One of the problems with CS education today
I have decades of software engineering under my belt and transferable academic credit (C programming, elementary to advanced). I have worked on embedded systems, FPGA's, web and mobile software and hardware dev. I have developed software in assembley, C, Forth, Lisp, C++, JS, Python, Objective-C and more. Also HDL's: Verilog and VHDL.
What's the problem?
They requires all students to take the following courses:
Intro to Programming 1 and 2 How Computers Work Web Development
This will consume somewhere between 1 and 1.5 years.
Yes, someone who knows little to nothing should take these modules.
What about someone who has years of experience and some relevant academic work?
These programs do not have a sensible assessment test one could take in order to demonstrate capability.
I think this is a serious problem.
At the very least this does not respect student's time and prior accomplishments. Forcing someone to devote two semesters to "Intro to Programming" when they know the material inside-out is silly at best.
A further problem is that it seems none of the organizations have any interest in addressing this issue. Repeated pleads at the highest levels have resulted in nothing.
And so someone like me is facing the reality of having to spend a year+ "learning" how computers work, how to write a "for" loop and use arrays when hardware I designed that has flown in space and I have designed and programmed embedded computers from scratch --like 8080, 6502, MC86K, 8085, R65F11, C8051F100, PIC and other processors and published mobile apps.
This isn't necessarily about money but that is likely a factor as well.
You ought to be able to prove what you know through a well designed test and enter these kinds of programs at the appropriate academic level.
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[ 36.8 ms ] story [ 467 ms ] threadI even presented that certificate, and it was rejected: "We don't recognize MOOC's". The irony is thick and wide.
And so, again, having, at the very least, done the MIT course they force you to undergo the torture of "Fundamentals of Programming" 1 and 2 and the other truly elementary beyond description stuff.
This is truly frustrating. And support is useless. They take five days to answer any question and they must have so many students they have no time to pay attention to anything. I have literally received answers having nothing to do with my query.
Considering dropping out before it starts. The idea of spending a year and a half "learning" about loops and arrays grinds my raw to the bone.
At a fundamental ethical level it is, in my opinion, wrong.
I simply cannot understand the idea that someone at a university would think it is fair to force someone to undergo over a year of what amounts to torture before actually reaching courses where that person might start to learn. Something is very seriously wrong with an educational system that is so rigidly attached to a menu you must consume in a specified sequence without regards for what the person might know before starting.