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The article is a bit contrived IMHO. Could not even turn on a computer? Even my elderly mother-in-law can do this.
That said, as someone who teaches CS at a major university, it is clear there is a bubble. Students who have little aptitude for programming and math are majoring in CS because of the economic incentives. This dilutes the academic experience for the capable students, while sending the incapable students off on an unsustainable career path. The bubble will burst, and will leave many people high and dry. We would do everyone a favor by encouraging the incapable students to pursue something they *are* good at.
Related to this, it is clear there is a disconnect between what CS programs require students to learn and what skills are relevant in the working world. Many students who go into CS actually want to learn software development, but CS programs offer very little in the way of SD. Institutions of higher ed, however, typically make changes at a glacial pace, and we should not count on them to fix the problems anytime soon. Accordingly, I'm in the process of fixing the disconnect in a small way by providing SD training to recent CS graduates. Even so, SD training won't magically make incapable students capable.
And related to this, don't expect universities to discourage incapable students from majoring in CS. Universities are, first and foremost, interested in selling their customers what they think they want, and the students are the customers.
Meanwhile, I've yet to find an incapable student who is unable to turn on a computer, so Mr. Altucher would bolster his credibility by going a little more lightly on the hyperbole.
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You make very good points and you are correct about the extreme hyperbole of the article.
Great points about Universities not doing much with real Soft Dev. and their extremely slow pace.
Very encouraging to know you are out there making a difference.
Thanks.
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I worked for a company in 1990 and the boss employed a freshly graduated guy to be my assistant and help out with several new bespoke projects. he not only couldn't program, or understand simple instructions, but had no concept of what a customer might want, it was a disaster - he's probably a bigwig at Microsoft by now but I passed him on like a hot potato at the first opportunity
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_WinBase_ wrote: I passed him on like a hot potato at the first opportunity
That is similar to what they did with the guy I mentioned who didn't even understand functions.
Everyone felt sorry for him even though he refused to open his eyes to any constructive criticism.
One day a manager was going through ways to get rid of him,
"he can't code, he doesn't deal well with customers, he cannot write reports, he can't design systems...There's a management position in the Drabble Project. I'll tell the VP of Drabble that this is his man."
Yes, I'm serious.
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HR departments always ask me why I don't want recent graduates, with their fresh minds and fresh ideas.
It's because "fresh" ain't the word.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Mark_Wallace wrote: It's because "fresh" ain't the word.
Haha. This genuinely made me LOL.
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I doubt anyone that did nothing but attend class would be able to program professionally. Regardless of grades.
New graduates however often have work experience in programming and/or have done it outside of class. Sometimes that allows them to do a fairly decent job on non-critical software but attempting to hire new grads without defining a mentoring system is unlikely, on average, to produce good results.
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I know of people who have a 1st or a 2:1 in Computer Science and can't program. It really makes you wonder at the range of topics covered in Computer Science degrees. I would have thought that programming was one of the fundamental topics but apparently it isn't.
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This is interesting too, because in the 80s when I was in high school they always said, "data processing" (computer science) requires vast knowledge of math, so I knew I was out. Then, around 1988 I got my first computer, started learning QuickBasic, then QuickC and started writing programs. I didn't notice that I had not learned math so I kept on programming and learning. I was very good in logic for some reason, but at the time -- because my teachers had told me I was terrible in math -- I wasn't good at math.
Finally, after some years I decided to take some college math courses since they were apparently wrong about needing math for computer science, I figured maybe they were wrong about me being good in math too. I excelled in math. I love math. But, you see, the way they teach things is so non-vocational that all the teachers get stuck teaching so much theory that many people become disinterested.
Then, finally the truth becomes obvious. They teach math as theory because the teachers themselves don't understand math. So they stand around and spout things like, "advanced math is required for 'data processing'".
Meanwhile, real and interesting math is happening inside your cells. But, most high school math teachers are really English majors who've never tried any math or logic problems outside the books, so they just keep the myth going.
Sheesh.
Then, at the college level, it does seem that colleges are teaching some very important foundational concepts . However, concepts don't get it in the real world. Students need more vocational training -- hands-on porgramming -- at the beginning, and then later as they know enough to understand how the foundation concepts are important, they should learn those. Or, at least more balance between the two.
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There's video[^] and everything of this totally non-event.
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Try this[^]
Following a story that the paper was going to do something some people complained so the paper published a further story to say they are not now going to do it.
Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.
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I just had an egg mayo samich for lunch with a couple of pickled onions and an almaspaprika [imagine hot and spicy, then add hot and spicy]. This was by choice.
Yes! I chose to eat this antisocial food and I choose to spit in the general direction of the stupid 'make it social before you make it work' mentality. Okay we get, people communicate. Great. But that doesn't make it more, or less, important then software that delivers support for the critical functions of an enterprise.
Right, I'm off to post this on Facebook. 
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Nagy Vilmos wrote: egg mayo samich
The baby spelling is getting annoying now.
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P0mpey3 wrote: The baby spelling frequent name change is getting annoying now.
ftfy 
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Touché !
~RaGE();
I think words like 'destiny' are a way of trying to find order where none exists. - Christian Graus
Entropy isn't what it used to.
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I was going to say Touche but Rage has beat me to it.
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... and with added spelling! 
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No he spelt it the French way, I used the English version
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P0mpey3 wrote: The baby spelling is getting annoying now.
Only because you're new. 
There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
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P0mpey3 wrote: The baby spelling is getting annoying now.
It's been annoying for a long time.
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No, you only have to eat the hottest paprika on word with your next sandwich - it called Carolina Reaper and it has 2.2M SHU while Almapaprika only has 10,000!!! 
I'm not questioning your powers of observation; I'm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is. (V)
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I never thought you were social 
It's an OO world.
public class SanderRossel : Lazy<Person>
{
public void DoWork()
{
throw new NotSupportedException();
}
}
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