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No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers

nocsdegree.com

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Re: No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers

#41

Post by patorjk »

hirundo wrote: post #9

I'm 39 years into a coding career with no CS degree. But as a compulsive auto-didact (probably a common syndrome among HN readers) it hasn't been a barrier. Self-learning is a continual, daily requirement for coders. If you can continue your education as needed for this job you probably also have the skills and interest to learn from scratch. I studied the same books and did the same exercises as my brother the CS ma…

> The main thing I lack is access to government jobs

I guess my question would be which government? I do government contracting (US), and degrees are not required. The labor categories are typically written so that if you don't have a degree, you just need an additional 4 years of experience. On almost every contract I've worked on I've met a developer without a degree.

Re: No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers

#42

Post by cmrdporcupine »

I have no CS degree, and I've been in the industry in various forms since the mid-90s, software developer full time since about 2001 or so. I have no CS degree because I just did not have the math grades to get entrance to university.

I've been working at Google as software engineer for 7.5 years now.

I guess you could say this is success, but I would not recommend this path; even after 20 years, there's hiring managers or recruiters that won't look at me, and coworkers whose behavior changes when they find out. Impostor syndrome can be an issue.

At my age with family mortgage kids, it's too late and pointless to go back and re-do all the HS math etc. I'd need to get into a CS program. But I do wish I'd done this. It took me a long time to elbow my way to where I am now.

Re: No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers

#43

Post by k_ »

whatshisface wrote: post #39
Nevermindmyview wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That or they only used `while` (and friends if available in the language) loops.

Re: No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers

#44

Post by HomeDeLaPot »

cj wrote: post #29

I'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…

Right on! Plenty of people can teach themselves to code without a university education. But the degree gives you a broad exposure to parts of CS that you may never explore as a self-taught developer. And it gives employers confidence that you have the skillset to handle whatever they throw at you.

Re: No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers

#45

Post by bluedino »

whatshisface wrote: post #39
Nevermindmyview wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can google that in 2 seconds. A CS degree isn't going to help you there if you have not covered a language that uses iterators.

Re: No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers

#46

Post by AngeloAnolin »

Not sure if you would consider a two year associate degree in computer technologies as a CS degree because pretty much what I recall from my studies, we were working on understanding the computer parts and components, doing some typing (data entry exercises) and understanding what software and productivity suites are. We did embark on some nifty console programming and writing batch files, but never fully immersing into the bits and pieces of what makes up software (algorithms, binary, lists, etc).

I work professionally as a software developer for quite a while, and what I have seen in the industry is that you gain more merit when you are able to ship product(s) that people will use (or perhaps automate a process that was previously done in a manual manner).

Yes, you can get past the initial gates of hiring qualifications (such as having a CS degree certificate) as well as the coding tests that lots of companies use as a gauge to test your technical capabilities. But no amount of CS degree or certificate would be enough to patch for example when you are dealing with real world software issues.

Re: No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers

#47

Post by Kaveren »

crims0n wrote: post #14

While we are on the subject, if you are looking to self learn CS can anybody comment on the quality of this program? https://github.com/ossu/computer-science

fringe opinion. video courses in non-visual topics are a complete waste of time, made because the masses can't read and are lazy. there is a corresponding book better than the course available for everything listed. good books will have good exercises and solutions available.

video courses just won't teach as much. very easy to find best book available for each subject. even going partway through a book will offer more. can skip topics, look at syllabuses for classes offered in higher education that use said book if you want to know what to skip (many syllabuses available online).

for example, instead of taking the operating systems class you can simply actually read either of the two books suggested by this very page.

Re: No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers

#48

Post by cmrdporcupine »

itsmemattchung wrote: post #5

I think its pretty well known that you can work as a successful developer without a CS degree. However , as someone who is currently working through a masters in CS (after working in software the last decade), I would say that CS courses (some, not all) provide invaluable foundation that would be difficult to obtain (of course you can self study CS). Sure — you don’t need to know how the OS works to write a web app t…

Theoretical and CS fundamentals has never been an issue for me (no degree), because I find them interesting. Probably more interesting than most of my coworkers. I think you'll find this is the case for many people who end up in this industry out of passion rather than educational path. A year unemployed during the .com crash gave me lots of time to work on open source hobby projects, where I wrote my own virtual machine, compiler, etc. That was fun. Wish I could afford to do that again.

Honestly, what I find I'm missing is mostly class status and a piece of paper.

Re: No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers

#49

Post by jimmaswell »

The value of college to me was mainly the degree and an internship that resulted in a good reference. Nobody in practice seems to care about personal or volunteer projects unless it's maybe contributing to Mozilla or something. Degree is necessary to be interviewed by 99.99% of openings.

Re: No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers

#50

Post by bluedino »

Between the requirements of a degree and silly things like "10 years experience with X" for a CRUD develeoper, I have a hard time getting through HR when applying for jobs. If I can get to a technical manager or another developer, we can talk shop and show code and I'm good.

Just remember it comes down to who you know or who you can meet, you might as well have worked at Burger King by the way some of the filters work.

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