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

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

#341

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

daveFNbuck wrote: post #317

hirundo wrote: post #9

I'm 39 years into a coding career with no CS degree. But as a compulsive auto-didact (probably a common syndrome among HN readers) it hasn't been a barrier. Self-learning is a continual, daily requirement for coders. If you can continue your education as needed for this job you probably also have the skills and interest to learn from scratch. I studied the same books and did the same exercises as my brother the CS ma…

> Not everyone can learn coding without externally imposed structure. That's actually not what a CS degree is primarily about. You learn to code in maybe the first 2 or 3 classes. After that, it's assumed that you can translate ideas into code and you start learning about different areas of computer science. If you just need to learn to code for a job, there are bootcamps that can teach you that in a fraction of the…

Good comment. I can code, and I am knowledgeable about computing in general terms, but I am not a computer scientist as I haven't benefitted from the rigour of formal training. (I am a lawyer, fwiw).

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

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Post by username90 » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 7:02 PM UTC

mls-pl wrote: post #254

xwdv wrote: post #224

No CS degree is fine when you’re doing trivial programming work that doesn’t really matter, such as application frontends. But could you imagine riding in a plane or using critical infrastructure services programmed by people with absolutely no computer science degree to their name? Not a chance. Like getting surgery from a butcher.

People with CS degree have more theoretical knowledge, for sure. But people without it, self taught, have more practical knowledge, cause they simply done things instead of learning about them. Decide yourself, which is better.

I don't think that many self taught developers have any practical knowledge related to avionics control systems, there is only so much you can do on your own.

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

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Post by School-Cotton » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 7:18 PM UTC

jshowa3 wrote: post #338

School-Cotton wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Because I’m aware enough of the CS world that I just know that an iterative improvement in an obscure data structure is not enough to become rich and famous.

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

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Post by cjvirtucio » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 7:18 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 repeatedly encounter engineers who struggle to write even the most basic JIRA tickets. It was a real eye-opener on how many technical people, while brilliant, tend to take writing skills (or communication skills in general) for granted.

Funny thing is that it's deemed unimportant when they have to do it themselves, but appreciate it when presented with well-documented tooling/libraries.

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

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Post by adamredwoods » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 7:26 PM UTC

hutzlibu wrote: post #213

boblebricoleur wrote: post #90

Since these articles seem to be putting a cash value on the word "success" (or at the very least an instagram buzz value), I would point that IMHO, most of this success comes from people skill. You can have a degree or not, even bad developpers can hop from one job to another, making more and more money in the process, given they're good enough to manipulate the recruiters/clients into hiring them. Making money does…

"encouraging kids to drop out of high school to study CS on their own is wrong. " What about encouraging people to learn CS on their own, who have no way, to go to the university? (lack of formal education, money, time ...) And for those people usually what matters are not academic high valued software, but to make a living. And many people dream about making a living with IT, so they want to read such success storie…

At some point the saturation for (entry-level) programmers with degrees will be enough that (entry-level) programmers who are self-taught will be in zero demand.

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

#346

Post by Pete-Codes » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 7:26 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…

That's really interesting! Want to do an interview?

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

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Post by Corazoor » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 7:27 PM UTC

jhall1468 wrote: post #130

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 t…

There is actually a difference between being self-taught as you describe it, and being an autodidact.

The latter is able to identify holes in his own knowledge, and find appropriate material to educate himself on. That ability is what defines an autodidact in the first place.

This is also the very same thing you get taught in basically all sciences: How to aquire knowledge about a subject matter you yet know nothing about.

So, an autodidactic Programmer without a degree will most certainly have similar knowledge as a CS graduate, simple because that is how such people "tick".

It's just that not every self-taught programmer is an autodidact. And in that case I agree with your argument.

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

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Post by jki275 » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 7:27 PM UTC

naravara wrote: post #288

icedchai wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try large boring corporations, such as banks and insurance companies.

Or the government. All you need to do is: a.) Be able to pass a drug test b.) Not have any problematic debts or associations with problematic groups (e.g. Aryan Nation, ISIS) c.) Have a certification or degree that is related to the very specific thing they are asking for. It's entirely clearing a checklist when they're recruiting. They have no idea how to evaluate for actual competence.

That's heavily dependent on where you are in government. It's not true any of the places I've worked.

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

#349

Post by OscarDC » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 7:28 PM UTC

There's a specific case in France, where most developpers I know don't have a proper "CS degree" but have a more generalist "engineering diploma".

I can even speak for myself. I didn't learn to code at school much , did some bash and C here and there but that was not the point of my study. We mostly had math, physics and electronic-oriented courses and more precisely in my case a lot of telecommunication courses.

Still, for a first programming job, engineers (as in those with an engineering school diploma) are often preferred to people with a CS degree, which did a lot more programming that we did.

I would guess that it mostly has to do with the reputation of both the schools and the students from there. When it comes to STEM, engineering school is seen as much more prestigious than studying in a university. Young people with higher grades wishing to make a career in programming more often than not tend to choose the former over the latter - even if it means less focused courses.

And yet having said all that, I wouldn't say that french developpers are worse in any way than developpers from other places. Even if most of us learn to truly program at our first job.

I'm not at all saying that a CS degree has no point, but as long as you have the minimum knowledge about the field when starting, it's very efficient to learn on the job the specificities.

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

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Post by jki275 » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 7:32 PM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #74

bluedino wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It has not been very long since CS degrees were taught entirely in C89 or C++98, and there are a lot of us who won't touch Python or Java unless forced to.