Re:Certain types of programming... (Score 1)

Bollocks. I'm finishing my bachelors in CS this year. For years I've been having to learn largely pointless difficult concepts, 99% of which apply to Research. These areas have very little to do with real world work, even at technology focused employers here around London. They just want software engineers, not scientists. In applications forms at large software companies/consultancies we are asked what languages we know (inside, and in my case, mostly outside the course), and what *other* experience outside the course we have to the bizzare crap taught on these CS courses. Someone who "loves their CS" and knows how a CPU works or can architect a robot or knows advanced AI means little to them. They just want extremely good proven programmers, period. Don't get me wrong here, I do value a lot of my CS course, but most of it is just totally dull as fuck and pointless for most of us in the rest of our careers. It's certainly not going to help me much at all with any programming jobs I take, I know that (and this is supposedly one of the elite institutions in europe). I personally wish I *had* been the "plumber" in that example and done my own thing right from the start. Like Carmack did. You could be specific in an certain area like Games, why not compare Carmack with the Elixir team (UK developers of Republic, not sure if anyone's heard of it). These are a group of CS's from Cambridge with straight firsts, arguably the best trained CS's in the world. And Carmack programmed stuff in his bedroom "McDonalds" style (afaik he did not do CS, neither did Sweeney). Using your logic they would be pick up in 1 year what Carmack has been perfecting for 10 years. Er, no. There's more to writing great timely software than having a CS badge. (I don't even want mine, I wish I did something else.)