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calvinmorrisonHNSource author
Lessons learnedExperience excerpt · English

I tried to place out of an intro-to-programming course in a back-to-school bout of scholastic …

I tried to place out of an intro-to-programming course in a back-to-school bout of scholastic achievement. I wasn't allowed to test out of it despite the coursewor being rote and that anyone with 2 seconds looking at my CV could see I did not need it. Anyway - they released the assignments on day 1. I turned them in on day 2. I still had to go to class. Stupid. My "filesystems and database design" class was basically howto use mysql. It's a shame, I was more interested in actual file system and database design Just stupid stuff like that made me drop the academic bullshit and skip into the real world.

Original discussionAsk HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?767 source comments · at import
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2600guyHN

During my tenure in college, had a professor that would write 10s or 100s of line of code to do things that could literally be done in one or two. Pointed this out to him a couple of times, not that I had been a dev for 15 years at this point. Everytime he squashed anything I said. Comes to end of semester project. Within 24 hours of him handing it out, myself and team handed in final solution, which absolutely worked and fulfilled all requirements. We all got a not completed at final grade. Found out later that only 3 people in the class got an A, and they were the only females in the class, everyone else got a not completed. Immediately after having a convo with the "professor" and the threat of convo with dean of students, suddenly everyone got a passing grade. What a piece of human garbage.

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drekipusHN

Stuff like this makes me angry. I had similar experiences in uni. I grew up very poor, so finishing uni was like, an achievement I had to do, but I learnt C++ and HL2 modding and other computer stuff back in highschool. My uni experience was 7 years of hell (multiple gap years to go do real work before coming back). Getting stuff like "pseudocode can't have an equal sign in it, so NC" on assignments. "Even if you finish all the assignments you must attend every tutorial or you pass" Ive told many academics to go to hell. I'm not paid to be there like they are. My grades go from "barely passed" to "high distinction" like a rollercoaster each year. - and yet, I still really wanted to like uni. I do still want to like it, it's just a shame about the academics

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TijdreizigerHN

It’s hard to say with this little information, but it sounds like you might have chosen the wrong school for your goals? The database class at my uni was mostly relational algebra. Likewise, many other classes were mostly foundational theory (though we did have project-based applicative classes too).

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joshstrangeHN

I took a database design class in college. I had been using MySQL for years at this point (by no means an expert, but databases weren’t foreign to me). In my first exam I got a 90/100. I got all the queries right (don’t get me started on programming/writing queries on paper and how stupid that is), but I lost 1 point on each of the 10 questions. Why? Because I didn’t put a semicolon at the end of my query. Something I had never done in any database tool, never done in my code, and only done 1-2 times on the CLI if that. IMHO computer science in college is a joke at most places. Teaching things 10+ years out of date by people who have a chip on this shoulder towards anything new. I had an EE professor who literally did not go a single class without find some way to denigrate web developers and “not real developers”. Fun times.

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coldpieHN

When I had BS classes that required attendance, I'd just sit reading a book. Teacher doesn't respect me, I don't respect them. Screw em. Completing university is the most useless project I've worked on.

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