Ask HN: How would you design an IT degree? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How would you design an IT degree?

2 pointsmuzani3 comments

A lot of people say that degrees do a poor job of preparing people for development jobs. It's so bad that many people opt to drop out and get experience coding instead.

How would you change things? What kind of foundation would create the best developers 5 years after graduation?

To clarify terms:

IT - something that is more like modern web, app, back end. Not really things like multithreading, AI, signal processing.

Degree - a 4 year course in something. Newbies are expected to have good logic and math skills, but no programming skills.

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> A lot of people say that degrees do a poor job of preparing people for development jobs.

Because IT is a craft, and universities are an not appropriate environment to teach craft, which is completely opposite to what companies are expecting.

Craft is best learned while doing the actual job on actual product, so you need real production lines, machines, and tools -- and somewhat modern at that. All these are too expensive (in money and man power, both in setting up and maintaining) to be kept without them earning money (producing), and an university would need many of them for different degrees. It's just too costly and too far from how university works and should work (science! research!).

Note that a university has some traits that a normal work doesn't have. For instance, you won't learn much of the theory behind the craft, nor would you have a chance to wet your toe in an unrelated specialization of your field. It's valuable to have both, university degrees and craft training, it's just they're two different things and IT industry doesn't carry out one of them and expects the other to fill the gap.

But universities do a good job of teaching law, medicine, engineering, and art. I don't see why it wouldn't teach IT as well, especially when the facilities you need are just computers.

> But universities do a good job of teaching law, medicine, engineering, and art.

Or do they? Can you just get a regular job directly after finishing your degree in law or medicine or engineering, or do you need to get additional training in the form of internships? Pay special attention to medicine training and electrical or civil engineering.

> I don't see why it wouldn't teach IT as well,

Actually, it does work just as well -- or rather, just as bad. It's just the other fields are regulated and you need to have an actual apprenticeship-like training on top of that.

> especially when the facilities you need are just computers.

It's not just the computers. Out of everything, the computers are the part that's the easiest to procure. What you need is software that is actually used and that needs development and/or maintenance and an environment where students will not destroy system's code (usually it's achieved by guarding by much more numerous experienced staff). These parts (idea, users, and a way to keep the system running) are hard to acquire in IT even in industrial setting.

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