Joel Gives College Advice For Programmers 808
An anonymous reader writes "Joel on Software explains what college students should do with their lives. Interesting to note is how he justifies such trivialties as GPA scores and well-roundedness, the very things comments here tend to think are overrated. In short, learn to write English, learn to write C, and don't worry about India!"
Response to Joel (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Good advice... (Score:2, Informative)
I for one got sick and tired of doing it professionally, but I like to do a little as a hobby and to learn new technologies.
Other people I know i have been programming for decades (started in the 70's) and still love every minute of it. And still others burnt out completely. I guess it also depends on the jobs you have had.
Re:Slashdot anti-intellectualism (Score:3, Informative)
bullshit. I have a degree in Aerospace Engineering. I've never worked directly in that field. I certainly did learn a lot of really cool stuff that I could never have learned on my own, however.
Computers were a hobby, and getting a job in the field was because of that hobby. The education certainly did help, but I definitely did not get an engineering degree to "get the papers to get a job"
In fact, I chose aero over compsci *because* I could teach myself all of the programming. I wanted a real challenge. If I wanted good grades, I certainly picked the wrong route with that decision!
If all you want out of an education is a job, then go to something like ITT and become another trained monkey. A real university is not for you.
Anti-intellectualism is actually... (Score:5, Informative)
However, in the years since, I have grown in wisdom and have discovered that book knowledge will only get you so far and that personal experience will also, only get you so far. Taken together, a person can go places that having only one alone would be near impossible.
Now, reaching my 30's, I am kicking myself in the rear working towards obtaining a college degree to build upon and further my career goals.
If I had an opportunity to peform a 'do-over' the only thing that I would change in my life is completing at least an Associate's Degree the first few years after completing High School.
Re:Slashdot anti-intellectualism (Score:3, Informative)
Knowlege and education will always be valuable, in many ways. What does that have to do with college?
Seriously, for too many students, college is a four year waiting period: waiting to get their tickets punched for that good job. Some party full time, some work full time, but none of this group of bad students are trying to learn at all, except in the ``pass the test'' sense.
People who hate college, and say that it's worthless, tend to be in this know-nothing group. There are people who find that college gets in the way of learning, because they have to take time out from learning to pass tests. Still, if that's your problem, you should find the test passing relatively easy, or you should change your major to match your interests.
Re:GPA useless??? (Score:3, Informative)
In my career I have found that GPA is a very good indicator of a whole host of things. When I get a pile of resumes on my desk, I skip the 4.0s and throw out the 3.0s, if nothing turns up in between, I go back to the 4.0s.
That's a fine approach, as long as you're comfortable with knowing that you're going to miss out on some really talented people that way. Sure, you'll hire some good people along the way, but you'll screw yourself by passing up some top notch people as well.
There's nothing intrinsic about GPA that makes it a meaningful indicator of how somebody will perform at a job. Come to think of it, there probably isn't *any* metric you can use to evaluate potential employees, that works out to much more than a crap-shoot.
Evaluating people, in any profession, is an imprecise art. If it were otherwise, you wouldn't see guys drafted in the 1st round of the NFL draft get cut before the regular season starts, and you wouldn't have undrafted free-agents in the Pro-Bowl.
The point of all this? That evaluating talent is difficult and error-prone, no matter what. And no matter what arbitrary standard you filter on ( 3.5+ GPA, 4.40 forty-yard dash, 38 inch vertical, whatever) you'll wind up missing out on somebody you should have hired (or drafted).
Re:Slashdot anti-intellectualism (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Slashdot: Comforting Lies for the Cardboard Cro (Score:4, Informative)
No it doesn't. Your conclusion is just one of many that you *could* infer from a high GPA. It could also indicate somebody who cheated like hell, slept with their teachers, "played the grade game" by taking the easiest possible classes, etc., etc. High GPA is not a guarantee of strong performance in the "real world."
There are so many factors that you have to evaluate beyond just a single number, to come to anything close to a meaningful conclusion. Who's better, the student with the 4.0 GPA who took things like "Basket Weaving" and "History of Pornography as an Art Form" as electives? Or the guy with a 3.4 GPA who took "Quantum Mechanics" and "Intro to Neural Networks" as electives?
or what about the difference between a student with, say, a 3.8 GPA, who had rich parents to pay his way through school, and didn't have to work at all - versus a guy with a 3.5 GPA who worked full-time, 3rd shift, and followed work with an 8:00 am section of "Discrete Mathematics?" Hmmm... who is more "competitive" and has more will between those two? Which one will outperform his/her colleagues in the working world?
Are you *really* comfortable just picking the higher GPA in either of these cases?
Why should I take the risk that someone with a mediocre score will suddenly decide to apply himself once he's on my payroll?
You're taking a risk either way. GPA is just one factor you should look at, IMHO. If I were evaluating a candidate, I'd want to see their transcript, and actually look at what courses the selected. I'd want to talk to the person and find out what their interests are, what motivates and drives them, etc.
and FWIW, my own GPA is a 3.75 at the moment, so none of this is an attempt to apologize for myself.
Internship available (Score:3, Informative)
Team Overbot [overbot.com], Silicon Valley's entry in the DARPA Grand Challenge, is hiring.
Coolest robotics project in the area. Great resume builder.
C++. GCC. Python. Geometry math. Electronics work. Field testing. Hard problems. Not boring.
In Redwood City, CA.
Re:Anti-intellectualism is actually... (Score:2, Informative)
Now, reaching my 30's, I am kicking myself in the rear working towards obtaining a college degree to build upon and further my career goals.
I, too, am kicking myself in the rear for obtaining an 'easy' degree (Geography) after high school and now I am paying for it.. I'm 32 and its back to school next year.
Re:But now is not then. (Score:3, Informative)
Granted, 10 years ago, it was possible to get a foot in the door of the software industry without a degree if you could show a proficiency in at least one programming language. But those with degrees were still able to get better jobs and salaries. Nowadays, you'd be hard pressed to get so much as an interview without a degree of some sort.
Missed the point, I think. (Score:3, Informative)
One: You get from college what you put into it.
Two: A guided, strong college curriculum pays higher dividends than trying to learn on your own.
The guy who posted in a Ph.D. in neuroscience (spec., visual neuroscience). Trust me, you don't learn neuro from reading about it, you learn neuro from being in a lab, tinkering with experiments, reading the data, and trying to discover new things. You can't do surgery in the library.
The library and internet in the hands of a motivated man are very useful, but they don't equal the experience of learning from a trusted and qualified advisor, especially if you get to be a part of his or her research program.
The real college experience has nothing to do with being told to "shut the fuck up". Book learning is static, a college experience (by the fourth year) should be dynamic, learning the bleeding edge of things that haven't been put in the books yet. I'm sorry yours didn't turn out that way. =)
Very bad advice (Score:5, Informative)
But this line takes the cake:
Right. Because programming is all about understanding pointer arithmetic.
This statement has nothing to do with CS, nothing to do with software engineering, nothing to do with digital design or assembly. This strikes me purely as "my language is better than your language" elitism.
I firmly believe in his general thesis: a great software developer pays attention to soft and hard skills. Software development is a continuum of skills: at one extreme, it's all about people -- at the other extreme, it's all about computer science.
However, the argument that the best programmers must know C idioms can be reduced to the argument that the best programmers must know (in depth) electrical engineering, digital design, or physics. Because otherwise, it's just superstition that the machine works!
In today's world, knowledge is the essential resource. It's more important to know how to organize your ignorance than to try to learn everything.
Abstract languages like Simula, Lisp, and Smalltalk completely changed the way we look at computer science. It brought the "people" element back into it - the need to think and communicate primarily at the level of the problem, not at the level of the machine -- but retaining the ability to drop down to machine level when necessary.
Abelson and Sussman explained this shift in the preface to SICP [mit.edu], which I think is a good way to end this rant (highlights mine):