I also think that undergraduate CS degrees today, are diluted. That's not to say I have not met folks who know what they are doing with their CS degree. They are also the ones paying attention in class. For those that don't really know how to program ... they got about as much skill as a non-techie who goes off to try to do their own thing.
With regards to the English major. It was very possible that he programmed computer as a kid, tried to get a CS degree, and failing that dropped back to English. I'm not saying that this is what happened to him. I do know of a few folks at the local university it happened to. So far, they have not tried to get a programming job.
Just to clarify, though, the point I was trying to make was not about the importance of degrees but about the importance of learning computer science rather than just, for example, "learning to code Rails" (whatever that means).
The "English major" Zed mentioned is a friend and co-worker of mine. Zed and him has had some beef going way back.
Kevin is no script kiddy, I can guarantee you that. His 20% time project at Powerset is contributing to Rubinius. I don't know how many people here are hacking on the next generation of Ruby VMs, but I wouldn't call him a script kiddy.
I'm not calling the dude a script kiddie either. I was pointing out the more general pattern of the sentiments Zed has shown in his posts.
Kevin's obviously done a lot of useful work for the Ruby and Rails communities and I respect him on that basis the same way I respect Zed for his open source contributions.
I also think that undergraduate CS degrees today, are diluted. That's not to say I have not met folks who know what they are doing with their CS degree. They are also the ones paying attention in class. For those that don't really know how to program ... they got about as much skill as a non-techie who goes off to try to do their own thing.
With regards to the English major. It was very possible that he programmed computer as a kid, tried to get a CS degree, and failing that dropped back to English. I'm not saying that this is what happened to him. I do know of a few folks at the local university it happened to. So far, they have not tried to get a programming job.