[Gllug] VACANCY: Junior Systems Support

[Hari Sekhon]

JLMS wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 11:44 AM, John Winters<john at sinodun.org.uk> wrote:
>   
>> - Tethys wrote:
>>     
>>> On Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 10:18 AM, Hari Sekhon<hpsekhon at googlemail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>       
>>>> I'm surprised we're talking about degrees any more these days,
>>>> especially in a practical job like IT, I thought everyone already
>>>> figured out that degrees were a waste of time and money?
>>>>         
>>> At a guess, you don't have a degree. They're far from a waste of time
>>> and money. Certainly at the time I did mine, a degree in computer
>>> science equipped you to deal with the world of IT far better than
>>> learning on the job,
>>>       
>> <snip>
>>     
>
>   
>>  I did mine quite quickly and found my colleague still
>> struggling with his first one.  I took a look and found something like:
>>
>>  IF price > 10 AND price < 2
>>
>> Given the required logic at that point I suggested it should be OR
>> instead of AND.  He made the change and suddenly his script worked.
>> Next thing I knew he did a global edit of all his scripts to change all
>> the ANDs to ORs, because clearly OR was better than AND.  At this point
>> I realised that I was actually a lot better at programming than most of
>> those around me, despite my lack of an IT degree.
>> <snip>
>>     
>
> Uhm, er, how is that possible?
>
> When I went to University we had extensive training in boolean logic
> and did several medium sized projects in several languages (from
> assembler for several architectures to C++, even LISP and Prolog!),
> there is no way that somebody that had gone through a degree where I
> studied would have been so unprepared.
>
> The only caveat is that like Tet, I also went to University a few
> moons ago, but surely more recent graduates can't be that incompetent?
>   
I knew a guy doing a degree, learning Java, and when I asked him what 
sorts of things he could do in it he told me he was writing a 
"dictionary" that only worked up to "M" but that was alright because 
that was all he needed to do... which is basically like a kid in nappies 
turning the steering wheel of a car while it's parked and switched 
off... I actually tried to get said guy a job for £20K at a place I was 
leaving but he didn't have any other skills and so it didn't go through...

I've known lots of people with IT degrees who can't and don't program.

-h

-- 
Hari Sekhon
http://www.linkedin.com/in/harisekhon

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