Do you ever think back to your college education where you were supposedly learning the basics on how to be a good software developer (or Computer Scientist in my case)? Think of all of those math courses (Differential Equations, yuck), those theoretical courses, etc. etc. Well, now that I’ve been out of college for almost 7 years, I can say that I definitely got a quality education for my $120,000. I can say that degree I have looks really pretty on my wall. And I can also say that college exposed me to my start in writing software applications, mostly UNIX console applications. Last but not least, that degree got me a job that I’m lucky to not have been without since I got that degree.

But what did I really learn that was useful on a daily basis? Basically, I learned how to program and learned a lot of useful things that could be applied to writing effective and efficient software systems. But did I really learn how to be an effective software developer.

I really don’t think I became an effective software developer until I had been out of college for about 3-4 years. There are principals that I wish that I had been exposed to earlier. Being a Computer Science major, I suppose I was learning all the tools it would take to do any job in the computer field from being an IT guy to working with artificial intelligence. What I probably really needed was a degree in Software Engineering.