Ask HN: Is it worth continuing my computer science degree?
41–46 of 46 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is it worth continuing my computer science degree?
#42As you may have realized, any adult older than forty went through college back when it was lots cheaper and students routinely graduated with job offers in hand. You may be wise to discount our advice. I wouldn't spend fifty or a hundred thousand dollars slogging through a major that you hate, in exchange for a reward that you can't see yet. Take a break for a while and get that full-time iOS developer job that you c…
As someone with the opposite experience (I have just a semester of college): if you're even a little bit successful with the iOS development job, it's going to be very hard to go back to school. Once you let it, life happens fast.
I don't regret not going to college, but I'm not happy about how drastically my life choices foreclosed it for me.
Re: Ask HN: Is it worth continuing my computer science degree?
#43I would finish it. You'll be pushed to do courses like analysis of algorithms and operating systems, very tough and important topics you might not cover otherwise on your own.
While these may seem disconnected, the fact is you will build much more intelligence here than continuing to make (likely trivial, sorry) iOS and web apps. Basically with a proper CS education you will learn the fundamental skills needed to adapt to new technologies, rather than being a "trade worker" of the tech industry whose experience and knowledge is confined to languages and frameworks that can fall out of style at any point.
Re: Ask HN: Is it worth continuing my computer science degree?
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're making the assumption that psychology classes teach you how people think, and that marketing classes teach you how to generate sales - they don't. If he was still interested, he could just buy the textbooks, or more likely, get similar resources for free online.
Learning from a textbook about psychology is not the same as having discussions, generating ideas, learning from others and teaching others. Just my opinion though :).
yeah, wasted 4 years doing that. would have been way better spent working.. anywhere
Re: Ask HN: Is it worth continuing my computer science degree?
#45As you may have realized, any adult older than forty went through college back when it was lots cheaper and students routinely graduated with job offers in hand. You may be wise to discount our advice. I wouldn't spend fifty or a hundred thousand dollars slogging through a major that you hate, in exchange for a reward that you can't see yet. Take a break for a while and get that full-time iOS developer job that you c…
As someone with the opposite experience (I have just a semester of college): if you're even a little bit successful with the iOS development job, it's going to be very hard to go back to school. Once you let it, life happens fast. I don't regret not going to college, but I'm not happy about how drastically my life choices foreclosed it for me.
Okay, I'll take your word for it. Let me put on a different hat and try a different tack.
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This is the best time in your life to go to college. It will be harder to go back, later. But you're wasting your limited college time on iOS development, which has nothing to do with college and vice versa.
You will have the rest of your life to build iOS applications, if that's what you want. (In ten years, let alone twenty or thirty, it probably won't be.) But you'll only have a few years of access to a university: It costs a fortune to go, and it's hard to find the time. Make the university count, or take my original advice and get out until you're ready to take it seriously.
You need a real major: That is, one which is real to you. Based on your question, I'm not convinced that CS is it. I count three mentions of iOS in your question, and zero mentions of such things as compiler theory, concurrent operating systems, cryptography, programmable logic, deep-UV photolithography, or computer vision algorithms. If you can't get inspired by anything from that list, or if your so-called CS department doesn't offer such subjects, study something else.
(Just because you like programming doesn't mean you're supposed to like CS. CS is to programming as physiology is to playing football, and you can love weight training, passing, and tackling without necessarily loving vesicular transport and the troponin-tropomyosin complex.)
I'm a physicist so I tend to recommend sciences - physics, chemistry, biology, geology, astronomy, meteorology - or mathematics, or engineering. But I know wonderful programmers who studied classical music, medieval Icelandic, and Renaissance essays. (And art, architecture, and design, of course, but that goes without saying.) Steve Jobs, legendarily, only liked one college course: Calligraphy. It doesn't matter what you study. Find something more challenging, more interesting, or more awesome.
Labs. You'll never see them again once you graduate. Take every lab course you can stomach.
It saddens me to hear complaints about electives. Elective courses are beautiful. The best of them are professionally-guided tours of other fields, custom-designed to showcase the good parts. Ask around, find out who the best teachers are, and take whatever they offer.
Re: Ask HN: Is it worth continuing my computer science degree?
#46I believe that my CS degree was worthless to me. I learnt nothing. Everything I know is self-taught, either pre-university or post-university. I kid you not. However, and here is the kicker; My degree is NOT worthless to the multiple employers I have had. Of course it was worthless in reality, but those letters after my name helped. Stupid, but a fact of life. I recommend you finish the degree, but do the stuff you l…
This. I can't tell you how often the barrier of not having a degree is an issue, even in places like Silicon Valley where supposedly skills matter more (yet majority of postings including for a large number of startups requires a degree).
If you have a solid portoflio, solid work experience, etc... this might not be an issue down the road but it can be difficult just making that first step. Unlike Junto, I didn't get a degree. I dropped out. I regret not doing something about it sooner. Although things did work out in the end, having that degree would have been much easier even if the courses and everything else turned out to be useless relative to what you do.
Go to school. Work on projects and learn on the side. Make connections while you're still in college.