Opportunity

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On 2022-08-23 12:46, Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss wrote:
> On Tue, 2022-08-23 at 03:01 +0000, David Schwartz via PLUG-discuss 
> wrote:
>> The question that was posed morphed into something about the value of 
>> CS degrees
>> today. I don’t think they’re worth the time or cost to get one. 
> 
> I agree. More later...
>> 
>> Pretty much all of the work I’ve been hired to do since then (2005+) 
>> was based
>> entirely on the fact that I had 10+ years working with Delphi. 
> 
> How would you like to give an online presentation, on Lazarus, at the
> GoLUG meeting
> in early October or early November? I think it would be well received.
> 
> 
> About CS degrees...
> 
> As I've mentioned a few thousand times, I learned to program at Santa 
> Monica
> Community College. In late 1986 I had to hire an assistant programmer
> to help take
> care of what ten years later would be called the client in what ten 
> years later
> would be called a client/server system. This client was written, by me, 
> in Turbo
> Pascal, which is an easy language, so I was looking for an entry level 
> person
> willing to work cheap. I put the word out, got 750 resumes, and called 
> a few.
> 
> The test part of my interview consisted of the following:
> 
> In *pseudocode*, write a program to read lines out of one file, 
> capitalize every
> letter, and write them to a new file. You have 30 minutes, but if you 
> hand it in
> earlier it will count to your credit. Easy, right?
> 
> Several applicants had CS degrees from UCLA. Some claimed they could 
> write a
> compiler. Not one of the the UCLA grads could get it done in 30
> minutes. Disgusted,
> I recruited a couple of students from Santa Monica Community College.
> They both did
> it in 30 minutes or less. One was ideal, but she and I couldn't come 
> close to
> agreeing on salary.
> 
> Yeah, I'm not that impressed with CS degrees for real world
> programming, and the CS
> grads or undergrads I knew who were good would have been good if
> they'd spent the
> time clerking at a convenience store: They simply had what it takes, 
> schooling
> irrelevant.
> 

Interesting statement.  I think programmers are like sport's players.

Some do really good in high school and go not further.
Some make it to college and go not further.
Others make it to the farm team  and go not further.
And then the select few get to make it to the majors.

Technology is a crazy place.  So many directions to go and things are 
constantly changing.  Kind of like being in a blender on high speed.

I've made friends with a guy who works at Walmart who tells me he used 
to be a COBOL programmer and his job was sent to India.

About 5 years ago I met a guy at a local car show.  He was showing his 
1960's Vette.  He told me he was a COBOL programmer.

I like technology... No I love technology, however if I had it all to do 
again...




> 
> SteveT
> 
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