I'm fully aware that computer science is not the same as programming or software development. But if you have a computer science degree and cannot tell me the big-O performance of a double loop to intersect two lists, we have a problem. If you cannot come up with ideas to perform the same operation more efficiently, we have a bigger problem.

Every computer science curriculum that I've seen has a Data Structures and Algorithms course in the core curriculum. I honestly cannot think of an easier algorithm efficiency question I could ask. If you can't handle that question, you shouldn't pass that course. But I'd say that at least half of the computer science graduates that I interview can't come up with a reasonable answer to that question.

(Open ended questions are even worse. "What is a class?" Guaranteed disaster.)

Sure, they may have been learning lots of other things in their classes. But to my eyes giving people with holes like this CS degrees is equivalent to graduating math majors who are unable to solve a basic related rates question.

In reply to Re^7: So it's homework - so what? by tilly
in thread So it's homework - so what? by tachyon

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