Why does your degree certificate say the same thing mine does when you can’t program and I can? I was reading an article recently on codinghorror titled, Why Can’t Programmers..Program? and it got me thinking. You see I often wondered about these people at university and what would happen to them after they graduated. You know who they are. The people that failed or repeated multiple and in some cases, countless subjects over the course of their degree. What’s more, some even failed the same subject multiple times. As if once wasn’t enough!
Not all programmers created equal
Yet they still continue on to get that piece of paper at the end that dictates they are a competent programmer and are worthy of the Computer Science Degree they received it for. When it all comes down to it, on paper at least, they look and appear as ‘qualified’ as their real graduates. Now you obviously know these ones. They are the ones that probably didn’t fail a single subject in their entire degree, they worked hard to never get a single assignment in late. Some of them, may even have achieved distinction averages across the board or higher. So how is it we produce two polar opposites, two opposite ends of the spectrum and they get a piece of paper that draws equal?
This type of equality Jeff advocates as a slap in the face…
…I am disturbed and appalled that any so-called programmer would apply for a job without being able to write the simplest of programs. That’s a slap in the face to anyone who writes software for a living.
But whose fault is it really?
Because that’s what graduates do. Whether they can actually program or not. Once they get that piece of paper, they go out into the work force and look to slap somebody in the face, or at least in Jeff’s mind….and I’m of a mind to agree with him too. But I’m not entirely sure it is their fault (yes I know we are all responsible for our own actions).
I would further extend this slap to the universities in question. After all, they are the ones producing graduates who supposedly can’t do what their certificate says they can do. Is it not their responsibility to ensure that those that do get through, that do receive that certificate of completion can actually do what it says they do? Because if it isn’t, than they may as well hand them out (graduate certificates) like every other flyer handed out at universities.
Jeff raises for loops, recursion, data structures (specifically the linked list) and other simple tasks into the lime light advocating that in his experience, most programmers struggle with the basics. He even pointedly targets Master’s graduates and experienced (or so called) programmers with time behind their belt. Now I’m currently undertaking a masters and I’d like to think I gave a check (a very big one at that) to all those tasks before I even considered doing further study. So tell me why their degree paper says the same thing mine does when they can’t do what I can do?
