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

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

#331

Post by cr0sh » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 6:45 PM UTC

pmarreck wrote: post #184

docker_up wrote: post #150

I work with a twenty-something year old right now. He graduated from high school. Had his own non-tech company for a while after high school. Decided he wanted to go into coding. One of the best damn coders I've worked with in 25 years. Gives the toughest, most consistent code reviews. He's the type of programmer you can build a startup around. In another comment a few days ago, I mentioned a 10x engineer I knew. Gra…

What languages do they use?

That doesn't matter. If there's one thing my years in this career has taught me, it's that the client(s) don't GAF what language or framework or system you used to solve their problem(s).

What they care about is if you have given them a solution that solves their problem(s). They don't care how you got there. They don't care what technology you used. Just as long as you solved the problem(s) they were having, and that you did it in the time/budget allotment for the job.

That said, as the solution provider you should have found out both their current use cases and potential future use cases, in order to select the tools you'll need for the immediate solution, and ideally for any updates or improvements that may be needed later on.

Because they will care, for instance, if the code you wrote was in a language that won't allow them to scale up quickly and easily (assuming you wrote the rest of the system to allow for this of course), or has some other kind of issue that prevents the client from moving forward with a change.

The last thing a client wants to hear is "complete rewrite using different language/framework/system" just to implement an extension or upgrade path (the best you can usually get by with is a refactor of the existing code base - but you better have a damn good reason and plan for that refactor).

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

#332

Post by drinchev » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 6:45 PM UTC

I also have no CS degree, I have a law degree though. I could say that "development" is like lego construction - yeah you can do that with a very specific preparation, but nobody actually stops you from reading the F manual ( RTFM ) and do it on your own.

However I think that people loving the job are better than the ones that were learning for it, so no wonders sites like this exists.

And in any case I wouldn't go to a self-taught doctor, so something will probably change in the future.

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

#333

Post by zshrdlu » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 6:47 PM UTC

cr0sh wrote: post #323

jhall1468 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

> But the fact remains that I can write a compiler. I can program in C or C++. I do understand pointers. EDIT: Note - I see your replies and reasoning with others on what you meant; I do agree with you there, too. --- I know you can do all of them without a CS degree. Where a CS degree really helps, though - and this is something that I know I lack (but real-world experience has taught me enough that I can get by) -…

The failing here is that you have put a (rather low) ceiling to what an auto-didact can achieve. There are no hard limits to a self-taught scholar of computing, certainly not things as elementary as data structures and algorithms.

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

#334

Post by cloverich » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 6:48 PM UTC

School-Cotton wrote: post #324

Zaskoda wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CS program taught me the history and context for Computer Science. It taught me the fundamental physics that make a gate work and how to put those gates together to make a logic circuit. It then built on this one step at a time, walking us through each layer from how machine code manipulates bits to how to properly evaluate the run time of a complex algorithm. CS told me the comprehensive story. Earning my BS and…

I am absolutely confident that you couldn’t tell I’m self-taught if you worked with me. All the stuff that your CS degree taught you is also possible to learn by reading books.

Further, the book on which the curriculum is based. Diligently going through them will often teach you more than the structured class based on them. When coursera first came out I was very excited to take CS classes from top universities. Then... I was surprised at how generally poor quality the lectures and material were. Outside a few standouts, I think you are vastly better off reading quality, well reviewed books / papers than taking a course / watching lectures. (Unsurprisingly this felt true of my actual degree's as well).

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

#335

Post by pstuart » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 6:49 PM UTC

arendtio wrote: post #315

methodover wrote: post #277

I have a religious studies degree. I wonder if it’s prepared me better than a CS degree for the actual work I do. What did I learn with my RELS degree? Hermeneutics— understanding ancient texts written by lots of different authors in their original historical contexts, often which has been deeply redacted over time. Anyone who’s worked on any production code can see the benefit of being trained in that kind of thinki…

> I had no trouble understanding object oriented programming Indeed, Object-Oriented Programming is harder to learn for programmers who have experience with other languages already (no pun intended) ;-) When you know a language like C/C++/Java and you learn about OOP you think you understand, but in fact, you don't. So while functional programming was probably the easiest course for me in university, it took me 1,5 s…

Do you have a tl;dr you would care to share?

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

#336

Post by pard68 » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 6:50 PM UTC

methodover wrote: post #277

I have a religious studies degree. I wonder if it’s prepared me better than a CS degree for the actual work I do. What did I learn with my RELS degree? Hermeneutics— understanding ancient texts written by lots of different authors in their original historical contexts, often which has been deeply redacted over time. Anyone who’s worked on any production code can see the benefit of being trained in that kind of thinki…

I have a degree in New Testament studies. I totally agree. Learning Koine did the most to help me

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

#337

Post by jshowa3 » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 6:51 PM UTC

eloff wrote: post #199

UncleMeat wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> some of the data structures I created perform better than anything in the published literature - but I couldn't be bothered to write papers. You can probably imagine why many people wouldn't believe you. "My work is amazing but I am too lazy to publish it" is a peak stereotype for self-educated people. My prior on this being ignorance rather than genius is super high. And if it is true that you are a once in a gene…

It's not really that hard. For example I made a queue that outperforms the lynx queue. My fundamental instinct after reading that paper was that there's no way faults out perform bounds checks in a modern, speculating out of order CPU. I ran some tests and yes my instinct is correct. Maybe the result wouldn't hold under peer review for some reason, I just tested a few more ideas / criticisms with a colleague and move…

So, in reality, you have no idea if your idea is truly better and it looks like you just ran some specific test cases and assumed it applied. Still paper worthy, but far from thinking that you made anything better than published literature. And the goal isn't to "personally benefit" it's to know that your ideas survive scrutiny and contribute something meaningful to the world.

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

#338

Post by jshowa3 » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 6:53 PM UTC

School-Cotton wrote: post #329

jshowa3 wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet your ideas could get you millions in publicity, fame, etc. to spend literally one week to advance the field. The fact that you actually argue against this is laughable, not to mention incredibly selfish.

What makes you think the idea is significant enough to get “millions in publicity”, etc.? He’s not claiming he invented cold fusion, just something that would be an iterative step in improving the state of the art, probably worth one paper in a decent but not super prestigious journal. Where do you get the idea that it’s worth a free Ph.D, fame and fortune, and all that?

What makes you think that they wouldn't? That's why I used the operative word "could".

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

#339

Post by snoman » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 6:55 PM UTC

hutzlibu wrote: post #221

pmarreck wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What languages do they use?

Does that matter? They probably use the right language to get the job done. Depends of the area of their work.

> Does that matter?

Yes.

While the evidence provided is anecdotal (that is to say: outliers exist in successfully learning anything outside of a formal education), there are languages designed to be more friendly and more fun for newcomers (Ruby, for example) while others are designed to be translate more directly to the instructions a machine might execute. More anecdotal evidence indicating that one language might facilitate informal learning better might be interesting or helpful.

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

#340

Post by zshrdlu » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 6:57 PM UTC

xmprt wrote: post #270

pmarreck wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any functional language, pretty much. They use enumeration (list/array traversal) to process a list/array of inputs. And it entirely makes impossible the off-by-one error. I am happy if I never have to see a for-loop again. (Even in JS, I use iteration/enumeration constructs as much as possible.)

I find it hard to believe a beginner with no theoretical CS background would pick up a functional language first. So the question still stands.

How strange. Why would you find it hard to believe?

It is one of several programming paradigms, after all. Am I missing something?