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No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers

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

#71

"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 th…

1) You're allowed to curse on the internet. HN doesn't have a content filter. Saying "f*cking" reduces the impact the curse is supposed to have. If you feel it's appropriate to curse then just fucking do it. 2) Not everyone does well in a formal school environment. This site shows people that self-taught can still earn good money. 3) Even if a CS degree would increase the Austrian's earnings, how much would it increa…

regarding 2 and 3. My complaint isn't about having or not having a CS degree, I didn't even get that far.

It's about the Taboola-like quality of the headline. They're an insult to one's intelligence. If I want to be insulted on the Internet, I'd go elsewhere.

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

#72
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…

Nice to see that reference about projecteuler. Although I study Computer Engineering, which is very close to Computer Science with Electrical Engineer grade, I really focus too much in the subjects which interests me.

BTW, I reforce a lot of aspects about analysis, optimization and programming with ProjectEuler by doing Polyglot programming with some friends: https://github.com/DestructHub/ProjectEuler

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

#73
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…

This is interesting, but I don't think it's the norm for self-taught devs to not recognize a for..in. I would find that surprising. (I'm also a self-taught developer, and now I work at a larger corporation.)

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

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Any self-respecting computer science degree education should cover at least one language that has iterators or enhanced enumeration.

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

#75

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.

Sounds like you didn't read the parent post carefully? He wrote:

> I didn't know how to write a for loop

If

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

#76
I just find these odd. Does anyone struggle with this stuff? They just make it all look so easy.

I for one struggle quite a bit with coding, design, theory, and other aspects. I just don't get how so many people think coding is as easy as "reading a book" or "doing a tutorial".

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

#77
Honestly, as someone who laboured in a CS degree and work as an employee for 10+ years, I feel frustrated that I feel stuck.

It feels like that the reason that I am still working in mediocre jobs is because I don't know how to generate ideas. Or how to make prototypes using design tools. Or how to go about as an entrepreneur.

It's both inspiring and deflating at the same time to people, especially young people, succeed in things that I have dreamed about when I was young.

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

#79
I'm a self-taught Senior Engineer doing this professionally for the past 10 years. I've never taken a single course in Computer Science and dropped out of business school to start my own. Amazingly, some of my work has been used by universities, 20 million have watched my Programming YouTube channel and 50k+ have signed up for my online courses.

Most companies don't have a hardline requirement for having a degree anymore, but if they do, even for management, I'll do my best to avoid them.

Last thing, I started coding at 28.

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