I'm studying Computer Science and Engineering in Uni.

People don't understand the most fundamental principles of programming at all. Variables and functions are like a foreign language to them.

I get that not everyone knows everything but if you decide to go to uni to study programming, and you have never programmed before. Are you really in the right place?

Don't stress, I still stumble across the occasional dev who doesn't know basic things - and we are talking mid-senior devs.

@C0D4 yikes.

At my uni many cs people were new to programming. Many of them are quite good at it now and are working in good companies, so...

@Jilano html?
Is that Hot Tallywacking Mechanical Lollipop Developer?

Because that's a title I could respect.

That's totally true. If you're going to study programming, you have to be interested and at least learn basics before going to university imo.

In my first year I had someone call C#, without flinching or smirking, "C Waffle". He insisted that was right.

Then again, our Java tutor misspelled "void" as "voit" everywhere, wondered why his shit didn't compile and got fired after the second period.

And now we're working with service layers, generics and APIs and I'm serving as another teacher at this point.

@orhun not true, however uni itself is not responsible that you know “programming”, there must be interest.

@theunknownguy it's even harder to achieve something if you're ok with just the uni. education.

Hard disagree. A lot of primary and secondary schools don't offer CS/programming classes, and not everyone has the free time/readily available resources (i.e. regular access to a half-decent computer) to teach themselves before college. They're at college, the whole point is to learn things. The less they know coming in, the more value they're getting for their money. Your rant just makes you sound like a snobby, judgemental headass

@LuckierDodge I'm divided on this.

You can program whatever the hell you want on incredibly cheap devices (think Pinebook, Rasp). Is this ideal? Not really. Any kind of graphical development is dead in the water unless you really want to learn OGL's static pipeline for software rendering.

But in terms of preparation for university (which is what OP is about, not college), I think there is some basis you need. That basis is why you would be admitted to a university-grade course over a college-grade course. That's how it is over in the Netherlands, at least.

@Mvzes interesting perspective. For clarification, what's the difference between college and University in the Netherlands? In the US those are functionally synonyms

@LuckierDodge University is regarded as a higher level. Most focus is put on academic research, whereas a college is really about learning the skills required to do a job.

You can do a bachelors or a masters at a college and a masters or a PhD at a university.

@Mvzes "C Waffle" is my new head canon

@Mvzes ah, interesting! See, in the US, University encompasses bachelor's to PhD, so I assumed we were referring to students starting a bachelor's. A Master's student is a different animal.

@Mvzes voit lmao

And here I was judging people that say S.Q.L.

"If you decided to go to uni to practice medicine, and have never performed surgery before, are you really in the right place?"

Yes. Yes they are.