Hacker News Reader

I'll tell you as a web developer who is a CS grad: CS students are terrible at programming and software development when compared to someone who does it for a living. It takes more than participation in a course to develop a skill.

I understand the distinction: CS students get geared up to understand algorithms, languages, and theory. A web developer understands his tools, his workflow, his practice, and people's needs.

View on HN

I remember my final project in my CS master's degree very fondly: I delivered a barely working piece of software in a totally arcane problem domain with a very complex set of instructions which enabled it to work, sort of, in one specific environment. My supervisor was delighted.

In comparison with my battles to get something to work in both Firefox and IE6 a few months later in industry (in order to ship something that people's jobs actually depended on), it was an absolute walk in the park.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com