When you tell people that you went to university and studied some Computer Science related degree, people think you are a genius.

They also assume you must be a better programmer than self-taught developers, but that isn’t the case.

I heard someone rant on a podcast that some people in the industry try to “gatekeep” by saying that “Software Engineers” are university taught, whereas self-taught people are merely “Software Developers”. So a “developer” is a  pejorative term. I’m not sure if that is an American thing, because I have never heard of that before, and it’s not something I have witnessed in England. Personally, I use the terms as synonyms, and if I did hear someone trying to differentiate between them, I would certainly argue against it.

I was taught programming at College and didn’t learn much. I went to University and the standard of teaching (when it came to programming) was actually very low. 

Part of the problem is that you do some coursework based on something you are studying on the course, and by the time your code is starting to look complex – then you have completed the task. Your attention moves onto the next set of coursework and the pattern repeats. So essentially you are writing code using basic constructs like “If statements” and “For loops”, then moving onto another basic task using the same constructs.

Another problem is that when the coursework is graded, they mainly care about the written report. Often you had to simply demonstrate your program running to prove you didn’t just pretend.

The other problem is that it didn’t matter if your code was efficient or clear. As long as you could explain the theory, then it is fine. You were encouraged to litter your code with code-comments, explaining every line. When you actually learn how to write good code, you read about the idea of “clean code”, which means writing code in a logical and easy-to-read manner. This is the opposite of how universities teach it.

Your code at uni is a mess. There’s no automated tests, there’s no design patterns, the methods and classes aren’t split into small logical groups. It’s loads of messy code crammed into a few files (or maybe just 1 file); it’s not readable or very maintainable, and then the file is double the size because you have spammed it with code comments.

At that point in my life, I found that I learnt the most in my first job, simply by making mistakes and thinking about what I could have done instead. After I left that job, I spent time reading and working on the most ambitious idea I had. It was at this point, I felt that I finally understood how to be a developer.