Ed,

>>>Again, you can amass all of the theory you want. If you have never put it into practice, it means squat...
>>
>>It's a bit shortsighted, don't you think ? Let me ask you a question, Do you own a degree ?
>>
>
>It's not a matter of ownership, it's a matter of earning a degree. There are schools which, for a small sum of money, will be more than happy to sell you a degree.

I know, I should have prashed that a more presise. I got the impression that JVP was telling that a degree does not mean anything because there are people who reach the highest level in their field without one. I don't think it's true. From, people with a degree in CS you'd expect some basic level of understanding the field area where it applies, whereas for people without it, it's more difficult to determine his/hers knowledge in the field in a wider view: He/she can be gifted with excelent understanding of one specific field (i've seem lot's of examples right here on the UT), but does not even have a clue about others. Since having a degree in for example CS should have learned the at least the basics of computer science in a broad view, it certainly does not say that he can compete with someone without one but is specialized to the problem area.

For example here in the netherlands (i'm sure this would also apply to the US), having a degree in CS would mean that:
- Having a clue about OSs
- Having a clue about mathemetics (like intergration, differentation, specific algorithms)
- Having a clue about relation database systems.

One uneducated can excelently function in relational database design, but not have a clue about OSs nor academic mathematics.

Let's say that these two people cannot be compared with eachother, one is specific, the other is wider (BTW Of course there also academics, who are both).

Walter,


>It'd be difficult for John to attend law school at an accredited school in the US and not have an undergraduate degree of some sort; they'd not accept his application. I certainly don't have a degree in CS; my degrees are in Applied Mathematics and Psychobiology, and are now over 20 years out of date if the knowledge I picked up in either field had to be applied to the state of the art in these fields of endeavor, which have changed considerably since I was in school. Fortunately, I feel a certain obligation to keep somewhat current with the technologies I deal with in the day-to-day environment (well, at least decade to decade.)
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>I've learned more to respect the proven abilities of a candidate's work, in part indicated by their willingness to stick at a course of study, than to judge a candidate's worthiness based on their possession of a specific academic degree. The quality of the school awarding the degree is a large factor as well. Recognition of the outstanding caliber of work by one's peer group is another issue; the people who know something about a field are the ones best suited to making judgements about the skills exhibited by others in the field. And their knowledge of their field of endeavor, and their ability to distinguish between tools, technolgies and add-ins when asked about their qualifications and expertise is a factor as well.
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>I don't think that many of us would question JVP's understanding of VFP, VB, and their common technologies. The possession lack of either a graduate or undergraduate degree in CS would not be the basis for our judgement of his excellent accomplishments. I'd hate to think about the number of people I've interviewed, both on my own behalf and for clients, with a long string of TLAs and academic accolades strung behind their names who mentally were tossed in the "no clue - wrap up this interview quickly" category after a couple of minutes.
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>I can think of people with undergraduate (and perhaps graduate) accredation who probably would not be up to the task of holding his hat.