Judging by the dismal performance of the pool of undergraduates that I'm trying to recruit developer trainees from, they don't actually teach computer programming in computer science courses.
I had one candidate fail to answer what the output of the following program is:
const z = [5, 4, 3, 2, 1]
const o = []
for(let i = z.length - 1; i >= 0; i--) {
o.push(z[i])
}
console.log(o)
She was about to finish her master's degree in computer science.
@newt Not particularly, but recruiting cute developers is not part of the job description...
@thor that's a shame
@jeff @thor @thatbrickster coding in itself is a useful skill, just as being able to use a phone, understanding legal documents or cooking. Not everyone should make this a career choice, just as not everyone should be a lawyer or a chef.
@thatbrickster @thor @jeff I mean, it is a useful skill for anyone who works with computers. Imagine throwing in some quick macros in MS Office to avoid doing the same thing by hand again and again, that sort of thing.
A company I interviewed with a few years back (turned it down because the job was too basic) told me that I was the only person that had passed their simple electronics test in the past few years, even the graduates coming from local Big-10 university couldn't do things like calculate simple op-amp gain or equivalent resistance of parallel circuits.
I've literally met people that were designing circuit boards who had no knowledge of what components were beyond their limited scope of what they worked with.
@thor Unless I'm missing something sneaky: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Without looking it up, I'm not sure I can guess the language. Java-ish?
@thor [Googles] JavaScript? Anyways, seems like a CS student should be able to figure that out.
@thor I tried but I dunno what push() does.
Programming has never been a significant part of computer science curriculums where I grew up. At best you might see a BASIC or similar outdated thing.
Personally I'm okay with that. Schools can't keep up on the latest tech, but they can teach the fundamentals about how computers work which _people need to understand_ these days.
Devel is so easy to learn online, someone who only learns in a classroom wouldn't fit the job requirements you shared.
@simba The thing is that the applicants I've dealt with mostly talk about the courses they took in the basics as something they have since forgotten. In my opinion, computer science is something you can add after you've learned the nuts and bolts, when actually have meaningful questions to ask about computers. Personally, I never went to college and learned this on my own, supplementing with math, data structures and algorithms as necessary.
@simba If computer science degrees reflected the needs of the marketplace, they would consist of 70% exploring computers and writing software, and 30% theory.
@simba The dropout rate would be high, because more people would discover that they aren't cut out for the profession. And that would be a good thing, because it avoids wasting everyone's time.
@simba It's not that CompSci isn't relevant, but such a narrow focus makes it expensive and risky for employers to hire graduates.
@simba Oh, by the way, it's not terribly hard to guess what push() does. There's another call named pop() that does the opposite thing. You're familiar with stacks, right? These are the same operations, except it's an array.
@thor but is she cute?