Programming Grads Meet a Skills Gap in the Real World
Welcome to the The ProgrammersTalk Community forums.
You are currently viewing our boards as a guest which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our free community you will have access to post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), respond to polls, upload content and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free so please, join our community today!
If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact contact us.
Programming Grads Meet a Skills Gap in the Real World
Quote:
Programming Grads Meet a Skills Gap in the Real World
eWeek (09/03/07) Taft, Darryl K.
Although colleges and universities have stepped up their efforts to produce graduates ready to work, there is still a significant skills gap between what computer science graduates learn as an undergrad and what skills they need to excel in a work environment. Teachers and professionals say not enough is being done to ensure the educational system keeps up with the constantly changing needs of IT. Frequently, entering the work force is just as educational as attending college, particularly for programmers. Terracotta CTO Ari Zilka says he thoroughly understands the skills gap because he worked in the high-tech industry while attending the University of California, Berkeley. "I found that UC Berkeley had an excellent curriculum but not only was my schooling lagging behind work, it became very hard to even go to school because work had me learning the concepts and their applicability and nuances that teachers didn't even seem to know," says Zilka. Some of the skills that schools could spend more time teaching include design patterns, coding style and practices, scalability and performance tuning, and the entire software development lifecycle in general, according to Zilka. Additionally, subjects such as quality assurance, unit testing, and stage and release are usually not taught. Texas A&M computer science professor and creator of the C++ language Bjarne Stroustrup says the skills gap is difficult to characterize because there are so many different types of jobs, and that it is important to remember that universities should educate for a lifetime of future learning, not train student for specific tasks. However, Stroustrup acknowledges that many students have no clue about software development and are completely unable to program, which puts them at a disadvantage even if their job does not directly involve programming.
Well i am still in college, start my second year on Monday, we do nothing that is advanced programming as this is not the main bit of the course, but it can take us on to tough programming courses in uni which i hope to go to next year, though programming is not the focus we have still been told all about the different testing methods and done some small scale ones are self, so i hope that in this country i wont really be that far behind as i hope to know enough code for when i get there so when they mention advanced concepts i will understand.
09-07-2007, 04:53 PM
Programming Grads Meet a Skills Gap in the Real World 
Linear Mode
