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Comment by vivekseth | Hacker News Reader

There _is_ a major disconnect! You’re studying computer science and wondering how it applies to software engineering. When I studied CS (graduated a year ago) we never went over things like building a GUI, reverse engineering an API, or designing a UI. Those are software engineering topics. By the time I graduated I learned how to do those things, but it was by learning them on my own. If you want to learn these things you’ll need to take the initiative yourself.

Here are some links to get you started:

1. http://lancenewman.me/reverse-engineering-the-tinder-api/

2. https://www.raywenderlich.com/151741/macos-development-begin...

3. https://medium.com/@erikdkennedy/7-rules-for-creating-gorgeo...

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Even in software engineering programs, stuff like this just doesn't get covered.

Yet it's way more fun than what they teach you in school and will often involve learning the same concepts anyways. Just sad really.

It seems like many if not most computer science students are actually interested in software engineering and not CS. It is a shame that more schools don't offer separate software engineering programs or at least make the distinction between the two more apparent to prospective students.

I am sure I wasn't the only 17 year old told I should get a CS degree if I wanted to be a software developer. Meanwhile the most value I have gotten out of the CS classes that taught me to write a loop in MIPS or two build a XOR gate out of NAND gates is commiserating about those experiences with fellow CS grads. I would have much rather had a class about reverse engineering an API or other less theoretical and more vocational classes.

Knowing how a loop is implemented in MIPS means your now have enough knowledge to debug assembly, and perhaps do low level performance optimisations. It's not useless, just not directly and immediately. You won't be able to lean on any foundational work if you hadn't learnt it, and you'll have a super hard time doing complex things later, like reverse engineering.

What percentage of developers ever have to debug assembly or do low level performance optimizations? I am 10 years into my career and I have only professionally seen assembly code once. We have abstracted most of these low level things out of the normal life of most developers. That isn't to say it isn't important for some, but there are a lot more developers who would benefit more from a class on design principles than a class on assembly.

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