|
|
|
|
|
|
by noir_lord
3639 days ago
|
|
|
I'd been programming for nearly 20 years when I made it to University, everything about the way they taught programming was pretty much hilariously wrong* (not the language choices or any of that, that's just noise in the grand scheme of things) but the approaches and the way they explained how to decompose a problem, write it, test it etc. Not helped by lecturers who'd either always been lecturers or lecturers who'd left industry 15 years earlier (this was 2005 so they'd have left in 1990). It was still a valuable experience since a lot of the other stuff was valid but I took all the programming stuff with a massive pinch of salt. * Except Charlie, Charlie was an ex-telecomms C/Unix God he didn't like the way a lot of the programming stuff was taught but he did point us all to where we should be looking. |
|
|
Exactly what I'm talking about. I've met graduates with very weird ideas about how to approach problem solving, and they would eventually confirm it had been taught to them at the university as the one true method of doing things. I remember that I myself had to "accept" some of the ideas being taught to us and recite them at the examination, pretending I agreed with them. Was the only way to get through some courses, and I recall many other students suffering from wrongful instruction. Some tried to argue with the academic staff and get those wrong things fixed, many of them would pay the price later by failing the examination. Apparently, those lecturers and professors didn't like their competence questioned.
About 15 years ago we had a new lecturer come to teach our group. I remember my thoughts after a couple of his lectures: this guy must have been thrown out of every shop that's out there. Was completely useless, even if senior by age (around 50 I believe). Tried to teach us about computers by reading aloud a book similar to the "Computers for dummies" series. Was not a good reader either. From the rumor that was circulating around he had a buddy in the hierarchy and used that to land a job at our university. Was truly pathetic.
As the common saying goes: Those who can do, do. Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach, manage.