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I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months

miguelrochefort.com

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Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months

#201

Post by fnord77 »

cxr wrote: post #170
abfan1127 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I paid off $240,000 in 3 years by not being an idiot with my money. I got on a budget with my wife. We cut up our credit cards because we always double or triple spent our money. We budgeted for things like Christmas. We followed Dave Ramsey's plan. We're 2 months from paying off our house now. Edit - I went back and checked, it was $140k.

Heads up: this is a common pattern of expression that makes you come off as really obnoxious to people who will never tell you that that's what's happening. If you can't understand why people have a problem with this, here's the explanation: there are almost certainly smarter people than you who happened to be more unlucky than you . You were lucky-but-stupid before, so you stopped being so stupid, and now your messa…

Do you do social skills coaching? Plenty of tone deaf people (myself included) who would gladly pay for this.

Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months

#202

Post by yudlejoza »

trogdor3000 wrote: post #179
jventura wrote: post #153

While I praise the author's effort, as a professor myself (I teach CS in a local polytechnic school - something like the US community colleges) I really doubt the quality of either the WGU and of the knowledge retention. As an example, this semester I'm teaching Operating Systems concepts (definitions, processes, threads, semaphores, mutexes, signals, memory layouts, IO, etc.), and even if I take the theoretical conc…

The sad thing is that no one cares abou the quality of the degree outside of academia. All they care about is seeing the BS on your resume.

That only proves GP's point. What the author of the blog-post did in 3 months does not meet the expectations of a CS program from even a half decent school (think bottom of the top-100 list).

You know what also doesn't meet those expectations? a degree from a diploma mill.

So what you're saying is that, since outside of academia no one cares about quality of education, employers don't mind (or maybe shouldn't mind, according to your opinion) degrees from diploma mills.

Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months

#203

Post by graycat »

pokler wrote: post #24

I think the subheading may be a better title -- 'This is the story of how I prepared for a decade to graduate in 3 months.' This seems feasible only for a specific set of people: those with previous experience & looking specifically for the credential and not so much the learning experience that comes with a traditional 4 year degree. Not to take away from the author's achievement, I just think it would be misleading…

> I just think it would be misleading to imply that this is a path that most people can take.

Yes, but if focus just on computing, in that field, there is, long amazing to me, evidence that "most people can" and, in a significant sense, do: I've long been impressed the degree to which the learning crucial for computing in the US has been obtained via self study much as in the OP.

Okay, say what you will about an ugrad computer science degree and then move on to graduate degrees, Masters and Ph.D. Uh, reality check: At the grad level, the material to be taught is often not all polished up and instead has rough edges, loose strings, things left unclear, etc. The fundamental reason is that the material, the work, the education, whatever, are supposed to be at the leading edge, or, if you will, the bleeding edge. More, the profs are paid mostly for their research (which for teaching is a path, with some efficacy, of quality) and not having all polished up, with good pedagogy, course teaching.

And in Ph.D. programs, and sometimes in Master's programs, the student is expected to write something, original, hopefully publishable -- usual criteria, "new, correct, and significant".

So for the work, it's, in a word, new. Right away can assume false starts, dead ends, encounters with brick walls, unpredictable rates of progress, unpredictable results, etc. So, we're back to independent work or, if you will, self study.

Main point: In education, self-study is not only helpful but at times crucial. In particular, independent study has been especially important in the US computer industry. So, in a sense, the independent study in the OP is not very surprising.

Oh, by the way, the OP mentioned a Georgia Tech Master's degree for ~$10,000. Secret: Commonly high end US research university graduate programs are very short on good students and long on tuition scholarships -- tuition should be about $0.00 for the whole graduate school effort.

Evidence: I was a student and a prof in applied math and computing. From a world class research university, I got a Master's and a Ph.D. For the grad degrees, I paid nothing in tuition. Independent study was crucial.

E.g., of the five Ph.D. qualifying exams, I did the best in the class on four of them, all four made heavy use of independent study, and three of them making heavy use of independent study before the grad program.

E.g., the work that did me the most good in grad school was the independent study with results that were clearly publishable.

Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months

#204

Post by dragonwriter »

the_only_law wrote: post #191
chrisseaton wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but the qualification (from whichever accredited university) would open up a lot of opportunities I'd caution about this - if you think you can apply to jobs requiring a PhD I would think that when you apply the first thing they're going to do is to ask you who your advisor was and what you did. Unlike a bachelors just having a PhD isn't worth much - they will want to know what you actually achieved. If you have a…

Just out of curiosity, who is offering remote PhD’s? The only online PhD’s I’ve ever seen have been in nursing related fields.

Lots of schools, and not just in Nursing. Google “remote phd”

Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months

#205

Post by yters »

gspr wrote: post #44
yters wrote: post #12

Comp Eng PhD here. The fields can indeed be dramatically compressed. Lots of trivia obscure the main points in each comp sci topic.

This comment summarizes much of the the whole thread: a bunch of people who think that getting an academic degree should be like trade school.

No I am not arguing for a trade school approach. My impression from 4 years of undergrad and 4 years of graduate studies is the material in my classes could be much better focused around the key questions that created the topic in the first place and why it is important. And this would significantly reduce the content in the classes, while making it more accessible to a larger audience.

Also, while not reducing academia to a trade school, there are non faddish stable practical skills that should also be taught in an academic setting much more.

My ideal curriculum would maintain fundamental results that are not directly practical, like proofs of the halting problem, no free lunch, and np completeness, to delimit the realm of the possible. It would also teach practical skills around systems programming and software development, and well established widely used protocols.

Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months

#207

Post by [deleted] »

fnord77 wrote: post #201
cxr wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heads up: this is a common pattern of expression that makes you come off as really obnoxious to people who will never tell you that that's what's happening. If you can't understand why people have a problem with this, here's the explanation: there are almost certainly smarter people than you who happened to be more unlucky than you . You were lucky-but-stupid before, so you stopped being so stupid, and now your messa…

Do you do social skills coaching? Plenty of tone deaf people (myself included) who would gladly pay for this.

[deleted]

Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months

#208

Post by ambicapter »

fnord77 wrote: post #201
cxr wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heads up: this is a common pattern of expression that makes you come off as really obnoxious to people who will never tell you that that's what's happening. If you can't understand why people have a problem with this, here's the explanation: there are almost certainly smarter people than you who happened to be more unlucky than you . You were lucky-but-stupid before, so you stopped being so stupid, and now your messa…

Do you do social skills coaching? Plenty of tone deaf people (myself included) who would gladly pay for this.

Seriously, what an amazing comment. Imagine if we had someone like this in every discussion on the internet.

Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months

#209

Post by theplague42 »

leetcrew wrote: post #198
trophycase wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the average household probably also isn't in 240k of debt unless they made very very poor financial choices.

this is correct, the median household has a (positive!) net worth of ~$120k. you have to go down to the tenth percentile and below to find households that actually have negative net worths. https://dqydj.com/average-median-top-net-worth-percentiles/#...

I do not think that "240k in debt" (he clarifies it was 140k in another comment) actually means owing 240k more than your total assets.

As far as the median net worth, that's just someone most of the way through paying off their mortgage...

Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months

#210

Post by brundolf »

pokler wrote: post #24

I think the subheading may be a better title -- 'This is the story of how I prepared for a decade to graduate in 3 months.' This seems feasible only for a specific set of people: those with previous experience & looking specifically for the credential and not so much the learning experience that comes with a traditional 4 year degree. Not to take away from the author's achievement, I just think it would be misleading…

The thing is, 90% of the value of a 4 year degree (at this point) is the credential. I support broad and quality general education, I think it has value, but I don't suggest anyone put themselves deeply in debt for the rest of their lives over it. But to have any shot whatsoever at a decent job? Yeah, maybe.

So if you have the opportunity to pay a fraction of the cost for the credential, even if it means teaching yourself everything, that seems like a strategy very much worth considering for many people. It's dystopian that that's where we are now, but it is what it is.

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