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Stack Overflow survey reveals over half of developers are self-taught

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  Stack Overflow survey reveals over half of developers are self-taught RS Wood  <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2015-04-11 19:14 +0000
    Re: Stack Overflow survey reveals over half of developers are self-taught Sylvia Else <sylvia@not.at.this.address> - 2015-04-12 13:48 +1000
      Re: Stack Overflow survey reveals over half of developers are self-taught Bob Eager <news0005@eager.cx> - 2015-04-13 21:24 +0000
        Re: Stack Overflow survey reveals over half of developers are   self-taught Peter Mc Donough <mcd-mail-lists@gmx.net> - 2015-04-14 00:05 +0200
    Re: Stack Overflow survey reveals over half of developers are self-taught Bjoern Hoehrmann <bjoern@hoehrmann.de> - 2015-04-13 21:32 +0200
    Re: Stack Overflow survey reveals over half of developers are self-taught Dan Espen <despen@verizon.net> - 2015-04-13 21:44 -0400
      Re: Stack Overflow survey reveals over half of developers are self-taught Tim Streater <timstreater@greenbee.net> - 2015-04-14 09:35 +0100

#7341 — Stack Overflow survey reveals over half of developers are self-taught

From the «d» department:
Title: Stack Overflow survey: Nearly half of developers are self-taught
Author:
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2015 12:44:50 -0400
Link: http://www.topix.net/science/computer-science/2015/04/150410PB8GLN?fromrss=1

A college degree in computer science is not necessarily needed to get up to
speed in software development. Almost half of developers never received a
degree in that discipline, according to a Stack Overflow survey that polled
more than 26,000 persons in 157 countries this February.


--
Posting to comp.misc, sci.misc, and misc.news.internet.discuss

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#7350

On 12/04/2015 5:14 AM, RS Wood wrote:
>  From the «d» department:
> Title: Stack Overflow survey: Nearly half of developers are self-taught
> Author:
> Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2015 12:44:50 -0400
> Link: http://www.topix.net/science/computer-science/2015/04/150410PB8GLN?fromrss=1
>
> A college degree in computer science is not necessarily needed to get up to
> speed in software development. Almost half of developers never received a
> degree in that discipline, according to a Stack Overflow survey that polled
> more than 26,000 persons in 157 countries this February.
>
>
> --
> Posting to comp.misc, sci.misc, and misc.news.internet.discuss
>

I have a computer science degree. You don't really learn that much, and 
what you do learn becomes obsolete quite quickly.

The same is likely true of a great many other disciplines, with the 
significant difference that a qualification in computer science is not a 
legal requirement for getting a job in that industry.

Sylvia.

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#7373

On Mon, 13 Apr 2015 21:21:26 +0000, Stefan Ram wrote:

> Sylvia Else <sylvia@not.at.this.address> writes:
>>I have a computer science degree. You don't really learn that much, and
>>what you do learn becomes obsolete quite quickly.
> 
>   What one learns in computer science does not become obsolete quickly:
> 
>       - mathematical and physical foundations - grammars, LR(k), ...
>       - automata (deterministic/nondet.),
>       - formal languages - computability - the lambda calculus and
>       Turing machines - undecidability - complexity, P, NP,
>       - parsing - semantics (e.g., denotational semantics)
>       - ...
> 
>   It becomes obsolete quickly when teachers confuse computer science
>   with vocational training for specific products (like Java or SQL).

Exactly. SWMBO has a little thing she uses to explain the difference 
between education and training:

"Would you rather your son/daughter went to school and had:

 a) sex education
 b) sex training?
"




-- 
Using UNIX since v6 (1975)...

Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
 http://www.mirrorservice.org

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#7375 — Re: Stack Overflow survey reveals over half of developers are self-taught

Am 13.04.2015 um 23:24 schrieb Bob Eager:
> On Mon, 13 Apr 2015 21:21:26 +0000, Stefan Ram wrote:
>
>> Sylvia Else <sylvia@not.at.this.address> writes:
>>> ...
>>
>>    It becomes obsolete quickly when teachers confuse computer science
>>    with vocational training for specific products (like Java or SQL).
>
> Exactly. SWMBO has a little thing she uses to explain the difference
> between education and training:
>
> "Would you rather your son/daughter went to school and had:
>
>   a) sex education
>   b) sex training?
> "
>

OT: The answer depends in parts on the curriculum of either, how old the 
children are and how credible their parents are as role models.

Peter

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#7368

* RS Wood wrote in comp.misc:
>A college degree in computer science is not necessarily needed to get up to
>speed in software development. Almost half of developers never received a
>degree in that discipline, according to a Stack Overflow survey that polled
>more than 26,000 persons in 157 countries this February.

Looking at http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2015 the
survey results and the media coverage of them seem rather useless. I've
not been able to find out, for instance, who was actually asekd to take
the survey. People looking for a copy and paste recipe for the right
command line options for some tool aren't really "developers" in any
meaningful sense of the word, for instance. Take this result as example:

  After millennia of heated debate, mercifully, at long last, we have
  an answer. Most developers prefer tabs to spaces.

  Upon closer examination of the data, a trend emerges: Developers
  increasingly prefer spaces as they gain experience. Stack Overflow 
  reputation correlates with a preference for spaces, too: users who 
  have 10,000 rep or more prefer spaces to tabs at a ratio of 3 to 1.

(Note that `SELECT ... WHERE rep >= 10000` as suggested by the end of
the sentence is not really a way to determine correlations either btw).
-- 
Björn Höhrmann · mailto:bjoern@hoehrmann.de · http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de
D-10243 Berlin · PGP Pub. KeyID: 0xA4357E78 · http://www.bjoernsworld.de

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#7378

RS Wood  <rsw@therandymon.com> writes:

> From the «d» department:
> Title: Stack Overflow survey: Nearly half of developers are self-taught
> Author:
> Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2015 12:44:50 -0400
> Link: http://www.topix.net/science/computer-science/2015/04/150410PB8GLN?fromrss=1
>
> A college degree in computer science is not necessarily needed to get up to
> speed in software development. Almost half of developers never received a
> degree in that discipline, according to a Stack Overflow survey that polled
> more than 26,000 persons in 157 countries this February.

Business programming probably goes back a bit further than when I stated
in 1964.  At least by a few years.

There were no college courses for programmers for years
after I started and most companies hired without looking for college.

I took a few months of programming training at a tech school.
300 hours I think.  I remember my mom loaned me $325 bucks to pay
for the course.

Lots of other programmers were similar.  During interviews education
was not an issue, just experience or knowledge or aptitude.

I knew a guy that barely got out of HS but wanted to try programming.
I told him to get a computer operators job.
He used to run lots of compiles on the night shift.
I suggested he fix the compile errors he could figure out
with a note to the programmer.

Didn't take him long to break into programming.

This stuff with education for a job in programming is a farce.

Education is important, you need to do it all your life.
I'm not a fan of the formal stuff.
You need to learn on your own, not have someone feed you stuff.

So, glad to hear lots of people can break into the field without
spending all those years paying to be spoon fed a lot of stuff they
can learn when they need to.

-- 
Dan Espen

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#7381

In article <mghrc5$26a$1@dont-email.me>, Dan Espen <despen@verizon.net>
wrote:

>RS Wood  <rsw@therandymon.com> writes:
>
>> From the «d» department:
>> Title: Stack Overflow survey: Nearly half of developers are self-taught
>> Author:
>> Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2015 12:44:50 -0400
>> Link:
>> http://www.topix.net/science/computer-science/2015/04/150410PB8GLN?fromrss=1
>>
>> A college degree in computer science is not necessarily needed to get up to
>> speed in software development. Almost half of developers never received a
>> degree in that discipline, according to a Stack Overflow survey that polled
>> more than 26,000 persons in 157 countries this February.
>
>Business programming probably goes back a bit further than when I stated
>in 1964.  At least by a few years.

Try 1951:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LEO_(computer)

-- 
"Please stop telling us what you feel. Please stop telling us what your 
intuition is. Your intuitive feelings are of no interest whatsoever, 
and nor are mine. I don't give a bugger what you feel, or what I feel. 
I want to know what the evidence shows."             -- Richard Dawkins

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