I read an interesting article this morning debunking the standard thought that successful software developers need a healthy dose of discrete mathematics in their academic diet (”Forget Maths“). It follows on nicely from an essay by Kurt Cagle about the looming labour crunch that the IT industry is about to face (”Tech Labor Crunch“).
In a nutshell both articles point to the lack of agility in global technology education. In the time it takes to develop a course based around the current fashionable language, that language because yesterday’s news. This results in graduates coming out of our tertiary institutes with practical knowledge only valuable to large corporates that are desperately trying to string together legacy systems. Its also leading the best talent to start-ups where the bleeding-edge (read cool & interesting) technology is being used, but most times shortcuts are being taken and experience gaps are being found.
Perhaps that’s the sting then; the corporations are behind the lag in the education sector. I’m not into conspiracy theories generally, and this one might be a little far fetched, afterall we are again looking for new blood with COBOL experience for goodness sake!
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I agree with the article in one level, but on one hand I disagree. Here is a cut & paste from a commenter in that article:
Hey Will M. Do you write compilers? No. Do you design VLSI? No. Do you think about heat transfer in semiconductors? No. You are not a Computer Scientist! You are a Computer Engineer. You are no different from a locomotive driver. You shovel coal into the engine, adjust the throttle, and get the train to the station on time.
If you’re trained to be a web-admin , HTML coder, web-designer, data-base developer, then no math is fine. However, when you want to do cutting edge development, then math is the only ticket for any developer to do those.
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