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Discussion on: A rant on change, and the good old times.

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darkwiiplayer profile image
𒎏Wii 🏳️‍⚧️

Having seen the university landscape, I can certainly agree that we need some sort of hybrid-approach. Pure book-smarts on their own aren't worth much in the real world of software development, but they are, at the same time, an integral aspect of being a competent developer.

I wouldn't say actual books are necessary though; I was never a big fan of programming books myself and much prefer reading shorter papers and articles. There's some very in-depth articles out there that explain a lot of theory.

Sometimes this doesn't matter, but often it does.

Not only does it often matter in a very practical sense, like when trying to optimise languages that run on a VM, there's also often a whole lot of tricks to be learned by studying the underlying technology. Elegance of design is an almost universal concept in the world of IT and ideas from the bottom of the stack (that is, hardware) can sometimes be applied even at its top (say, javascript programs).