[Lazamataz]

In my 20 plus years of software development I’ve determined that college education only accounts for maybe 20% of the required knowledge for my career field.

... if that!

To me, a college degree shows me only two things:

1. You have the capacity to learn, and

2. You have put up with four years of bull**** from egotistical, often psychotic instructors, and were even willing to PAY for it. LOL!

[RockyMtnMan]

I agree and hence the “maybe” I guess I was being overly generous :-) Just in these last five years I’ve seen a massive increase in new frameworks, application servers, languages, databases and database ORM solutions, scripting languages, build systems and on and on.

The only thing I could imagine anyone learning in college if I had to design a CS program would be a language (Java or C++), patterns (like Enterprise Integration Patterns) and continuous build systems. Maybe throw in a little hardware as background knowledge along with maybe some PM fundamentals and design methodologies (scrum, waterfall, etc).

I think what many fail to understand is software developers are the producers, not the consumers. I view the company I work for as the customer and I produce for them. If I produce a crappy product they show me the door.

The problem with off-shoring was it assumed the producer was the PM or management and 9 out of 10 times they didn’t have a clue what was needed to build and maintain a given system. Instead of listening to the actual producers they went off half cocked and now the chickens are coming home to roost.

[Scrambler Bob]

Agree. I’ve said that myself for the last 35 years.