No Dummy

Calico finished the semester with five A’s and one B and her mother is certainly proud of her. She is already preparing for next semester’s classes. Although she has taken the prerequisite course for a Data Structures class, the comparable class here uses a different programming language. She picked up one of those Dummies books and has completed about half of it. By the time she returns to classes, she should have no problem following the course material.

It’s a shame that the transition from college programming to workplace programming isn’t as simple. It’s not the fault of the classes or the instructors; it’s just that real life is far more complex than any class.  

Take data for example. Student programs are run against data that is significantly smaller than that found in most workplaces. Imagine that someone asked you to sort a list of twenty names. I bet you could do that easily. What if someone asked you to sort all that names in a New York City phone book? That’s far more complex. It isn’t practical or time effective to have students work with huge data samples, so while they learn programming basics, they miss out on issues that occupy much of IT professionals’ time. It is not uncommon to spend days, or even weeks, determining the most effective processing methods. Timing is just as important. Job scheduling software, for example, can even the load placed on a large computer by running some heavy processing tasks during off-peak times and insuring that each program completes successfully before continuing the sequence.

Users can present the biggest challenge to new IT professionals. Computer science students spend their days with peers and professors, who understand geek-speak. Computer professionals must translate their knowledge into layperson’s terms. Programming assignments come with specific requirements. Users requirements can change, or come to light, after a programming assignment has started. Maybe someone needs to write a Dummies book that explains how to deal with that!