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

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

#391

Post by boblebricoleur » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 9:55 PM UTC

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…

This is turning into a "I'm self taught and I can code juste as well as the next CS graduate" debate.

I totally agree with that proposition. The degree is not a sine qua none condition of competence.

My point was that success stories about kids making a lot of cash on a self taught developer skillset are pure and simple lies. They hide the truth to those who really want to get into the IT industry and make a living with it. That truth is : work your engineering skills if you want to build cools things.

I said make a living. Not get crazy rich. Engineers don't get crazy rich. Salesmen (and salewomen) do.

People that did not have the ressources or desire to go to uni would get a lot more encouragement and from real developer tales : stories about smart engineering, beautiful UIs, dedication to a craft and passion, or even sly hacking.

Instead they read stories about skilled salesmen. The stories are not even that good. Glengary glen ross and the wolf of wall street are much better.

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

#392

Post by sushid » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 9:57 PM UTC

klingonopera wrote: post #353

adamredwoods wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Doubtful, you're ignoring the fact that self-taught (entry-level) programmers cannot simply be replaced by (entry-level) programmers with degrees (or vice versa). Both have their up- and downsides, and treating them like equals is ignoring that which makes them each of them unique. There will always be a market for self-taughts, if you don't understand this, you don't understand what makes a self-taught special.

What do you mean? Why don't you enlighten the rest of us about what makes a self-taught special?

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

#393

Post by Demiurge » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 10:05 PM UTC

It's interesting that not having a degree is equated to being self taught developer. What if you chose to take all CS major courses but nothing else? University degrees are supposed to give you generic background on many subjects, on which you can specialize later, not to set you up as a "developer". This is why it is even called computer "Science" and not "dev ops certification".

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

#394

Post by Melkor765 » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 10:08 PM UTC

staticassertion wrote: post #364

james_in_the_uk wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

At what point do I get to call myself a computer scientist? I dropped out of college halfway through.

I think it's fair to call yourself a computer scientist if you do computer science. If I walk dogs I'm a dog walker right?

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

#395

Post by abacadaba » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 10:11 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…

I dunno I think it might be kinda like quantum mechanics. If you think you understand OOP, then you definitely don't understand OOP.

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

#396

Post by alain_gilbert » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 10:15 PM UTC

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #388

huehehue wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many are bad at communicating in general, e.g. selectively ignoring/missing parts of an email, incomplete sentences, typos. Some also have the nasty habit of skimming stuff and replying to what they thought they read. I've seen this from interns to CTOs and remain baffled by its prevalence.

> Many are bad at communicating in general, e.g. selectively ignoring/missing parts of an email, incomplete sentences, typos. Some also have the nasty habit of skimming stuff and replying to what they thought they read. I've seen this as well. It really makes one wonder how they're able to code properly since programming is, in a sense, also the expression of ideas as text.

Maybe they are used to compilers telling them all the typos before it actually compile.

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

#397

Post by coldcode » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 10:19 PM UTC

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…

38 years here, I had undergrad in Chem and part of a masters. Had no college classes or experience when I got my first programming job. Always worked at the leading edge of whatever I did and always had success. Was never an issue. Today I wonder if I would have even gotten an interview.

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

#398

Post by 40acres » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 10:23 PM UTC

I'm listening to the excellent BBC podcast 13 Minutes to the Moon about the Apollo program, can you guess how many CS degrees worked on programming the Apollo Guidance Computer?

In my opinion, software is more of an art and design discipline than other types of engineering. The traditional notions of what constitutes an engineer do not apply as much to software. This is clear in the fact that we have no formal certification.

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

#399

Post by t34543 » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 10:35 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…

I suffered the opposite experience. I can’t learn in an academic setting. If I’m faced with a problem (read: motivation) I’ll learn what I need to solve it.

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

#400

Post by eloff » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 10:43 PM UTC

jshowa3 wrote: post #337

eloff wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're making a lot of assumptions there about which your mistaken. I don't need to defend myself here. If that's what you want to believe, that's fine.