A CS degree is better than teaching yourself how to code? • Hacker News Board

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

#271

Post by mettamage » Sun, Nov 03, 2019, 3:21 PM UTC

gatherhunterer wrote: post #259

mettamage wrote: post #244

As a bootcamp instructor: 1. I gave deadlines 2. Students did group assignments 50% of the time 3. They learned to work with Git and how to communicate I studied a CS degree and learned less collaboration than my students did. Based on my experience I must conclude with regret that this article is too unnuanced and therefore not very informing, if at all. The author himself can email me for a discussion on mettamage@…

Everything that you need to know about the author’s reasoning is in the “prestige” section. He claims that it is prestigious and therefore good to have a CS degree with no explanation of his logic. This is not a reasoned conclusion, it is an opinionated dig at those whom he feels are invading his space without paying their dues.

I see, I agree with your interpretation as well.

> Certainly there is some level of prestige that comes with having a degree. This comes from the level of communication required to simply navigate a degree. Also it is, in a way, a validation stamp that says… “Yes - you have the skills to be a Software developer”.

Prestige is only worth something in an inefficient social system. I don't want to encourage prestige or signaling as it will make a system worse off in the long run. Prestige does not hold any inherent value as the metric of why something is prestigious may be for completely the wrong reasons.

Moreover, the level of communication required to navigate a degree is too heterogeneous to measure and then state as an opinion that it is always more difficult than a bootcamp. Navigating my psychology, CS + business minor bachelor and game studies masters were easy. Navigating my CS master degree was tough. They are all university degrees and it was fully dependent on my personality. The reason navigating my CS master degree was tough is because I'm not that formal in my thinking.

Likewise, I had a couple of people who really disliked full-stack development and wanted to be front-end developers but they were stuck in a full-stack bootcamp.

Navigating those 3 months was a really tough thing to do for them. They talked with me and I adjusted their curriculum to a front-end one as much as possible. And also, front-end wasn't my specialty, so I couldn't optimize it as much as I would've liked. Other teachers may not be so nice (I've met them) and they knew they were taking a huge risk telling me this. They were vulnerable, and made the situation more complicated for me and themselves as well, which I was fine with but it isn't easy. I had an easier time at my psych. bsc, CS bsc. and game studies msc.

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

#272

Post by gamesbrainiac » Sun, Nov 03, 2019, 3:23 PM UTC

bitfhacker wrote: post #247

gamesbrainiac wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to be honest with you, I find your experience to be contrary to mine. I went to university to get a degree in Computer Science, but I dropped out because the course work was full of stuff that did not have anything to do with computer science. Furthermore, you will find that in many countries, a Computer Science degree is the same as a Software Engineering degree. I have met many computer science majors who ar…

I have the sake experience of you. I started working when I was 19 and started at 21(at night) a computer science. I left the course at the 4th year because I felt that I wasn't learning anything.

I did the same thing. I started working at 14, so way before I went to university. By the 4th year, since they had no real computer scientists, they just flooded it with super hard math courses.

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

#273

Post by gamesbrainiac » Sun, Nov 03, 2019, 3:24 PM UTC

scaryclam wrote: post #246

gamesbrainiac wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to be honest with you, I find your experience to be contrary to mine. I went to university to get a degree in Computer Science, but I dropped out because the course work was full of stuff that did not have anything to do with computer science. Furthermore, you will find that in many countries, a Computer Science degree is the same as a Software Engineering degree. I have met many computer science majors who ar…

I have a CS degree and my university also provided a SE degree. The first years, we all studied together. Only in the final year did we study courses that deviated (some were still shared). The final year was about focusing on either the science or the engineering disciples. I felt like it worked really well. The SE's left with a really good knowledge of computational science, while also learning how to engineer solu…

I think that is a really nice way of doing it. I honestly, don't know what you would do as a capstone project for Computer Science though; perhaps design a compiler or a language?

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

#274

Post by kemiller2002 » Sun, Nov 03, 2019, 3:28 PM UTC

vbtemp wrote: post #222

I work with a team of people who mostly have "Software Engineering" degrees. I am one of the few with CS. In short: IN GENERAL - Those with SE degrees (or other non-CS degree, or no degree) can be excellent developers (good code style, good unit test coverage, aggressive PR reviewers, etc). However, the art of computer programming - or computer system design -- is often in formally defining the problem at hand using…

I agree with you in theory, but here's your problem. You assume people without degrees in Computer Science cannot learn those concepts and those with them automatically understand them. A lot of CS people I've met pass a 15 week course in Finite Automata and could not explain one thing they've learned from it. I can go buy a book on Amazon and watch YouTube videos and become more of an expert on it than they ever will. Outside of certain degree programs that I've worked with people who have them, I would never assume someone knows something because of a Computer Science degree. That being said, you're right there are a lot of people without CS degrees that have no idea what you're talking about and wouldn't know where to begin on certain problems. (And you did say in general too, so I know you were making a basic assumption, and that it's not a steadfast statement).

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

#275

Post by antb123 » Sun, Nov 03, 2019, 3:37 PM UTC

cryptica wrote: post #142

1290cc wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here, getting close to hitting 7 figures. Never stepped foot in a university but I was coding from 13 and working part time from about that age. Uni just seemed like a waste of time as the CS curriculum was already out of date for modern development in the country I'm from (this was mid 90s and internet was taking off). I would not recommend this career track if you're the kind of person that wants to climb a ca…

The most valuable lessons I got from University were: - Time and space complexity (Big O, Little O, big Omega) - Algorithms and data structures (linked lists, heaps, trees, graphs, search algorithms, sorting algorithms) - Artificial intelligence (neural networks, evolutionary computation, decision trees) - Electrical engineering logic gates and circuit analysis (gives a good basic understanding) - Discrete maths (De…

Unfortunately with 95% of programming you just reuse libraries created by someone else and modern programming language come with much of the data structures built in.

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

#276

Post by goshx » Sun, Nov 03, 2019, 3:38 PM UTC

greggman2 wrote: post #105

Teaching yourself to code while getting a CS degree is best IMO. Just teaching yourself you'll likely miss lots of topics and not challenge yourself as much. Conversely I've met plenty of students that don't really care about the topic and are just taking the class to get a job. So do both! Take the class and teach yourself. In other words pursue your hobbies and use code where those hobbies match. Learn the things y…

TL;DR: doing this is what ruined my desire to pursue the CS degree.

I started working on web development before my CS classes started, back in 2001. Web was just not part of the curriculum, and when web related classes were introduced, they were using Java for the job. I was working with PHP, so I absolutely hated the idea that I’d have to go home to learn to code in a different language (because the professor didn’t teach it at all) to be able to complete the homework, while I could be learning more about what I could actually use in my daily job. When all the agile trend started, TDD, etc. it was even worse. Professors were stuck in the past or in academia, not having a clue of what was happening in the market.

Eventually I dropped out.

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

#277

Post by codingdave » Sun, Nov 03, 2019, 3:39 PM UTC

Most of the points listed in this article will also be learned by working in the real world, on a good team. And if you get a degree in CS just to learn to code, you are doing it the hard, expensive way.

I do believe in higher education. If you want a broader and deeper education than what you get in high school, with new ways to approach learning and applying your education to larger projects, a degree gives it to you. It also gives you the academic credentials to pursue higher degrees. And the point that some prestige can come with a degree is true.

There are reasons why a degree is a good thing. But for the most part, this article doesn't accurately explain what they are. If you just want to learn to code, get a job, and do it well... you don't need a degree for that.

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

#278

Post by zeroonetwothree » Sun, Nov 03, 2019, 3:46 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #192

ggambetta wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People with no degrees hate degrees. People who can't pass FAANG interviews hate FAANG interviews. It's a defense mechanism, along the lines of "I'm not a bad student, the teacher hates me".

What does it say about FAANG interviews that many can pass them without any practical experience by studying leetCode and Cracking the Code for a year? How many SE’s do those companies have? Do you really think they are all the best and brightest?

Having done 500+ FAANG interviews I don't think I've seen anyone hired "without any practical experience". (Except new grads, obviously, but presumably that's not what you meant).

leetcode definitely helps but won't guarantee being hired. There are many things we look for that it won't help you with.

And the unfortunate fact is that merely having experience doesn't mean you are a competent programmer. We need some way to check for that, and onsite coding is the best way we have right now, even though it's imperfect. Sometimes companies ask more realistic problems ("implement this API on a laptop w/ access to docs") so it's not always so artificial, but the artificial problems make it easier to have a level playing field.

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

#279

Post by honkycat » Sun, Nov 03, 2019, 3:47 PM UTC

innocentoldguy wrote: post #102

ggambetta wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People with no degrees hate degrees. People who can't pass FAANG interviews hate FAANG interviews. It's a defense mechanism, along the lines of "I'm not a bad student, the teacher hates me".

I got a degree and graduated summa cum laude with a 4.0 GPA. I don't think my college education has been anywhere near as valuable to me as reading software engineering books and coding a lot has been. If I could do it all over again, I would save the $60,000 and buy a sailboat.

I agree with that 100%. I am a voracious reader, I love software engineering and productivity and fiction and Syfy and nonfiction and... You get the idea.

I have a previous comment on this site about reading. That is actually what I look for, intellectual curiosity and a desire to continue learning and growing.

I'll just quote myself:

""" What I look for in a developer: READS BOOKS. ( Audio books count )

That's the only thing. I'm sorry, if you are not reading and studying to keep up, you are getting left behind. There are so many brilliant people writing amazing books on a huge array of subjects. If I could get every one of my developers to read ONE book on software design[0] a year, I would die happy and the entire industry would be 10 years ahead.

They don't even have to be technical books. I just want to see intellectual curiosity and a commitment to self improvement.

- 0: In the vein of Clean Architecture, The Pragmatic Programmer, The Mythical Man Month, Designing Data-Intensive Applications, The Google SRE book, etc """

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

#280

Post by honkycat » Sun, Nov 03, 2019, 3:51 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #192

ggambetta wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People with no degrees hate degrees. People who can't pass FAANG interviews hate FAANG interviews. It's a defense mechanism, along the lines of "I'm not a bad student, the teacher hates me".

What does it say about FAANG interviews that many can pass them without any practical experience by studying leetCode and Cracking the Code for a year? How many SE’s do those companies have? Do you really think they are all the best and brightest?

It's not that they CAN be gamed. It is that they NEED to be gamed.

They want you to want the position. They want you to explicitly study and prepare for the position.

Sure you could go from zero to ready to interview Google over the course of the year. But I feel like most experienced software developers would only have to study for a month or so to really brush up on interview questions.