I think this a very good point. This is giving them knowledge of how to start, and hopefully the resources to continue to improve. Most computer science curriculums don't teach you how to become a software engineer. They teach you theory, probably with some practical by ways of labs and projects. Hell, when I got my degress in computer and electrical engineering, I don't think version control was ever mentioned, let alone continuous integration. I learned about this on the job as an intern, well, about VCS. CI wasn't popular back when I interned.
The amount of practical learning accelerated my first few years as a full-time developer. Went from barely using nix to spending nearly all my time there except for time spent in Outlook. Went from a cursory knowledge of C++ to having a beyond intermediate knowledge. Learned Python (back at version 2.2!).
I think a big point of a course like this is not to give you a full knowledge of the domain, but rather how to learn* about the domain. Software is constantly changing; to be effective, you have to be able to keep up. Which means a lot of reading. When I first started, Google wasn't a thing. Meant a lot of dead tree edition books (ebooks weren't a thing yet). I got my starting points when I was in high school from early forums and mailing lists circa 1995. Took a long time to research things at 56kbps. Also took an effort to convince my parents to buy me programming books at $40 a pop even in the 90s, but when they saw me reading them cover to cover instead of watching TV (easy to get motivated - we only had 2 TV channels) and spending hours slaving away on the computer on programming instead of playing Civ 1, they were more willing to buy the books.
The amount of practical learning accelerated my first few years as a full-time developer. Went from barely using nix to spending nearly all my time there except for time spent in Outlook. Went from a cursory knowledge of C++ to having a beyond intermediate knowledge. Learned Python (back at version 2.2!).
I think a big point of a course like this is not to give you a full knowledge of the domain, but rather how to learn* about the domain. Software is constantly changing; to be effective, you have to be able to keep up. Which means a lot of reading. When I first started, Google wasn't a thing. Meant a lot of dead tree edition books (ebooks weren't a thing yet). I got my starting points when I was in high school from early forums and mailing lists circa 1995. Took a long time to research things at 56kbps. Also took an effort to convince my parents to buy me programming books at $40 a pop even in the 90s, but when they saw me reading them cover to cover instead of watching TV (easy to get motivated - we only had 2 TV channels) and spending hours slaving away on the computer on programming instead of playing Civ 1, they were more willing to buy the books.