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?
So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do.
Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game.
The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...
