

What's wrong with CS in India - lut4rp
http://pratul.in/whats-wrong-with-cs-in-india

======
aagnihot
I am a Software Engineer residing in India. I have never worked for
Outsourcing shops, however most of my friends work there. I have worked for
Product based companies, and I can contrast the two. Comment on Point 1:
Quality: Software applications created by CS students generally are never
meant to run for years and have new features added to them. So CS students
never focus much on Scalable design, modularity and engineering discipline in
general. The discipline in Design, Implementation, Source control and
execution was taught to me when I was an intern. Every aspect was reviewed by
peers until it met the standards. However, I observed that outsourced project
based companies are more focused on delivery/schedule than on quality. I feel
that the quality control must be done from outsourcer's end and that too when
the code is being developed. This might help them avoid unpleasant surprises.

Point 2: Passion: There is a huge imbalance between number of graduates we
produce and number of jobs available in India. This works in favor of students
who take up CS studies not because they like it but because they thing they
will be employable.

Point 3: People look down at design?? They equally consider System
Administration, Document Writing, Escalation handling as inferior.

------
alphakappa
You make some interesting points about design. It's always bothered me that in
a country with so much talent (both programming and design - you just have to
see all the beautiful artwork in good adverts and movie sets to know that
there are people who care about aesthetics) pretty much every mainstream
website has terrible design. It doesn't matter how well things are programmed
if everything looks cheap on the front-end. I liken it to the Chinese products
I see in trade shows - they may have the same technology as the American-
designed products, but they have such shoddy design and poorly proof-read
verbiage that it gives off an impression of low quality. I see Indian website
products in the same phase of development - the technology is excellent, but
the wrapping is poor.

------
samps
What's with the title of point 3 ("design is gay")? Is the author quoting a
homophobic opinion of some Indian programmers, or is he being careless with
his own wording?

~~~
lut4rp
Yes, rather careless with my words there. Updated that and some other words
too. Damn, I should write 10x more.

------
saintfiends
I agree with #2, this is more common in SAARC region. It mostly happens
because of how job interviews and selection are conducted.

Even if the job requires technical knowledge, most interviews will be carried
by HR personal who lacks any technical knowledge of the said field. So having
a CS degree is enough as far as merit is concerned. Only thing left is to nail
the non-technical interview. Not to mention the corruption involved in this
process.

But I'm generalizing here, there obviously are companies who does this right.

------
leogau
Your points suggest that it's not the technical skill of CS graduates that are
lacking rather, the mental attitudes and mindsets are not there. While school
can be an amazing resource, I'm not sure that any university is structured to
teach its students to be passionate or to consistantly over-deliver on
quality.

------
xtacy
With so many students, there is also a lack of inspiring and well qualified
professors to take up the job of teaching them.

