What you learn at a uni is not really about learning a trade, sure it gives you a taste of the basics in many areas, but you will never be an supeb developer (or another profession) when you get out by only attending classes. However, what uni teaches you is how to learn, how to think critically, how important sources are, what to look for to get the most knowledge out of what you read. Or at least that is what it has always been about for me, the process of learning effective learning.

That's what university is supposed to be about, but it doesn't achieve that for many people. Which is a shame, because those skills are extremely important.

"assuming you have a real engineering job" does a lot of work there. You could also do a lot of work the other way by stating "assuming you are getting a real education". I studied physics when I was young and that field is a lot deeper than my current work in programming. Computer science can also be quite deep if one considers things like the halting problem, type theory and proof assistants.

You're commenting on the wrong article.

I think it's that the things learned in school are academic (red-black trees, dynamic programming, writing toy OS and programming languages, etc.)

In the real world you're faced with building five nines active-active systems that interface across various stakeholders, behaviour has to be eventually consistent, you've got a long list of requirements and deadlines, etc. It's practical, hands on, and people are there to build the thing with you at a scale that far exceeds the university undergraduate setting.

It's not a bad thing, it's just different.

Students shouldn't be afraid of it. Your job and coworkers, if it's a good workplace, are there to help you succeed as you succeed together. You learn and grow a lot.

You also learn how to deal with people, politics, changing requirements, etc., which I would imagine is difficult or impossible to teach without just throwing yourself into the fire.

Sure, it's different than gaining professional experience. It's more theorical, more foundational, broader. But that doesn't mean you're learning less, let alone 4 times less on a yearly basis.

I've been a CS teacher and I found that it's terribly easy to underestimate how much there is to learn and how much effort that learning takes, when you've internalized a skill yourself a long time ago.