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Comment by thrown-0825 | Hacker News Reader

Great, and if you got a job with us I would be having to explain how docker works because you refused to learn it for some reason.

Point is that what is deemed important in academic circle is rarely important in practice, and when it is I find it easier to explain a theory or algorithm than teach a developer how to use an industry standard tool set.

We should be training devs like welders and plumbers instead of like mathematicians because practically speaking the vast majority of them will never use that knowledge and develop an entirely new skill set the day they graduate.

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You're simply wrong about CS. CS is a science. You are not looking for scientists, you are looking for apprentices. Don't hire an architect to paint your wall. Don't hire scientists to be code monkies. Universities are not the right place to look at.

Except if you instead just want smart people, yea, they tend to aggregate at unis. There, you can hire an athlete to paint your wall, if that's what you need.

Stop kidding yourself, most CS grads are about as much of a scientist as your car mechanic.

A majority, yes. Though I know enough of them that proceeded with a PhD to say that it's far from universal.

I use standard algorithms all the time. Sometimes I have to come up with new ones. And that's not just when I'm working on performance-sensitive roles.

Also, btw, I did eventually learn how to use Docker. I did actually vaguely know how it worked for a while but I didn't want Linux VM anywhere near my computer, but eventually I capitulated provided I didn't have Linux VM running all the time.

Ditto. I avoided Docker as long as possible and look forward to the day it is replaced.

> I didn't want Linux VM anywhere near my computer

This is like taking auto mechanic classes and refusing to touch a car because of the grease.

Why are you against running a vm? And a superior OS in the vm, to boot?

Your comment gives spooky vibes. Like, I'd expect you to avoid pattern matching, because "nested ifs work fine".

IME it is far far easier to teach a CS graduate how to use some software than to teach a user basic CS principles.

Besides, at the rate of change we see in this industry, focusing on producing users instead of developers will make half the stuff outdated by the time the student graduates.

I mean, okay, lets teach Jira. Then the industry switches to assure develops.

That's the general problem with vocational training: it ages much faster than academic stuff.

We have obviously had different experiences, but I would much rather have a high level conversation on an abstract academic topic like reinforcement learning, set theory and how it applies to sql, merkle trees, cpu architectures etc that a junior dev will be adjacent to but not necessarily need to interact with vs something like AWS IAM roles or the various gotcha's and foot guns in CSS.

I agree that vocational knowledge decays faster, which is why I would prefer stricter training and certification in those areas vs something like building a compiler from scratch in the your final year of undergrad based on a textbook written by the professor 10 years ago.

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