[burgerbrain]

In other news, 29% of students are under-educated about IT.

Seriously though, I think it's clear, at least in CS, that if you only do your coursework you'll be left far behind your peers and what employers expect from you. It has to be something you can be passionate about on your own. Getting A's in all your classes but never doing anything outside of them isn't good enough.

[evilduck]

I have to disagree. Passionate programmers have side projects all the time, school or work. But you can successfully be a completely mediocre (dare I say average?) programmer by just doing your classwork.

The typical Java and .Net business programming jobs out there require people who are absolutely lacking passion, otherwise they couldn't bear the day-to-day tasks. These jobs are not really desirable to good programmers, but they are the majority of opportunities out there.

[burgerbrain]

You will never find a above average programmer that isn't in some way passionate about what they do.

And really, "average" isn't really a good word to use here. People are idiots, but technically speaking your average person is of average intelligence. Those of us who consider ourselves to be in a higher tier generally consider "average" to be very sub-par.

[evilduck]

Point taken, I didn't mean to deride the average person, but my issue was with employers only wanting passionate or above average programmers. Exceptional opportunities want exceptional people. But my point was that most opportunities in our field are not exceptional and that it doesn't take much academic effort or ability to successfully meet their requirements. The student who has a firm grasp of OO concepts and can write a little SQL can handle 90% of the jobs you'll find on Dice/Monster/Craigslist/etc. Business requirements programming just isn't that academically demanding.

[adamdecaf]

Right, you can be "average", but "average" in CS lies between "Programmers" and "Senior Citizens". Average programmers aren't really programmers, they're just people who combine prewritten chunks of code without proper understanding of it.

"Programmers" have to be doing side projects, otherwise they re no better than an artist who only paints for money, or a musician who only plays for shows.

[al05]

Those Java and .NET jobs probably provide you with more money to look after your family as well. All the interesting jobs, seem to lack higher salaries, in the UK anyway.