Re: Nothing new.
They are more concerned with getting their stats up, so they get more budget, so they can repeat this failure all over again and call it their "good work." Sometimes I wish I had received more college level computer coding classes; I went military, so no fun party schools for me, and I don't have the wherewithal to cover more education afterwards, just went right into the job market. And I pre-date the rage of certifications, and for good cause, as that is some expensive paper and not worth anything unless you end up at some company that actually requires these "bits of paper." Nothing is as full-featured as getting the real education from a real CS course, but there are ways of making up for it. Such as;
1) have a project for your new found knowledge, so you're not just reading and forgetting. I like to learn a new language, then either master it by using it everyday, or just making sure I know what to do in there by making a sample application. I like to make a new password generator when I learn a new language. It makes knowing the syntax and the coding style for that language mean more and do more right off the bat, plus I get to grok all the nuances of the language and the cool specific goodies. Like the fun one-liners in Perl, or the pretty syntax and easy looping constructs in Python.
2) take time to go back and learn all the theory you missed by not being properly trained! I got some education bucks from my last gig and purchase the Stanford University computer programming texts, a huge four volume epic by Donald Knuth. So heavy in math I had to take a break and starting learning higher math so I could get through the concepts. This is CHALLENGING stuff, but when you are able to craft a bit of code on a fictitious system like MIX, you are ready to code the depths of the enterprise. Mind you, I'm just a Senior Sys Admin and newly crowned devops guy, and not a full-time coder. I take the coding very seriously and know my limits and know what great code looks like and what shitty code looks like.
3) use it every day! every day! If you're not taking a few weekends or nights to do your own computery projects at home with your scaled down data center, then you might want to go into managerial arts. People who love technology, people who love to write interesting code are the people that are fun to work with when you share those ideals. People who are not should rethink their role in IT, or like I said, become a manager and stop annoying the world with lesser solutions and stinky code.
4) work with someone way, WAY better than you, and keep your mouth shut and your eyes wide open! I got a chance to work with a real coder, with big skills, and college trained in Finland, and it was a pleasure to learn all about a piece of code that I was trained to maintain, but really could not craft on my own. It was pretty big, in multiple parts and basically did the work of shuttling tons of Bugzilla tickets into that system for automated data center migrations and rollouts. No one ever used it while I was there, and I don't know if they even knew it was there, but no matter; it was a very well designed piece and taught me so much more about Perl than I even dreamed.
It all comes down to talent, education, and a true love for what you do. No matter what you do. We know IT, but that statement works for any career, me thinks. Thanks for the stack exchange info. I've never heard of it myself, then again I dislike running to Google search something I could figure out on my own by reading the man pages, or the documentation. If you search first, you probably need to be a manager because your code is plagiarized garbage without original thought, mostly.