experiences in college. College taught me that working is better than doing it right, getting it done fast is better than making it solid and, as an engineer, you don't need to know what you're writing just follow the directions. On the flip side I learned the opposite in the open world. Add on top of that I also learned HOW to program in the open world while college taught me how to write code in one language (Java v1.3) where they more or less said an engineer won't write anything but Java (seriously, it was the early 2000's and Java was cool).
The projects for 'ramping up' to become a professional in college were almost funny. I saw people writing Java classes that do more or less nothing. On the flip side, those who were playing in open space found that just because they write 50 lines of so-so code doesn't make them a hot shot and that they are judged on the quality and consistency of their participation which is something most code shops employ (Billy isn't contributing to the project? Billy's contributions are sub-par? Why are we paying him?). A good wake up call before being thrown into real product coding!
I'm not saying college is a bad thing, but it doesn't get you ready for the real world of engineering on it's own ... but is an amazing way of showing you have the absolute minimum skill set needed to write code.
In short: As an engineer college teaches you to not think, just do. The open world teaches engineers to think, do and work with others. Which is more realistic?
Authored Comments
I'm waiting for the 31st in which I'm going to delete my Facebook account. Honestly, there are many other open and closed social networks out there that let you keep in contact with others ... I don't see why anyone should feel they need to stay in a closed and dangerous (they keep having security issues most of which are not rocket science to avoid) network. I am happy to see my non-technical and non-FLOSS friends actually saying similar things.
I can't disagree more with his statements. I write code not because of some college project or due to anything I learned in college. In fact, I could say I write code in spite of my experiences in college. College taught me that working is better than doing it right, getting it done fast is better than making it solid and, as an engineer, you don't need to know what you're writing just follow the directions. On the flip side I learned the opposite in the open world. Add on top of that I also learned HOW to program in the open world while college taught me how to write code in one language (Java v1.3) where they more or less said an engineer won't write anything but Java (seriously, it was the early 2000's and Java was cool).
The projects for 'ramping up' to become a professional in college were almost funny. I saw people writing Java classes that do more or less nothing. On the flip side, those who were playing in open space found that just because they write 50 lines of so-so code doesn't make them a hot shot and that they are judged on the quality and consistency of their participation which is something most code shops employ (Billy isn't contributing to the project? Billy's contributions are sub-par? Why are we paying him?). A good wake up call before being thrown into real product coding!
I'm not saying college is a bad thing, but it doesn't get you ready for the real world of engineering on it's own ... but is an amazing way of showing you have the absolute minimum skill set needed to write code.
In short: As an engineer college teaches you to not think, just do. The open world teaches engineers to think, do and work with others. Which is more realistic?