This quote from the article is a perfect explanation of the situation too...
"The result is that these days, there's a much bigger emphasis on learning products over theories."
I notice that a many newcomers don't want to read any books on dev topics but instead only want to do online bootcamp or whatever. I think bootcamps are great but they really should be supplemented with books which can provide a much deeper understanding of the material. If you only learn from web sites and snippets and bootcamps where you build specific test apps then you don't always know what is really happening underneath.
Again, I think bootcamps etc are fantastic but what is really needed is some type of hybrid learning where a student learns how to build and then learns why you choose certain ways to build and what is really going on under the software. In some ways, developing apps for the Web Browser causes this. Seeing the "machine" only as the Virtual Machine of the browser doesn't let you see all the way down into the metal (hardware) of what you are actually doing. A layer of understanding is lost. Sometimes this doesn't matter, but often it does. Great discussion.
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).
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This quote from the article is a perfect explanation of the situation too...
"The result is that these days, there's a much bigger emphasis on learning products over theories."
I notice that a many newcomers don't want to read any books on dev topics but instead only want to do online bootcamp or whatever. I think bootcamps are great but they really should be supplemented with books which can provide a much deeper understanding of the material. If you only learn from web sites and snippets and bootcamps where you build specific test apps then you don't always know what is really happening underneath.
Again, I think bootcamps etc are fantastic but what is really needed is some type of hybrid learning where a student learns how to build and then learns why you choose certain ways to build and what is really going on under the software. In some ways, developing apps for the Web Browser causes this. Seeing the "machine" only as the Virtual Machine of the browser doesn't let you see all the way down into the metal (hardware) of what you are actually doing. A layer of understanding is lost. Sometimes this doesn't matter, but often it does. Great discussion.
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.
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).