Stuff you should have learned in school but didn't pay attention to at the time

Question

This question made me think that there was a better question to ask.

What did you learn in school that you didn't care about at the time, but turned out to be useful or you had to relearn in the workplace because you had it in school, but didn't retain the information and you needed it? (I mean for software related jobs.)

I think this might help college students identify some of what they really should be paying attention to while they are in school.

I regret not having spend more time learning spoken languages (it just clicked for me 10-20 years later), but this is not programming related. — LennyProgrammers, Mar 02 '11 at 14:51

score 120 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 02 '11 at 23:30

120

Girls. You may think I am joking but I am not.

Don't go mad or anything, you still need to learn the academic stuff. But you also need to spend some time learning about the people, from the people around you.

That includes the half of humanity who have completely different interests and attitudes from you and your friends, but who you will still want to get along with.

answered Mar 02 '11 at 23:30

Ben

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I wish I could give this more upvotes. – immutabl Mar 03 '11 at 00:53
3

Spending more time with people who don't grok computers in general is a good thing(tm) – Rob Allen Mar 03 '11 at 14:13
16

48+ people who upvoted this just quietly sigh'ed to themselves. – George Mar 03 '11 at 15:22
Otherwise know as 'Users'. – Gary Willoughby Oct 21 '11 at 18:14

score 61 · Answer 2 · edited Sep 25 '12 at 11:17

61

I feel I should have put about 42% more energy into statistics.

edited Sep 25 '12 at 11:17

cregox

687

answered Mar 02 '11 at 14:31

FrustratedWithFormsDesigner

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That was going to be my answer! http://elem.com/~btilly/effective-ab-testing/ shows one of the ways in which statistics has proven useful for me. – btilly Mar 02 '11 at 14:37
Totally agree with @frustratedwithformsdesigner , statistics and Logic are two things i really should have paid more attention – guiman Mar 02 '11 at 14:46
10

My brother and I both told our mother last year that we wish we had studied more stats. I'm a quant and he's a physician. Oh, and my mother is a stat teacher... – chrisaycock Mar 02 '11 at 15:17
where in your work as a programmer you feel that not knowing statistics enough is an impediment?? This is a very surprising answer for me. Unless you are in a very specific field... – davka Mar 02 '11 at 15:40
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@davka: It comes up more often in testing, especially performance testing. Also in data analysis, which I have a lot of these days. – FrustratedWithFormsDesigner Mar 02 '11 at 15:44
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@davka - I work in a data driven company and good statistical analysis would be helpful for developers to be able to present their findings on 'why code x is better than code y', or 'yes, I can prove that if you allow me to invest 2 weeks to improve this thing, statistical analysis shows it will speed up by x%'. Knowing how to apply statistical techniques to design your experiments is really the goal here. – wkl Mar 02 '11 at 15:46
3

I think there is a 70+/- 2 % chance that I should have taken stats. – Zachary K Mar 02 '11 at 16:38
10

60% of the time, it works every time. – Matthew Read Mar 02 '11 at 16:58
1

You probably all should have... – Mar 02 '11 at 22:12
1

47.2% of stats are made up. 60.3% of all people know that. – George Mar 03 '11 at 15:12
@chrisaycock, very interested to know how physicians use stats. Do you mean they use some sort of probabilistic expert-systems for diagnosing the sickness and prescribing drugs? – CMR Mar 07 '11 at 17:03
@CMR Mostly for reading publications, or submitting research for their own publications. – chrisaycock Mar 08 '11 at 06:02

score 50 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 02 '11 at 14:41

50

Writing would be one of the biggest for me. I don't think this is limited to just developers though.

answered Mar 02 '11 at 14:41

Erin

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stack overflow and blogging has helped me a lot on that one. – Svish Mar 03 '11 at 14:17

score 36 · Accepted Answer · edited Aug 17 '11 at 19:23

36

Most developers I've seen fresh out of school didn't have much experience with OO development. They've heard of it, but most thing it just 'putting stuff in classes'.

At school you get loads of examples about cars & people which can be placed in the OO-framework. This teaches you polymorphism, overloading and stuff like that. Rather 'basic' stuff. It's good to know these things and how they work, but I never got an example of a real-world use for this. I think it's important to show students some real-world scenario's where some design is used.

One other thing I missed in college is the use (or mis-use) of usable design patterns. I think these days the most important patterns should be introduced somewhere in the late 1st year or beginning of the 2nd year. Students should get familiar with them.

Writing clean code is something which isn't taught (enough) at school. We could make a real mess of the code and still get an A+. 'If the application works, it's good.' was the motto. Students should learn how to write clean and high quality code and get rewarded for it, this also means refactoring and using the patterns or best practices they've learned.

Of course the eager students learned all this stuff by themselves, but others who weren't that eager didn't. This could be placed under a lack of motivation, or they just didn't know where or how to look. When paying a lot of money for a school, I think they should really teach you this semi-advanced stuff.

Also, some decent (professional) writing is a lacking skill for most people. Too bad as it's very important in the real world. Most important is being able to make yourself clear in your native language. If you can't write clearly in your main language, it's hard to communicate in a company.

I don't know if you can teach someone to write at this age, they should already be familiar with this skill. One could repeat the stuff taught at high school. Maybe teach students how to write comments & technical documentation. I still find it hard to write technical docs as nobody ever seems to know how to do it, or what the default format is.

edited Aug 17 '11 at 19:23

Dustin Kendall

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answered Mar 02 '11 at 14:40

Jan_V

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this answer is not to OP but to its complement: what should they have taught you better/more in-depth – davka Mar 02 '11 at 15:42
I thought I was pretty darn strong at this coming out of school now, but some technical interviews made me realize there is alot more to it than I thought. – Panky Mar 02 '11 at 18:00
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The purpose of an undergraduate education is introduce the student to the breadth of a field. Specialization is what one does at the graduate level. I do expect candidates fresh out of college to be experts in anything. I expect recent university graduates to have a well-rounded set of fundamentals that span the gap between computer organization and basic algorithm analysis. I do not care if a candidate has memorized the asymptotic bounds of all of the searching and sorting algorithms. I prefer a candidate that can ascertain the asymptotic bounds for a real-world piece of code. – bit-twiddler Mar 02 '11 at 20:08
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Am I the only one to cringe when 'learn' is (incorrectly) used instead of 'teach'? – dr-jan Mar 02 '11 at 20:36
Good point, I got some basic experience with OO but since all the class exercises were small projects, didn't get a chance to work on a project where you have to refactor "big" code using good OO practices. – Jon Onstott Mar 03 '11 at 00:14
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@dr-jan: Thanks for pointing it out. Edited. – Jan_V Mar 03 '11 at 06:57
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In my opinion, the only way that serious software writing could be taught is to have multiyear courses where you get your face ground into your very own past mistakes. – Paul Nathan Mar 09 '11 at 20:43
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I always wondered why there was never a "CS 5511 Advanced Debugging" course or something like that. Could easily fill a semester with that – ses011 Apr 01 '11 at 04:09
The reason being universities are there to "Teach you how to learn" or some such crap. "They aren't there to teach you a job, that is what a trade school is for." – Aug 17 '11 at 19:35

score 36 · Answer 5 · answered Mar 02 '11 at 17:43

36

Functional programming. At the time it seemed like a swarm of parenthesis that couldn't do anything useful. Now that lambda expressions are finding their way into widespread use, I've had to retrain my brain to think in that way. In college I just wanted to get LISP and Scheme as far into the rearview mirror as possible and never look back. If I had any idea how useful some aspects of functional programming could be, I would have paid more attention.

answered Mar 02 '11 at 17:43

Jason

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+1. It is my firm belief that for somebody who doesn't know how to program, functional programming is easier to learn than imperative programming, that imperative programming is easy to learn if you know functional programming, and that functional programming is hard to learn if you learned imperative programming first. Therefore, it makes sense to not only teach functional programming, but tech it first, and most importantly don't make such big f-ing deal out of it! I love how SICP does it. The first assignment doesn't appear until a couple hundred pages in, and you don't even notice. – Jörg W Mittag Mar 02 '11 at 20:54
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+1. Scheme turned me off functional paradigms for several years in college, as I had a C and C++ background before I took that course. I didn't list it as something I felt I should have paid more attention to because in my senior year, I took a languages course and used SML and really enjoyed it, and I also enjoyed Lisp too. Probably just the product of experiences throughout college making it far easier for me to understand how to use those paradigms. I am also teaching myself Scala now and enjoying it very much. :D – wkl Mar 02 '11 at 22:10
1

I generally agree (more functional in school) but it's impossible to prove that it's easier or harder to learn functional programming based on what style you learned first. – Kevin Aug 17 '11 at 20:18

score 34 · Answer 6 · answered Mar 02 '11 at 21:09

34

Regular Expressions. I distinctly remember blowing them off in college. They have been indispensable for work.

answered Mar 02 '11 at 21:09

patrickmcgraw

101

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Regular expressions should only be used as a last case scenario however – billy.bob Mar 03 '11 at 11:04
Yes! I remember thinking how much I hated it back then... Learned it for the class and removed it from my mind until I needed it again several years later. Then I was cursing myself because I had to re-learn it. – Bmw Mar 03 '11 at 13:16
4

@m.edmondson, regular expressions are great for simple tasks. You might be doing something wrong if you're using them in your code (after all, parsing combinators are a way much better), but for your typical search-and-replace in a text editor they're just fine. – SK-logic Mar 03 '11 at 13:17
3

Regular expressions are a great tool for using on the command line and in powerful editors such as vim or emacs. Not just for use in code. – Stephen Paulger Mar 03 '11 at 13:31
@m.edmondson, Regular expressions should only be used in programming when they make the program easier to understand. – zzzzBov Mar 03 '11 at 17:02
1

@m.edmonson, no - regular expressions are fantastic tools which should be chosen first! For those situations where they apply - knowing when they don't is where experience is required. – Apr 06 '11 at 13:47

score 33 · Answer 7 · answered Mar 02 '11 at 14:39

33

My favorite answer (statistics) is taken, so I'll give my second favorite answer. Big-O notation and a knowledge of the efficiency of various key algorithms. It is less of a "secret weapon" for me than statistics, but it is still very valuable.

answered Mar 02 '11 at 14:39

btilly

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Maybe I am just not writing complex enough stuff, but the only time I had to know Big O was at an interview at a high end tech company. So while I learned it 20 years ago, since I don't use but once every 10 years or so I don't remember it. – Bill Leeper Mar 02 '11 at 17:20
2

@bill-leeper: My experience is that Big-O is not something you use every day, but it is something that, when you know about, every so often helps you figure out a problem that you didn't know you had, or otherwise wouldn't have figured out. If you don't know it, you never have those insights and don't know what you are missing. – btilly Mar 02 '11 at 22:00
1

@bill, big-O is just a formalized way of saying that you need to be careful with how many loops you put inside on another when you need to scale. Most programmers learn that one way or another without having to know the formal name. – Jul 28 '11 at 08:07

score 23 · Answer 8 · answered Mar 02 '11 at 20:02

23

I wish I'd listened to what my teacher told me when I was 14. Unfortunately I can't tell you what it was, because I didn't listen.

answered Mar 02 '11 at 20:02

score 21 · Answer 9 · answered Mar 02 '11 at 16:43

21

Has to be the course on Finite Language and Automata Theory.

Thought it was too theoretical, till my job demanded me do a domain specific language compiler from scratch.

answered Mar 02 '11 at 16:43

Fanatic23

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Whoa. What do you do exactly ? If you don't mind me asking =) – fouronnes Mar 02 '11 at 22:25
1

@otibom: I work with semiconductors, and it has its own domain specific languages with reasonably stringent performance requirements. – Fanatic23 Mar 03 '11 at 06:12

score 18 · Answer 10 · answered Mar 02 '11 at 15:35

18

I would say C, as well as UNIX. Though I learned UNIX soon after college, I feel I would have benefited from getting more ingrained with UNIX and C earlier.

answered Mar 02 '11 at 15:35

UNIX? Is that still taught in colleges? – apoorv020 Mar 03 '11 at 07:13
1

It should be... or well, more like Linux. Any programmer should know a bit of bash (or an other shell). – Per Wiklander Mar 10 '11 at 22:43

score 17 · Answer 11 · answered Mar 02 '11 at 15:42

Artificial Intelligence/Data Mining - took the class, was bored, years later I am learning about topics like collective intelligence on my own. Large data set analysis is a big deal in my job and previous jobs.
Database theory/design - Again, took the class, was bored, so I've been learning stuff about databases myself
Just high level math and interesting math techniques in general - I took 4 calculus classes, linear algebra, statistics, probability, discrete...but felt I should have also done:
- Numerical methods
- Advanced statistical methods, even stuff like Markov chains - again, related to large data set analysis
Human-Computer Interaction - in school I didn't feel this was in any way useful to what I would be doing in my job (I liked working at a low level or behind the scenes), but in any job I've had, usability has been a focus at times.
A second language - I've always had a gift for languages, but in college I didn't take a language, and I find it difficult to try to teach myself Japanese.

score 13 · Answer 12 · answered Mar 02 '11 at 17:23

Technical writing. I spend a lot of time writing requirements, communicating with customers and co workers. This is an area that I had a 1 credit hour class in in College. The only other class that really helped in my career was another 1 credit hour class. That was in C programming. The rest while interesting and probably helped my overall analytical skills hasn't really been a direct benefit to my career.

Granted I went to school 20 years ago and C was considered cutting edge in the Electrical Engineering department. The CS folks were doing some stuff with Lisp and C++ but still probably not as much OO as I would hope is going on with Today's graduates.

score 11 · Answer 13 · answered Mar 02 '11 at 17:20

11

Design Documents

I always assumed someone else would be the one creating these things, or that they were just simple docs. They are not simple at all and my team is small enough that I do my own design docs.

answered Mar 02 '11 at 17:20

Rachel

24,029

someone else WILL be writing them if I'm no good at it, which is the way I like it. – Kevin Aug 17 '11 at 20:19

score 10 · Answer 14 · answered Mar 02 '11 at 14:55

10

Second foreign language. Russian in my case. Lots of books, resources, and more in this particular language in my surrounding space.

answered Mar 02 '11 at 14:55

lfx

814

@FrustratedWithFormsDesigner yes now, but when I was child... :) – lfx Mar 02 '11 at 15:14
I studied french and german personally, and actually spent some time in germany. It's something everyone should experience. – Ken Mar 02 '11 at 15:48
12

Really? Programming-related resources in Russian? I am a native Russian speaker, but I hardly ever make use of that when I search for stuff on programming. Most of the time, typing an English query into Google gets me an answer. Also, technical books in Russian are often very bad translations from English. – Dima Mar 02 '11 at 21:12
@Dima, what situation is nowadays don't know, but when i was in collage and in school, every teacher said that. – lfx Mar 03 '11 at 06:37
@lfx Depends on when you were in school. :) We have a joke about how the Russians supposedly invented everything, with a punchline that Russia is the motherland of elephants, and the Russian elephants are the most advanced elephants in the world. Seriously, though, it depends on the field. If you are talking about literature or physics (e. g. Landau and Lifshits' course on theoretical physics), then yes, there is a wealth of material in Russian. If you are talking about computer-related stuff, then you are much better off knowing English. – Dima Mar 03 '11 at 14:27
@Dima: I also had a friend who did a PhD in pure math and remarked that they wished they could read Russian because a lot of the material in their subject area was written in Russian. – FrustratedWithFormsDesigner Mar 07 '11 at 17:07
3

@FrustratedWithFormsDesigner: that I'll believe. There is certainly a lot of math-related material in Russian. But if you are talking about computer-related subjects, then you are better off knowing English. – Dima Mar 07 '11 at 17:58

score 8 · Answer 15 · answered Mar 02 '11 at 15:34

8

From the CS side of things:

User Interface design
Testing
Version Control
Concurrency

From the everything category:

Technical writing
Speech communication
Time estimation skills

answered Mar 02 '11 at 15:34

Tyanna

9,528

+1 for Testing and Version Control. Seriously, we heard a lot that testing was very important... never really learned how to though... (and that wasn't our fault. we just never had anything about it really) – Svish Mar 03 '11 at 14:23

score 7 · Answer 16 · edited Mar 02 '11 at 21:35

7

Obviously, History and Literature. Problem is often, school doesn't make those interesting.

edited Mar 02 '11 at 21:35

Nick Pierpoint

161

answered Mar 02 '11 at 17:56

jokoon

2,242

When learning those as a home schooler, they can be far more interesting. – Matthew Rodatus Oct 21 '11 at 18:51

score 7 · Answer 17 · answered Mar 02 '11 at 19:12

7

Vector math and calculus. I had 'em, but my profs were awful and didnt actually teach the subjects. But as someone who's heavily into graphics programming... a better vector math foundation would have helped.

answered Mar 02 '11 at 19:12

GrandmasterB

39,224

score 6 · Answer 18 · answered Mar 03 '11 at 05:00

6

Electronics

I hadn't much software related stuff at school. Ah - informatics, but I canceled it. :) But it was easy to learn later. Whereas electronics, I often don't get it. Microcontrollers, PWM, GPIO - wtf? I wish I would understand the stuff.

answered Mar 03 '11 at 05:00

user unknown

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I took Electronics at (the EU equivalent to) high school because there was no "pure" IT choice. Still glad to this day that I not only know how to use computers and it's peripheral hardware, but also how they work. – Vincent Vancalbergh Mar 03 '11 at 08:59

score 5 · Answer 19 · answered Mar 02 '11 at 19:31

Distributed networking/computing. Programming is not a challenge, but the prerequisites in current architecture are in-depth knowledge of distributed concepts.

A detailed course was offered as an elective, but had to choose between this and AI: so, it is not really a regret.

score 5 · Answer 20 · answered Mar 03 '11 at 10:28

5

Design Patterns: The way they were presented didn't actually tell you how useful they are, since then i've read a couple of books on them and think they are incredibly useful.

answered Mar 03 '11 at 10:28

Omar Kooheji

387

This bugs me in general about programming training, we are acceptable at explaining the how but not the why. And no good practial examples. This is why we have peole using the worng techniques for the problem, they pick the first one that occurs to them that will work without the knowledge to tell that this other technique is better for this particular problem. – HLGEM Mar 03 '11 at 14:51

score 4 · Answer 21 · answered Mar 02 '11 at 15:18

4

Unix, Shellscripting, C. Had a chance to learn it well in school, but had to do that later on the job.

answered Mar 02 '11 at 15:18

user281377

28,382

score 4 · Answer 22 · answered Mar 02 '11 at 20:57

Non computer science stuff:
Personally, I wish I had a native language like most normal people around here. By that I mean that most people were born speaking one main language and maybe picking another one or two later. In this situation, the additional languages usually don't impair the native language because you already have a solid foundation that encompasses speech, writing, and listening. I grew up speaking, writing, and listening to three distinct languages simultaneously. Even though I always did well at language classes both at school and college, I wish I had complete fluency in ONE language. This results in me having to think a little bit for a split second before formulating a response. Some people notice that and conclude that I'm too shy (which is not wrong to a certain extent). So I wish I had taken more classes that involved a greater amount of speech, discussions, group work, etc.

score 4 · Answer 23 · answered Mar 03 '11 at 01:38

4

Economics. It may be boring (and a bit cruel), but anyway it is the only one that is truly essential in this society. After that, statistics.

answered Mar 03 '11 at 01:38

Víctor Pimentel

1

score 4 · Answer 24 · answered Mar 03 '11 at 03:31

I think the three classes that gave me the most insight into how computers operate in the execution of software (which this understanding allows for more optimal programming) were:

Assembly Language Operating Systems Compilers

Its perhaps very easy to think that these classes aren't as useful unless you go in to a career specifically focused on any one of these things but even if you're a web developer and don't utilize any of these directly that underlying understanding would still be extremely helpful to code effectively.

score 3 · Answer 25 · answered Mar 02 '11 at 16:43

3

There are about a dozen classes I wish I had taken in college but didn't. Mostly not CS. Photography, General Chem, more writing!

answered Mar 02 '11 at 16:43

Zachary K

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score 3 · Answer 26 · answered Mar 02 '11 at 22:27

3

It's funny the number of people who are saying liberal arts: I was a cognitive science major (Philosophy/CompSci/Anatomy)...Ended up switching to Philosophy/CompSci with a heavy minor in English (I could have gotten a BA, but didn't bother taking the 101's I'd skipped).

It would take me a week of stories to tell you about all the crap I got from my CS peers for taking those liberal arts classes. No matter that a half dozen classes in logic did more for my programming than any amount of calculus. No matter that all my best AI courses were Philosophy courses. No matter that there were fricking GIRLS in my English classes. No no, I was some kind of unserious poser for taking those courses.

Take heart though. At least you don't have to explain your education every time someone looks at your resume.

answered Mar 02 '11 at 22:27

Satanicpuppy

6,200

Could you please explain what you meant by "my best AI courses were Philosophy courses"? – Mark C Mar 03 '11 at 04:09
@mark: "Cognitive Science", which was my original major, is basically nothing but AI, and largely comprised of philosophy. There are two kinds of philosophy: analytic and continental. All the stupid shit is continental. Analytic is logic, cog. sci, linguistics and shit like that. – Satanicpuppy Mar 03 '11 at 05:08
+1: As a philosophy major myself I took a class called Philosophy of the Mind. This class was basically devoted to Turing Machines. My Philosophy advisor was a CS major in undergrad and my CS advisor actually had his Phd in Philosophy. – Morgan Herlocker Mar 03 '11 at 05:17
1 : "you don't have to explain your education". And there I was, thinking things were different in the US/UK... I know exactly what you mean.

Raveline

Mar 03 '11 at 13:45

score 3 · Answer 27 · answered Mar 03 '11 at 00:22

3

Quadratic equations and trigonometry.

Very important in writing software in the for the traditional engineering disciplines.

answered Mar 03 '11 at 00:22

angryITguy

253

Does not compute.... since a majority of good programmers are engineers, why is someone who feels lacking in their basic arithmetic skills writing software for engineering disciplines when there are a ton of engineers who understand the math, the physics, and the computing? – Ben Voigt Mar 03 '11 at 06:21
@Ben. Believe it or not...ALOT of people managed to get into software development, and do not have formal training in it. This is probably before "your time". Me being one.. I managed to learn it, but it would have come alot easier if I had paid attention in school. – angryITguy Mar 03 '11 at 23:22
In case it wasn't obvious, I'm advocating for engineering software to be written by engineers who aren't trained in software development. Software engineering isn't hard to pick up if you have been trained to think logically. OTOH learning to solve engineering problems automatically, if one is lacking in such basic math skills as quadratic equations, is going to be next to impossible. – Ben Voigt Mar 04 '11 at 05:00
@ben. Those that are lacking in "basic math" skills are now called social media consultants and making considerably more than engineers. – angryITguy Mar 05 '11 at 05:20
@guilio: I respectfully disagree. There are a few engineers at the top making an insane amount of money (we typically call them "inventors", but they used engineering skills to design the product). Then there is a small group of the most sought-after media consultants. Then the rest of the competent engineers, below them the incompetent engineers and the rank-and-file media consultants are intermingled. And all of 'em make more than your average college graduate with a math degree who teaches quadratic equations to the next crop of engineers. – Ben Voigt Mar 05 '11 at 05:27

score 1 · Answer 28 · answered Mar 02 '11 at 17:44

1

Ya I didn't pay much attention to compilers as I should have.

answered Mar 02 '11 at 17:44

score 1 · Answer 29 · answered Mar 02 '11 at 21:50

CS/Math: more logic, algebra, category theory. More fundamental and less applied stuff: understanding applied stuff when you know fundamentals well is much easier tha the other way around, and more fruitful.

(I had A in statistics but it took way long to link it to real programming needs, I forgot a lot.)

'Humanities': natural language, writing, formulating, understanding and being understood. It does not look important until you join a team of more than 2-3 fellow hackers, that is, in so called 'real life'.

score 1 · Answer 30 · answered Mar 02 '11 at 23:15

Computer Graphics (3d rendering in opengl/directx)

I honestly was very interested in it but so busy that I couldn't put in the time I would have liked. It became a chore instead of a hobby. I think I may have to pick up a book on it to get me interested in it again.

score 1 · Answer 31 · answered Mar 03 '11 at 01:58

I would say at the time recursion and memory management are two things that I shook off in college as things I didn't care for that I ended up needing to practice and relearn on my own time.

For me recursion was taught poorly and seemed almost like "magic" that I never cared to get the full grasp of. The lessons and assignments related to recursion were always trivial and made me write it off and do things iteratively whenever possible. Later, I obviously began to realize the benefits of recursion and put some time in to feel confident having it in my back pocket for whenever it's applicable. Funny thing now is I administer a lot of the hands on programming interviews for my company where recursion is necessary for completion of the problem - all too often I see young candidates struggling to use recursion, apparently I wasn't the only one that didn't master it in college.

Regarding memory management - I did my part to get through my C programming class, but when I went back to predominantly Java it was as if that poorly understood part of my memory was erased. I later forced myself to do some real development in C and get my bearings on all of the basics and beyond. I felt I needed to learn it all for my own sake but doing mostly higher level development I didn't expect to use it - until I started doing iPhone dev where the garbage collector wasn't available. Relearning the foundation saved me a lot of time and headaches in learning the Objective-C way of memory management.

score 1 · Answer 32 · answered Mar 03 '11 at 06:43

1

When to settle and just get it done. I Fuss and fret over the stupidest detail and make code portable and reusable to the nth degree when n-1 would work in almost all cases and take half the time.

answered Mar 03 '11 at 06:43

rerun

2,045
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score 1 · Answer 33 · answered Mar 03 '11 at 10:56

1

economics (especially accountancy) and logistics.

We spend most of our time as IT professionals working on software to do accountancy and logistics related tasks, knowing how that works helps a ton.

answered Mar 03 '11 at 10:56

jwenting

9,783

score 1 · Answer 34 · answered Mar 03 '11 at 13:37

Sometimes I regret not having paid more attention in Mathematics, however there are many great resources on the web to learn about specific topics so it hasn't really held me back and I think that is probably true for most things. If you're motivated you can still learn the majority of things by reading the internet.

I do think that foreign languages are harder to learn the older you are, I've noticed this myself having started learning French, Spanish, German and Welsh.

score 0 · Answer 35 · answered Mar 03 '11 at 07:07

Calculus of complex variables. Forgot it all, and had to relearn it decades later when I wanted to develop and also explain some heavy DSP audio processing code.

Psychology. Helped me eventually gain a greater interest in reading about the very human cognitive limitations that can help lead to such things as aviation pilot error and common programming bugs.

score 0 · Answer 36 · answered Mar 03 '11 at 11:20

0

Hardware. I should have taken a few classes from the CE and EE curriculum. Being perceived as a "software-only" guy tremendously limits your job opportunities.

answered Mar 03 '11 at 11:20

luis.espinal

2,590

score 0 · Answer 37 · answered Mar 03 '11 at 12:38

Use the libraries and tools that are available!

While fundamental knowledge is critical both for writing one's own code and for assessing the value of the stuff you can find in libs and online, I wish one of my professors had sat me down and said, "this is pretty good code you wrote in 30 hours, but you could've done it a lot faster and just as well if you'd downloaded and used foolib, barlib, and libbaz. Next time, hunt before you peck."

…but then again, we were all still getting used to the Internet back then.

score 0 · Answer 38 · answered Mar 03 '11 at 12:42

Sorry that this in nothing to do with programming, but:

Singing

Effective learning techniques (mind maps, anybody? Wish I'd had them at school)

Time management

Mnemonics

Spelling

How to get along with others, and conversly, how to argue my point eloquently.

Other things will cmoe to mind later, I'm sure!

score 0 · Answer 39 · answered Mar 03 '11 at 13:14

I have not needed anything I could have learned in school. All I ever needed in programming was taught hands on. My school did not teach OO and the ONE SINGLE THING I need the most is touch typing - which was also not taught. I can do 4 finger touch typing on my own, but I wish I had had the opportunity to learn it at school.

score -1 · Answer 40 · answered Mar 02 '11 at 14:47

-1

I started in a profession that is less cerebral than programming. A professor in a programming course recommended against it because, "My brain would turn to mush." Fortunately, I made a career change before too much damage. Majoring in CS or at least taking more courses would have helped.

answered Mar 02 '11 at 14:47

JeffO

36,816

While I don't disgree that focusing on CS would result in more knowledge of CS, this is kind of elitist. I don't view other disciplines as damaging and I wouldn't consider someone who got their BA in Philosophy and then a BS in Computer Science to be damaged. – Matthew Read Mar 02 '11 at 14:51
@Matthew Read - I don't see it as elitist. What if he recognized that I could be a painter? Would recommending a career in art be more elite than CS? It's a matter of an individual pursuing an area of their strength. I've held several non-programming jobs and in most of them ended up writing an application or two instead of creating a painting for the lobby. – JeffO Mar 02 '11 at 16:50
@Jeff - careers are what you make of them. That professor was just another academically-boxed asshole. I cannot imagine anyone that is actually intelligent and that actually has industrial work experience to have that type of thinking (and to advice students with it.) As a fellow CS'ist, good for you that you went into CS, but c'mon that kind of statement does not make any sense in the real world outside the walls of academia. – luis.espinal Mar 03 '11 at 11:23
@luis.espinal - I didn't major in CS which is why I said it 'would' have helped. I changed careers 10 years later when I was old enough to recognize good advice unlike your assumption based on a single statement (He did more outside of academia than most will do in a lifetime). My father was a pilot in WWII and gave the same advice when I was in high school. Trust me, his 35 yrs in a steel mill was plenty of industrial work experience. You want to fool yourself into believing you could be happy cleaning toilets, go ahead. I just think life is too short to not do what you are good at and enjoy. – JeffO Mar 03 '11 at 13:55
@Jeff - Well, I didn't argued that cleaning toilets or working on a steal mill are careers. career =/= job; equating both is not an argument I made. Nice strawman btw. It is true, though, that I made an unfair assumption your professor's "outside" experience, but without you specifying what the hell you originally majored in, all one can do is work on assumptions. As typically attributed to Voltaire - if you wish to discuss with me, define your terms. State what you originally majored on and let your readers judge the validity of your first sentence. It is the fair thing to do. – luis.espinal Mar 04 '11 at 17:24
@Jeff - And to clarify, a career is not just any job. A career can be related to one or many jobs throughout your work life, but they aren't the same. A career is an academic or vocational/technical study or specialization. More precisely as defined by the Oxford dictionary "an individual's "course or progress through life (or a distinct portion of life)... usually considered to pertain to remunerative work (and sometimes also formal education)" -- Janitorial work or working on an assembly lines, those aren't careers (or professionns). – luis.espinal Mar 04 '11 at 17:30
@Jeff - Also, as found in the Oxford dictionary "Profession - a paid occupation, especially one that involves prolonged training and a formal qualification". How does toilet cleaning or steel mill work qualifies as such is beyond me. Furthermore, when talking about careers and professions (as terms understood by literate people), I find it hard (if not impossible) to objectively* speak of one such that would turn a brain to mush in the general case. Sorry, you can only do that when you act subjectively (thus compromising the validity of such a statement.) – luis.espinal Mar 04 '11 at 17:36

Stuff you should have learned in school but didn't pay attention to at the time

40 Answers40