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No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers
31–40 of 480 posts
Re: No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers
#32I think the biggest difference between successful devs and unsuccessful ones is the hunger for constant learning and improvement. You can lack that hunger if you have a CS degree or not. I've observed this at my company and others I've worked for as an almost constant.
Re: No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers
#33If I had a gray beard... 30+ years as working dev. I've never taken a 'computer class' while in school, although I've taken some instruction while working. Entirely self-taught. I do this because I like it. Back in the day, I never played video games, I taught myself, and wrote, code. To this day, I don't play video games. It's been my experience that hiring degreed CS graduates may not be the best course. Theirs a b…
That's cool! Extra inspiration for myself as well. I think it's good to bust the myth you have to love video games, or start coding aged 4 etc.
Re: No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers
#34Recursion and Abstraction, like love and herpes, are a form of disease which once caught cannot be lost, but can be shed, and so spread. Your brain is wired to look for both opportunistically, in any problem. What a CS degree does, is teach you how to apply the infection. Some CS degrees are like innoculation against them and you come out with a degree, but no grasp of the fundamentals. Others, you learn so much you…
recursion overrated imo.
Re: No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers
#35I'm an engineer. No CS degree. I coded for fun on various side projects from 2006-2012. I didn't consider myself very good. I worked at a couple startups from 2012-2013. During that time, I became very proficient in Coffeescript and a couple popular frontend frameworks. I was very productive in terms of pumping out lines of code (that somehow resulted in a working product). However, I didn't know how to write a for l…
What kind of coding did you do for 6 years if after that time you couldn't identify a for-loop?
Re: No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers
#36[deleted]
Re: No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can "peel back the layers of abstraction" without a CS degree, all it takes is time and (admittedly rare) dedication. Webservers, operating systems and books on theoretical CS are all out there, you just have to be interested.
This is absolutely true, however in reality (= in practice) very few non-CS degree devs _will_ reach the same level of knowledge. When you have to learn all that stuff to get your degree, then you just have to learn it. Period. Also people who are full time students have more time to spend on these topics, but when you are actually working 8h+ per day and your career is mostly around JS frameworks it becomes much har…
I don't disagree with you, but I don't completely agree with your implications either. From my experience, most people with a CS degree will not attain that level as well. Even at the masters level, a number of people will not understand. It's sad. I really feel this is a failure of universities not forcing students to learn, but I know there are a number of politics etc that factor into how hard they can make courses, and what they can teach.
Re: No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers
#38"This 22 year old self-taught PHP developer earns $15k a month and lives in an Austrian farmhouse"
I mean, f*cking seriously?
Yeah, that's harsh, but such a headline's an insult to those with a CS degree and serious self-taught developers alike.
To those who made this stay on the front page: given you're competent, you already make the same or more money as those with a CS degree, even if you might know less about the fundamentals, get over it! Upvoting cruft like this isn't going to vindicate your choice.
Re: No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers
#39I'm an engineer. No CS degree. I coded for fun on various side projects from 2006-2012. I didn't consider myself very good. I worked at a couple startups from 2012-2013. During that time, I became very proficient in Coffeescript and a couple popular frontend frameworks. I was very productive in terms of pumping out lines of code (that somehow resulted in a working product). However, I didn't know how to write a for l…
What kind of coding did you do for 6 years if after that time you couldn't identify a for-loop?
The parent said they didn't know what for-in was, which implies they were using a language like C for their side projects which only has for (i=0;i<n;i++) loops.
Re: No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers
#40Recursion and Abstraction, like love and herpes, are a form of disease which once caught cannot be lost, but can be shed, and so spread. Your brain is wired to look for both opportunistically, in any problem. What a CS degree does, is teach you how to apply the infection. Some CS degrees are like innoculation against them and you come out with a degree, but no grasp of the fundamentals. Others, you learn so much you…
recursion overrated imo.
iteration gets repetitive.