Finding a programmer

[bobsmith1492]

Originally posted by: Woosta

Originally posted by: NanoStuff

Originally posted by: mugs

Originally posted by: NanoStuff
College educated programmers are generally at the bottom of the competence barrel, but they sure are cheap. Any specific reason why it has to be a student? Low cost programmers can be found outside of the student circle. You'll probably have better results looking into Asian countries for remote work.

I assume you mean people who ONLY have some college education and no practical experience?

Yes of course, it's within the practical experience where they actually start learning how to program. The large issue for most college graduates is finding an employer that is willing to put up with their incompetence.

I have a friend who spent 3 years in college 'programming', I wouldn't hire him to write my HTML. It's sad what they do to people there.

Mmm true. I don't think the majority of teachers keep up with the latest on the web anymore, they just teach the deprecated mid to late 90s style of coding which they were taught and never improved their skillset. And because of this most college students just pickup on their teachers code thinking its how things are done. Although more and more people are learning the right way to code (front-end) in regards to the semantics of html, seperation of presentation behavior and content, etc.

Luckily I didn't take a college course and rather learned from the real experts that do this on a day to day basis who know exactly what they're doing.

HTML != code... they seem to be talking about code that requires computer science/engineering degree which would be real code like C, C++, etc.

It depends on who you get. Sure, maybe 50% or more of the kids will have no clue but there are always quite a few who are smart, work hard, and learn quickly. There are also a few that have done work on their own already so they have a leg up on things. You're much more likely to find someone knowledgeable in junior/senior year, also (I didn't do much beyond basic code concepts until then but then again I'm a EE). Ask a professor at a decent school (not a CC) to recommend a student to you and you'll find someone good for sure. Profs know these things.

 

[Jmman]

Originally posted by: bobsmith1492

Originally posted by: Woosta

Originally posted by: NanoStuff

Originally posted by: mugs

Originally posted by: NanoStuff
College educated programmers are generally at the bottom of the competence barrel, but they sure are cheap. Any specific reason why it has to be a student? Low cost programmers can be found outside of the student circle. You'll probably have better results looking into Asian countries for remote work.

I assume you mean people who ONLY have some college education and no practical experience?

Yes of course, it's within the practical experience where they actually start learning how to program. The large issue for most college graduates is finding an employer that is willing to put up with their incompetence.

I have a friend who spent 3 years in college 'programming', I wouldn't hire him to write my HTML. It's sad what they do to people there.

Mmm true. I don't think the majority of teachers keep up with the latest on the web anymore, they just teach the deprecated mid to late 90s style of coding which they were taught and never improved their skillset. And because of this most college students just pickup on their teachers code thinking its how things are done. Although more and more people are learning the right way to code (front-end) in regards to the semantics of html, seperation of presentation behavior and content, etc.

Luckily I didn't take a college course and rather learned from the real experts that do this on a day to day basis who know exactly what they're doing.

HTML != code... they seem to be talking about code that requires computer science/engineering degree which would be real code like C, C++, etc.

It depends on who you get. Sure, maybe 50% or more of the kids will have no clue but there are always quite a few who are smart, work hard, and learn quickly. There are also a few that have done work on their own already so they have a leg up on things. You're much more likely to find someone knowledgeable in junior/senior year, also (I didn't do much beyond basic code concepts until then but then again I'm a EE). Ask a professor at a decent school (not a CC) to recommend a student to you and you'll find someone good for sure. Profs know these things.

I was thinking the same thing. Where I went to school HTML is taught very little because people don't want to graduate just to design websites or some crap like that. We learned C++, Java, Ada and other high level languages, and the good students came out of the program able to code in just about any langauge you need. On top of that our senior project was a large team based software engineering project of decent sophistication. I think when we were done it had something like a 100,000 lines of code.....

 

[dealmaster00]

Originally posted by: bobsmith1492

Originally posted by: Woosta
Mmm true. I don't think the majority of teachers keep up with the latest on the web anymore, they just teach the deprecated mid to late 90s style of coding which they were taught and never improved their skillset. And because of this most college students just pickup on their teachers code thinking its how things are done. Although more and more people are learning the right way to code (front-end) in regards to the semantics of html, seperation of presentation behavior and content, etc.

Luckily I didn't take a college course and rather learned from the real experts that do this on a day to day basis who know exactly what they're doing.

HTML != code... they seem to be talking about code that requires computer science/engineering degree which would be real code like C, C++, etc.

It depends on who you get. Sure, maybe 50% or more of the kids will have no clue but there are always quite a few who are smart, work hard, and learn quickly. There are also a few that have done work on their own already so they have a leg up on things. You're much more likely to find someone knowledgeable in junior/senior year, also (I didn't do much beyond basic code concepts until then but then again I'm a EE). Ask a professor at a decent school (not a CC) to recommend a student to you and you'll find someone good for sure. Profs know these things.

Thank you for this reply, I was about to say something along the same lines. Doing HTML work is not the same as doing computer science work. Most of the latest (web) technologies, if you need to use them, can be picked up very quickly if you have a good programming background.

 

[Imdmn04]

Depends on what programs.

Students from top 10 CS programs in the country will have a pretty decent offering, but they will be more expensive than the $15/hr like others have suggested. Big companies such as Microsoft pay interns anywhere between $18-22/hr.

 

[Analog]

Originally posted by: Safeway

Originally posted by: Analog
I am a professor in an EE / CNS department. I get requests like yours all the time...

And you pass them along to students and the projects are successfully completed?

Many times, these requests turn into internships for the students, or even senior projects. Our school has a senior design course that fits into these types of assignments well.

 

[SarcasticDwarf]

Anyone else?