I am conducting technical interviews for about 10 years now.
I swear to god, the applicants keep getting dumber and dumber.
Getting more and more ashamed to talk about data structures, design patters or even the most basic algorithms, everyone with a graduation badge from udemy is now a software engineer. Fuck this shit.

A title does not say much about actual knowledge and even less about ability

I have never trusted any diploma or title until I have seen either actual code they have written or seen them actually write code or solve a problem.

Instant gratification culture. Bootcamps and academies where they teach basics of coding did more harm than good. Some people are like koalas, they need to be spoonfed. For example koala knows that leaves grow on trees. If u would pick some leaves and put them on a plate - it wouldnt know what to do with it.

I took an alternate path to where I am now, self-taught, went to a boot camp while working two jobs.

I'm several years into my software career. I don't get asked if I have a degree anymore. Instead, most seem to assume that I do.

Boot camps teach the beginnings of some applicable web development skills, almost nothing more, it's assumed you'll learn everything else as you go, but anybody can stagnate if they don't keep working at it.

I understand your frustration. At one point, I was frustrated about not know those things!

I would suggest that anybody that feels they are more capable than others consider becoming a mentor and help guide others towards becoming better devs.

You can do it. I know you can.

@Voxera even though the term computer scientist may involve a diploma i was not referring to that, i just mean that nowadays everyone who reads a tutorial or does one course just one, thinks they’re the bees knees.

I too have noticed this trend. Simply go to the homepage of stackoverflow each day... usually its all python, and half of them are duplicates you could get an answer for with a 5 second google search

And I think software got mixed in with the "hustle" / "founder" culture too much "oh its just a cool tool that can boost your productivity!" no its not. its a discepline just like many of the engineering and science fields, and takes years and years of experience to get a good grasp on all the moving parts

One last thing then Im done - I'm a huge proponet of people learning code / software stuff in general. In fact I wish more people understood some basics. I would just ask that people recognize and acknowledge that it is hobby if its not something you do at your day job.

@alismx the problem is not people willing to get mentored the problem is people finishing a hello world course and claiming they are an engineering marvel and have the papers to prove it.

To be fair a lot of courses are marketed that way. It's super annoying when going through candidates and also creates a bias towards people who have a long history in the field or stellar open source projects.

I feel your anger and reciprocate it. The issue lies in the practices and methods of learning and how those picking up just languages as skills qualify as programmers or developers now. All they really know is a language, and no know-how of anything else. In CS degrees, problem solving is taught first, widely using pseudo code. The environment by most universities teaching CS encourages logical thinking before anything else. They then go ahead and teach what actually happens behind the languages, and then languages are used as a tool for problem solving in programming. Then important concepts of software engineering, design and development, architectures, networking, operating system concepts are taught which always have some contribution even if the person in question is doing app development. The udemy grads do not have any knowledge of this, and even if they have knowledge of a few of these they've learnt it in an abrupt way.

Soon we will all come to what WALL-E was talking about

@cjde225 I went to a top 10 university in England. I can tell you most of my class failed, those that passed could barely write hello world. They literally had no idea about anything. There was a lot of copying off each other going on, cheating in general, and the university dumbing things down and doing everything they could to prevent failing grades by reducing exposure to hard stuff.

I really doubt that's an exception.

@Crost in my third year I was in a class for web API development. In the last week of the class people started attending and asking questions like "what's an API?", "JavaScript? I spent the last 3 hours reading about java...same thing though right?", "Why do I need to do this? I don't care about programming, I want to build robots"

1. College being expensive as fuck

2. Modern low wage and unskilled jobs have somehow become more toxic (or whatever gen z calls it) than decades prior. Chalk it up to a more selfish culture.

3. Lot of good paying *minimal skill* (think high school diploma) jobs no longer exist for many people.

4. Unskilled and minimal skill jobs no longer allow people to live or pursue traditional markers of success and class mobility, like owning a home, or vehicle or other asset outright, or starting a family, or a host other common goals.

5. People see coding, are told to "learn to code", are told it's easy, and see those in it "making a lot of money", all without needing a degree or certification.

To the people run ragged by steps 1-4, it's easy to fall into the trap of hoping this is an opportunity at a better life.

@alismx my story is similar.

I started with some evening courses and borrowed computers before buying my own.

Then started writing programs for hobby, got a job assembling computers which evolved into programing and now everyone more or less assumes I got some university or similar when its mostly self taught and learning from mistakes :)

i mean, stack overflow is great if you know what you're reading. it's one thing to check syntax and another completely to just copy paste indiscriminately. it's the same as doing research for a paper, if you're lifting something from a source you gotta have a good comprehension of what you're getting from it. a good use would be to trim and get only what you need from your research. that's where a good education comes in.

I think a good education can come from outside of academy, but the truth is without a certain structure people often skip the basics that could elevate their end results, which is a shame, but i think it's a problem of both our economy and the academic culture

@Wisecrack there is also the complete dismissal of mid-skill jobs.
I'm yet to see a plumber or an electrician who is less than 50. Those jobs got ignored by a couple generations now, since those are not "college graduates" jobs, even while nearly every Uber is driven by a college graduate (where I live).

@darksideofyay my point exactly. People need some real life experience to be able to picture what they read in class, and they need classes to be able to see the bigger picture and the inner workings of what they live in practice.

But "that's inneficcient! College would take twice as long, be twice as hard and way more expensive! At least! Besides, I do not want to do a lower level job for no pay while in college, I'm paying for focus!". Heard that argument a few times now. And that's how we got where we are.

@Crost I don't know what to tell you. Majority of peers were all exceptional coders and if they lacked in one field they were doing great in another

They all racked up a pretty great portfolio, some had research under their belt even during bachelor's and majority landed a job 1-6 months before graduation

Of course there was copying off of each other etc. What student doesn't do that? But they all were pretty well in one field or another