What are the minimum requirements to get a job in?

[rusi]

On Dec 14, 6:13 pm, Dave Angel <d... at davea.name> wrote:
> On 12/14/2012 01:56 AM, Devin Jeanpierre wrote:
>
> > On Fri, Dec 14, 2012 at 1:13 AM, rusi <rustompm... at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> On Dec 14, 8:33 am, Dave Angel <d... at davea.name> wrote:
> >>> Do you know any one computer language thoroughly?  Or just a little of
> >>> many languages?
> >> There is a quote by Bruce Lee to the effect:
> >> I am not afraid of the man who knows 10,000 kicks
> >> I am afraid of the man who has practised 1 kick 10,000 times
> > It's worth pointing out that kicks stay relevant for your entire life.
> > Unfortunately, many programming languages don't.
>
> > I guess the next metaphor would be stock investments and
> > diversification. Point is, don't just practice one kick.
>
> But if you never learn any one move thoroughly, knowing what several
> others are supposed to look like isn't going to help.

It comes down to the difference between active and passive knowledge.

Here is an interview that distinguishes between doing music and merely
passively hearing and the unfortunate consequences of assuming the
latter is enough:
http://jacobneedleman.squarespace.com/blog/2012/12/12/music-is-something-you-do.html

Ideas which were summarized by the great pianist Josef Lhevine as
follows:

If I dont practice for one day I know it
If I dont practice for two days my audience knows it
If I dont practice for three days the critics know it

So much of what passes for CS education is about doling out pre-cooked
things -- programs, concepts, jargon -- that companies can be forgiven
for being stringent about whom they employ.

Heres Alan Kay on Stanford: (One could expect other univs to do
worse):

I fear —as far as I can tell— that most undergraduate degrees in
computer science these days are basically Java vocational training.
I’ve heard complaints from even mighty Stanford University with its
illustrious faculty that basically the undergraduate computer science
program is little more than Java certification.
from http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1039523