No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by pmiller2 » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 3:34 PM UTC

vegiraghav wrote: post #34

ggm wrote: post #11

Recursion 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.

> recursion is overrated imo

Right up until the point where you have to traverse a nested data structure.

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

#92

Post by sct202 » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 3:35 PM UTC

Nevermindmyview wrote: post #35

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…

What kind of coding did you do for 6 years if after that time you couldn't identify a for-loop?

Maybe they're was using Coffeescript with jQuery, and jQuery has some built in looping functions like .each that don't exactly look like a for loop.

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

#93

Post by randall » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 3:36 PM UTC

Much like CJ (upthread) I'm a completely self-taught developer. I started building apps to scratch my own itch, and eventually found out the only way to accomplish what I wanted at a larger scale was to build a company. Last year we sold to Facebook, and I continue to develop software as well as manage a team working on our vision.

I'm writing mostly to hopefully let others know you can be self taught and be super impactful.

I've dealt with a lot in my life, and our ride wasn't smooth sailing -- https://twitter.com/randallb/status/1110669172487286784

But regardless, now I build things that are high quality and fun.

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

#94

Post by commandlinefan » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 3:37 PM UTC

dev_dull wrote: post #8

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…

Your comment goes to the heart of the debate: does understanding what’s going on behind the scene of your tools help you become better at using them? I think for the vast majority of jobs it does not, but for a few it absolutely does.

If so, though, then a CS degree in general is sort of pointless, isn’t it? But if you can say that about a CS degree, what degree could you really not say it about? I suppose a medical degree is “meaningful” in the sense that you can’t get access to bodies to dissect without attending medical school, but if a CS degree is a waste of time, then pretty much every degree is a waste of time.

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

#95

Post by pmiller2 » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 3:38 PM UTC

bungie4 wrote: post #25

If 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…

If that works for you, then great, but you’re locking yourself out of an entire world of software professionals who only code for work. I suspect those who don’t code outside work outnumber those who do.

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

#96

Post by duckqlz » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 3:40 PM UTC

Even with a degree the learning process NEVER stops. Most important imo for new developers (self taught or otherwise) is to learn from multiple disciplines. CS without math and statistics is basically mindless data entry. Adding in high level concepts like category theory not only improves you as a coder but deepens your overall understanding of concepts that will allow you to excel in any language or atmosphere. While I think that a lot can be gained from a formal education there are other options provided someone is willing to put in the work. I have done work before getting my degrees and work after and in the end what sets coders and engineers apart is their “portfolio” which is generally a display of their side interests and their willingness to keep learning.

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

#97

Post by sus_007 » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 3:40 PM UTC

sergiotapia wrote: post #68

Make peace with this fact: you can most definitely build businesses and add value to any organization. But you won't be able to optimize Twitch's video codec or any other very low level, uber-specific, high impact code. Business need both types in this world. No shame in that, but don't lie to yourself into thinking that you can do _both_ with no CS degree. You can't.

So you're saying a highly motivated individual with an access to World Wide Web and physical textbooks can't teach him/herself to optimize "Twitch's video codec" or any low-level problems on their own ?

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

#98

Post by ej12n » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 3:41 PM UTC

HomeDeLaPot wrote: post #44

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.

> And it gives employers confidence that you have the skillset to handle whatever they throw at you.

Blindly having confidence in someone with a degree vs. someone with no degree is a bad mistake in this industry, IMO, sadly it happens.

It really comes down to the person, self taught or not, if you don’t pursue continuing education (which is a must in this industry) whatever CS knowledge you learnt with your degree will only take you so far.

Also said “broad exposure” can be well… self taught as well, algorithms, data structures, OS, etc… all things you can learn and "master" with no CS degree.

With all that said, I do agree CS education is essential to become a better developer. As a self thought myself, learning CS has made me a way better developer for sure, and I would advise all self taught devs to do the same, it will pay off immensely and best of all no student loan to repay.

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

#99

Post by oneplane » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 3:42 PM UTC

It's fun when people assume a CS Degree means you are a developer. Practically all development is self-taught, a CS degree is only handy for those moments where you dig into some abstract theory, which in most development jobs hardly ever happens.

You mostly spend (or waste) time on tools, frameworks and interaction (both with humans and other systems). Lots of common development is rather mundane compared to all the beautiful theory behind it. Which is not automatically bad, but also doesn't require a CS Degree to get going.

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

#100

Post by microcolonel » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 3:43 PM UTC

derekp7 wrote: post #52

I sometimes feel like I have a leg up based on when I learned computers (self taught mid 80's to early 90's). At that time, everything was more low level, and there were fewer, yet higher quality books on the market. So I started off with W. Richard Stephens, K&R, Pike, Sedgewick, and others that you either had to really get it, or you wouldn't get anything. Not that this was the best way to learn, but you knew comin…

I started with MASM-style assembly, and transitioned to higher level languages when I got frustrated.

I think this angle has made a huge positive difference in my ability to reason about my work. I think if you start with high level languages, it's easy to ignore what you're actually doing.