i'm a dropout just do horrible coding for fun can anyone explain why CS programs are adamant about not teaching on the job skills? like databases, web, embedded, security plus theory
The ideas behind a database is more important than the the concrete database used. If the ideas are taught, then the students can adapt when the fashion changes.
So instead of teaching something that you can use on your first job, they teach principles you can use your entire career. And times does change.
Remember the good old languages Fortran, Algol 60 etc. That's where the jobs were...
CS (traditionally) is more about algorithms, limits, growth. There's a bunch of complexity in even just understanding and calculating what a computer can do.
The Software Engineering degree makes so much sense if you're studying about how libraries can be tied together, upgraded, unit/integration testing, container and source code management, etc.
They are truly different disciplines at this point.
when i hear computer science i hear the study of computers that in my head means software, hardware, and theory it's like having doctors that study humans theoretically and others that do surgery
Software Engineering is the study of how to efficiently build software, typically on a medium to large team.
Dijkstra line sums it up well "Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes."
Software Engineers : Doctors :: Computer Scientists : Biologists/Biomedical Scientists
is perhaps reasonable.
And not because they were outdated and useless when the course started, though some did have issues. I think the least outdated "on the job applicable" material is Java fundamentals, and that's because you can still write Java 6 basic stuff in current JDK - a lot of the interesting and powerful stuff we learnt is no longer available in JDK though.
OTOH, fundamental principles - algorithms, including set logic in RDBMSes, low-level programming (which to annoyance of some was done in SPARC assembly or random assembly designed just for given assignment), robotics using programming stack and parts that were never seen outside university, various in-depth studies on different theoretical or scientific areas - all of that is material I use to this day in many different jobs when it allows me to understand and reason in ways I couldn't before I joined university - and I already "knew" how to program then.
BTW, within the 5 years I spent at university, "javascript on the server" turned from niche use cases within some stacks, usually running Mozilla Rhino, into complete new ecosystem that was surviving its first big fork and was becoming used in big projects, Android went from one phone "who knows" to pretty mature platform holding half the world with 64bit CPUs, tablets and first wearables, similar evolution for iOS, in fact arguably over my entire university time we had explosion of "you can now make mobile apps easier" to "mobile app developer is lucrative" all the way to "you're probably not going to make much money as solo developer anymore".
That's the point. CS curricula are supposed to teach you deep skills and principles, not how to fiddle around with git.