Thread: Things a CS major/programmer need to know to be competent

Originally Posted by zacs7

I agree, but finding the balance between mathematics/science and software engineering is always going to be difficult. But who can blame them? Industry seem to have the same attitude, what else is a test team for? ;-)

I work at a company with over 10 teams, each with a balance of Developers and QA. QA are responsible for exploratory, functional, and in our case web automation/testing. Developers are responsible for unit and code-level integration testing and automation. In smaller companies or companies that do one thing in their product a test team might be a valid resource, but I imagine larger organizations and those with multiple facets need to have developers that understand they are responsible for testing their code.

Just to throw two more cents into the can, I'm working on my CS degree on the side not that I think I'll gain some worldly knowledge that I don't already have, but rather as insurance in-case my current job goes under I have that piece of paper to help me bubble past the 50% or so applicants with no degree. The market being what it is causes any open position to be flooded by applicants, so I've seen some places instantly cut all applicants without at least a BS to get the list down to something manageable. It sucks that it comes to that because some of the best developers and hackers I've seen have no degree what so ever, but in a world ran by suits that piece of paper or even certificates do speak loudly.