Vietnam lacks playing field for IT programming students

Ngoc Huynh

VietNamNet Bridge – Due to a lack of platforms and academic orientation, IT students are weak at algorithmic skills that can be used to solve practical problems posed by enterprises.

Tholons, an international consultancy firm, has named HCMC and Hanoi among the top 20 addresses in the world for software outsourcing. In August 2016, HackerRank ranked Vietnamese coders 23rd in the globe, above many developed countries.

However, experts say there are still many problems in IT training in Vietnam. Algorithms, the core competency of the sector, is being overlooked, while students’ algorithmic knowledge is limited.

Launching Samsung Software Challenge 2016 competition, Huh Chang Wan from Samsung Electronics Vietnam commented that Vietnamese IT students are competent and potential, but they are still weak at algorithm and programming experience to solve the problems posed by enterprises.

The problem is that Vietnamese students don’t have many opportunities for practicing.

“The lack of playgrounds,” a university lecturer said to a question about why Vietnamese students are weak at algorithms.

In fact, Vietnam still sends teams to students’ annual IT Olympiad. However, the playing field is commented as ‘narrow’ as the members of the competition teams many times compete with each other when they were at general schools.

Meanwhile, there are not many university IT students, especially students about to finish university, because they are busy practicing other skills, including foreign language skills, programming and soft skills.

Vietnam won’t be able to build up a powerful IT industry with just several hundred IT students proficient in algorithms. One unit alone such as Samsung Vietnam Mobile Phone R&D needs thousands of workers.

An analyst commented that 20 years ago, IT students just needed computers to learn programming. Ten years ago, they needed computers with internet connections. But now, they need many other things as well – servers, computing cloud services, hand devices, smartphones, wearable devices and IoT. Meanwhile, the facilities at many universities remain unchanged.

The analyst said that to solve this problem, training establishments need to have closer cooperation with enterprises to get support in technological devices and technology transfer, which would give students more opportunities to practice.

In fact, technology experts say, the lack of programmers with algorithmic skills is not the problem of Vietnam only.

According to Code.org, in the US, only 2 percent of students study computer programming.

Vietnamese students from the HCMC University of Natural Sciences rank third in the world in a HackerRank’s survey in programming, just after Russia and China.

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