[btheshoe]

I personally don't like the undertone of the class (tho very grateful that this material exists!!!) - this idea that universities are failing their students by not teaching them necessary material. I think a better phrasing is that students are failing themselves by not learning the material. I've personally never considered it the responsibility of my university to educate me - some of the classes are certainly useful for learning, but the ultimate onus falls on me to gain the skills that will lead me to success. I find it kind of distasteful how classes encourage a sort of passive victim mentality when it comes to learning - as if students need to be bribed with credits and cudgeled with a gpa to be forced to learn genuinely useful things.

[bmitc]

You don't consider paying tens of thousands of dollars as creating responsibility to educate?

Of course, students need to be active in the learning process. But in my experience, it is more likely that professors and departments are terrible at educating than it is for students to not be motivated to learn.

[ramblerman]

> You don't consider paying tens of thousands of dollars as creating responsibility to educate?

I get OPs point. It's like getting an english literature degree and you've never read a book on your own.

My guess is most people needing the missing semester never coded outside of their assigned tasks. Which is fair enough, but its surprising to me to meet phd candidates who marvel over the missing semester (I've met 2).

[sokoloff]

There’s absolutely a responsibility to educate on the topics needed for the degree to be granted.

This class is an adjacency to an EE or CS candidate. Are universities also failing their students by not offering/requiring a touch-typing class? I don’t think so, in large part because computer science is not programmer occupational training.

[tkiolp4]

A degree takes already 3 or 4 years. In order to incorporate this “missing semester” universities would have to either a) remove existing material to make space for it, or b) extend the degree one more semester.

I don’t think universities should remove existing material in general to incorporate “bash 101”. Mainly because learning bash is easy and one can learn it by oneself without a professor. Extending the degree one more semester doesn’t make much sense either.

[pcthrowaway]

I'm surprised anyone would object to this. Universities have a responsibility to prepare their students.

When I saw the title I figured it was another "computer science" class. But the curriculum was a significant portion of what I lacked when I graduated, which prevented me from finding work for a year.

Had someone at university told me before I graduated that I'd have no chance of finding work if I didn't know Git, Linux, REST, how to use the command-line, how to use an IDE, how to use an editor on the command line, and bash, I would have prepared myself for those things.

[l33t233372]

Can you elaborate on how not knowing those things specifically is what led to you not being able to find work

Did your interviews ask specific questions about Git, Linux things not covered in a standard operating systems course, and command line editing?

[adrianmonk]

> the ultimate onus falls on me to gain the skills that will lead me to success

I see where you're coming from, but sometimes you don't even know what the necessary skills are. Even if you're very self-motivated and enthusiastic, you can still benefit by being pointed in the right direction. That's part of what a good school or teacher should do for you. (And while they're at it, they can provide materials that smooth out the path to get there.)

You should never expect them to cover 100% of that, but if they're aware of a way that they can get closer to 100% than they currently are, then it's a good thing for them to do it.

[enumjorge]

I think you’re conflating two different things: universities selecting and presenting a syllabus needed to earn a certain degree, and students actually learning the material.

The latter is the solely the responsibility of each student, but I don’t understand why the former would be. Some of the content in this course strikes me as unknown unknowns for new programmers. Why would they be to blame if no one told them to learn a particular skill?

[jimbo9991]

Honestly, because its something that should be a prerequisite for starting the degree program in the same way basic algebra is a prerequisite. Likewise, not knowing you need to know this stuff is a sign that you are probably not at the point where you should even be able to have declared the major. The fact that colleges allow this at all is doing a disservice to students, many of whom will go on to permanently damage their academic records.

[jimbo9991]

People are going to really dislike what you said but I agree to a certain extent, especially when it comes to the basics of working in the command line. If somebody can't read the manual on that and figure it out then they are going to be so hopeless for so many other things that I don't want anything to do with them.

[ghaff]

If someone has literally never opened a terminal with a command line, you're probably being rather dismissive of how unintuitive it will be for a lot of people at first.

[TheBigSalad]

"I've personally never considered it the responsibility of my university to educate me" - you're going to have to explain yourself