I wondered for quite a long time the following: is it useful to be trained as a computer scientist to be a software developer? Does only knowing the basics of computer science helps to be better developer? Could it bring value to a developer? If you ask yourself these questions as well, and you don’t want to invest time (yet) learning computer science, here’s the story of my experience. I’m trying, in this article, to answer these questions:

I had a mission, for many years. This quest led me to do innumerable Google searches, trying new tools to finally give up each time. I was feeling like a knight fighting the same dragon again and again, and the dragon was always winning. Where was the happy ending? As Perceval wanted to find the Holy Grail, I wanted to find a good interface for MySQL. I was using MySQL Workbench, like everybody.

Once upon a time, in the magic Startup Land, there was a fearful backend developer who needed to implement a new functionality. He was working on a back office for movie producers to upload their movies. These movies could then be rented on a VOD platform. Did you hear about Netflix? Same spirit, except that a customer can rent each individual movies instead of paying a subscription. After uploading their movies, the producers could choose in what country they would be available.

Here you are! In front of a powerful CTO of the best we-will-disturb-the-market-startup in town. You answered a job offer promising money and glory, soon they will be all yours. To warm you, the mighty CTO begins to ask you to draw a B-Tree on a shiny whiteboard. Easy peasy, you draw a wonderful tree you saw in a garden today. Then, he gives you a sheet of paper to test “your skills”.

Today is a great day: you will begin to develop the new greenfield project of the soon-very-successful startup you work for, as a PHP Ninja Wizard of the Crown. You and Dave (your colleague developer) have been chosen to develop this new application. Finally you will do something else than fixing and refactoring crappy code from old PHP 4 spaghetti projects! Everything begins well. You set up the project’s backbones quickly and Dave is in charge to implement the first functionalities.