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Do Developers Need College Degrees?

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Re: Do Developers Need College Degrees?

#161

Post by Kalium »

ooqr wrote: post #139
Kalium wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're completely right! Those are all amazing resources. I would posit that using textbooks, syllabi, recorded lectures from the best schools and greatest professors, and documentation is still a form of self-direction. The learner is left entirely to their own direction, discipline, and environment. Perhaps the only thing that's changed in that list of wonderful resources since the 1960s is MOOCs. I thought of and…

Well now we're opening up a can of worms. Are not those with instructors also partially self-taught?

By that logic, everyone is self-taught. So perhaps that line of reasoning proves too much, rendering it potentially suspect.

Re: Do Developers Need College Degrees?

#162

Post by tbrowbdidnso »

Do any engineers need degrees? Does anybody? Before you go too deep down that philosophical rabbit hole just consider one thing.

Is it a job that requires a lot of skill?

Any job I've seen that is highly skilled and not in the "get your hands dirty" kind of way usually has a degree behind it.

I've seen many kind of engineers without a degree. It's not like you couldn't figure it out on your own for any kind of engineering. The two main problems are commiting enough time to learn it on your own and getting a company to take a chance on you.

You can do it without a degree but it will be a lot harder to learn enough and to get your foot in the door. If someone takes a risk on you, you'll probably get paid like crap for a few years too.

Is it worth it to do that or just spend 4 years on a degree? Most of the time the answer is a degree.

Computer science isn't any different from any other branch of engineering even though developers like to think it's so special

Re: Do Developers Need College Degrees?

#163

Post by khedoros1 »

technologyvault wrote: post #158
khedoros1 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Step one: Find that material organized into a complete lesson plan. Without curation, a library is just a pile of books. Step two: Package that with a bunch of people (both experienced and inexperienced) who can help with coursework and answer questions when they come up, teams of people to work with, somewhere to live with dozens of others doing the same work, hundreds more learning unrelated things (but who might b…

What about Udemy and Lynda? Every time I think of all the extra hundreds of hours I spent learning things that didn't help my developer career and that seemed to be distractions, I tend to compare those to courses published online that have precise learning modules that are so helpful. College just seems like it's so expensive compared to the value you get out of other sources of knowledge.

College is a lot more than learning about software development and computer science. I guess that's what I was getting at. It's expensive, but I don't know any other way to meet the same mix of people and get the same set of experiences. And that's part of the point: If you just want to learn development, college shouldn't be a prerequisite. I'd imagine that some kind of trade school, self-study, or job training would make more sense.

Re: Do Developers Need College Degrees?

#164

Post by khedoros1 »

bsilvereagle wrote: post #136
khedoros1 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say that analyzing a finished mechanical device is similar to examining disassemblies and hex dumps of program files. You're missing information on the manufacturing process, allowable part tolerances, and so on, that the original manufacturers have access to.

Once you have the asm of a program, you have 100% knowledge of it if you put the time in to learn& follow the assembly. Sure, it's not as easy as looking at the source, but you have the capability of fully understanding the program. With a mechanical device, you don't know the dimensions on press fits, you don't know what the aluminum was heat treated to, you don't know the silica to aluminum ratio and how that affec…

> Once you have the asm of a program, you have 100% knowledge of it if you put the time in to learn& follow the assembly.

You have all of the "what" (in an inconvenient format that will need tremendous effort to be useful for most things), but you're mostly guessing on the "why". Tons of information is discarded, and can't be retrieved. Just guessed at. This puts a good bit of distance between what you have access to in the theoretical sense and how useful it is in the practical sense.

Re: Do Developers Need College Degrees?

#165

Post by pedalpete »

brudgers wrote: post #100
pedalpete wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I'm always amazed at how many Real Estate Agents suggest that others should get into it because it is so lucrative. They seem to ignore the fact that they are welcoming more competition in a finite market.

In the US, there's a bit of pyramid to real-estate commissions and a lot of the recruitment is done by brokers. And even at the sales person level, the commission structure of most company's pays better when an agent sells the listing of another agent in the company so the more agents the better the odds of a better commission. But coming from the architecture profession, I don't discount encouraging others as a form…

I was strangely missing that piece. I was going to write in my comment that they are similar to pyramid scheme members, but thought that was a stretch.

My step-father and brother are both brokers, so I know how they operate, but I somehow missed how agents get a piece of the action.

Re: Do Developers Need College Degrees?

#166

Post by zamalek »

n0w wrote: post #77
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…

You don't know what you don't know. This is what struck me about my formal education. While I also believe you can learn anything with enough material and dedication on your own, having the structure to ensure that you cover a set of subjects that constitute "foundational knowledge" can be invaluable.

> You don't know what you don't know.

Self-taught developer with the mentioned "foundational knowledge." I'm very strong so far as any university-level CS subject goes. One area where I have recently learned that "I don't know" is anything beyond high school calculus - having started to play around with Tensorflow. You are most certainly correct and now, instead of immediately having that expertise at my fingertips, I have to self-learn it over a month.

Re: Do Developers Need College Degrees?

#167

Post by aithoughts »

Kalium wrote: post #132
aithoughts wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, like you said, it really depends on what you'll be doing. Granted, there are different paths one's trajectory will take, and you won't know them in advance. On the other hand though, I wouldn't presume to write my own cryptographic protocol without having the fundamentals myself. Wouldn't you say that it's actually reasonable to learn this on your own? There are so many options, paid, or free, that can help you…

You're right! The world contains a wondrous bounty of instructional materials the curious might use to attempt to edify themselves. You're also right that the argument can be made that any individual who might seek self-study of advanced mathematics is not "most people" as I described previously. To that subject, let me offer a different formulation: most individuals attempting to study advanced mathematics independe…

As a percentage, how many US colleges would you say are excluded from the opportunities provided by "rigorous course of study"? Would you say you could get this kind of rigorous study at any university? If not, how many (as a percentage of all undergrad colleges)? Is this scalable/sustainable for the entire population?

Re: Do Developers Need College Degrees?

#168

Post by aninhumer »

xiaoma wrote: post #135
n0w wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't know what you don't know. This is what struck me about my formal education. While I also believe you can learn anything with enough material and dedication on your own, having the structure to ensure that you cover a set of subjects that constitute "foundational knowledge" can be invaluable.

What is it about formalized schooling specifically, that you believe makes it uniquely capable in teaching people what they don't know? When I was 18 I spent dozens of hours pouring through a university course catalogue, looking at the required courses for each degree, the prerequisite trees and the requirements for graduate degrees. It felt like a bird's-eye of the entire fractal structure of human inquiry. Later, I…

I think one factor is that Universities are usually involved in research, so they're in a good position to continually identify what's important out of the existing body of knowledge, and keep their courses up to date with new ideas.

Another factor is that you can't skip over topics that don't immediately interest you. Some self-taught people can have that discipline as well, but it's not universal.

Re: Do Developers Need College Degrees?

#169

Post by tomtompl »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #15

If a hiring decision comes down to two equally qualified candidates, and one has a degree, that one gets the job. CYA, plain and simple. However, if both candidates have several years of relevant experience, it is more of a toss-up.

How often it's the case that you have "two equally qualified candidates"?

Re: Do Developers Need College Degrees?

#170

Post by paganel »

estebank wrote: post #130
paganel wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, painters, plumbers, and other trades definitely have tips and techniques that they've learned through experience and from mentors, and you won't find much of that being given away freely. Exactly this. My father is a civil engineer who's now in his early 60s, and he recently got to work with colleagues much younger than him. He told me that said colleagues didn't know some trade-related stuff which hadn't…

> but he also told me that he's got other professional secrets that he's not ready to share just yet. I'm curious enough to ask: why?

For job security, I think. We're lucky enough as programmers not to have to worry about that too much, but when you're a civil engineer in a quite poor part of the country and the continent (I'm talking Eastern Europe) you do not have much better other options.
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