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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

#291

Post by vulcan01 »

_nrv9 wrote: post #220
skeeter2020 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I see degrees from universities I've never heard of I assume they're diploma mills and look them up. Often they're not but fill a particular niche in learning or circumstance. This is the major failing with the US system IMO, in Canada the word "university" has a much stronger legal definition so there is more trust in it. Similar to what happened to the title "Engineer" when programmers started using it* *I hav…

Wow, I hope to never work with you. You value things that should not be valued in tech. We care about competence, not credentials. I've interviewed dozens of engineers. Never once looked at their education or gave it any weight. I assess them myself, no need to defer. Selecting for people from schools you've heard of is probably the wildest thing I've heard in my career.

It depends on the number of applications. If the number of applications is unmanageable, then credentials can be a useful first filter.

This is also why the SAT/ACT is still important in college admissions: they get a lot of applications, and they need to filter out some applicants to make it more manageable.

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

#292

Post by Buttons840 »

jventura wrote: post #278
Buttons840 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

I probably spent even less time passing Discrete Math 2 at WGU. However, that was largely because I had fully embraced that I would never graduate from a university and had to learn on my own, so the year prior I had read some books on proofs, probability, and statistics. I have notes and flashcards, I really studied, never expecting school credit. I had also encountered combinatorics and such in grade school and other math classes over the years. Discrete Math always seemed like "programmer's math" to me, in contrast to Calculus, and being a programmer it felt easier.

We don't know a lot about what the author was doing outside of school, but we know he was serious about self improvement - he wasn't just putting in hours at work and collecting a paycheck. It sounds like he's completed some impressive programming projects, he attends meetups, keeps a blog, uses Linux, hates Windows, learned to like Windows anyway, ported a Windows UI library to Android and iOS, speaks multiple languages, has attended multiple universities in the past, etc. I think there is a good chance that "he already [knew] most of it".

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

#293

Post by ljm »

abfan1127 wrote: post #232
ljm wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're getting downvoted because you're missing the point somewhat. You had the opportunity and means to change your mentality and become 'intentional' with your money, and learn how to prioritise your spending, because you've had such a surfeit of wealth compared to the average that you won't have faced the same problems others would (and still) have. That's fantastic for you, don't get me wrong, but for man…

The deepness of my debt and the steepness of my accent are just variables in the equation. Many people are 1-2 paychecks away from total disaster, but they never take the step to make a change. It can certainly feel impossible. But the reality is "merely surviving" has a broad usage. I know lots of people that are living paycheck to paycheck, but have the iPhone X. https://www.daveramsey.com/dave-ramsey-7-baby-steps

I don't know if you're shilling this guy or drank too much of his kool aid but it's still blind to the reality of the situation seen across the entire world. You're talking about your 'equation', which is not the same equation other people are subjected to.

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

#295

Post by jkingsbery »

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 read the story differently. It seems like WGU splits two problems (teaching material and verifying that the students learned material) into two different problems. It's not that the author crammed weeks of learning into hours, it's that the author _already knew all the same material from years of experience with it_, and just needed someone to help him verify "Yes, this person understands this material." I would love to see more universities who are happy to verify people's learning, instead of pretending there's only one way to learn the material.

The objection you raise seems more relevant to bootcamps, which claim to teach one how to program in a matter of weeks. After a few weeks, students might be able to get by, but they aren't going to be on par with people who have been working through some of this stuff for several years.

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

#296

Post by ghaff »

caspper69 wrote: post #276
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.

One thing that stood out for me as well was that someone else indicated that, in general, the only requirements were the exams. Most of the engineering classes I took had weekly problem sets that, yes, took at least a solid evening to do.

The way my undergraduate did credits was the (theoretical) number of hours a week they took between lectures, lab, recitation, and study/problem sets. Typical classes added up to 12 with usually 4 hours of the first 2 categories and 8 hours of the last. Classes varied but that wasn't too far off for the typical class. (Though there were some real time sink outliers.)

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

#297

Post by [deleted] »

abfan1127 wrote: post #107
astura wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of every single one of those "how I paid off $100,000 in debt in 1 year" articles. It's always like "dad got me an executive job at his company and grandma gave me a condo as a graduation gift so instead of living in it I moved in with my parents rent free and turned the condo into income stream. (Aren't I smart!?!) Since mom always had a gourmet hot meal prepared for me I could put all my income into my l…

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.

[deleted]

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

#298

Post by astura »

theplague42 wrote: post #190
abfan1127 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no, you may be right (it was a few years ago). It may have been 3.5 or 4 years. I did receive small raises over the years, but we kept our budget fixed. I did receive a big windfall near the end from a company acquisition ($40k iirc). But at the rate were were paying stuff off, it brought it in ~6 months. The math still shocks me every time I do it.

So it was really around 100k over four years with the last 40k covered by your acquisition earnings. So 25k a year on a 100k salary (pre/post-tax?). Which is a lot less than 80k a year. Still impressive, and kudos, but let's not pretend that it's anywhere the same. That's a difference of two whole median incomes per year.

Jeez, I made $99k last year and saved more than $25k and I AM an idiot with my money (I consider my lifestyle to be lavish). So I suspect it's more the "making a lot of money" part instead of the "not being an idiot with my money" part. Absolutely nobody is going to "not be an idiot" themselves to a six figure loan payoff in a few years on a 30k/year salary.

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

#299

Post by caspper69 »

ghaff wrote: post #296
caspper69 wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

One thing that stood out for me as well was that someone else indicated that, in general, the only requirements were the exams. Most of the engineering classes I took had weekly problem sets that, yes, took at least a solid evening to do. The way my undergraduate did credits was the (theoretical) number of hours a week they took between lectures, lab, recitation, and study/problem sets. Typical classes added up to 12…

My university recommends that you spend 2-3 hours on your own per credit hour of study per week.

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

#300

Post by greyhair »

Bakary wrote: post #186
ljm wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're getting downvoted because you're missing the point somewhat. You had the opportunity and means to change your mentality and become 'intentional' with your money, and learn how to prioritise your spending, because you've had such a surfeit of wealth compared to the average that you won't have faced the same problems others would (and still) have. That's fantastic for you, don't get me wrong, but for man…

Being poor is only something you can truly understand once you've tasted it yourself. The stress alone feels like it's shaving many IQ points from your baseline. Even then, I got only a limited understanding compared to people in the third world. (not going for the misery olympics here, just an observation)

Having been there, I second that. Juggling late utility bills in the middle of winter against having food to eat. If you come through that, it hangs with you forever in ways that others that have not will never understand. Even though that life is almost forty years behind me now, it clearly affects my life decisions every day. I am aware of that, and I manage it, but it is always there. Like you, I am not going for the misery olympics either. Just don't assume that, given my career and place in life now, I am not happy with my perfectly maintained fourteen year old car. I know I can afford a new one, thank you very much. But spending that kind of money, just because I can, does not bring me comfort. People that have never been poor will never understand that.
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