Re: WANTED: Programmer for comm stuff

[dlyons@netcom.com (David A. Lyons)]

In article <385u01$67i@tuba.cit.cornell.edu> jmk3@crux4.cit.cornell.edu (Jay Krell) writes:
>I'm curious, have many of you out there that are programming
>full time not finished college? Do any/most of these jobs
>state they require a BS? I think they don't in reality, but
>they might require it anyway. These jobs look so tempting
>to me.

Myself, I have a BS.  I don't have a statistic for you, but a bunch
of my coworkers do not have degrees (some are working on them, some
aren't).

Many jobs require "BS in CompSci or equivalent experience".  To me,
that means you had better be able to talk about comp sci in the same
terms that textbooks use.

It's really a bummer to find a good programmer and then find big gaps
in their basic CS knowledge, or even that they understand all the right
concepts but don't know the generally-accepted names for them.

For example, I expect to be able to talk about big-O notation for
algorithm complexity, linked lists, queues, stacks, trees, various
searches and sorts, xxx-fit memory allocation, encapsulation, and
all sorts of stuff like that. -- If someone's going to work with me
on a huge base of source code, they had better not be coding many
bubble sorts, and they should be able to put explanations in their
code in terms that their fellow programmers can easily understand.

On the other hand, I would give a lot of leeway on all that stuff to
get someone who is skilled at never making a boundary-case (off by one)
error!


So...even though you can get a programming job without a degree, I
personally recommend getting one anyway.  Well-roundedness, and all
that.  (If you -only- know about computers, what are you going to
do?  Write better software-development software?  You have 30
minutes. Discuss.)

-- 
Dave Lyons
Mr Tangent