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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

#121

Post by n4r9 »

tempsy wrote: post #105
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…

Is Project Euler better than LeetCode for "gut checking"? I've probably done 300 or so LC, and do some every week, mostly as an insurance policy for technical interviews if I ever opportunistically interviewed in a short time frame.

They're geared towards different goals. LC is for interviews: solving small scale problems of the scale you might get asked in an interview or come up against every day in a software job. PE is more of about curiosity and personal intellectual development. It asks something that you might never have heard about and might never see again but is often very interesting, and will stretch your ability to develop your own algorithms or to apply learnt methods to unfamiliar scenarios.

I'd recommend LC to someone who has an interview in a month, PE to someone who has one in a year.

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

#122

Post by vectorEQ »

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…

i agree. i'm happy to have some CS students point me to some areas which are useful even if they are not interesting for hobbyists. There's also a lot of value in learning academic methods of investigation and research (if you are at a good university). A lot of self-taught learn a lot about computers or some programming languages, but a CS degree like any degree also teaches a lot of other valuable competences which can be hard to come by from own inspiration / initiative.

Another thing is that following and completing a degree is a practice in going from start to finnish in a multi-year project which the degree is, which is also very valuable in life in general. being able to see fruits in the distant future of your current work, and having that motivate and drive you.

A lot of people i meet who are self-taught will give up more easily due to this. not that they are quitters, but they tend to lean towards their interests, which is not always in their best interest :)

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

#123

Post by steev »

tempsy wrote: post #105
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…

Is Project Euler better than LeetCode for "gut checking"? I've probably done 300 or so LC, and do some every week, mostly as an insurance policy for technical interviews if I ever opportunistically interviewed in a short time frame.

I would say for technical interviews you should stick with LeetCode. Project Euler is more mathematics oriented.

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

#124

Post by chapium »

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…

CS isn't really about programming so much as it is about problem solving.

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

#125

Post by tracer4201 »

jtdev wrote: post #113

I’m a programmer who studied information technology (with a number of programming courses, but zero true CS coursework) first at community college and then at a budget brand state college. I’m now a senior developer/engineer and frequently work on projects alongside CS graduates from prestigious schools who seem incapable of completing even the most simple coding tasks - this is the case nearly 100% of the time in my…

I work in big tech. I know lots of folks who fall into your camp. Anecdotally from interviewing and working with other software engineers, site reliability engineers, software development engineers, and , how prestigious your undergrad institution was reflects little to none in your ability to solve real world problems. It does help open doors though, as every FAANG I’ve worked at heavily recruits from these schools.

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

#126

Post by balls187 »

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…

> The problem with being self taught, at least in my experience, is that you end up being very strong in whatever areas it is that interests you, and whatever areas of CS are relevant to the projects you're working on day-to-day.

Which is not necessarily a bad (for whatever definition of bad) thing.

For the startups you worked at, your ability to write code was far more valuable than your understanding of underlying CS concepts.

Kudos to you for having the maturity to acknowledge the gaps in your education and to address them in a manner that complements your life.

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

#127

Post by gnode »

pmiller2 wrote: post #95
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.

> [...] outnumber those who do.

If their understanding that amateurs make for better hires than professionals is correct, then amateurs being the minority makes an even stronger case for filtering.

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

#128

Post by langitbiru »

setpatchaddress wrote: post #101
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.

Nonsense. You can absolutely teach yourself to optimize low-level code if that's what you want to do. The amazing thing about today's world is that all of the incredible resources available for learning just about anything in science and engineering to anyone who has the time to consume them. And you can work on open source projects to build your native skills. The difficult part for you will be obtaining an intervie…

The other difficult part is to put aside time and money. I mean the information is most likely free but you still need food. Food is not free. Then you have to work so you can buy food. If you work, you will have less time to study by yourself.

In this sense, UBI is a godsend. But of course, we assume all actors are rational and self-disciplined.

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

#129

Post by ssully »

sarchertech wrote: post #17
whatshisface wrote: post #7

Earlier 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.

It's possible to learn most things through self-study. But the vast majority of people will only learn the parts that they find fun and interesting. They generally won't wrestle with the tough sections in a systemic fashion, the way you are forced to in a decent CS program. For most people (even most professional developers) the only practical way to gain the equivalent knowledge you'd get with a CS degree, is by get…

Like whatshisface said above, quality self-study is rare. As you point out, people will learn what is fun/interesting, but I will also add that they will just learn what they need to get whatever job done.

I have a friend who does webdev (mostly Wordpress, some Drupal) who did not have go through a CS program, though he took a few web dev classes in college. He goes good work, but he has a very loose grasp on fundamentals. He showed me a side project he was doing (a web based clicker game) and after looking at the code, I suggested he try adding some classes to reduce his code reuse. After explaining the basics (and some quick research on how classes work in Javascript), it kind of blew his mind. He never used classes before in his code because he just had no reference point.

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

#130

Post by jhall1468 »

oneplane wrote: post #99

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…

CS is more than abstract theory. It gives you a foundation that you otherwise are unlikely to get. Self-taught means learning things useful for your existing job or things you find interesting. I'm work almost exclusively on the frontend, but my CS degree gave me enough foundation that I'm fairly familiar with compilers (I wrote one in college for a required course).

I don't necessarily enjoy writing compilers. But the fact remains that I can write a compiler. I can program in C or C++. I do understand pointers. None of this may hold any real value, but I wouldn't be able to do any of them if not for the degree.

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