For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time

Re:For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time by stcredzero on Wednesday August 13, 2008 @03:33PM (#275353)

We need to stop fooling ourselves and just flat-out have masters and apprenticeship. When the system in schools and in companies works, it boils down to this anyhow. (I'm not including prodigies that you couldn't keep from learning no matter what you did. I'm talking about those talents that wouldn't flower if they didn't fall into the right circumstance to reach their full potential.)

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Re:For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time by astine on Wednesday August 13, 2008 @04:02PM (#275402)

We have those in some industries: It's how you get to be a plumber for instance.

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Re:For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time by stcredzero on Wednesday August 13, 2008 @04:04PM (#275404)

We really need that in Programming!

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Re:For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time by menloparkbum on Wednesday August 13, 2008 @04:23PM (#275440)

No, we don't. I don't want some guild or certification authority telling me I can't program for a living until I've done 2 years of "journeyman" programming and passed my licensing exams.

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Re:For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time by Alex3917 on Wednesday August 13, 2008 @04:34PM (#275458)

I'm having trouble finding it right now, but there was a good argument posted here a while back for requiring a certification proving that programmers know how to write secure code. The analogy was that the market can already sort out good chefs from bad chefs, but that there should be a basic certification to prove that you understand food safety.

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Re:For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time by nostrademons on Thursday August 14, 2008 @02:52AM (#275896)

The difference is that all chefs can make people sick with poor food safety, yet the vast majority of programmers are working on things where security really doesn't matter.

If we had mandatory security certifications, Reddit wouldn't exist. Nor, for that matter, would Windows. And while many of us would probably rejoice at that, I think a lot of people would be pretty pissed off if they had to use OpenBSD.

BTW, I interned at a company that does avionics/medical devices/financial software. Those industries do have strong regulations, like mandatory code reviews and traceability matrices. And that's great for what they do, but I'd hate to see the same standards applied to your Web 2.0 social bookmarking site.

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Re:For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time by stcredzero on Thursday August 14, 2008 @09:55AM (#276071)

Where in the world did I say anything about "manadatory?"

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Re:For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time by silentbicycle on Friday August 15, 2008 @07:56AM (#276931)

You're probably thinking of this article at Raganwald: http://weblog.raganwald.com/2007/07/certification-bring-it-o...

Rebuttal here: http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/2007/07/04/certification-pl...

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Re:For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time by stcredzero on Wednesday August 13, 2008 @05:41PM (#275538)

The thing is, the market only sorts out egregious programmers.

The security certification is a wonderful idea! I think that would be a great place to start. (And end, perhaps.) The test for this could be entirely empirical. An applicant could be required to place $1000 in escrow, and implement a web application on the guild's servers. They would be required to add certain features. During the test, anyone would be welcome to try and hack the website. If anyone can prove that they are successful, they get the $1000. If the features all get implemented with no hacking, then the applicant gets their money back, minus the fee.

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Re:For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time by invisible on Wednesday August 13, 2008 @06:22PM (#275584)

Although I did laugh, I have to ask if this was this a joke? So $1000 or $100 is what you pay (depending on if you fail or succeed)? Aside from the monetary figures you mentioned, sure it sounds like a great idea for a staffing business.

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Re:For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time by stcredzero on Wednesday August 13, 2008 @08:33PM (#275671)

Not a joke. Do you think the amounts are too high? This thing doesn't even have to be a certification. It could be a contest.

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Re:For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time by justin on Thursday August 14, 2008 @04:35AM (#275935)

This is silly. Programming, networking, etc certifications exist: big companies like MSFT give them out if you jump through all the hoops and prove your high skillz. Fortunately for us crappy programmers on the web, companies that give a shit about those certifications care about hiring people with them, and companies that don't, don't. Yay for free markets!

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Re:For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time by stcredzero on Thursday August 14, 2008 @09:53AM (#276068)

More words in my mouth. In many cases, the market settles for something that just shows the hiring manager dotted their I's. (A hoop-jumping exercise that feeds another hoop-jumping exercise.) If there were certifications based on actual results in practice, this would be beneficial on many levels. It would be a way to disseminate good practices, and it would be a more direct indicator of the ability to produce results.

In other words: the market does do something, but someone could do even better.

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Re:For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time by stcredzero on Wednesday August 13, 2008 @04:43PM (#275468)

We don't? I've been in a lot of different programming shops as a consultant, mostly in large organizations, and let me tell you -- I don't think a lot of the people out there who are programming really should be. I've had to be the hero far too many times for shops where someone didn't realize doing something was O(n^2) and doing it another way was O(n).

The industry doesn't need to the government to penalize non-guild programmers to benefit from a guild. All the guild has to do is to show that it is effective in producing competent, knowledgeable programmers. I suspect that things like employment at Microsoft have filled this niche. (Sub-optimally.) An organization that is designed to fulfill this particular purpose would be much better at its function and more robust.

A majority of US drivers think they are above average. I have met very few under-qualified programmers who realized it.

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Re:For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time by astine on Wednesday August 13, 2008 @05:09PM (#275501)

He man, I know some neo-guildists if you want me to put you in touch. :P

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Re:For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time by astine on Wednesday August 13, 2008 @05:03PM (#275492)

I don't know, I can see the education model being useful. I'd rather not have to submit to a guild or union (unlike some friends of mine,) but I can see the value of serving time in a real programming shop with experience and competent (hopefully) individuals as part of one's education. Of course, I think this is called an 'internship' these days.

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Re:For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time by byrneseyeview on Wednesday August 13, 2008 @04:25PM (#275443)

Is that what Murray is advocating? The article I read suggested that using standardized tests would be a cheaper alternative than college -- but if you'd prefer four years of paying and not working to two years of getting paid to learn, you can at least enjoy the status quo.

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Re:For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time by menloparkbum on Wednesday August 13, 2008 @04:45PM (#275471)

Is that what Murray is advocating?

No, but that seemed to be what the commenter I replied to was advocating.

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Re:For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time by stcredzero on Wednesday August 13, 2008 @04:55PM (#275480)

Too many conclusions jumped to. Though guilds have had legal backing like this historically, I don't think you need that to have some form of benefit from a "programmer's guild."

I think you could base it entirely on empirical results -- successful programming projects being the sole measure of value.

Come to think of it, Open Source projects somewhat fill this role.

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Re:For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time by jraines on Wednesday August 13, 2008 @04:42PM (#275466)

It seems like it would be nice as a norm, but not as a codified system with licenses and such.

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Re:For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time by nazgulnarsil on Thursday August 14, 2008 @01:17AM (#275845)

this is the kind of thing that can only be implemented 1 company at a time. trying to make some sort of organization to do it would create problems.

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