Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers

nocsdegree.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

461–470 of 480 posts

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

#461

Post by scifi6546 »

jhall1468 wrote: post #256
trustyhank wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a self taught developer I can say your point assumes self teaching is all about following your interests. This is simply not true. Self teaching is a combination of following your interests and figuring out your areas of weakness and attacking them. Part of my self learning involves browsing college degree requirements or graduate programs to identify must know topics, I learn them regardless if I have a particula…

My point assumes people bias their learning towards their interests. That isn't an opinion, that's just human nature. That's not to say you can't learn things that don't interest you, but if you aren't going to do it formally you certainly have to be driven by filling those gaps and most people aren't. Learning to think outside the box and learning about specific specialties that you don't find interesting aren't eve…

At the same time people who are self taught typically have more time and energy to attack things in more depth. My cs classes are pretty 'standard' and on my free time I can go on long tangents where I really learn. I learned about assembly programming and the bacics of how cpu's work from self learning rather than getting a very simplified understanding from a class. There are many things in cs that can not be learned in 1 semester and people who are self taught have the ability to take things at their own pace and jump to different topics, something that busy college studens have little time to do

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

#462

Post by neop1x »

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…

From what I saw it is individual and also based on area of CS. There are lots of people who are for example very good in JS, CSS and HTML, doing fantastic UI work while not having CS degree. And there are some with CS degree who can't really solve real tasks effectively. Some people learn only what is needed to pass an exam. And some people continuously want to learn more an be better. I, for one, started doing a degree but dropped due to lack of time and lot of work opportunities. And while school learned me some useful stuff and it could learn that way even more, I continued on my own. I am an introvert, not hating math and having lot of patience. I learned so much over years, for example C, python, PHP, bash, vim, linux administration, docker, kubernetes, mysql, golang, html, css, vue, flutter, http, cors, CSP, opengl, linear algebra in graphics, mutexes, atomic ops, Atmel AVR programming. I also learned abou free software, GNU history, Mozilla/Netscape story, Gopher. Majority of this self-tought because my life is CS, I am reading or doing something CS-related whole days because nothing interests me more. Yesterday I discovered dgraph and I am excited to learn in. There are math-heavy and scientific problems which require more school-type skills. But most real-world work is surprisingly not like this. On the other hand, lots of people lack CS history - I've heard some modern web devs don't even know what a http header really is.

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

#463

Post by neop1x »

typon wrote: post #32

I think the biggest difference between successful devs and unsuccessful ones is the hunger for constant learning and improvement. You can lack that hunger if you have a CS degree or not. I've observed this at my company and others I've worked for as an almost constant.

yes, completely agree with this. To be successful, it has to be your hobby and you have to be hungry to know more and improve. It is also required anyway because CS and technologies changes rapidly. For example it is not common to write UI apps in Tcl anymore. :) but it is now more common to use LXC and Docker instead of virtual machines and shared library versioning hedeaches.

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

#464

Post by mrjn »

neop1x wrote: post #462
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…

From what I saw it is individual and also based on area of CS. There are lots of people who are for example very good in JS, CSS and HTML, doing fantastic UI work while not having CS degree. And there are some with CS degree who can't really solve real tasks effectively. Some people learn only what is needed to pass an exam. And some people continuously want to learn more an be better. I, for one, started doing a deg…

Hey, founder of Dgraph Labs here. If you are interested, we would love to consider you for a role at Dgraph. Feel free to reach out to me at Manish at Dgraph.io.

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

#465

Post by adamredwoods »

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.

As an employer, I want the best. All other things held equal, someone trained from some kind of institution will give me more confidence for employment than someone self-taught. Self-taught shows initiative, but institutional learning applies a baseline training employers can trust.

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

#466

Post by varrock »

whatshisface wrote: post #7
itsmemattchung wrote: post #5

I 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…

You can "peel back the layers of abstraction" without a CS degree, all it takes is time and (admittedly rare) dedication. Webservers, operating systems and books on theoretical CS are all out there, you just have to be interested.

Are there any well known resources to do just this? I have no idea which books and topics to pick up.

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

#467

Post by taradinoc »

jhall1468 wrote: post #262
spamizbad wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any reason to suspect a self-taught developer couldn't also self-teach themselves simple compiler writing?

No, and my post never implied anything like it. On the contrary, my point was that I was forced into it by degree requirements. I'd know nothing of compiler design or implementation today without being forced to learn it. It's a valuable skill to be sure, but not one I'll ever use professionally because I find it frustrating and boring. And that's my point. If you're self-taught you have to be willing to learn things…

> If you're self-taught you have to be willing to learn things you find completely uninteresting (or boring, hard, whatever) if you want to be as well-rounded as a CS graduate.

Not necessarily, you could also just find all that CS stuff interesting.

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

#468

Post by GordonS »

jammygit wrote: post #293
GordonS wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in a similar situation. Dropped out of uni because it bored me, easily got a dev job (I was really lucky), worked for years as a developer, and then an architect. I eventually did study part time for a degree, mainly out of belief that it might help with future career opportunities, but also because I might enjoy it. I got a 1st, with honours. TBH, the only part I truely enjoyed was the final project. The rest wa…

My degree never required me to read a single academic paper

That was only actually for the final project. If it makes any difference, I studied with the Open University (remotely).

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

#469

Post by nimbosa »

lowercased wrote: post #357
alexandec wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My philosophy degree has been extremely helpful throughout my software engineering career, for many of the same reasons. Clear, concise writing is crucial in code reviews, documentation, product requirements documents, and all sorts of ad hoc communication (Slack, emails, wiki comments, Jira cards, etc). This is doubly true for remote work. Just like writing code, written communication is a difficult skill requiring…

philosophy degree here too. in general, the ability to approach a problem from multiple angles is helpful, not only in software, but (imo) for life in general. I'd started with software well before university (5th grade - maybe 6th?) and there were not many resources. Our school had a computer, but no classes as such - the staff weren't really even sure what to do with the 3 we had. HS - there were some "computer cla…

wow, now wondering what that accident might really be.. ;)

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

#470

Post by jhall1468 »

ColanR wrote: post #316
jhall1468 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point assumes people bias their learning towards their interests. That isn't an opinion, that's just human nature. That's not to say you can't learn things that don't interest you, but if you aren't going to do it formally you certainly have to be driven by filling those gaps and most people aren't. Learning to think outside the box and learning about specific specialties that you don't find interesting aren't eve…

It sounds like you're speaking for yourself more than for anybody else.

No, I'm speaking about human nature. Most people don't learn things they dislike because it fills a knowledge gap. How many people do you know with hobbies they hate?

It's natural to gravitate towards things that interest you. Some people are driven by gaps and learn things regardless, most people do not. That's not even controversial.

Post reply on HN