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Old 11-13-2004, 05:36 AM   #10 (permalink)
AngelicVampire
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Computer Science trains academics (at least it does at my uni) to do theoretical work (none of our lecturers are really great with computers or programming it seems!).

Programming is an art rather than a science as far as I am concerned, yes you have to learn the words however its the music that makes the difference between a good coder and a bad coder. Knowing what a language contains (syntax etc...) is useful but nothing that a reference guide cannot help you with, however if you can fundamentally understand programming and the strucutres that underly all programming then you are a step ahead of most graduates I have met.

Programming is about making something happen on a system which is dumb (how often have I written something which does what I tell it and not what I want?) and making that system work properly. Learning a language is simple but the fundamentals are what you need to get.

As for getting a job internships or just applying to random companies for scholarships etc is a good system, I have a scholarship through my uni course and its great, over the summers between terms I get to work on real software projects and live in a real environment... nothing like having to come in at 7 in the morning to start coding rather than coding at 3am and having breaks to play game cube... Learning about the environment and the coding standards at work was one of the major things that I learned, picking up c and c++ was easy and took about a week however learning to apply it and comment it correctly was the major thing.

Basically go out and see what you can get, part time coding is good and gives you experience, too many coders I have met have never left a university environment, some of them when they left uni just moved upstairs and set up a business on uni property... dunno if that counts as leaving really!
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