[olug] [OT] IT degrees

[Jay Hannah]

On Apr 2, 2009, at 5:46 PM, Sam Tetherow wrote:
> Finding someone who can program beyond simple hacks who does not have
> some formal education in CS though it a rarity. If you are looking at
> less than 10000 lines of code sure you can get by, but if your looking
> at a project of any size you really do need all that 'theory crap'.

On Apr 2, 2009, at 11:21 PM, Obi-Wan wrote:
> A couple community college classes that teach you the syntax of
> C++ or Java do you no good when you have to wrangle 3,000,000 lines of
> source code for an engineering application.  I've been in that  
> situation
> at two separate jobs, and I've seen people succeed and fail.

What classes that either of you took were relevant to large-scale  
programming skills?

Sure, to become the supreme dictator of a 3M line engineering  
application it would behoove you to understand everything about the  
math and physics of engineering. Otherwise you're (probably) less  
able to improve the key pillars of the application fundamentally. But  
surely you could be one of that dudes minions without knowing the  
advanced math?

But after 15 years of wrangling .5M line balls of mud for companies  
not rooted in advanced math I'm looking at the CS coursework  
offerings at UNO after 1620 (C++) and I don't see anything that  
addresses higher-order organization strategies for large-scale  
software systems.

What classes are relevant? I'd like to take those. (But they won't  
take my money since I don't have the Calc pre-reqs. -laugh-)

I don't see how the CS program helps much past the basics if your job  
will be to pound out non-scientific source code for a living.

I've been told degrees are required by many/most companies. But when  
hiring code monkeys* I can't figure out how that's anything other  
than politics. I'd take a history of open source patches as better  
evidence of skill than a UNO CS BS.

j
Just Another self-taught Perl Hacker

* Like me! Code monkey pride!