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Do Developers Need College Degrees?

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Re: Do Developers Need College Degrees?

#101

Post by alkonaut »

Hydraulix989 wrote: post #45
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…

I knew linear algebra in high school. I taught myself matrix math because I wanted to make games, and because the most challenging math my lackluster rural public high school offered was basic calculus. My top university's CS program had a linear algebra class that loaded me up with theory though like Hilbert spaces, wavelet transforms, spectral theory, abstract algebra, and of course, principal component analysis (b…

Linear algebra is used in even the simplest of games, and almost anything related to cad, computer vision, engineering, ...

If the problem is related to web and databases and crap then there is rarely any linear algebra (heck there are rarely even real numbers) but we didn't go to school to work with databases and web forms did we ;)

Obviously hilbert spaces might not be useful everywhere but for example, anecdotally I did stumble across one interesting problem already in my first year out of university: A drawing program needed to scale a drawn ellipse in one direction, which wasn't necessarily along one of its axes. Q: is the result an ellipse? What are its axes?

A: (I had to ask a friend with better linear algebra skills, which still bugs me): the axes will be given by the eigenvectors of the matrix involved. The math was fairly hairy compared to most other things in a simple drawing program, but it was fun and really rewarding when the math worked.

Re: Do Developers Need College Degrees?

#102

Post by greenhatman »

Clubber wrote: post #82
smcl wrote: post #16

We are such a weird profession. What other industry is like "Hey, you can do my job. It's easy, here are lots of extremely detailed courses, documentation and guides on how"

Well, that's because companies can't afford to be as picky right now . Once everyone "learns to code." and there is a glut, you'd better believe degrees become more valuable.

It still won't necessarily be degrees that separate the high performers from the low performers.

Re: Do Developers Need College Degrees?

#103

Post by loginatnine »

pinkythepig wrote: post #67
choxi wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea of "open source" is also unique, I can't think of any other professions that have something analogous.

Closed source is what is unique. I can tear apart any engine to understand how it works. I can rip out the bathroom in my house and install a totally new one. With closed source, I can't just rip out component X and replace it with component Y. I can't read the binary to understand how it works (Technically I could, but I mean that with modern languages, the assembly looks massively different from the original source…

You can tear it apart and understands how the mechanism work but you don't have the million details about the manufacturing process, precise drawings with tolerances, material composition, etc.

Re: Do Developers Need College Degrees?

#104

Post by Retric »

alkonaut wrote: post #101
Hydraulix989 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I knew linear algebra in high school. I taught myself matrix math because I wanted to make games, and because the most challenging math my lackluster rural public high school offered was basic calculus. My top university's CS program had a linear algebra class that loaded me up with theory though like Hilbert spaces, wavelet transforms, spectral theory, abstract algebra, and of course, principal component analysis (b…

Linear algebra is used in even the simplest of games, and almost anything related to cad, computer vision, engineering, ... If the problem is related to web and databases and crap then there is rarely any linear algebra (heck there are rarely even real numbers) but we didn't go to school to work with databases and web forms did we ;) Obviously hilbert spaces might not be useful everywhere but for example, anecdotally…

There is a tiny fraction of linear algebra that's very useful for most games, but you can pick most of it up over a long weekend. Further taking the class five years ago means you still need that long weekend anyway...

Compared to say learning direct X it's a tiny time investment and hardly worth a degree.

Re: Do Developers Need College Degrees?

#105

Post by yellowapple »

dntrkv wrote: post #91
CJefferson wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, closed source is I think the more unique thing. I can go to planning offices and see the plans of any building. Almost no-one has "secret painting methods", or "secret plumbing methods".

Those professions cannot be compared with software, you would have to compare an industry where the product is intangible. Do you see musicians making samples and giving them away to other musicians for free? Sure, you can find some online but it is definitely not the norm. Does Hollywood create stock footage and release it for other production companies to use for free? Do photographers allow others to use their pho…

I reckon the increasing popularity of FOSS is paving the way for the examples you've listed to start becoming mainstream. Social media is already starting to kick that third one into gear, and I wouldn't be surprised if the growing remix culture soon evolves into licensing terms that expand fair use to "you can sample my song as part of your song as long as your song is substantially different from my song".

Re: Do Developers Need College Degrees?

#106

Post by aithoughts »

Kalium wrote: post #61
seoknucklehead wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With everything that's available in documentation, on YouTube, in forums, and in boot camps and other trainings, doesn't it seem like there are much more efficient ways to get the foundational knowledge that don't require four years of expensive college courses?

It does seem utterly inconceivable that getting copiously documented things into the heads of people would be something only accomplishable through an outmoded and expensive educational process. Surely we've come up with something better by now with all the effort being poured into it! Yet, perhaps there's something about that process. After all, there are aspects to a formal collegiate experience that are not neatly…

This may or may not scale but I've been lucky to be part of a startup program that roughly matches your description of a "better option". It's a 2-year program; I was, and still am, part of their experimental first class of students. So far I've gone through 9 months of entirely CS study, and I was even placed in an internship working in Mountain View, and without a college degree.

I have never held a dev job before, but I’ve gotten to doing some pretty serious and nuanced coding (all the way down to memory management and writing in C). They’re a really great team of people, their unofficial motto is “Google it”, and RTFM, and their program is called Holberton School.

I really hope it succeeds.

Re: Do Developers Need College Degrees?

#107

Post by Kalium »

aithoughts wrote: post #106
Kalium wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does seem utterly inconceivable that getting copiously documented things into the heads of people would be something only accomplishable through an outmoded and expensive educational process. Surely we've come up with something better by now with all the effort being poured into it! Yet, perhaps there's something about that process. After all, there are aspects to a formal collegiate experience that are not neatly…

This may or may not scale but I've been lucky to be part of a startup program that roughly matches your description of a "better option". It's a 2-year program; I was, and still am, part of their experimental first class of students. So far I've gone through 9 months of entirely CS study, and I was even placed in an internship working in Mountain View, and without a college degree. I have never held a dev job before,…

That does sound very promising. I, too, hope it succeeds.

How much time have you spent on set theory or discrete mathematics?

Re: Do Developers Need College Degrees?

#108

Post by flukus »

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…

> I think there are things "every good developer should know" such as knowledge about how cpus work, how OS'es work

Considering the complexity of modern CPU's and OS's, does college go into enough depth to tech them well or does it just let students think they know how they work?

Re: Do Developers Need College Degrees?

#109

Post by xyzzyz »

markdown wrote: post #88
Kalium wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 person…

What do you think of this curriculum? https://github.com/open-source-society/computer-science I'd say that these days it's easier to gain all that "foundational knowledge" without attending a university.

You sure can gain all that knowledge, but my experience is that without a formal setting with defined expectations and specific goals, few people will actually have enough motivation to spend few hours every day for a few years doing this.

Re: Do Developers Need College Degrees?

#110

Post by eloff »

I'll share my experience here for anyone who's considering the tradeoffs.

It's harder without a degree, especially getting the first job. And your jobs might pay less in the beginning (mine did not, but that might not apply to everyone.) After that it gets easier, but even now in my mid thirties I get turned down because of that - but it doesn't bother me much. There's a lot of developer jobs out there and I still end up getting to pick among several. I was making six figures by my second job, but I have no idea how common that is.

A degree costs a lot of money and 4 years of your time. You should give that a good hard look, because if you're dedicated and you love the work you can progress much faster on your own and it won't cost you anything - in fact you will likely earn a lot of money during that time. If you prefer to veg out after work every day with your choice of drug or tv, forget it. You're going to need all the help you can get, go for the degree. If you're going to put in the time and effort you'll quickly surpass your peers and get the best jobs - with or without degree.

But the biggest thing I did for my career was move to Panama where there's no tax on foreign income. I worked five years in a remote job and paid off my mortgage.

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