A CS degree is better than teaching yourself how to code?

My experience has been that it has taken a lot of effort and time to try to learn things, and keep up with everything. Also, I think my resume just gets straight up tossed out a large fraction of the time compared to CS majors.

Maybe there's other issues, but I've had people look over my resume and things like that.

Additionally, my lists of technology are pretty weak (I'm trying to work on it, but my company doesn't use a lot of mainstream technologies if any).

I did not have any internships in CS.

I don't know how bootcampers and other get jobs at FAANG companies in 6 months, because I can't even get a non technical phone screen with them.

I even did triplebyte without too much success.

That being said, I accept there are probably other issues and things I need to work on, and I'm trying to work on them as much as I can.

But, I have spent a lot of time reading about topics, asking my friends questions, reading conversations in group chats that are technically oriented and looked up things from them to learn. It has been a hell of a journey.

Trying to move to a company that uses more mainstream technologies. So I can have a resume that will actually get me calls back.

This is a bit of a ramble.

Also, considering the article. I don't think I really had to learn any of those things in school well. Maybe if you do clubs and things, but I don't think it's much of a result of the curriculum IMO as far as teamwork/communication go. I know CS majors have senior design where the work in teams, but I think a lot of them suck at the teamwork part.

Current weaknesses of mine: Socket programming, messaging, multi threaded applications, I don't know SQL (beyond basic queries)/database schema design (we don't SQL it at work)

I still barely know what dependency injection, factories etc are. I only learned what a "god object" was today.

I'm trying really hard. I want to have a really good job since I know the benefits in terms of rewards of me studying hard are HUGE.

I didn't know this and I find it incredibly surprising. I've literally never heard anyone say anything bad about trade school ever. In fact, I almost always hear about it in contrast with college, which is said to be an expensive waste of time that turns kids into gay communists.

Not that few. Here's what mine has:

- Writing x 2

- Discrete Mathematics (a few concepts in there are really needed - the rest is mostly not)

- Public Speaking

- Humanities x 4

- Calculus x 2 (I doubt even 10% of SW folks use this)

- Linear Algebra (as few as calculus use this)

- science course (e.g. chemisty, bio, phys - you pick) x 2

- Non tech seminars x 2

- Probability and Statistics (I'd argue one should take this, but I'd still wager less than a quarter of developers use this)

What's worse: The majority of the above are in the first two years - so if you don't have the discipline to do courses you feel are irrelevant, you just want get to the fun stuff. Only 6 out of the first 20 courses are related to computers.

> “I never would have cut it in college” is not a free pass from needing a well-rounded education, appreciation of art, literature, business, ethics, etc., and good writing, communication and organizational skills well beyond what’s taught in trade school. This is becoming increasingly critical in business software settings, where developers are often working directly in tandem with product managers.

Look - I think I gained quite a bit from the well rounded education I got. And my general advice is that people should go for it. However, I also have the reality of experience: Most of my peers who have degrees are poor at writing, poor at communication, poor at ethics, and poor at business skills. I see nothing differentiating them from trade school folks in this regard - and these all matter in the work place.

So yes, I gained quite a bit from those courses. But the reality is most grads do not.

Having lectures in 21st century is already pointless (we have video on demand). And what is worse, we force professors to teach basic stuff to undegraduates when they could spend time doing their research. And general education requirements? Ugh.

Let's be real, most of programming-related jobs don't require knowledge of a 4 year undegraduate degree in CS even taking career progress into account (most modern jobs that only hire college graduates don't require undergraduate degree level knowledge).