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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   3623 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for November 25, 2022

Be advised; this thread is not for serious in depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I'm studying Physics but I want to appreciate programming and Computer Science more. I must admit that the two programming courses I've taken were quite boring and deluding, and I don't know if it is because they sucked or because I find programming boring in itself. My problem is that I do not really know what a programmer and computer scientist should be able to do, both in an academic and marketability sense[1], in other words how do I create a self-study curriculum to follow?

[1]like: What are jobs that programmers do? What are some beginner to advanced projects that I could implement on my laptop?

I'm a programmer and my current job is only nominally programming, but in fact just badgering the people who give me tasks to explain what they actually mean because they can't write task descriptions for their lives, then asking a dozen people how the hell a given system ever even worked, then finding out what minimally invasive change gets the desired results without breaking anything, which usually only involves a single-digit lines of code or a few hundred of largely copy-pasted lines ported from different projects. Actual programming ability is the least relevant part of my job. It's also what they specifically requested and what I specifically offered during the hiring process. I have no idea why software companies hire the way they do.

I suppose they really want you to have the skill of programming during that 1% of time you're going to actually use it?

That's probably the notion, yeah, and I guess it makes sense. Still feelsbadman.jpg on most days though.

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