Wednesday, February 09, 2005

Joel's Advice for Computer Science Students

I liked Joel's advice to students in Computer Science, especially the "work on big projects" and "learn to write" items. Not so sure that microeconomics is useful unless you want to run a company, but it's probably helpful to have that exposure so you can better understand the weather around you (and to prevent you from getting too bitter when customers don't automatically think your product is worth a million dollars and you deserve to retire at age 30). The bit about sticking out the boring classes is especially good advice; lots of jobs have boring parts that have to be done anyway when you're starting at the ground level, and it's a good character builder to learn to do well at that stuff even when you don't enjoy it.

Joel on Software: Advice for Computer Science College Students

4 comments :

Anonymous said...

I took microeconomics in college and I'm still bitter that customers don't think my product is worth a million dollars and that I deserve to retire at age 30.

KeithHandy said...

Typo in subject! Fix typo!

Anonymous said...

I am getting rather tired of Joel and more particularly the 'peanut gallery' on his message board. Whenever anyone asked someone about interviewing the chorus of 'Smart, Get Things Done, As hire As, Bs hire Cs, baah baah baah' becomes deafening.

Having said that there was an amusing reply to the article you mention on the lines of:
a) remember that college is your best opportunity for meeting women (if you want to meet women)
b) take up a sport you will be able to do afterwards otherwise you will get fat

Sadly I can't find it at the moment.

Lynn said...

Ok, maybe I do miss out by not reading the comment threads on those things. I just dip in for the content most of the time.