Subj : Re: Academic grades and programming
To   : comp.programming
From : Eric
Date : Thu Jul 28 2005 12:37 am

On Mon, 25 Jul 2005 11:32:46 +0300, Jyrki Alakuijala
<Jyrki.Alakuijala@find.me.via.google> wrote:

>James wrote:
>
>> university.What's more the toppers of my class who doesn't even know
>> the fundamentals of programming, were eligible to sit in the company
>> interviews.

-snip-

>IMHO, there is an analogy between programming and musician professions.
>If you want to be a concert pianist or an opera singer, it helps to
>start young and take a formal training. Further, in both professions
>you have to continue practising during your whole career - until you
>give up and move to administrative tasks.

Afaik the best way to scout for good programmers is to use iq scores.
A university degree just proves you are not stupid and have enough
social skills and stamina to sit out the classes. 

Some of the best coders i've seen where drop outs. They were off the
scale smart and able to break down complex problems & absorb new
information really fast.

That being said, some of them had serious problems relating to other
humans, and management in particular. Which i guess makes them non
perfect for an actual company situation where you have to work among
average iq people and play the office game. But still their coding
skills were superb.

-E

.