[Update]Just to add on. My point is not to say that EE students can be a replacement for (good)CS/IS peeps. My point is that companies should no longer think that SoC is the only place where they can get good programmers. They can get them from other faculties too. It does not take a degree from SoC to make one a good programmer. Similarly, a degree from SoC does not mean one can program either.[/Update]
Just a thought. A rather explosive one. One that will piss off many people, but a valid one nonetheless.
Since many companies in Singapore are complaining about the lack of good enough students to join the technology workforce from NUS School of Computing, especially jobs that are not Java related, maybe, just maybe, it would be better to hire the electrical engineers to code, even for web apps.
There are a few reasons for this.
- These guys code at the Assembly/C level
If there anyone who has coded their entire life with a very clear understanding of performance, it is these guys. They understand why abstractions can be bad, and they are innately conscious of how bloated a program can be when they are coding. Because they think in Assembly/C. - They know how other programming languages work
With such a clear understanding of Assembly/C, and the fact that almost everything else is build on top of these 2, when they use the abstracted functions, in languages like Ruby/Python, they have an idea of how it works. Because they innately start thinking of how someone would implement it. - They can learn damn fast
And because they have worked at the lowest level their entire life, they will find it easier to understand the higher level language, by virtue of the fact that higher level languages are supposed to abstract out the hard parts in the lower level language
So, to those guys who have been complaining that SoC doesn’t produce real men(trust me, I agree with you on this, but that’s another post for another day), maybe it’s time to cast your nets somewhere else, and go hire EE students rather than CS/IS students.
Just a thought.
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The probability of hiring a good programmer from SoC is higher than that from EE. Employers would be in a bad position if they have to pick out the good from the bad if they chose to focus on EE grads.
From experience, most EE students are not interested in programming. Perhaps they will pretend to be in order to get a job. But yeah, you get my point.
Not saying SoC is much better, but definitely better.
I read your post with much amusement because CS in my experience was filled with a lot of hardcore stuff ranging from coding in assembly, c, java, compiler theory, automata theory, advanced algorithms.
Sounds like CS isn’t what it used to be eh? But that’s CS for me.