🚀 go-pugleaf

>I get continuing education all the time - it's called "working with
>good programmers".  I find that far more educational than any CS
>course I've ever taken.

Excellent point. I have been wondering where the replies are from people
who are working in the field but don't have the proper education. Since I
don't see them, I thought I would come out of the closet.

When I was in college, I took exactly 3 credits worth of CS, specifically, an
introductory course where they taught Fortran. I thought the course was so
worthwhile, I skipped most of the classes. In fact after a couple of weeks of
skipping, I decided I better go and find out when an upcoming test was going to
be given. I walked in on it. (Got a B). Instead, I majored in Physics and in
Education.

My education in CS consisted of:
1) Hacking programmable calculators.
2) Hacking a Popular Electronics ELF computer (RCA 1802 processor).
3) Hacking a Ohio Scientific Superboard II.
4) Hacking many home computers since then.
5) Reading lots of magazines and somewhat fewer books.
6) LISTENING to what good people in the profession had to say.

I graduated from college in 1980. I have been working in computer science ever
since.

Has the lack of formal education hurt me? I have been in charge of up to
7 other people; most of them with CS degrees. I am currently in charge of two
other people; both of them have CS degrees. One of them has a Masters. (Lest
you think I am one of the idiots placed in supervision over people who know
far better than me, I would simply point out that most of my time is spent on
actual design and programming, I have written roughly 120 pages of C++ the last
three months).

Some observations:
1) A computer science degree certainly isn't harmful. I have seen lots of good
people who have them.
2) I have seen plenty of dogs with degrees in CS.
3) What seems to distinquish good programmers and software engineers from bad
ones is a certain way of thinking, NOT THEIR FORMAL EDUCATION.
4) IMHO this way of thinking is very difficult to teach. I have seen no evidence
that the Universities ARE teaching it.
5) The techniques in CS are not that hard to pick up. I honestly think I could
explain FIFO queues to my 8 year old son in a way he would understand. (I admit,
I would have to wait on hashing for sometime yet 8-}.)

Relating this to the license issue.

1) They would almost certainly require some degree of formal education which I
have just argued above is not needed to do the job well.
2) Further education is even more laughable. I am not against education.
(Remember, I have a degree in it). It is just that the type of education that
is most appropriate for any particular individual in any particular position
varies quite a bit. The person and the company he works for are in a much better
position to judge what education a person ought to get as opposed to the state.