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Comment by vages | Hacker News Reader

Is there anyone who ever knew all of this when they graduated?

I think maybe the top student through my five years at university might have known all of this. I sure as hell did not check all the boxes when I graduated two years ago.

If you're nervous after reading this, just know that the "should" probably means "in an ideal world".

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I've been working in industry for 19 years and I don't think I know all of this stuff right now. What I do know is that in these topics there are a myriad of things I don't _really_ know.

If you covered all this in a 4-5 year program, you either worked 90 hours a week and didn't take any other courses ("major" doesn't mean full time) or each of these courses was covered in an "edited highlights" fashion. It's a preposterous list.

Agreed. My program had 9 different tracks you could focus on [0] with many of his titles having their own dedicated track.

[0]: https://www.cs.purdue.edu/undergraduate/curriculum/bachelor....

Students at good programs will check all the technical boxes just by attending required classes. Those schools tend to also have enough project based courses and career prep coaching that the portfolio box is also checked.

The intersection of that and communication skills is rarer, but it happens often enough, especially for people who pick up a second major in the humanities or did a lot of public speaking prior to/during college. Again, not the average case, but not terribly uncommon.

Could you point me to the website of a school which makes you check all the boxes just by attending?

Mine[0] did the vast majority of them.

[0] https://sigarra.up.pt/feup/en/CUR_GERAL.CUR_PLANOS_ESTUDOS_V...

Cool! That looked like an extensive program. I studied at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and my partially self-chosen courses covered most of it too.

I think we may differ on what we mean by "should". I don't (really) doubt that it's possible and valuable to learn all of this in university (forgive my use of hyperbole in the original comment). But I don't think it's necessary for most people with a major/master's degree in CS to do so.

The ideal and the necessary should not be confused.

Oh I completely agree with you. Most are "nice-to-haves" but in no way necessary.

Technically, "should" means "if you don't have some familiarity with this, you have a weak spot that you might want to work on."

Well, I'd say I knew the vast majority of it when I graduated (in software engineering). Most of the topics listed there had dedicated classes to them which I had to pass.

After 1 year of working about 90% of that was already gone forever.

I'd be frightened by a similar list for my own field, should someone write one. If nothing else, a list like this helps in the search for gaps that one might enjoy filling in.

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