[alexwestholm]

School is about indoctrinating certain ways of thinking, not teaching the specifics. I've done a CS degree (admittedly at a crap school), an MBA and am about to finish a law degree (at a non-crap school) and none of these bear direct relevance to what's out in the field. Indeed, part of the reason I put myself through the agony of so much higher ed is to gain experience thinking in different paradigms, not merely so that I can now write an algorithmic description of the rule against perpetuities.

With that in mind, and having written code for both startups and large companies, I don't think that CS programs are generally all that much like the real world in either situation (unless of course you're talking about somewhere like PARC). You're absolutely correct that learning to "build cool stuff" is pretty important, but I think it's equally important for larger companies, so I'd say that's more of criticism of CS in general than a failure to prepare people for startups.

[babeKnuth]

i agree with most of what you say, but i think a key is more balance between the two. not purely "real world", and not strictly "academic world". somewhere in between.