Filed under: Developer
Dev Chair : Do we want scientists or engineers?
Good computer science graduates do not make good software developers. Really, I mean it. But for the polar opposite reason that these two New York University computer science professors think.When I was in high school my physics teacher once told us, "All physics experiments work. They just may not work the way you want them to."
This encapsulates neatly what software development is all about. On one hand, it is science. It is deterministic. Each programming language statement performs exactly as stated (baring bugs in the compiler, or the SDK, or the OS). On the other hand, software development is closer to engineering where years of experience allows a software developer to spot patterns in the model and apply them to build a system.
Unfortunately, just as in physics, computer science courses do not prepare students for what comes after graduation. Skills that are considered crucial in almost all commercial software projects are either not taught in college or are only touched upon. This disparity between the skills graduates possess and what the industry is looking for means it generally takes one to two years of working in real life project for a graduate to become fully trained.
In 2002, it was all doom and gloom for aspiring computer science students. They were being told that, by the time they graduated, offshore developers and computer scientists would be doing the jobs they sought, and for far less money. Sure, it may have been true for a while, and lots of development is still happening overseas but, did you realize Comp-Sci grads are still raking in bigger paychecks?
With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet.
They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...
