Comment by bayindirh
4 years ago
> PhDs often make the worst possible developers.
I personally don't agree.
> Software development is more about finding the right problems than it is about solving problems; to find the right problems, you need to understand the 'why' in as much detail as possible.
This is what a software or CS PhD makes you understand. You know the why's to the lowest level possible.
> The PhD diploma itself doesn't have much practical use in financial terms; it's not a good investment to get a PhD for purely practical reasons. Detatchment from practicality is the worst attribute someone can have as a developer.
In my experience it's the opposite. After I got mine, I realized that I can answer these "Why"s faster, infer my own knowledge and can write better code easier and in less time. The whole process got much entertaining too.
So, YMMV.
I say, it doesnt matter, PhD or no PhD. Alot of the smartest people in the world have no PhD.
What i will say is that, i suspect PhD people to be people that create more theories around how to solve certain problems. And this. is very very very bad. It leads to design patters and generic solutions aka. lazy solutions that are just bloated and slow.
And this is a problem i see often with people who learned to code via school/university or some code academy like BS.
Design patterns are evil, and solutions should always be custom made towards the problem and be made as simple as possible. Only then you wont end up like microsoft or 95% of all developers.