...A good coder will get a hell of a lot out of a good degree programme...

Oh yes, indeed! All of what you can learn in a CS study, being a more or less experienced programmer, will fall on "fertile" ground and thus flourish (pardon the analogy, maybe there's a bit too much of Chauncey Gardner in there ;-) I even would make at least 1 year of programming a prerequisite for being allowed to do a CS study.

But that's just the problem. Many CS students don't have any programming experience. They're not able to make a connection between their new knowledge and the real world (yet). And by the time they're in a position to apply, they will have forgotten about most of what they're learned.

Anecdote Alert:
I once gave a 3 week course in programming (TenCORE LAS if you must know) to a group of 15 ex-teachers who had never done any programming before. Unfortunately, the forces in charge decided that it would be at least 4 months before any of them would be able to use it in the real world. Needless to say, after 4 months I could basically start teaching all over again. Very frustrating. Glad I'm not in the (classroom) teaching business anymore.

Liz

In reply to Re^7: Programming and math by liz
in thread Programming and math by kiat

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