I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months • Hacker News Board

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

#271

Post by abfan1127 » Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 6:01 PM UTC

cxr wrote: post #267

abfan1127 wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the risk of more down votes, I'll disagree with you. There are certainly smarter people than me who are less lucky than me. However, its a much smaller subset than many would believe. Many claim unlucky when in reality their luck is a consequence of their past choices. They've taken risks and those risks didn't work out.

I once read some advice that I'll try to repeat, but without knowing whether I can do a great job capturing it, but here it goes. The general idea was that if you're on a date with someone, then you should avoid asking or saying things that subtly insist that something is true if you don't know it to be true. An example is that if you don't know whether your date was molested by their father as a child, you should tr…

interesting perspective. Thanks for sharing!

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

#272

Post by clavalle » Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 6:04 PM UTC

NullPrefix wrote: post #68

D13Fd wrote: post #64

For anyone who is wondering, the school he listed (Western Governors University) is unfortunately not ABET accredited as far as I can tell.

This should be at the top. What's the point of that paper if the issuer is not accredited?

It's not ABET accredited, but it is regionally accredited -- which all of the big schools are. That means credits earned at WGU will generally transfer to a traditional school.

There are a lot of top schools that are regionally accredited in their CS department but not ABET.

ABET has been for more traditional engineering like Chemical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering and the like.

Even for those schools that do have their CS departments ABET accredited, it's a new thing.

The school I went to, University of Texas at Austin, for example, only became ABET accredited in CS in 2017. Whereas the ChE was ABET accredited in the 1930's.

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

#273

Post by jacurtis » Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 6:04 PM UTC

confidantlake wrote: post #199

autotune wrote: post #84

WGU would be great if they would just accept my friggin high school transcripts. I've had them mailed out twice, once via certified letter, and both times their admissions department failed to receive said transcripts. It's really infuriating too because I'd love to take their CS program but they just... won't... accept... my... transcripts.

Also gave up in attending because of the admissions process.

I eventually went to and graduated WGU. But I actually tried to go a few years ago initially and their admissions and communication process was such a disaster I gave up.

I went back later and literally had to force them to let me enroll. When I finally complained to my mentor about the admissions process being like pulling teeth she simply said "We want to make sure students are motivated before we enroll them". I am not sure I buy that response, but that's what she told me.

I agree, it is a joke.

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

#274

Post by war1025 » Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 6:06 PM UTC

alistairSH wrote: post #269

war1025 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what it will add to the conversation, but I thought it was worth adding in my two cents. My family of five is supported by my income (~$100k / year). I get paid weekly. Every Friday, I go into my bank account amd transfer anything in excess of $2000 into the stock market. Some weeks that's quite a bit of money, some weeks it's not so much money. As of a week ago when I did the math, we had $65k more to o…

It's certainly not unreasonable or even uncommon. But, it's still way above the norm in the US. Median household income in the US is somewhere around $65k/year (before taxes and expenses). Side note - You're only holding $2k in cash for a family of 5? That seems low. Your efforts to invest for the future are commendable, but if you get caught on the bad end of a 2008-style recession, is it enough to keep paying bills…

> You're only holding $2k in cash for a family of 5?

I am holding $2k in a checking account. My savings accounts are appropriately sized to get us by for probably six months to a year.

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

#275

Post by lcall » Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 6:07 PM UTC

A capable family member (in-law) of mine got a Master's degree from WGU, resulting in a salary increase.

For someone who lacks the needed English skills, is not in USA/Canada (and thus benefits from much lower cost, varying widely by country), there is also BYU Pathway Worldwide, which also provides high-quality, online university education (from start to Master's). It helps with, for example, learning English and/or study skills in an inexpensive intro program, and has a system for support/encouragement to help students along. More info in wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYU_Pathway_Worldwide or of course their web site https://www.byupathway.org/ .

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

#276

Post by caspper69 » Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 6:14 PM UTC

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…

I have to agree here. I am going back to get a 2nd BS, this time in a technical field, and I just finished discrete mathematics (at a community college no less). We used Rosen, 8th edition, and I had single homework assignments with enough problems to fill up 6-8 hours if you include the readings required. It was probably one of the most challenging classes I've ever taken.

And then the proofs. Oh the proofs.

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

#277

Post by cxr » Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 6:17 PM UTC

war1025 wrote: post #236

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…

I would guess he is actually getting downvoted because he is pointing out an uncomfortable truth. The majority of the people that frequent this site are above the median income. Being in the tech field gives you a huge leg up economically. You can either squander that, or you can use it to stay out of debt and build wealth. Having someone point out that you maybe don't actually make the best financial decisions is un…

Alternatively, maybe someone really does have a "royal flush" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rV8XhzG_rAg> (or anal fissures, cf The Office episode "Health Care", season 1, episode 3).

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

#278

Post by jventura » Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 6:19 PM UTC

Buttons840 wrote: post #225

jventura wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was being taught by a substitute teacher from the art department who knew some programming. The class was 5 assignments (...) I guess you were unlucky! Teacher from the art department, and a class with only 5 assignments?! Didn't your university had a CS department with CS-competent people to substitute? For instance, the CS department of my college has at least 40 teachers, and it's a polytechnic school (more l…

It was a summer class, and I don't know what their staffing situation was like. > What I want to say with this is that maybe your university is also questionable for delivering CS courses like that. Yes, it was. My point is that most CS degrees come with questionable quality. We should not knock WGU for its flaws while ignoring the widespread flaws of traditional universities. > Even having 7h of classes per day, thi…

> If I'm reading that right you taught 7 hour per day for 4 months? 16 weeks * 5 days a week * 7 hours = ~500 hours?

There were 6 professors. I taught ~75h of server-side web development..

> I think the traditional style of teaching (large class, one teacher) isn't very time efficient, so it makes me sad to see something like WGU dismissed solely because of the time spent.

Not that time spent == quality, but as in the examples I mentioned above, 15h for operating systems concepts (which I've been teaching for the last 3/4 semesters) doesn't teach you anything unless you already know most of it, and 9h30 for Math is only enough if you are reading a book (diagonally, that is)..

Again, the author's effort is something that he should be proud, but I, personally, think that he hasn't learn much things with enough quality..

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

#279

Post by jacurtis » Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 6:21 PM UTC

brighton36 wrote: post #17

rootusrootus wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the author, but I will say that in my experience having the paper has helped open a lot of doors, especially early in my career, that I otherwise would have had to push harder to get through. It gives you a bit of default credibility. Perhaps unjustified, that's a matter of opinion, but it's definitely real.

Just seems like a competent GitHub serves the job better, at lower cost...

There are still a lot of jobs unfortunately that won't even look at your impressive github account if you don't have a degree.

I built my career for 10 years without a degree. It is doable. But having a degree (got it at 32) made life A LOT easier.

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

#280

Post by vmception » Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 6:21 PM UTC

vitus wrote: post #162

vmception wrote: post #97

How do you guys feel about this? He signed up at an accredited university and then used non university resources to transfer credits in, which weren’t universities at all Is that concept new? Is this something we can all be doing for other degrees or is this barely accredited and will come under fire very soon and stop being respected long before

I went to a public 4-year university and transferred in community college credits that I'd previously used to satisfy high school graduation requirements. Requiring courses from a university is assuredly too high a bar, given that it would exclude anyone who, say, transferred from a community college into a 4-year program (several of my brightest peers fell into that category). Several of these courses (Calc 1, Ameri…

One travesty to me is that high school AP courses are so much more rigorous than every single other alternative for college credit. 10 months straight reserved for the local overachievers, with a suspenseful lead up to a third party test that determines their future. A future which is ultimately no different from college-bound people that coasted and chilled through high school, and a professional future that isn't much different from everyone there.

The actual college course is 3-4 months and may just have only a midterm that you need to show up for, or less.

The AP exam and equivalents you can actually self-study for, so the overachievers congratulating themselves for 10 months straight would probably be equipped to use their time more wisely if they already have the discipline and support system.