Shit. What about NO DEGREE in general?
No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers
411–420 of 480 posts
Re: No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers
#412Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. I liked your initial point, but the argument weakens... People absolutely have learned all the above things (and very well), on their own, outside of a CS degree, and I bet you could've.
I wasn't advocating that people don't. There are absolutely vastly better compiler programmers than I am that have never taken a formal class. My point was that I wouldn't have learned it because I don't enjoy it. And sometimes, professionally, we get to do stuff that isn't fun. The nature of being self-taught is heavily biasing the things that interest you. College forces you outside of the box. Outside of the box h…
Would just like to say that this is a fantastic point, and really makes the case for a formal education. It takes a special kind of self-motivation (which I readily admit I do not have) to diligently learn those uninteresting-but-necessary parts of the CS curriculum.
Re: No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers
#413Came for interviews with self taught people who are now full time developers.
Found interviews with self taught people who hacked together websites and built businesses.
Admirable but misleading. Suggested title: “No CS Degree required - interviews with entrepreneurs who learned to hack code”
Re: No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers
#414I 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…
It seems like you’re saying it’s nice to know the layers of abstraction but it sounds like you don’t use it in real life. As a non CS degree developer I can’t really see anything that I’m missing because of not having the degree. I have a successful business, get hired for freelance jobs for a good salary, can build anything I want, ... Would love to know what one would get out of having the degree versus self study.
An engineer with a degree and a contractor can both build you a bridge.
The difference is one will remain standing after an earthquake.
Re: No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers
#415I'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…
Can you elaborate on some of these books you are referring to? I'm a self taught developer in his first real, institutional engineering role and I am worried I'm in over my head sometimes and would love to read some "must haves".
Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment, by Richard Stevens
Re: No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers
#416Another one of these articles. For novelty, I'm expecting to see an article about the novel idea of there being successful developers who do have CS degrees. It can happen!
The site seems to lean pretty heavily on contradicting the remarkable idea that you might need a CS degree to slap together a website and write some lines of PHP.
But that being said, there's a lot of evidence that some people who don't have CS degrees can do great programming and even great CS, and a lot of evidence that some people with CS degrees can't code their way out of a wet paper bag.
I'm not sure why everyone feels the need to run around with their dresses over their heads every time this comes up; although it does provide a good venue for people to indulge in the harmless pleasure of praising oneself on HN.
Re: No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers
#417I 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…
Funny, I'm similar. I have an English Degree (Fiction Writing emphasis) and minored in Religious studies. It's proven to be a positive in so many ways, mostly because I am an excellent communicator and able to explain complex subjects to non-tech folk. I've also been told that I stand out as totally different from every candidate they've interviewed, prior. I started programming on my own at age 11 and have been passionate about coding my entire life.
Re: No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers
#418I 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…
I'm at a point where I don't want to do (web) app development anymore and want to switch to something more interesting (to me)so I'm not stuck doing something I hate for the next x decades. Unfortunately, it seems that what I want to get into (low level embedded stuff, firmware development, etc) seem almost neccessary to have a degree (or even a Masters or PhD). I assume this isn't mostly because of the level of EE k…
I have coworkers doing that without a degree. They did however show up with experience.
Personal projects will do. You could work on Open Source software. Obvious choices: qemu, valgrind, FreeRTOS, RTEMS, Linux (kernel), SeaBIOS, gcc, clang, ghidra, binutils, MAME, OpenOCD, gdb, dosemu, dosbox, FreeDOS, Wine, SDCC, dolphin-emu, Xenia, coreboot
Re: No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers
#419Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 fundame…
We've all seen the utter messes that recent CS graduates have made with classes, unnecessary inheritance and over complicating problems, while being unable to do fundamentally basic logic, you must know the opposite problem is equally true.
CS majors who cannot program applying academic theory without understanding.
I'm old enough to remember graduates rolling their own sorting algos, or building classes 6 levels of inheritance deep. While simultaneously creating massive if/else nesting, with tons of duplicated code, unable to understand how to use basic ideas like functions and recursion, even though I'm sure they probably had a whole one lecture on the subject, mixed in with whole modules on pointless compiler lectures.
Because that's what their CS degree taught them.
How both CS graduates and non-graduates really learn is by seeing what other programmers do in the industry, or by making their own mistakes.
Re: No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers
#420Earlier quoted context omitted.
1) You're allowed to curse on the internet. HN doesn't have a content filter. Saying "f*cking" reduces the impact the curse is supposed to have. If you feel it's appropriate to curse then just fucking do it. 2) Not everyone does well in a formal school environment. This site shows people that self-taught can still earn good money. 3) Even if a CS degree would increase the Austrian's earnings, how much would it increa…
Regarding 2, I'd like to point out this is both 100% true and somewhat misleading. You certainly can be successful with no degree, but I think anyone without one will tell you it's a significantly more difficult path than a CS grad takes. If you are driven enough to pass some of the most difficult interviews in the industry, I'd argue you probably could have done well in a formal school environment, since the intervi…
Not all interviews are for the biggest corporations. Many do well with freelance or medium sized companies. Those interviews are nowhere as intense.