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According to Cook, there are certain in-demand skills that students may not learn in college — namely, coding.
"And so to that end, as we've looked at the — sort of, the mismatch between the skills that are coming out of colleges and what the skills are that we believe we need in the future, and many other businesses do, we've identified coding as a very key one," Cook said during the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board meeting on Wednesday, during which President Trump met with the board's members, including Cook.
Cook also added that about half of Apple's US employment last year was made up of people who did not have a four-year degree.
The Apple CEO also said he believes that it should be a requirement for every kid in the U.S. to have some level of coding education before they graduate high school. Apple launched its Everyone Can Code program in 2016, a curriculum designed to help students from Kindergarten to college learn coding. There are 4,000 schools in the US using Apple's curriculum, according to Cook.
Save yourself the cost of college: Learn to Code?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by exaeta on Saturday March 09 2019, @06:10PM (4 children)
I have been to college for "Computer Science". I have wrote some code too.
College, at least at the not amazing university of my program, was not teaching much. The skills are lacking, the depth is lacking, there's a lot of teaching about marketing and sophistry and little about anything worth learning.
When he says coders are in short supply, what he really means is the colleges put out bad coders. Posers, in other words. Or, maybe I should put it this way, programming noobs.
The smug elitists are the ones at university, who actually think themselves to be beyond noobs. Not so. My professors were noobs at the art of coding. They knew not what they spoke of.
The noobs that come with Computer Science degrees are worthless. They graduate by majority, in the "scripter" phase, unable to develop large complex programs with anything more difficult than python.
The noobs of university don't understand RAII, nor multithreading, nor undefined behavior, nor basic aspects of programming like the rules of the languages they're supposed to be coding in. A bit of math helps not when you lack the fundamentals of the discipline.
Degrees cover math, but math is not what we need. We need people who understand enough C++ to write programs that don't crash every 5 seconds. Does more math help with this? NO.
The smug university elites tell us C++ is terrible, and it's our fault for using it. Meanwhile the rest of the world continues to run on C++, and we ask "can you write C++ code without tripping over yourself?" and the answer is no.
We don't need a glut of more weak programmers who can code in script kiddie languages, nor haskell, we're running into a shortage of people who can develop infrastructure level code. We need people who can develop code which is both secure and fast.
More time complexity, more space complexity, more language theory of languages like C++. And we need to get rid of the myth that languages are interchangable, they aren't. You can't "pick up" another language in a few weeks. You'll be a noob, even if you can produce a buggy program that half works.
The people who oppose the improvement of teaching people how to code are themselves posers. They know they provide little value and don't want to see actual competition. They fear others doing better because it makes it harder for themselves to extort funds with their half assed "coding" skills. So be it, you corrupt greedy communist. But we will advance without you if you don't follow, now go learn to write code that isn't shit.
Academia opposes raising the bar because it exposes the professors for whag they are, noobs. Industry needs to push back and demand better than what academia provides. If we have to get people without degrees, so be it.
The Government is a Bird
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Saturday March 09 2019, @11:00PM (3 children)
Well, here's the easy initial test [codinghorror.com] to calibrate your candidates amongst the greater field.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Sunday March 10 2019, @12:51AM (2 children)
The opposite side of that coin are HR people who can't tell a competent coder from a dead dog.
Or, they get weird and won't hire the best even when they have correctly identified them. Keep coming up with Kafkaesque reasons why an excellent coder will not do. Won't be a "good fit", is too independent, isn't desperate enough for money because no spouse and kids, is a flight risk, doesn't have 10 years of experience with Windows 10, or 5 years experience in each of 20 different technologies, is too smart, etc. And sometimes the real reason is "isn't the boss's nephew". They may be a sweatshop with a world view that in essence is that slaves are better workers than free people. Naturally, can't let in any subversive, rogue coders who might do something completely unacceptable like try to start a union.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 10 2019, @01:55AM
Ha, ha!
And the other (I would say more frequently encountered) side of the coin: the companies that only want young, single engineers.
The kind of employees who see no problem "living" at the office and doing uncompensated "research work" on weekends and travelling for weeks at a time on short notice.
All because they have no family waiting for them when the workday is done.
These people are slaves and DON'T EVEN KNOW IT.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Sunday March 10 2019, @08:18AM
Shortly followed by, "job security in cleaning up the mess he left."