The Skills University Doesn't Teach Developers

A computer science degree is genuinely valuable — it teaches you how to think, the theory behind algorithms, and the vocabulary of the field. But plenty of graduates hit their first job and realise nobody warned them about the parts that fill an actual workday.

Using the command line

Most coursework happens in IDEs and notebooks. Real work happens partly in a terminal — navigating servers, running tools, reading logs, using git from the command line. It's assumed knowledge that's rarely taught.

Git and working with other people's code

University projects are usually solo and thrown away. Real work is mostly reading code other people wrote, making a small change without breaking things, and collaborating through pull requests. The skill of joining a codebase matters more than starting one.

Deploying and running software

Theory covers how programs work; it rarely covers how to get one running on a server, behind HTTPS, that stays up. "It compiles" and "it's in production" are very different milestones.

Debugging real systems

Textbook problems have clean answers. Real bugs are messy — a config typo, a permission issue, a service that died silently. Methodical debugging is a learned craft, and it's mostly learned by doing.

Communicating

The developer who says "this is blocked because X, I'll have it tomorrow" is worth more than the one who codes in silence and surprises everyone.

Writing clear updates, asking good questions, and explaining trade-offs are career-defining skills that no exam tests.

The fix

None of this requires another degree. It requires building and shipping real projects — the kind where you hit the messy, practical problems on purpose, while they're cheap to get wrong.