Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Do Developers Need College Degrees?

stackoverflow.blog

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 198 posts

Re: Do Developers Need College Degrees?

#31

Post by Kalium »

alkonaut wrote: post #10

Succeed personally: no. Some dev jobs obviously require a lot of foundational knowledge. I wouldn't want to have a colleague who didn't know linear algebra, simply because that's important in my field. That's not important for making Wordpress sites. I think there are things "every good developer should know" such as knowledge about how cpus work, how OS'es work, how some important algorithms work, some basic set the…

One of the much-downplayed things that degrees are more likely to indicate than personal projects is foundational knowledge. When you work exclusively on Wordpress sites, this is irrelevant. When you work on distributed systems or cryptography, then foundational knowledge gets pretty important.

It is completely possible for any person to learn foundational knowledge outside of a formal instructional setting. I personally know excellent developers who have done so. It's unquestionably possible. I firmly believe that given sufficient time and determination and help, it's possible for any person to learn any subject to any level.

It is, however, possibly true that not all people learn discrete mathematics, relational algebra, and computer architecture in an ideal manner when entirely self-directed. Or perhaps even all developers.

Re: Do Developers Need College Degrees?

#32

Post by keithnz »

Need? no.

Do you need a good working knowledge of what a degree covers? Ideally yes, in practice only parts.

Do people with degrees come out "knowing" what they covered in their degree? often partially, bits are almost completely forgotten as the significance of concepts wasn't really understood till much later.... even if you got A's

But, ideally, if you go in to a degree, highly engage with the content, it gives you a structured approach to many ideas and is a great basis for many kinds of programming applications.

Can you get the same through being self taught? sure. Though I do see that people won't teach themselves things that don't seem relevant, perhaps some of the mathematical foundations, etc. Which they often don't directly need, but it does limit the brains innovations about possible ways to attack various problems (to be fair, this is the stuff some people with degrees tend to forget). Then, of course, some people teach themselves many things, beyond what a degree would give them.

Re: Do Developers Need College Degrees?

#33

Post by denvercoder904 »

The key here is "developer". A web developer can learn to write code for a pretty website. This only requires very basic knowledge and essentially no math is involved.

In contrast, an engineer or computer scientist capable of working as an applied mathematician definitely requires an advance degree. I laugh when webdevs call themselves engineers.

Re: Do Developers Need College Degrees?

#34

Post by stpe »

Rhetorical question: Am I the only one who did get a degree to actually learn stuff?

I was self-taught, had programmed as a job for 4 years but wanted to make a leap in my skills. Dedicating 5 years to just focus on learning stuff, practicing, all in a structured way (courses) was really, in hindsight, pretty amazing in terms of accelerating my learning. I did get an MSc in CS, but the main motivation was to learn stuff, not to get a degree on paper.

Disclaimer: EU-citizen. Studied in Sweden. No tuition fee.

Re: Do Developers Need College Degrees?

#35

Post by mindcrime »

prions wrote: post #23

I'm someone who graduated with a non-cs engineering degree (and worked professionally as an engineer) whose now in a MSCS program after trying my hand in the job market. Not for a lack of trying, but my experiences definitely relate to an uphill struggle just to get even noticed. And before anyone says "you should do x|y|z", I've done my part pretty well. A few decent sized personal projects, constant studying, meetu…

IIRC, the article says that a whopping 56% of developers don't have a degree. Given that the majority of developers don't have a degree, I'm not sure I'd agree with saying " without one, your options are very limited". Maybe "somewhat limited"?

My anecdotal evidence, looking at both my own career and a lot of developers I've worked with over the past 17 years, is that having a degree, or not, isn't a big deal.

Re: Do Developers Need College Degrees?

#36

Post by 20years »

ganfortran wrote: post #14

Yes, they do. Having a degree opens more doors, there is no denying that. Degree doesn't offer enough proof of your skill, but this doesn't mean it is pointless.

No, they don't. They do however need to invest a lot of time into learning and must be willing to for the remaining of their career. I don't have a degree and I have been at this for 15 years making above middle class wages for the past 10. I know many other developers in similar situations. The common factor is self motivation and the willingness to always learn.

Re: Do Developers Need College Degrees?

#38

Post by gremlinsinc »

I've seen degrees actually set people up for failure, or not prepare them enough.. My brother went to school for 'interactive design/dev' and 2 years later hasn't found work.. they taught php/javascript -vanilla no frameworks, he learned css/html but no bootstrap. For basic web dev, I think if you're a go-getter and self-taught you're more likely to succeed than a college grad w/ the basic college curriculum.

Re: Do Developers Need College Degrees?

#39

Post by sevensor »

No, but it helps. Autodidacts are rare (possibly not on this site, but in general), and few people who haven't been to college even know what they don't know. Unfortunately a large proportion of college grads are equally clueless. College is a place where you can get an education, but nobody's going to insist, and neither degree nor GPA is any indication one way or another. What's worse, people who learned next-to-nothing in college don't even know that they don't know anything, and they can interview quite well. As the numerous HN threads about hiring and interviews attest, it's murderously difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Re: Do Developers Need College Degrees?

#40

Post by runT1ME »

denvercoder904 wrote: post #33

The key here is "developer". A web developer can learn to write code for a pretty website. This only requires very basic knowledge and essentially no math is involved. In contrast, an engineer or computer scientist capable of working as an applied mathematician definitely requires an advance degree. I laugh when webdevs call themselves engineers.

>In contrast, an engineer or computer scientist capable of working as an applied mathematician definitely requires an advance degree. I laugh when webdevs call themselves engineers.

Why would you think this? Do you think everyone who has a degree in CS understands algorithms, compilers, type theory, PL design, or operating systems at a deep level?

Why would it be impossible for a self taught dev to learn these things? I've been in the industry for over twelve years and have found no correlation between degrees and deep understanding of CS concepts. Some with degrees have it, some without... shrug

Post reply on HN