Those are _very_ different programs.
Ask HN: A question for those who went to MIT/Stanford/CMU
11–20 of 57 posts
Re: Ask HN: A question for those who went to MIT/Stanford/CMU
#12I've spent a lot of time around Stanford and Berkeley CS grads. The main difference I would say is not that they are particularly more intelligent than anyone else, but that they are filled with an incredible amount of motivation. They tend to be extremely driven, focused people who are capable of putting in tons of work to "get shit done". They also tend to have a million different things going on at once (clubs, si…
CMU grad here, currently working on a PhD. All I can say is, this description doesn't apply to me. I'm definitely of the "work smart, not hard" persuasion. Persistence, I guess I have; but not an unbounded work ethic, or the focus to work on ten things at a time. Persistence for me means finding a new way to attack a problem, not pushing as hard as possible, John Henry style.
Re: Ask HN: A question for those who went to MIT/Stanford/CMU
#13It's rather simple: A proper CS education, one that has all that "useless" theory that a number of HNers love to deride, equips its bearer to understand how anything in the software world is implemented. You don't have to study as hard to pick up a new technology or stack because you will know roughly what the underlying implementation has to look like and can simply poke around to identify the components and interfaces that you know have to be there.
Or, as a recent blog posting that made HN succinctly put it "'How' ages faster than 'Why'" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13500883). Knowing the "why" of CS means you never have to chase the "how" of the latest flavor of the month stack or framework.
Re: Ask HN: A question for those who went to MIT/Stanford/CMU
#14I think that focusing on undergraduate credentials as a measure of engineering ability is largely unproductive, and phrases like "they don't get hung up on new Javascript framework" are stereotypes, and you will meet many counterexamples. To be clear, these schools turn out plenty of mediocre engineers. Usually, the selection process of which you're seeing the results is that kids who are very good at engineering wil…
>that MIT/Stanford produce great engineers by having some magic classes that the other top-20 schools don't.
They also have rigorous DS&A courses that make it easy to get into top companies, but the rest of the Top-20 schools have those too.
Re: Ask HN: A question for those who went to MIT/Stanford/CMU
#15Just by their admission standards, these top tier schools are going to have a higher percentage of very smart students who are fundamentally prepared for college and have learned how to learn. At the university, they also have an advantage of learning from and interacting with a faculty who are themselves, leaders in their respective fields. Thus, there are opportunities to participate in cutting edge research that isn't offered at other schools.
A computer language is simply a tool to get things done. Education isn't about learning the latest and greatest tool but applying what you know with what you have in an effective and productive manner. To wit, Fortran, that old-timey language from the 60s, is still being used in modern research in physics, electronics, and other technical disciplines.
Re: Ask HN: A question for those who went to MIT/Stanford/CMU
#16I think that focusing on undergraduate credentials as a measure of engineering ability is largely unproductive, and phrases like "they don't get hung up on new Javascript framework" are stereotypes, and you will meet many counterexamples. To be clear, these schools turn out plenty of mediocre engineers. Usually, the selection process of which you're seeing the results is that kids who are very good at engineering wil…
I would assert that, given that great engineers end up at these top unis, they are able to widen their gap with others by a) accelerating their skills/knowledge by associating with like-minded individuals, and b) being stretched by their respective colleges.
My observation is that top colleges tend to lump more work of greater breadth and depth in their students.
It's like joining a great sports academy where you develop faster by constantly being in competition with your peers and by also training harder.
Re: Ask HN: A question for those who went to MIT/Stanford/CMU
#17I think that focusing on undergraduate credentials as a measure of engineering ability is largely unproductive, and phrases like "they don't get hung up on new Javascript framework" are stereotypes, and you will meet many counterexamples. To be clear, these schools turn out plenty of mediocre engineers. Usually, the selection process of which you're seeing the results is that kids who are very good at engineering wil…
I would assert that, given that great engineers end up at these top unis, they are able to widen their gap with others by a) accelerating their skills/knowledge by associating with like-minded individuals, and b) being stretched by their respective colleges. My observation is that top colleges tend to lump more work of greater breadth and depth in their students. It's like joining a great sports academy where you dev…
I think this assertion is accurate.
Re: Ask HN: A question for those who went to MIT/Stanford/CMU
#18Regardless of your education, once you learn a set of technologies well enough it generally becomes easy to just start working on a problem.
Also, I don't mean to be invidious but, programming languages are normally the easy part: Unless you jump from (say) VB.Net to Haskell most programming languages are actually fairly similar. In fact, programming languages are boring: Once you know a few, particularly if you know a bit about compilers (e.g. can work from the specification/grammar, Haskell made sense only after I'd read SPJ(possibly et al)'s, it becomes fairly easy to pick up a new programming language. However, software engineering is very important (e.g. Style, testing and optimisation, i.e. for the cache, are all very important skills that I'd assume most people learn by themselves.
I'm 16, so I can't exactly speak from experience; I also don't have any data: My guess would be that because of the difficulty of getting into the top schools/Unis, they cream off the top students. These students then spend years honing their skills, however (assuming your observations are true) they get particularly good at the more rigorous/theoretical side of their science. Supposedly, that would help you focus on the stuff that matters(TM).
In practice, I think that this is probably not true. I'd be fairly surprised (Or shocked) if MIT et al just spat out magically excellent engineers. I'd guess, that it just provides a nice foundation to learn on top of.
Re: Ask HN: A question for those who went to MIT/Stanford/CMU
#19I think that focusing on undergraduate credentials as a measure of engineering ability is largely unproductive, and phrases like "they don't get hung up on new Javascript framework" are stereotypes, and you will meet many counterexamples. To be clear, these schools turn out plenty of mediocre engineers. Usually, the selection process of which you're seeing the results is that kids who are very good at engineering wil…
On the topic of curriculum Robert Harper has some good posts on reasons why CMU jettisoned their entire curriculum and rewrote[1] it from scratch back around 2011 and it's success[2]. It really is a great curriculum I haven't seen at other schools that focuses on verification, functional programming and parallel algorithms.
[1]https://existentialtype.wordpress.com/2012/08/17/intro-curri...
[2]https://existentialtype.wordpress.com/2011/03/21/the-dog-tha...
Re: Ask HN: A question for those who went to MIT/Stanford/CMU
#20Many top people have been very self-motivated at some point in their lives. When you experience this, you can sit down and work on problems in flow day after day without fatigue -- even when the going is rough. It feels like solving a puzzle, where you get excited figuring out how every piece fits.