Theory v Practice
In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, practice and theory are really quite different.
This quote above was passed down to me by a great mentor and coach I had in the early days of South Bend Code School. She used this quote to help me when we found the business to be in a spot where we were headed into uncharted waters.
I think the quote speaks for itself.
It’s been helpful to me when we are thinking through many different scenarios, but the thing that stands out most to me about it is how I feel it impacts my style of learning as well as the learning we impart on most of the students who take South Bend Code School programs.
I think that one of the big issues with education is that much of the focus is around theory. We have seen some correction around this with project based learning and other ed industry buzz words, but there are still quite a few individuals we meet who’ve never actually built anything.
An analogy we often use when describing why we have students focus on projects rather than exercises goes something like this…
“Who would you rather have build a house for you? An architect who just graduated from one of the best architecture programs in the country, or an architect who can walk you through 10 good looking homes that they’ve already built?”
The job market as a whole is going through a big correction right now. Practical skills are at a premium while fluffy college degrees are being called out for what they are. Companies are hiring less for GPA’s and more for portfolios and examples of work. This is especially relevant in computer science.
In interviews with hiring managers of tech companies we get a lot of feedback saying, “We don’t really care what their degree is in (or if they have one at all), we just want to see samples of their work and the ability to demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of the strengths and shortcomings of that work.”
We’ve even had companies tell us that they just want to hear applicants walk them through a project they’ve worked on that failed and describe why it failed.
In a lot of these interviews, companies don’t necessarily want you to have all the answers. They want to see how you respond when you don’t have the answer at all. A veritable Kobayashi Maru if you will.
One of the hardest things about practice is that it actually requires you to do something. More people are averse to getting up and executing than you might think.
We conducted an interview a couple of years ago where a recently graduated individual with a computer science degree from a reputable institution came into our office and we talked with him about what kind of coding projects he had done.
He told us that he just had only completed assignments for class, didn’t have any of them on a computer or online where we could see them, and before the end of the interview said, “I want to be a coder, but I need to be paid in order to code.”
Coincidentally, we ended up hiring a different, and awesome, individual for the position because he was able to talk to us about his pet project of exploring bio genetics data using a programming language called R.
The moral of the story is that it doesn’t help to wait until the time is right. You have to get out there and get the experience. Sometimes you have to make that experience for yourself.
Practice is greater than theory no matter what anyone tells you. You have to have the mentality of “Portfolio over GPA”. You’ve got to be able to point to something and talk about the effort you put into it, talk about why you did it the way you did, talk about what works and what doesn’t, and feel comfortable doing so.
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Alex Sejdinaj is a cofounder of South Bend Code School, GiveGrove, and Code Works. He loves building cool stuff that helps people.
