I just had this discussion. We should delineate between CS and software engineering. Doctors need to learn chemistry and how the body metabolizes drugs they don’t need a degree in chemistry for their day to day job. But if you want to go into pharmaceuticals, chem is a must. https://twitter.com/kstewart/status/1291128416549232640

In the same regards, the majority of software developers, EVEN AT TECH COMPANIES, don’t work on compilers or OSes and don’t need to know how to do that. But if you want to build the tools other developers use, its a must. More important is collaborative software development.

Designing good code. Understanding business requirements and how they impact the system. We need more tutelage in these areas than how to implement a bubble sort. You wanna know how I do that? I use an effin library.

Imagine that you’re hiring a carpenter and instead of asking him to demonstrate assembling a patio, you asked him to build a rotary saw. What kind of sense does that make? Absolutely none. But this is what happens all the time in tech interviews. And PEOPLE SHOULD KNOW BETTER.

These are your so called “rockstar developers” who are too lazy or incompetent to identify actual talent. So they play the “let’s see if he’s read the latest volume of coding interview questions” game. “Why is a manhole cover round?” Because the manhole is round. Duh.