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I'm currently pursuing my CS degree after a couple of decades working as a programmer. The big difference is that you will miss "why" and learn mostly "how", unless you have a very inquisitive mind. On the other hand, not everybody can afford years of no income or crippling debt.
I worked for almost a decade before going back, and I had the same experience. As for debt, there's no need for crippling debt though if you go to a state school and are planning on working as a programmer.
> These skills are often gained through completing an undergraduate degree. Disagree. An apprentice or even a bootcamp grad can learn these skills in their current job or in a online MOOC course without a degree. What the author fails to mention is the amount of student debt that comes with the CS degree. In some cases a CS degree isn't worth the debt if the curriculum doesn't align with the market or if the universi…
I - disagree here. My CompSci background gets me called in to deal with the hard stuff that others skip bc the theoretical parts of CS are not present. As mentioned in a further comment below - I can understand why code is slow (eg: BigO for cpu or memory), what structures and algorithms to use in different scenarios (Data Structures & algos), how things are working (Computer Architecture, Programming Languages [theo…
But where I really perceive my limitations from lack of formal education is where math comes into play. I get the gist of how cryptography or machine learning works, but I don’t think I’d be able to work in those areas for a living even if I spent some time brushing up on my skills and doing self-study. I never developed the intuition for the relevant math, and that makes it extremely difficult to pick up the material just by reading. And doing an entire self study course sequence of the missing material seems like too much of a hill to climb.
Not saying CS degrees aren’t creative, IMO they just seem a little more prescriptive in their solutions to problems.
Universities are such a waste of time for the whole society. 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 ev…
The article should mention breadth. University education forces you to take courses that may be outside of being directly related to your field. My computer engineering degree also included classes in the following subjects, some mandatory, some chosen by me: - Film history - Multiple English/Literature courses - Geology - Physics - Chemistry - Macroeconomics - World History All these subjects made me a more well-rou…
> These skills are often gained through completing an undergraduate degree. Disagree. An apprentice or even a bootcamp grad can learn these skills in their current job or in a online MOOC course without a degree. What the author fails to mention is the amount of student debt that comes with the CS degree. In some cases a CS degree isn't worth the debt if the curriculum doesn't align with the market or if the universi…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I agree trade schools are not considered enough for the value they can add, your comment strikes me as reinforcing the college degree path. 1. Beyond a few general requirements, most CS programs do let you focus on what you’re interested in, and to much greater depth and pragmatic application than trade school. “Focusing on things you don’t care about” is a very minor part of college technical programs unless y…
> Beyond a few general requirements, most CS programs do let you focus on what you’re interested in, and to much greater depth and pragmatic application than trade school. 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…
Linear algebra, discrete math & probability really are needed all the time.
I'm currently pursuing my CS degree after a couple of decades working as a programmer. The big difference is that you will miss "why" and learn mostly "how", unless you have a very inquisitive mind. On the other hand, not everybody can afford years of no income or crippling debt.
I agree with you; I have a CS degree, and when I work with those who learned the programming mechanics (aka making code work) - are often skipped other topics that came in handy for me making other decisions. I can understand why code is slow (eg: BigO for cpu or memory), what structures and algorithms to use in different scenarios (Data Structures & algos), how things are working (Computer Architecture, Programming…
these have nothing to do with coding skills! any degree will get you those skills. project planning, deadlines, networking, dealing with people, etc. college will always give you access to people. what is missing is basically easy & sometimes free access to knowledge. god i miss having access to nearly any library and all these books, and all these publications you can print for free. i still have a trove of PDFs on…
I'm a self-taught programmer and finishing my BS in Software Engineering right now. Something I never appreciated in my career or my first go at college was the value of access to academic papers. There is so much knowledge available in academia that's locked away from the general public. Quite frankly a lot of that knowledge ends up duplicates effort because you can't get to it otherwise.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
From my experience, if people don't have the discipline to self-study some specific topic then they'll have a hard time in CS. The problem is CS is constantly changing and you need to be routinely upgrading your skills as time progresses to stay competitive in the marketplace. I would even go as far as saying that being able to self-study on your own is an essential life skill, up there with learning how to read/writ…
> The problem is CS is constantly changing and you need to be routinely upgrading your skills as time progresses to stay competitive in the marketplace. CS moves slowly, tooling moves fast.