Comments on: High Academic Results Make Better Programmers

By: Oliver Stieber

Oliver Stieber — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 04:32:19 +0000

I’d also add a couple of things,
which is based on my previous comment the system is weighted, and obviously who do well by the system and get a gold star think it’s perfect except could be a little better in the way they think of things. There also more probably the people in-charge of giving it direction.
There was a story just the other day about people in Uni doing biology (possibly even graduating?) would remember everything, but not know a things about the workings and interactions often beyond very incorrect intuitive thinking. e.g. Spaghetti grows on trees and when it dies it forms part of the great FSM in the sky.

Democracy (well most if not all of the current so called democracies, but where only the election is democratic for instance) also have a quite similar natural tendency. Franklin said, ‘Democracy is two wolf and a lamb voting on dinner
Liberty is a well armed lamb’
Basically the tendency will be towards narcissism.
So for instance drivers may vote for better roads and people who don’t drive may vote for better roads or abstain or vote against.
I can’t really think of many instances where a driver would vote for worse roads and still drive or even really want to abstain.
But things like tax and social care too etc…
And most defiantly more government power and control

Sometime the odd thing will reach breaking point, after a while it’s going to be the inevitable history repeating.

By: Oliver Stieber

Oliver Stieber — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 04:13:21 +0000

Ahh… either your a high grade academic, or you’ve not worked with many or known many.

Now it does depend on exactly what the did and how they did it and where examined, but the worst, by an order of magnitude beyond crap, programmers I’ve ever known have been CS grads, Math PHd and Physics PHd, except on guy who could really use a keyboard.

All the best ones I’ve known has had next to no qualifications at-all and are self taught or taught on the Job.

I put the former down to the following,
people who need to be taught right from wrong and remember things by wrote for instance will do very well in (certainly UK) current academia in many subjects.
When they do really well they think, like they are told, that they are super-brainy and going to rule the world (well bit of an exaggeration,but not much) really big EGO.

Problem is they only know how to do what they’ve been told, often by wrote and don’t actually know how to think much beyond that.

They also may be very specialist.

All the good smart ones start up their own company etc….

By: Adrian

Adrian — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 13:04:44 +0000

I think an important factor that is overlooked here is the academic institution.In a university which prioritizes skills and actual hands-on work then indeed good grades mean good programming skills.But if you take an institution were teachers grade exam papers based on your ability to reproduce the most text from their courses, and completely ignore the aspect of actually understanding what is written there, then grades are less relevant.In cases like these, in the end it all boils down to what you’re actually able to do.

By: The Hard Six » The Reality of the Underachieving Hacker

The Hard Six » The Reality of the Underachieving Hacker — Tue, 18 May 2010 09:43:20 +0000

[...] my daily Hacker News fix, I came across an article, in which, Alan Skonkin makes a case that better students make better programmers. He describes his frustration with the idea that in the world of software, mediocre grades have [...]

By: Joris

Joris — Sun, 09 May 2010 02:08:17 +0000

Took us 2 months, and training will still be required, oth I guess it was a pretty tall order… :)

By: Chris

Chris — Sat, 08 May 2010 11:24:03 +0000

I.T. has definitely declined in recent years. Western countries are introducing the work farm standard of teaching, we have Indian people in charge of some outsourcing company telling our Uni’s how they should set up their curriculum. And it isn’t to think outside the box, it’s to be the I.T. equivalent of a blue collar worker. A mindless grunt, basically. Hence the dumbed down uni courses. You aren’t even taught (In the first year anyway) a coding language, you’re told to “Use intelli sense to speed everything up”. Then business units in 2nd year tell you how to develop, architect according to a methodology and pre-concieved pattern, nothing original.

Haha. Interpersonal skills, MSFT and FOSS appreciator, original enough to think for themselves and design, along with decent grades. That’s a pretty tall order, good to hear you found someone.

By: Chris

Chris — Sat, 08 May 2010 08:57:15 +0000

Nah, I didn’t say they were rubbish. More that being tested on the extreme basics when you’re at a much higher level is rather annoying. Basics are fun, advanced theories are more fun. :P

By: Joris

Joris — Sat, 08 May 2010 07:01:15 +0000

True genius is punished by the education system. On the other hand, a genius would pursue their own goals strongly and probably never have to worry about grades :)

Btw, I’m pretty sure Einstein wouldn’t refer to 1x tables as rubbish ^^ A genius interprets everything :)

By: Joris

Joris — Sat, 08 May 2010 06:57:43 +0000

At uni I was educated in the inner workings of programming languages and to a lesser extent the hardware. We were educated in 2 languages, Scheme (lisp dialect) and C++, other than that you were pretty much free to pick what language you would deliver tasks and projects in. But we learned every nook and every cranny of the theory behind and the implementation of all levels of software architecture, software engineering (SDLC), compilers, interpreters, logic programming, OO, script languages, web-architecture and more.

What’s the point of teaching people syntax and only syntax? I’m not generalizing that people with better grades will be better programmers or have more in-depth knowledge. I finished with only a 75% gpa but I went to uni to study computer science because it was the place I could best learn and specialize in what I already loved.

Unfortunately you cannot count on self-study anymore the way you could a decade ago. Self-professed developers can be found on every corner, unfortunately the quality is … well … sad.

Higher grades don’t mean better programmers, but you have a higher chance of finding a good one if you raise your entry threshold.

And thanks for the recruiting tips :) We did however not want to find someone that could “write queries” or “build a website”, we needed someone that is capable of architecting as well as implementing over several technologies from the Microsoft as well as Open Source stable, and have medium to good client-facing capabilities. Turned out pretty though :)

By: Tero

Tero — Fri, 07 May 2010 20:44:46 +0000

I think the point is that academic achievement does not necessarily translate to programming. It might, but at the same time it might not.

It is far better to look at what the person has done and look for that motivation that the job requires. If that does not exist, your school grades are irrelevant. If the motivation is there, then school is a bonus.

I just think that there is a bit of a sampling problem with the whole idea that people with good grades can’t swing it. A good deal of such people apply for the jobs because they have a diploma and want a paycheck, but they actually do not have the passion. Companies then hire them based on academic achievement alone. Any other people that they do hire must prove something more, and they often have what it takes as a consequence.

Apart from that, what does it really mean if someone can get good grades? It means that you are good at playing with someone else’s rules, have discipline, follow instruction, and perhaps you are smart too. But what it does not mean is that you are creative, clever, think out of the box, can experiment, have a vision and all that creative stuff that is extremely important in programming. Many of those things are not measured at schools at all.