There is no insult intended jsteph, and I'm sorry that you took any of my comments as such.
==>Based on my post and your reaction that the 20-year old degree is still relevant, then by this quote you're saying that a programmer doesn't need to continue his education.
I have no said on word about continuing education one way or the other. I issue is with the premise that a twenty year old CS degree is obsolete.
==> So you know trees, stacks, queues, deques, and linked lists. Big deal. If most business code was written in C then that'd be useful.
==> I used C as an example: << if most business code was written in C...>> since C was a common language for business apps.
Data structures are logical constructs and have no bearing on any specific language. They can be implemented in virtually any language, and in fact, can be embedded directly into your physical database structure, and can drastically improve the performance of the system.
==> Again--my point was not that *all* of the basic concepts learned while getting the CS degree are useless--my point, if you can take your blinders off for a moment, is that the degree itself as a point on a resume for a business programmer is not nearly as meaningfull as recent certs or recent technology-specific education.
I'm not sure they were ever on, but consider the blinders off. What basic concepts of a twenty year old CS degree do you consider obsolete? What basic concepts do you consider not obsolete? Maybe the more appropriate question is what do you consider basic concepts?
==> So in the tech field, a CS degree depreciates monthly, in my opinion, where a law degree may just serve it's owner well for most of his life, ...
What about the degree, and please be specific, depreciates? I would also like to point out that since law is interpretative by nature, and is based on case law and precedent, that decisions made by courts today invalidate the decisions made twenty years ago, or even last year. In other words, what you learned in law school, or in court even, about what a law meant twenty years ago may not be what that law means today. In fact, within the last several weeks, an appeals court reversed itself based on a very recent Supreme Court ruling.
Good Luck
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