[racket] Math Guidance

From: Steve Knight (stknig at gmail.com)
Date: Thu Nov 4 09:43:39 EDT 2010

> I can't remember where I saw the table but in searching for it I came across
> this article
>
> http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/education/359164/unemployment-rate-of-computer-grads-baffles-bcs

To be clear here, the Education Statistic Agency has lumped together a
lot of IT-related courses together and the article has mistakenly
reported this as a problem for CS graduates.   CS, to me at least,  is
a clearly defined subset of IT primarily about algorithms & data
structures.

It is indeed very hard to find competent programmers that know
anything at all about CS.   Even ones with first class degrees from
universities with a high relative status.   As a case in point my
nephew is about to complete an "IT" degree and recently asked me for
advice on his final year project.   When I described what I did for
mine (in '93) his comment was along the lines of "I try to avoid doing
the programming side and concentrate on the other stuff".   To which
my (silent) reply was "What other stuff?".   If you're not
programming, or are not capable of programming, what are you doing ...
really?

Even when I was at University there was a lot of criticism about
Universities not producing the right-sort-of graduates that industry
needed.   The University's response?  Teach Steve COBOL.   I am still
waiting to write my first line ...

However, I use the data structures and algorithms stuff they taught me
nearly every day.


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