this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2024
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I think it depends on the school you go to. some programs are basically math degrees and others are glorified job training of the type your describing. of course, to get a job after school, recruiters expect you to have both the CS theory and direct experience writing code. they stop checking for the CS background after the first job because it's not something anyone stays proficient in, except in a rough heuristic sort of way. most training happens after you graduate in your first job or two.
the main differences between coding and writing are that 1. the former is predominantly a team activity and 2. the interface with the machine forces a maintenance burden on everyone that interacts with the code. in tandem, this means that if you write bad code, it's not just your problem - it's not merely that another person reading your code will struggle to understand what you mean but also that someone else after you will have to figure out how to change it to meet new needs.
capitalists try constantly to eliminate these factors and turn software into something that can be mass produced for no/little cost but they keep failing (for now) because they try to ignore the social factors (same reason AI code won't work for a while yet). that doesn't justify programmer egos, it's just an explanation of how software development differs from normal writing.
Well what I'm describing isn't really school specific. The majority of CS grads are careerists who really don't care about the actual field. At least in my achool where they are the biggest major. It seems they cheat through the theory part because they know they're gonna make 100k writing CRUD apps. This isn't a moral indictment or anything. I'm pointing this out to show that most professional programmers don't actually use any theory. What they do day to day should in theory should be trivial enough that most people could do it. In an ideal world that would be the case, and CS majors would only be needed for things requiring actual deep knowledge, much like professional writers.
I do agree that the issue is social. It's a matter of educational policy and for lack of a better word, orthography.
what I'm saying is that people have been trying to trivialize it for 60+ years and it hasn't worked yet - it remains a trade that takes ~8 years in and out of school to achieve useful proficiency.