Giovanni Cuzzola wrote:
I think if you learn a language on your own you become an "hacker" whileAbsolutely right! For professional programmers, "hack" (as a noun, not a verb) is used to mean "kludge".
if you learn "well" in school you could become a good professional.
I've learned several professions and trades both ways, and would opine that while practical experience and natural skill is essential, the knowledge, standardization, and mounds and mounds of details taught in school are invaluable. When you learn "on your own", you only have your own wisdom to guide you.
I gave up on tech and the accompanying lunacy of r�sum�s, interviews, etc after the tech crash in order to finish a long-abridged apprenticeship as a carpenter, with a parallel apprenticeship in scaffolding. I belong to a legitimate trade union in which there are no "glorified labourers" - only apprentices and journeymen. I can tell you that even after all those (fifteen!) years, I remembered more from my formal and informal on-the-job training than most non-union, never-apprenticed "hacks" - we also use the term - ever seem to learn. Trust me, I've been plenty on of both kinds of jobs, and heard plenty of horror stories.
Yes, much of that training is "on the job" - but you learn it, journeyman to apprentice, not by gosh and by golly. A similar thing happens in better software firms, where you benefit from the knowledge and experience of others - as opposed to the ones where the training system is. "Oh, just go figure it out."
A sample detail: what is the added wind load when a scaffold is hoarded (tarped) in? Six hundred percent. That directly affects other aspects of the build, like number and spacing of tie-ins. A lot of foremen and bosses on jobsites that I could mention - but won't - shrug such things off as unnecessary. Their scaffolds fall over on a regular basis - ours don't. A case in point: the collapse at the Centre St. TD bank the other week.
How does this relate to tech? The standards that we apply to physical structures, even temporary ones, are closely paralleled in applied science technology and (software) engineering. Issues like hoarding relate to fan-out, heat dissipation, failover processing, and maintainability. That's why medical, military, and other equipment is designed by professionals, to pre-existing standards: so the children's hospital doesn't burn down due to an overheated resistor and cruise missiles don't land in the wrong country. (Most of the time.)
Granted, if you're developing the latest image-manipulation program, this is a lot less critical. Same for a 6' access platform. When I sign off on a large build, though, someone puts his life in my hands: instant karma. So for that job - or a heart monitor - I'll use a pro. For a simple website...
Perhaps the moral of the story is that one should use the right tool for the job - something I learned in trade school! ;c)
My 2c,
Frank
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