Freshman out of the university started working for me as a php developer. Software Engineer from a major Australian university. First project, a WordPress plugin... Two weeks down the track I had to explain to him the concept of sessions and multiple visitors. WTF are they thought at universities these days?

Assuming he's a CS grad? CS has very little to do with programming.

@HollowKitty It's not about programming. If someone doesn't comprehend a server serves multiple clients simultaneously they shouldn't be called a software engineer.

@FuckJava Yeah it does have to do with programming tho. I agree it's pretty obv that a server usually serves multiple clients but that has nothing to do with pure CS.

@FuckJava Also, where I live, you don't get to be a "software engineer" unless you pass certification and get the brass ring, but from what I understand the US is different. I don't have a brass ring but I've had a lot of Americans incorrectly call me an engineer. I think that might be a specific cultural problem.

@HollowKitty I'm not in the US of A. I'm with wallabies

I don't know what the requirements are here to pass as a software engineer as I myself have studied overseas, but it shouldn't be that hard, given the quality (or lack of) I'm facing

@HollowKitty is mostly correct here, I'd say. CS undergrads don't usually have practical knowledge on most subjects, especially so if they come from a research focused university.

@Avyiel @HollowKitty I just found his application form. He clearly marked the box next to "Software Engineer"

@FuckJava maybe he just forgot to type in "Junior" 🙃
Jokes aside, maybe he really thinks he is an engineer... Which seems impossible, given your rant.

EDIT: you now have an opportunity to mentor him and maybe clear up the dude's misconceptions. If nothing else, you might be able to help him handle his overconfidence.
Either that or expose him as a liar, and tell the guy to go read some books about practical software engineering.

I only have one colleague I talk to who's working in Australia and from what I've heard the situation is basically the same deal as in the US.

Taking a checked checkbox on a rando form as gospel is not a super smart idea, especially in a country that doesn't keep "engineer" as a protected term. My point was, in Canada, you are not allowed to call yourself an engineer unless you literally have a license to practice engineering. In the US, anybody can call themselves an engineer. Not sure what the laws in AUS are but it seems that the behaviour in AUS is the same as in the US.

@Avyiel I might be wrong, but after three years in Australia, I feel everyone here feels super entitled. Not everyone; the snowflake generation; the ME - NOW generation. They think they see all; know all; deserve all. I've had the same person saying hi will be a senior developer two years after entering the market. Australia is land of the lazy conservative entitled snowflakes. Stay away! I can't wait to get out!

@Avyiel He's long gone. I'm still cleaning up his codes

@HollowKitty You're in all likelihood correct. No protection for Dr. or Eng. here, as far as I know. Don't forget, Britons sent their convicts here...

@FuckJava Still waiting to see the Banished episode where Marston claims to be a civil eng because he can bang out nails. 😂But yeah, maybe I'm defensive but I side-eye anyone who claims to be an eng but doesn't have a brass ring; might as well claim to be a doctor with no MD or residency. I'm not even an eng myself and you can be good at software dev without being an eng but if you have to grasp for that without earning it... 🙄🙄🙄

@HollowKitty I've studied zoology myself 😂

I've yet to watch Banished... Just finished Babylon 5 (yeah I know - old school)

@FuckJava Dudeski it's like 5 episodes and the Scotts Porage Oats man is in it. 😂

@HollowKitty Sounds like fun. I'll watch it

Just made myself a nice Cuba Libre!

@FuckJava How did you know my secret weakness? The Cuba Libre is like my fave drink. Best of luck finding coworkers who don't suck. ;P

@HollowKitty LoL I'd buy you one were we not on opposite sides of the planet

I have seen similar, had a colleague using static properties for storage of session data because he needed it over several instances of the object and thought it a nice way to cache the vale as it was expensive to fetch from db and it was hard to share between instances due to different paths to the creation of the instance.

It caused some not so good problems with dataloss (overwritten) and not found when trying to use some one else’s data.

@Voxera This gentleman once stored invoice total in a cookie between pages. I even showed him how I'd modify the value and pay $1 instead of $100 as a client, and he called me a hacker {insert emoji for face palm here}

@FuckJava freshmen from universities are used to learn algorithms and data structures by heart and code on paper.

SOMETIMES they even have to use a strange tool called compiler and implement something like hello world, quicksort, AVL-trees. Or simple class hierarchies to learn polymorphism and encapsulation.
> Quack.

This does not apply to all universities, of course. Having attended to both university and university of applied science, I can guarantee that none of them would "produce" an engineer ready for the harsh real business world unless they code outside of their uni assignments in their spare time.

Give him the time and mentorship and he'll get better :)

PS: enjoy your drink!

@darthkebab He lacked, for the lack of a better word, perspective into how computers work. I can't trust someone with coding if they can't form a mental picture all the between their code and CPU pipeline anymore

@FuckJava I think that you have really high expectations there.

The customer wants a red button with rounded corners. He does not care what the cpu does down below.

And... Sorry, PHP / any webdev language and knowing how the interpreter / JIT transforms *die()* to opcodes and what happens with the CPU? It doesn't fit together, doesn't make any sense.

@darthkebab Customer wants a red button that charges their customers $100.

OpCodes go to get executed. die(); eventually gets translated to a RET or some sort of JMP

You get the idea... What does this code do... How does it get interpreted... Where does php preprocessor dump the output... How pick the output up... What happens within the Web server... What's a TCP packet...

@FuckJava I agree on that partially. A good engineer knows his tools, but
what you describe is experience IMHO. And your new developer is inexperienced af.

I think the attached image sums it up pretty good :)

EDIT: downloaded a different image and I still cannot attach it?!

Lol. Had to switch to PC and create a NEW comment. Apparently I'm too dumb.

@darthkebab Very good image
But no it's not experience. I knew how an operating system booted up when I was 12 years old. I wrote a mini operating system (nothing but a command processor which used only BIOS interrupts and could be written to boot sector) when I was 14. I ported Microsoft Nibbles to Pascal and made it work on IPX/SPX when I was 15. So, no it's not experience. It's perspective

They teach you fucking nothing.

You learn how to use a linked list in java by just copying lines from somewhere.

Ask about some integrals he will do just fine beause you basically only learn math these days.

@nitwhiz I've been to university. I know they don't teach you shit. But you are supposed to learn, aren't you? Back then when I was learning programming I didn't even know English. I used a dictionary to translate Borland C and Borland Pascal's help. There was no Git or StackExchange in 1993. And I succeeded. Thus, I have no respect for anyone who doesn't know shit these days. They can go join the dinosaurs for all I care

@FuckJava a main problem i see is you don't get taught to build something yourself. And you don't have to learn it anymore. Using these script languages being everywhere now became too easy- and multi-plarform-ish. No fuck knows what memory management actually means these days. It's all transpilers and interpeters now, compilers are uncool.
VMs are a thing now too. If it doesn't work, we just add a layer to make it work, fuck performance.

@nitwhiz You know what's with my ID then. Programmers have stopped respecting memory, have stopped writing efficient code, don't even know what a North Bridge is, and all because of easy to use languages like Java and php. I clearly remember respecting malloc(). These kids, they only think about their smashed avocado

@FuckJava two of a kind. My colleague had worked 4 years when he did the static thing. He also put the private part of a keypair in a js file t be able to create the 3:rd party session key on the fly instead of creating it server side because the example (for node) was javascript ;)

@FuckJava I can feel you, although I created my first rudimentary OS/firmware for my custom SoC being 26 and not 14 years old, haha.

Started programming when I was 8-9 years old. Wrote my first shitty game when I was 10, I think. Continued with interpreters and compilers. Wrote a digital logic designer and simulator. Etc etc etc.

I think it will be easier for you and everyone else if you stop projecting yourself on others, stop expecting them to have comparable skills as yours. There's a big difference between being passionate and studying because "you can make money in IT"... Let them be shitty developers... It's their problem if they get fired.

Not everyone started doing this hell of a drug as a kid ;)

@darthkebab I guess that's why I'm single LoL

@FuckJava Computers are evil! (And so is expecting someone else to be a more or less copy of yourself)

@Voxera I hear you... Stupidity knows no limits. Not that I'm a saint...

@darthkebab Haha well, not much left. I'm already in 2nd half of my life so it's down the hill from now on

@FuckJava inefficient, memory consuming programs and easy languages are a business requirement... A business needs to deliver 10000 features by the day before yesterday.
Easy language? Cheaper developers🤑 You can hire more of them! 🤑🤑🤑 StackOverflow? NPM? Nice! Let the code monkeys glue together a Frankenstein monster 🤑🤑🤑 The customer will LOVE tons of features. (and love to buy 50 times more servers because of the efficient inefficiency)

@darthkebab Has anyone ever thought how much we are damaging the rain forrests by using shit like php and Java?

@FuckJava the only thing they think about is to avoid punching holes in their purses.

Throw a product on the market as quickly and dirty as possible to compete with hundreds of other bullshit services, bullshit apps and bullshit products using a ridiculous amount of over-abstracted abstractions of abstractions for the complete bullshit bingo extravaganza. Just to create yet another fart with bells and whistles.

Use easy and inefficient technologies so that the cheapest developer with a "PHP for dummies in 21 days" bootcamp-degree can hack something together. Whoops, "hello world" needs at least dual-xeon machine. How could THAT happen?

Stick to x86 architecture and enjoy the performance boost of spectre patches and ultra-high performance-per-watt.
</sarcasm>

Engineer products in a way that they break 2 days after the warranty expires. People will buy a new, more energy-efficient version ;) Invent new laws, make war, not love, increase the inflation rate (but not the wages).

@darthkebab thats what I like about building our own web based application

We decide what quality we like :)