Re: (OT) Real World Skills Versus CS Skills

[blue_cowdawg]

but stare at you blankly if you ask them about red-black trees.

I've been programming computers in one fashion or another since 1972. If you asked me what a red-black tree was I would certainly give you my best impression of a deer in the headlights on a moonless night.

On the other hand, I've probably written the algorithm a bunch of times without any idea what in the world it is called.

I would honestly say that 95% of my programming skills were learned through the school of hard knocks. Some of that I'll confess was by stealing copying other folks' code and tearing it apart to see what made it tick.

My sum and total college experience was had first ehen I was at sea in the US Navy when they sent college profs out to us and suit cased the courses in. English Lit and math were what they brought to us. Then after I got out I took two more semesters of calculus and three semesters of computer science. That's it folks. The rest I learned by doing.

Perl I leanrned via a combination of "just doing it", reading many books and articles in trade journals (including nifty stuff from merlyn) and fine tuning at the hands of the Monastery.

I say all that to say this: folks who can walk the walk can't always talk the talk. They still know what they are talking about, but they just don't speak your language. I've interviewed many "bright kids" over the years that could talk the talk and sounded really good but were absolutely lost when shown a real piece of code that wasn't out of a college text book.

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