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Real World Programming vs Academic Programming

Derrick Koon on August 23, 2018

I would love to tell you new developers that the rat race is full of inspiration and doing what you love, but that would be a lie. I work for a gre...
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Sergiu Mureşan

One of the most prevalent problem I see in the industry is that people stop learning and simply become a machine that codes 8 hours a day. It's not that they didn't get good grades at uni, some did. They learned and worked on only what the teacher told them to without expanding their knowledge through their own powers, without asking questions, without trying different things, without pushing their limits.

I think that is what you need to do in order to make university really worth your time in programming.

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Vince Ramces Oliveros

Your Teacher/Professor is not the same as a client

Especially if that student is a valedictorian and the client assumes that he/she can finish a finished product in less than weeks.

Some Projects Are Going To Suck

I tried different projects. most of them are half-baked and lazy to finish.

Your Coworkers Are Extended Family

One thing I failed in my college is, there are no collaboration. I was expecting to have a pair-programming basis to develop my skills especially working on a project. But in my standing point, they're waiting for me to finish the project and never helped me.

You Are Going To Fail..... Hopefully

Yes, I failed a lot, but that doesn't stop me from continuing my passion.(I never failed my subjects. I failed because I wasted a lot of time learning it and I won't be using it after I graduate).

You control your curriculum

Before I was learning web development,(This wasn't taught in college) and Mobile development(Still didn't taught in class because our teacher was lazy and had favoritism for his/her students). But still it's still worth learning new technologies even though this won't be credited in my curriculum.

My Thoughts

Overall I regret the school I went and I want to learn new technologies as soon as I graduate. This was very helpful for me to realize that there can be a lot of opportunities and not depend on what my grades are in the curriculum.

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Joe Petrakovich

Bravo! This was fantastic. Very relatable. I have to do a little better with the family one.

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Benax

Thank you very much Derrick.
Very helpful.

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Abdul Qadir Luqman

Actually writing code and fixing bugs is the best way not only to learn but also to get comfortable with programming

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Ryan Busby

Ah, UALR. I never graduated. Great school, though! ... Also, great article.

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Kellerman

Great article man!! Here in Brasil its exactly the same way. I have learned a lot mantaining legacy code...but to keep myself updated, i had to learn new approaches by my own

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Antonio

That LotR reference made my day.
Great post man!

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Igor Souza Martins • Edited

Great post, Derrick!

About the item five, is so true, I see many developers are accept your monotone jobs and don't want to learn something new.