Comments on: Education vs Training http://www.blackbagops.net/2006/11/29/education-vs-training/ Weapons and Intelligence in the War Against "Them" Fri, 22 Dec 2006 11:38:23 -0800 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Art McCray http://www.blackbagops.net/2006/11/29/education-vs-training/comment-page-1/#comment-3409 Art McCray Fri, 22 Dec 2006 11:38:23 +0000 http://www.blackbagops.net/?p=91#comment-3409 Hear, hear! I did a *lot* of interviewing at Big River, and the correlation 'twixt Java and "No, thanks, we like you as a customer," was very high. About as high as the level of education in the Big World is low. Over time I devolved to asking mostly: 1. Compare and contrast lists, trees, and hashes. 2. Write a c/c++ or pseudo-code function to reverse a string in place. 3. (assuming success with #2) OK, now reverse it by words--in place. Never mind 2 and 3. Less than 50% of the graduates with a Master's degree in CS could answer #1 satisfactorily. Masters of Computer Science from good schools, universities with good reputations (e.g., Berkely, U of Oregon, Duke, U of Texas), and with GPS 3.7 and above (I devolved there over time also). Training is useless in CS--the language of the decade keeps on rolling; over the course of my career (five decades) there have been at least five, more likely six (Pascal?) or seven (pick yours: PL/1, Cobol, Perl, VB, VBScript, Basic, &). Lots of words to say that I endorse the real solution: proper education, and degrees that mean what they should. "Coders" are useless outside the IT dept. at BigSlow Corp. Hear, hear! I did a *lot* of interviewing at Big River, and the correlation ‘twixt Java and “No, thanks, we like you as a customer,” was very high. About as high as the level of education in the Big World is low. Over time I devolved to asking mostly:
1. Compare and contrast lists, trees, and hashes.
2. Write a c/c++ or pseudo-code function to reverse a string in place.
3. (assuming success with #2) OK, now reverse it by words–in place.

Never mind 2 and 3. Less than 50% of the graduates with a Master’s degree in CS could answer #1 satisfactorily. Masters of Computer Science from good schools, universities with good reputations (e.g., Berkely, U of Oregon, Duke, U of Texas), and with GPS 3.7 and above (I devolved there over time also). Training is useless in CS–the language of the decade keeps on rolling; over the course of my career (five decades) there have been at least five, more likely six (Pascal?) or seven (pick yours: PL/1, Cobol, Perl, VB, VBScript, Basic, &).
Lots of words to say that I endorse the real solution: proper education, and degrees that mean what they should. “Coders” are useless outside the IT dept. at BigSlow Corp.

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