the common mistake between mastery and pedagogy
Today I had my first experience in a university classroom with a incredibly proficient teacher.
Being the stalker that I am, I had already looked into his LinkedIn profile to find out he's living abroad and working for some years in an international company. Not only that but he has a PhD. in some computer science related area. Seeing all of that luggage, I had high expectations for the class which of course have fallen short.
Teaching a programming language such as C is something that I have never seen anyone do well - in class or virtually. By using C, you are pretty much messing with just one layer above machine code/assembly and some tough concepts (such as pointers) are incredibly daunting. Of course that, having such challenge at hand, universities tend to search for overqualified people to fill those ranks and deliver high quality content.
But that's generally not the case. There is a very bold line dividing technical skills, time in the job market delivering real world applications and the gift of teaching (that some call pedagogy). Even though you are incredibly skilled and packed with knowledge in a given context doesn't mean that you are able to lift your peers with you to similar levels. Communication, it seems, still is the biggest challenge in the area of technology. What is the point of being able to write a kernel driver from scratch using Vim and a cup of black, no-sugar coffee if you can't make Johnny understand and perhaps contribute?