No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers

In a good CS program you will be presented a series of challenges below your “depth”....

“wait, you want me to WRITE a data structure? I usually just use a good one from a library”

“wait, you want me to fix a compiler? I have only ever run a compiler”

“wait, you want me to write code that CREATES processes out of nothing? I am used to letting the OS create processes”

... etc. These provide you a series of epiphanies, “wow, I can build a compiler from scratch, that means I could fux with LLVM if I had to”.

Ideally, these programs are designed to take you all the way down to the bottom of the machine. For some students, the end result is confidence in their ability to “dive in” to a problem anywhere in the system.

If your point is that you can teach yourself that outside of school—absolutely. But... well, in my case I doubt I ever would have. It wasn’t fun, I was pushed to do things I would never have followed through on if I was just casually teaching myself about programming languages or operating systems.

And if your point is that students can get away without learning the material—well, also yes. Of course.

But you are wrong to dismiss the idea that a CS degree is just another few things to learn. This business of “get all the way down to the bottom and challenge yourself at every step” is kind of the whole point of a CS degree, and the world outside is not going to encourage you to do it the way your profs will.

- People who went to university, going through significant effort for their degree, and want to defend that choice

- People who _didnt_ go to school, perhaps suffering from a touch of imposter syndrome, who want to hide their insecurity

I'm a 20yr old "self-taught" dev. I'm considering going back to school this year. But its a tough choice. Things are going very well for me in the professional world so far. I was in a CS undergrad program for a year but didn't feel like I was learning as well as I was on my own, to be honest.

What I think I can say with confidence is theres not much point in arguing about this. If you want to go then go. If not, don't. Why do we have to prescribe a gospel on this? Let people decide what they want to do. Part of why "self-taught" devs like myself often suffer from insecurity is people shouting the absolute necessity of a degree. I don't see it.

This is absolutely key. One of the main advantages of a solid undergraduate curriculum is that it forces you to work your way through things that are important, but don't interest you as much. And this path is designed and supported by people with a much better broad view of the field than you have.

Now, you'll still always gain knowledge faster in the areas that interest you most, but if you only indulge this approach you will have significant gaps.

One thing I always recommend to people self-studying (when they ask) is to find someone you trust who really knows the area and ask them for recommended courses/books. Then follow that advice.

To some degree MOOCs etc. try and do this for you by designing course progressions, but there are limitations and constraints there that can have you spinning your wheel.

Being disciplined about both breadth and depth in a new subject is difficult. One of the underlying themes of a post-graduate degree, particularly a PhD, is to give you tools to do this for yourself repeatedly. It's not impossible to gain these skills properly with little or no formal education, but it is quite difficult.