What a long post, but I read it. Now let me add to what javalove has just expantiated.

The reason I completed my education is because my family wont let me do otherwise. I started work (employed) when I was in 200L, and ever since den I have been working for one company or the other. The most annoying thing is when I carry some good cash to go pay school fees, money that could buy me quality programming books, pay school fees for some crack head who cant write hello world, yet call themselves prof,, doctors and masters of computer science, its pathetic

I can remeber how many of my lecturers I develop applications for, and yet they smile to the bank on the fees I paid. Today I have worked in several sectors(programming wise) and none of my employers ever requested for the certificate I spent 6 years procurring (plus ASUU strike). My fame always preceeds me. My WORKS say more dn certificates could.

I might not be able to work in a bank(except they change their policy of importing softwares), I might not be able to get some of those bogous govt works(where all they do is sit, jist, gissip, fight and collect salary), but I will always be able to do my thing. I have several contributions to open source software(and still counting), I have several apps that are being used home and abroad(yes abroad), I do what I love everyday and get paid for doing it, If I had not gone to school, believe I would have still achieved what I have achieved today, the only thing I will miss is the people I met on campus.

The truth is you dont have to go to HIGHER INSTITUTION, you can go to any other school but it doesnt have to be a university, dts where we all get it wrong, we allow our parents mentality of "my child is in the university" to get to us. Its time to wake up

Anyway come join us on http://naijadukes.net and find out why we are dukes even if we hate school this much

ciao
I am out for now

you keep getting the whole idea of my "attend or don't attend" a nigerian university wrong. Whether the curriculum is the same with oxford or cambridge, the quality of computer science graduates we produce is below par and they contribute little or nothing to the development of our country.  Please i stand to be corrected, 

In your very first few posts you categorically said that the young man should not attend uni in Nigeria because they are bad and that if he can't go abroad he should start doing stuff on his own.

You also said the curriculum is outdated and i gave you an assignment to compare the curriculumn of any of these so call wack schools to that of a so called good school and get back to me.

Point to 1 or two things that were done by nigerians (i mean computer science grads) that affect us in one way or the other. All the banking softwares we have are imported, the people who manage them are imported, our ATM clients are imported, even some of the inventory apps used in malls (yes!! u heared me right, inventiry) are imported, the software used for our voting was imported, our phones are imported and sooo on.

When i was still in Nigeria i knew a guy who developed a banking software single handly. This guy was a product of these same wack schools. The product was very ingenoius and the architecture was very simple but effective. This guy went to several banks to demo his product but what happnened ? They said they just don't want a nigerian software. It was too cheap, and stupid excuses like that.

I don't know the kinds of people you role with but when i was in Nigeria i met some very smart IT guys who had never stepped out of the country before. I don't even want to discuss inventory apps or voting software because those are simple apps to develop and even if you google hard enough there is an open source equivaleent somewhere out there.

Also ask youself this question why is NEPA  still using an imported billing system. A billing system is one of the most basic apps u can ever build. There are even open source billing systems out there.  The answer is simple. The IT people heading those organisation are looking for ways of making foreign currency. They are greedy. They don't want to recorgnise anything Nigerian.

That is why they will import stupid indians that don't even know anything to come and run things. It is not that our graduates can't do it.

I have worked with a lot of indians and 99% of them are rubbish and far worse that many nigerian graduates who don't even get the opportunity to learn and gain experience building these things. Outsourced projects from big companies is giving these people exposure somthing that a Nigerian grads lack.

In IT, in case u don't know, u hardly buy materials!!!!!!! The programmer hardly buys materials!!!!! We all charge millios for webapps or desktop apps but which material we dey buy? except to pay liscences here amd there.

Well, we are talking IT here and i beleive u don't need a research institute. The programmer just needs a group of people (likeminds) implemented. With online collaboration and a forum like nairaland, the platform for reaearch is made. The computer scientist needs only to to come up with a project idea and get a group of programmers, engineers or networking experts to get it done. All of these can be done online. Note, the passion has to be there oooo.

Now this is where i see how myopic your view point is.

When i say we need collaboration between Academia and the Public Private sector, i am not talking about building some random web-app or desktop app to solve a problem that is probably already solved somewhere in the world (and probably open sourced).

So you think just gathering some random coders without solid therotical background of things together will solve the kinds of problems we have in IT in this country and in ways that will make us very competitive in the world. You think these kind of people will develop software that will match what Microsoft or Oracle or Google ( who have a lot of professors in their payroll) build

Building some random enterprise app is not enough. Using Java or PHP is not enough.We need people who can do more than that. There are many briliant academics already in our educational system even if all they know is theory.We need to do is to give them the opportunity to practicalize these theory in Government or business.

there r lots and lots of guys in this country who code like mad. Coding is not an end. Its a means to an end. There are lots of people who code who have never gone to a uni, who dropped out. I have never been abroad too in my life and i'm doing bad with codes.

What exactly is ur point? U agree our lecturers are lazy, u agree our curriculum is wack. Must everybody followd same path Is there just one way to education. All i can deduce from your post is that " u are a salary earner" hence ur orientation.

I dont intend to stress my point further but undersand that there is no one way to success and whatever path anyone chooses to follow should not be condemned.

I believe the starter of this topic has the criterion to determine between what is right and what is wrong. I have posted, u have. Let him read between the lines and follow what suites him, let him follow is heart.

Lastly, i must confess that you are very intelligent and i have definately learnt a couple of things from your post. May God increase u in knowledge.

Very intelligent arguments brought by you guys javalove and candylips

I agree with Javalove on the basis that the syllabus is really whack and for you to go anywhere in IT you have to learn some more elsewhere and i agree with Candylips that a degree is extremely important especially in Nigeria a degree in whatever field will open more doors for you and will definitely help you climb up the ladder in your chosen field

Bottomline:Master your codes and programs but try and get a degree at home or abroad so you are not at a disadvantage when you jostle positions with someone with your IT qualifications as well as a degree you can kill two birds with one stone if you are able to achieve that

I will wish anyone that decides to borne uni and strike it out on his own goodluck but i will not advice him not to because there are inherent advantages in going to uni not matter how wack it is.

This is the whole essence of my posts to this thread and i hope the young man and other doubters will read this.

You might think you don't need school now but there is always one day when u will wish you did. Even the most famous IT drop out(Bill Gates) wished he hadn't dropped out of school.

The original poster asked for an humble advice and i just couldn't stand on the sidelines and watch you give bad advice.

If not going to school has worked for you. Fine ! Good for you! But keep it to yourself. There are probably 99 other people like you that are living from hand to mouth and curse the day they decided not to go to school.


I definately am a salary earner and i have learnt a great deal from working for big organisations which i believe might be very invaluable to me latter on if i decide to go on my own.

There is no better way to learn than from veterans who have been in the field for decades and i quiet enjoy understuding the way they approach and solve problems in ingenuious ways. These are things i will never have known if i had stroke it out on my own .

candylips:

Even the most famous IT drop out(Bill Gates) wished he hadn't dropped out of school.

drop-out my PASS , he stopped going to Harvard in year 3! (, after making his first millions)
By the way, do know his high school ? The point is not that he even went to school, but its obvious he's (very) educated,

candylips:

I definately am a salary earner and i have learnt a great deal from working for big organisations which i believe might be very invaluable to me latter on if i decide to go on my own.

There is no better way to learn than from veterans who have been in the field for decades and i quiet enjoy understuding the way they approach and solve problems in ingenuious ways. These are things i will never have known if i had stroke it out on my own .

You must be my twin!
here's a little quiz ,
1)Where are the people who know the most about windows ?
2)Where are the people who know what would happen to java tomorrow ?
3)Who new how to use eclipse and netbeans before it was released ?

[size=4pt]Answers:1)Microsoft 2)sun,google,IBM 3)IBM,SUN[/size]

Who wont pay to work there for a year ?
p.s to do that write your own compiler or get a degree(or more)

He was way too brilliant for those in his class and thats why he dropped out the school had nothing to offer him

Hi Candylips

I have been following some of ur posts and admired the intelligence and career counsellor approach in them. From what i've seen, u seem to be someone with a background in IT who is either into finance or developing financial systems. something i want to do. I studied comp science and has had experience developing small financial systems e.g risk mgt for asset managers, unit trusts management systems etc. I just finished NYSC sep 08 and currently work in the IT dept of an investment bank. I also noticed u are/have finished doing CFA (Wish u success and God's favor). Please hope i wouldn't be asking much if i ask for ur email address or phone. i wanted to talk to u privately about my career path and prospects because so far i seem to be in d line of what i think u are doing. U said u head the software group of a multinational coy and thats great.

@poster
don't doubt this, u need to go to university Naija or Abroad. I used to be a script kiddie too. but i went to uni. while in uni i combined my notes with MIT's Opencourseware and it helped me for some lecturers who didn't have the "give me my note back/cram to pass" mentality. Most  people i know would not respect an IT guy who didn't go to uni. Studying computer science makes u get more respect . I have seen software vendors who don't know how to analyse or conceptualise and yet they are programmers. i found out that most did not go to uni. so u see why u might be placed in that category.

i am surprised when people say the curriculum is outdated. for me it needs slight modifications. check curriculum of foreign schools and see that d difference is not much. computer science is not software engineering. though computer science is among the knowledge areas needed to succeed in software engineering. One guy in school said we should be taught oracle and Visual basic and that surprised me because these vendor specific technologies come and go and need not be part of a curriculum. Concepts is what counts. Courses like data structures, finite automata, digital circuit design, database design, software engineering, design and analysis of algorithms are very important.  Java or c++ should be used to teach object oriented concepts.  u shuld make sure u do lots of programming and database while in school. trust me u will have time for it. but don't cut classes much as it dealt me a great blow and i couldn't make a 1st class. i see u to be an intelligent young chap. and please don't take NIIT or Aptech or Karrox to be a Uni even if they have affiliations with a Uni. There is so much to learn from passing through a uni campus outside curriculum. as A40 rightly pointed out. Bill gates was not technically a drop out.

candylips i am waiting for ur response

i have sent you a pm

Well, your posts are indeed interesting (candylips & javalove).

One thing is clear: "There are coders and there programmers; there are developers and there are architects".
Coding is a means, but true software engineering requires skills beyond just coding.

Nigerians are talented, but often times, they are short on high design knowledge. Knowledge that makes the foreign look better than ours (some).
However, i don't think you'll get that knowledge from our universities, but they help by showing "shadows" of it.
It gives an opportunity or means to expand your scope. (Over-specialisation isn't so healthy). The developer needs to have diverse domain knowledge. The uni can help.
That aside, a university can be handy. Since you can get it, get it

That's all i say for now.

he, Guy listing to me i have been in those shoes before. i Studied at NIIT when I was done men where you see Job. Guy go to school and get your degree first then you go 4 d Course. Or you can be in school n run the Course that’s my advice to you

Guy i ve carefully followed your post i so believe that u are the kind of person that can help me on my c program i am just coming up

please can you help me with a code on a) Multiplication of 3 by 2 matrices b) code that will develop a pascal triangle pls i will be very greatfull if u will add some explanation of the codes pls.

thanks i am soji
we can chat one on one if u wish
taiwosoji@yahoo.com

good ambition