Right, but if you had to configure LAMP, could you?
What I said was, "every CS student SHOULD be able to configure LAMP." If you graduate with a degree and you can't configure the easiest web stack possible, then something went terribly wrong.
edit sub LAMP with WISC# or whatever you want. The specific technologies aren't the point of the article. It's far more useful for him to say, "Do this in Python" for somebody that is currently in a CS cirriculum. If he would have said, "configure a web stack using your database and application layer of choice," many would be (unfortunately) be lost.
> What I said was, "every CS student SHOULD be able to configure LAMP." If you graduate with a degree and you can't configure the easiest web stack possible, then something went terribly wrong.
This is kind of meaningless. Every CS student should be able to do X, but that doesn't mean every CS student should actually do X. X here could be "set up LAMP", "implement a linked list in every language you know", "read Mozilla's nsString code", "microwave a bag of popcorn", "part your hair in the middle", or "read Twilight: New Moon". A CS student should be able to accomplish these tasks, but that doesn't mean that a CS student should actually set a goal to do any of these things.
I've set up a LAMP stack before. I did it because I had a reason to, not because it was a meaningful learning experience. Setting up LAMP is sysadmin work. It has exactly nothing to do with CS.
I got a job where I learned pretty much everything I could about the LAMP stack within a couple of months.
I purposefully ignored everything to do with web programming when I was in uni because I wasn't even the slightest bit interested.
A computer science student should be able to get up to speed fairly quickly on any computer science subject - they shouldn't be an expert on all computer science when they graduate (although they probably will have a specialization in which they're pretty good).
If you graduate with a degree and you can't configure the easiest web stack possible, then something went terribly wrong.
I think you've confused your specialty with the whole of computer science here. I have no idea how to configure any sort of web stack, but I certainly think I got a good value out of my degree. I bet that many people who would have no idea how to go about writing device drivers if you gave them a chip's datasheet, but that just means that they're pursuing a different specialty, not that they or their school is incompetent.
Fair enough. I guess I've been living in web / cloud la-la land where that's 99% of what me and my peers do, I literally forgot there was non web-based CS work. My apologies.
>I literally forgot there was non web-based CS work
Surely there's not much of it, not with everyone's toaster now getting IP6 addresses and heart pacemakers having built in wireless web servers. </sarcastic-hyperbole-masking-genuine-enquiry>
I think that's a very valid point. I've had some wtf discussions with software engineers that were widely respected in their careers (usually Microsoft MVPs, for some reason) yet didn't understand something as simple as how to configure a web server, or what the significance of a subnet mask was to their ability to have a functioning network connection.
It was "beneath them", yet to me that's like an airplane pilot that doesn't know how to drive a car. Being able to fly a plane is great, but what about when you just want to get across town and buy some groceries?
Difference in specialties. I'm in my mid 40's and I've been programming since I was 18. The very first time I had to configure a web server was about 5 months ago when I got nginx running on my laptop.
Ask me about microcontroller programming or writing code to control the real world and I'll talk your ear off. Ask me about web stuff and my knowledge stops at PHP.
Valid point, but if you were writing code meant to run on the web, you should be expected to know a little bit about the server stack that will host your application.
Given how common guides are for setting up a basic LAMP, and that you can actually download free software called "MAMP" or "WAMP", it does seem like easily acquired knowledge.
What I said was, "every CS student SHOULD be able to configure LAMP." If you graduate with a degree and you can't configure the easiest web stack possible, then something went terribly wrong.
edit sub LAMP with WISC# or whatever you want. The specific technologies aren't the point of the article. It's far more useful for him to say, "Do this in Python" for somebody that is currently in a CS cirriculum. If he would have said, "configure a web stack using your database and application layer of choice," many would be (unfortunately) be lost.