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OSSU: A path to a free self-taught education in computer science

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Re: OSSU: A path to a free self-taught education in computer science

#91

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

woat wrote: post #86
mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #65

Given there is variation of skill at anything, there will be variation of skill at self-teaching. Not all self-teaching is created equal. If you’re not good at self-teaching, then you get a bad teacher every single time. Colleges diversify this risk. A few teachers might be bad, a few will have their back to the gigantic lecture hall the whole time, etc. But averaged over all your classes, most of them are actually p…

If the self-taught candidate can pass an interview screen at the same level of a new grad, then how does hiring the former become more riskier than the latter?

Passing trivia interview screens is useless, can’t tell you anything useful. You have to dig recursively into technical details about past experience or projects, and for university new grads this would be their education work. What will the self-taught candidate do at this point?

Re: OSSU: A path to a free self-taught education in computer science

#92

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

hogFeast wrote: post #81
mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #65

Given there is variation of skill at anything, there will be variation of skill at self-teaching. Not all self-teaching is created equal. If you’re not good at self-teaching, then you get a bad teacher every single time. Colleges diversify this risk. A few teachers might be bad, a few will have their back to the gigantic lecture hall the whole time, etc. But averaged over all your classes, most of them are actually p…

If you can't tell whether someone else is skilled or not, you aren't competent enough to be making decisions.

Well, asking CS trivia isn’t going to tell you they have skills to do the job. What do you propose?

In my decade+ of experience building engineering teams, the only useful signal has been probing technical details of education and past work experience.

If a candidate has neither, they simply cannot emit any signal you could possibly use to decide if they can do the job. Quizzing them on sorting algorithms or devops buzzwords is not going to tell you anything.

Re: OSSU: A path to a free self-taught education in computer science

#93

Post by hogFeast »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #92
hogFeast wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can't tell whether someone else is skilled or not, you aren't competent enough to be making decisions.

Well, asking CS trivia isn’t going to tell you they have skills to do the job. What do you propose? In my decade+ of experience building engineering teams, the only useful signal has been probing technical details of education and past work experience. If a candidate has neither, they simply cannot emit any signal you could possibly use to decide if they can do the job. Quizzing them on sorting algorithms or devops b…

...where did I suggest that you should be quizzing people on trivia?

If you need to work out whether someone can do something, ask them to do it. Talk to them about things they have done as a first step. Don't overthink it.

Where I am, no-one asks DS&A questions. Managers still manage to fuck it up by focusing too much on inane questions - a propensity which seems to be inherent to human existence - and discounting just sitting down, asking someone to do something, and then getting them to explain why they did it that way.

Re: OSSU: A path to a free self-taught education in computer science

#94

Post by pgcj_poster »

robomartin wrote: post #57
tombert wrote: post #2

This is a bit hypocritical coming from a self-taught dropout, but I have kind of grown to dislike a lot of these "learn programming on your own!" things/bootcamps/courses. This isn't because of some idea that it's bad to learn programming for fun, but more that I think it's kind of reductive to try and squeeze things down to a streamlined lesson to begin with...There's a reason college takes four or more years; it ta…

I disagree with you in one regard, I think you are taking the position of a young person who hasn't had much education outside of high school. Take a look at it from the perspective of a 30 or 40-something with some college or a degree in another domain looking to transition into CS. In this case, the fact that formal CS degrees are, I dare say, polluted, with irrelevant crap is a waste of time, money and brain power…

Karl Marx was notably a philosopher who wrote about the alienation of labor which resulted from a highly specialized capitalist economy. He saw that workers were increasingly separated from the things they produced, and that people who would have once tended for the flock, shorn the sheep, spun the whool, and wove it into clothing were instead spending 16 hours at a machine, isolated from the final creation. He thought this converted people in mere cogs in a machine rather than fully realized creative individuals.

If you think that universities should just teach students tools that they need for some specific job, perhaps you would benefit from a course in Marxism, even if many of his ideas are today known to be wrong.

Re: OSSU: A path to a free self-taught education in computer science

#95

Post by woat »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #91
woat wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the self-taught candidate can pass an interview screen at the same level of a new grad, then how does hiring the former become more riskier than the latter?

Passing trivia interview screens is useless, can’t tell you anything useful. You have to dig recursively into technical details about past experience or projects, and for university new grads this would be their education work. What will the self-taught candidate do at this point?

I would hope they demonstrated competency for the position. I'm sure there are other avenues other than education work that hold the same weight.

Re: OSSU: A path to a free self-taught education in computer science

#96

Post by Pfhreak »

Merrill wrote: post #89
Pfhreak wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no reason why a serious student shouldn't be actively learning 50 weeks a year Except... being a human? Having a family? Decompressing from the stress of studying? Earning a living? (I worked 35 hours a week in school so I could eat...)

The newly graduated BS-CS is going to be expected to work at least 40 hours/week, with two weeks vacation, and to study outside work hours to get up to speed with his co-workers. And his cousin, the apprentice electrician has been working 40 hours/week, with two weeks vacation, studying to become a journeyman and doing all those other things. Why are college students given such a light schedule? (I also worked my way…

> The newly graduated BS-CS is going to be expected to work at least 40 hours/week, with two weeks vacation, and to study outside work hours to get up to speed with his co-workers.

Wasn't my experience at any of the major or minor tech companies I've worked at. I've never been expected to study outside of work hours, and most places pretty quickly gave more than two weeks vacation.

> Why are college students given such a light schedule?

Presumably because they have hours of coursework every day, they should be socializing and networking, they have to work to feed themselves and pay tuition, they have a family to see to, and practicing/exploring their domain on their own?

I was enrolled in 20 credit hours/semester and worked 35 hours a week. Nothing about my schedule was 'light'. I think it's wrong to assume that college students necessarily have it 'easy'.

Re: OSSU: A path to a free self-taught education in computer science

#97

Post by sincerely »

Jimpulse wrote: post #28
newguy1234 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big problem with projects like this is the quality is pretty much lacking. Most of those MOOCs to begin with are no way intended to replace the equivalent college class. Most of them are watered down introductions to the courses. At a baseline for me to take any MOOC seriously then I want to see a high-quality textbook (or equivalent) for the course. If that doesn't exist then my opinion is the course is likely t…

The site gp posted addresses your concerns. All the topics listed in that site primarily focus on textbooks with the videos or courses as additional resources.

What does gp stand for?

Re: OSSU: A path to a free self-taught education in computer science

#98

Post by erikpukinskis »

Pfhreak wrote: post #4
tombert wrote: post #2

This is a bit hypocritical coming from a self-taught dropout, but I have kind of grown to dislike a lot of these "learn programming on your own!" things/bootcamps/courses. This isn't because of some idea that it's bad to learn programming for fun, but more that I think it's kind of reductive to try and squeeze things down to a streamlined lesson to begin with...There's a reason college takes four or more years; it ta…

I'm 50/50 on this. Part of me really agrees with you -- you need time and practice and mistakes to learn this stuff. But also, I'm not sure it has to be wall clock time. Four years at university gets you breadth that is probably good for you as a human, and probably important for contextualizing your work as an engineer (oh hey, history might be a valuable lesson for your understanding of ethics. Art and literature m…

I think if you want to do a great job, a four year CS degree should take about four years. You could maybe shave off a year by working through the summers and really pushing.

I’m pretty smart, and I worked HARD in my degree program. I did do some extracurriculars in adjacent fields that I could have skipped: psychology courses, a handful of advanced writing and math courses. And I took a handful of masters level classes that required a lot more time and focus. So probably there’s an easier path. But overall I would say doing a great job in serious CS classes is a full time job for all but the most exceptional students.

Sure there are genius types who could do it all in 18 months, and yes you could skim through it as a C-student on much less time. Or even as an A-student who just did the minimum to get the grades.

But if you really want to learn the material, it’s not easy and there’s plenty to occupy your time.

On top of that, there are all kinds of side projects that your education should be spurring, and which will feed back into your coursework. I learned PHP, SQL, and webdev in my spare time.

I just don’t look back and think “wow, there was a lot of wasted time there”.

In fact, for many courses (Statistics with Calculus, Electrically Engineering) I regret just doing enough to get a grade and deeply wish I had strived to understand that material deeply.

But I guess I’m kind of disproving my point... maybe with no extracurriculars, no graduate classes, and no side projects I could have done it in 2 years?

I guess, but I wouldn’t have gotten nearly the same benefit. Those things were part of what really made my degree formative.

Re: OSSU: A path to a free self-taught education in computer science

#99

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

hogFeast wrote: post #93
mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, asking CS trivia isn’t going to tell you they have skills to do the job. What do you propose? In my decade+ of experience building engineering teams, the only useful signal has been probing technical details of education and past work experience. If a candidate has neither, they simply cannot emit any signal you could possibly use to decide if they can do the job. Quizzing them on sorting algorithms or devops b…

...where did I suggest that you should be quizzing people on trivia? If you need to work out whether someone can do something, ask them to do it. Talk to them about things they have done as a first step. Don't overthink it. Where I am, no-one asks DS&A questions. Managers still manage to fuck it up by focusing too much on inane questions - a propensity which seems to be inherent to human existence - and discounting j…

> “If you need to work out whether someone can do something, ask them to do it. Talk to them about things they have done as a first step. Don't overthink it.”

I agree very much. It’s why I would be substantially less likely to hire someone for a software engineering job if they don’t either have (a) a somewhat standard bachelor’s degree in a related discipline and communicate clearly about knowledge gained through coursework or (b) previous work experience already delivering software engineering solutions.

If instead they have self-taught academic certification and no professional software experience, it’s too unlikely they can do the job when I ask them about doing it, regardless of their ability to talk about CS topics traditionally associated with tech interviewing.

Re: OSSU: A path to a free self-taught education in computer science

#100

Post by discordance »

tombert wrote: post #40
tempsy wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess my question is if there's even such a thing as a "non self taught front end developer"? No 4 year university will teach you React as part of a CS degree. Most probably won't even teach JavaScript. Point is, becoming a good developer is largely a self-taught discipline as is.

> No 4 year university will teach you React as part of a CS degree. DISCLAIMER: I'm not a frontend developer. They will teach you why React is used though, at least indirectly. A good professor will explain the virtues and drawbacks of immutability, and explain how it affects performance; with this understanding, it will help you choose whether or not React or another framework is more appropriate. > Point is, becomi…

Dumb example but knowing why or when to Google something like how to find the smallest item in a list shouldn't necessitate a 4 year $50k+ degree
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