Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by ZGF4 3387 days ago
Great advice to everyone, not just self-learners
1 comments

True.

But when you are just taught to use libraries and technologies without having some exposure to he principles behind their inner workings, it's easier to fall in cargo cult.

I can't speak for every student at every university, but my university is in the top 50 of csrankings.org and yet even in my junior-level courses there are loads of cargo-cult programming students. They think they understand things like compilers, operating systems, and so much more, and they delude themselves into having those beliefs based on things like "I'm in CS; of course I understand $THING" or "I'm at $UNIVERSITY and we've learned so much, so I definitely understand $THING". In reality, if you mention "ELF", most of them would probably think you're talking about a special type of new line, and the only thing they think "IR" could possibly stand for is "infrared"

It gets even worse when you get on the topic of "Computer Architecture" - so many people think they can talk to their computer on a deep level, without realizing that what they're learning in class (MIPS) is actually not what their computer understands!

Well, you can ask over 50% of software engineers: explain in 1 phrase what engineering is, or what software is.

Many people cannot give you the correct accurate definition.

spot on, man. takes a lot of discipline to remain indifferent to the status-signaling side of learning