There are many schools out there who produce CS students who haven't the foggiest notion of how to code in anything other than Java or maybe Python. They don't understand algorithmic analysis. They wouldn't recognize O(n^2) behavior in quicksort if it bit them in the quadratics. And what the heck is that radix sort thingy? And hey, if I need a backprop network, I can just Google for it, right?
That's perfectly okay when they're hacking together a RoR app and earning plenty of money for their clients, but there's also a fair chunk of work out there that they can't do. Most programmers probably couldn't cut at, say, SpaceX, though I daresay many of us would love to work there. What's worse, they tell themselves "I can just Google that", but if you've never even been exposed to an idea, it's awfully tough to Google for.
I remember when a university explained to me that they no longer teach C because it's "obsolete and OO is the future". I can't say if the list of schools that DHH provided are good or not, but if you have a company that needs CS graduates that are more than a McProgrammers, then yes, the school can make a huge difference.
Assuming that anybody coming from non-elite universities are "McProgrammers" is insulting. You learn how to learn at a good university. Rarely do you ever hit the ground running with every skill perfectly matched to the job you're hired for at any given company. That's why people, y'know, learn on the job. I very much doubt any programmer working on SpaceX had ever launched a craft into space before getting hired there. Stop being elitist.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 24.7 ms ] threadThere are many schools out there who produce CS students who haven't the foggiest notion of how to code in anything other than Java or maybe Python. They don't understand algorithmic analysis. They wouldn't recognize O(n^2) behavior in quicksort if it bit them in the quadratics. And what the heck is that radix sort thingy? And hey, if I need a backprop network, I can just Google for it, right?
That's perfectly okay when they're hacking together a RoR app and earning plenty of money for their clients, but there's also a fair chunk of work out there that they can't do. Most programmers probably couldn't cut at, say, SpaceX, though I daresay many of us would love to work there. What's worse, they tell themselves "I can just Google that", but if you've never even been exposed to an idea, it's awfully tough to Google for.
I remember when a university explained to me that they no longer teach C because it's "obsolete and OO is the future". I can't say if the list of schools that DHH provided are good or not, but if you have a company that needs CS graduates that are more than a McProgrammers, then yes, the school can make a huge difference.
Fortunately, I didn't say that.