[snazz]

I’ve seen many super-talented self-taught programmers who never received any formal education, and I’ve seen college graduates who can’t get FizzBuzz working. Of course the code camps are scams, but a degree isn’t much better for many people who have very little internal motivation to learn.

[learc83]

People regularly say this. But there is no way you made it through my program without literally paying someone else to do your entire degree without being able to code FizzBuzz. And I went to a no-name state school.

I don't doubt that you've seen it, but my guess as that it either was someone from a very poor program, their degree was long time ago and they haven't been doing actual programming since then, or they just get nervous in interviews.

Degrees aren't equal and you should definitely at least look through the curriculum if you aren't familiar with the program when evaluating a candidate.

I've noticed several times that a candidate will have a degree from a department of Computer Science and Computer Information Systems. And everyone will assume their degree is CS, but if you look through their transcript it's clear they concentrated in IT/sysadmin stuff.

Also, in general, their is a huge difference between someone who took the easiest classes and barely passed and someone who has a 3.0+ with challenging coursework. Look at transcripts.

[johnsimer]

I know a few current students who are about to graduate from a top 25 CS school, who struggle writing simple standalone methods (of analogous complexity to FizzBuzz). I personally just think these students "just don't get it"(https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/12/29/the-perils-of-java...). The ones I am talking about in particular are barely squeaking by, but still passing and graduating (without job offers) along classmates who are receiving $150k+ offers from FAANG

If you get enough easy teachers that give partial credit, or that have enough memorization based questions on their tests, and do well in the courses that don't really require deep understanding, it appears that you CAN squeak through and get a degree without really understanding programming.

Albeit, I know plenty of people who "just didn't get it" who did fail out of the CS program at this university, but some of these people do squeeze through.

And then because the 10-20% of graduates from top 25 CS schools who can't really program send in 90%+ of the job applications, you'll get a lot of interviewers saying "So many people with seemingly-good degrees can't even code".

[learc83]

I can see that explanation. Particularly with respect to those candidate's overrepresentation. I think that looking through their transcripts would generally reveal those people pretty easily though.

Also at some top tier schools it's actually relatively harder to completely flunk out, so that might have something to do with it.

[commandlinefan]

Ok. Yes, you’re right. There are proficient programmers who never went to college and complete idiots who did go. However. Most decent programmers do have a four-year degree, mostly in computer science (or something similar like math or physics) and most people who couldn’t hack it in college also can’t hack it solving coding problems 8-10 hours a day, all day, for decades. Stop acting like college degree _means_ moron.

[newen]

It's like you've internalized bad logic or something. Just because X is a subset of Y, where X are bad programmers, and Y are people with degrees, does not come close to implying that X = Y.

[matwood]

That certainly happens, but is it the norm?

[snazz]

No, but it happens often enough that I think that requiring a degree doesn’t significantly improve the quality of the average candidate you receive.

[teunispeters]

Speaking as a programmer without a degree .. yes.

never had access, so taught self from references. I'm working as a firmware developer now and pretty much do "full stack" so I think it worked out in the end. I have blind spots I know, but working on them as I can.