This generally rings true for me, it is almost required for developers to be continuously learning and honing skills as new patterns, technologies, and tools emerge. It is also generally helpful for developers to pursue side projects.<p>However, I disagree with the author on the specific point of how CS curricula are preparing students for "real life" development. The issue is not necessarily that there are specific tools students aren't being exposed to, it is that they often are not exposed to certain classes of tools at all (such as source control, deployment/build tools, etc...)<p>There is an excellent post on Coding Horror that covers this: <a href="http://blog.codinghorror.com/how-should-we-teach-computer-science/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.codinghorror.com/how-should-we-teach-computer-sc...</a>