TDD is BS?

H. S. Teoh hsteoh at quickfur.ath.cx
Fri Jun 21 13:23:47 PDT 2013


On Fri, Jun 21, 2013 at 09:49:21PM +0200, John Colvin wrote:
> On Friday, 21 June 2013 at 19:14:18 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> >On 6/20/2013 8:50 PM, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> >>One of my previous supervisors told me that when he gets resumés, as
> >>soon as he sees "Ph.D" he chucks it straight into the trash.
> >
> >He'd have missed out on Andrei, then.
> 
> And a lot of other people who are driven towards new ideas.
> 
> There's a fair amount of inverted snobbery about academia here.
> 
> Ultimately, a PhD shows the ability to conduct original research and
> present it. It doesn't make you a great programmer, but then again
> *it never purports to*. Nor does a computer science degree.

According to my ex-supervisor (and I'm not saying I agree with him), it
indicates that one is opinionated enough to originate ideas, and
stubborn enough to successfully defend said ideas, which can be
detrimental in a team setting if the idea wasn't a good one.  (And since
a PhD doesn't purport to make you a great programmer, and he was looking
for great programmers rather than researchers, that could be a reason
for his views on the matter.)


> If you want a normal programming job, you need to show more real
> world experience than a PhD, but just throwing out people who have
> proved their originality and in depth understanding of a topic
> through a PhD is nothing short of absurd.

Well, my ex-supervisor *did* have a reputation of having many
"interesting" (i.e. extreme) ideas about many things. :) I can't say I
subscribe to his views on this matter, but what I was trying to get at
was the prevalent fallacious fixation on academic achievement (i.e.
equating "he has good grades / a degree / a PhD" with "he is a good
programmer").  Too many potential employers can't see beyond that, or
are not willing / don't have the time and energy to do so, thus
resulting in the situation where people are being hired because of their
academic achievement, but are expected to have skills not necessarily
implied by said achievement. Then when such hires consistently produce
sub-par work, some people get provoked to equate "PhD" with "poor
programming skills".

This situation wouldn't have developed if employers evaluated candidates
based on their *skills* rather than by the credentials on paper.  But in
this day and age where time is never enough, it's all too convenient to
dismiss a candidate because he has no academic credentials rather than
to spend the time / energy to review unlikely candidates on the
off-chance that perhaps they might turn out to be hidden programming
prodigies. Or to blindly hire a candidate *with* said credentials
because someone of high academic standing is likely to be skillful
enough to do the job, rather than to spend to time / energy to check if
this is actually the case. (Not to mention that all too often, the ones
with hiring powers may not necessarily have the ability to discern real
skills from a smooth talker.)


T

-- 
"You are a very disagreeable person." "NO."


More information about the Digitalmars-d mailing list