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Ask HN: Did you regret getting a CS degree?

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Re: Ask HN: Did you regret getting a CS degree?

#11

Post by suhailpatel »

jason_slack wrote: post #5

I do regret getting a CS degree. CS came easy to me and so I got a CS degree. Hindsight I wish I had challenged myself to get a degree in something that didn't come easy. I dont appreciate my degree and I blow off the fact that I even have one. It means nothing to me. I have a 14 year old son whom I am pushing to challenge himself and be more well rounded than I was. He is learning C++, yes but he plays basketball, l…

I'm in my final year of getting a CS degree and i'll be honest I feel the same way. My main motivation for getting a CS degree was that it would open up more career choices in the field but I wished i'd done something like Economics (which I have a real interest in).

Most of the content has been easy although I have learnt a lot of techniques and algorithms (especially in AI) so it's not been completely worthless.

Re: Ask HN: Did you regret getting a CS degree?

#14

Post by ceol »

victorhn wrote: post #8
jason_slack wrote: post #5

I do regret getting a CS degree. CS came easy to me and so I got a CS degree. Hindsight I wish I had challenged myself to get a degree in something that didn't come easy. I dont appreciate my degree and I blow off the fact that I even have one. It means nothing to me. I have a 14 year old son whom I am pushing to challenge himself and be more well rounded than I was. He is learning C++, yes but he plays basketball, l…

what kind of degree would not come easy if you were able to make a CS degree? IMHO only a few degrees like pure math or physics may be more difficult.

CS isn't any harder than most other programs. GP could have found a challenge in arguing philosophy, designing fashion, or learning theater.

Re: Ask HN: Did you regret getting a CS degree?

#15

Post by jason_slack »

victorhn wrote: post #8
jason_slack wrote: post #5

I do regret getting a CS degree. CS came easy to me and so I got a CS degree. Hindsight I wish I had challenged myself to get a degree in something that didn't come easy. I dont appreciate my degree and I blow off the fact that I even have one. It means nothing to me. I have a 14 year old son whom I am pushing to challenge himself and be more well rounded than I was. He is learning C++, yes but he plays basketball, l…

what kind of degree would not come easy if you were able to make a CS degree? IMHO only a few degrees like pure math or physics may be more difficult.

I always liked Economics. I was accepted to PA School but could not come up with the funds to attend.

Re: Ask HN: Did you regret getting a CS degree?

#16

Post by AlexDanger »

In hindsight, the CS cirriculum I did was pretty bad. There were only three units which I think really had any value for me in terms of application to my work in IT. The units I did outside of CS (mainly maths) were much more valuable.

But there are two things I got from university that were invaluable:

1.) People. The people I met at uni are still my best friends today and a diverse bunch of talented and interesting folk. The social aspect was invaluable.

2.) Learning how to learn. By the end of my second year I felt I had the cognitive and critical thinking skills to tackle new topics without the aid of a professor guiding me. I take this skill somewhat for granted and it has been a critical part of my success in the workplace. Some people are born with this capacity for self-learning, I wasnt, I got it at university. So there is still something to be said about the old brick-and-mortar educational paradigm.

Re: Ask HN: Did you regret getting a CS degree?

#17

Post by michael_miller »

I don't regret getting a CS degree one bit, since it exposed me to people I wouldn't have been exposed to otherwise. I wouldn't have taken ballroom dancing, buddhist art, or learned how to fly had it not been for getting my degree.

My intuition is that school marginally helped by day-to-day coding, but gave me the tools I needed to dig deeper. It was invaluable to take operating systems, and learn about the nitty gritty internals of how a modern OS worked, along with the details of CPU caching. I probably could have learned the information outside of school, but it would have been a much longer process, and I might have large gaps in my knowledge.

Re: Ask HN: Did you regret getting a CS degree?

#18

Post by threedaymonk »

I didn't get a CS degree - I did Elec Eng instead, which has some overlap, I suppose - but I haven't found it too much of a problem. I occasionally become aware of gaps in my knowledge, but I find that a bit of reading can usually fix that. I think I'm more motivated and self-directed now than I was back when I was a student, so I'm not sure I really missed too much. Education is wasted on the young!

In any case, once people are more than a few years out of university, they've forgotten enough that it doesn't seem to make a huge difference. Experience, receptiveness, and willingness to continue learning become bigger factors.

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