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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

#311

Post by tuzakey »

djsumdog wrote: post #32

Almost seems like the writer treated the process like playing a video game, without all the pretty colors and sounds that give you that dopamine hit. I feel like I did get a lot out of my Computer Science degree. I got it in 2004 and I picked up a lot of stuff I don't think I would have learned on my own. I also went to a small state University in the middle of nowhere that' wasn't very expensive, and I didn't rack u…

> Going back to games;.... That might be a model for new typed of education going forward.

I think this is how 42 school works. I've known a couple people who started the program there but none who completed it. However 42 is afaik not accredited and WGU(where the OP attended) is. 42 probably lands more in the coding bootcamp end of education the spectrum.

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

#312

Post by miguelrochefort »

jerry80 wrote: post #309
miguelrochefort wrote: post #2

Author here. I'd be happy to answer your questions.

Congrats on the degree! I took almost exactly the same path as you, and I also finished my WGU degree in 3 months. I got my BS to meet the admission requirements for GATech's OMSCS program, which I'm doing now. Do you plan to go for a masters next?

How's GATech's OMSCS? I'm thinking about applying.

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

#313

Post by 908B64B197 »

bondolo wrote: post #261

I also dropped out of a Canadian computer science degree program but in my case I will likely never get a degree. I left University of Alberta in 1989 after completing about two years of my degree to co-found a startup with the thought that if it failed I would go back to get a degree at a better program. The startup was a success and I have never gone back to school. Sadly, in 1988 the University of Alberta CS progr…

> Sadly, in 1988 the University of Alberta CS program was stuck in a 1970s data processing curriculum and, for undergrads, had neither PCs or Unix

I feel the landscape today is very different for CS degrees. Most universities standardized quite a bit around what CMU, Stanford and Berkley are doing. But you are not the first telling me that CS degrees were a crapshoot in the 80's. EE as a pathway to software was much more common.

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

#314

Post by Viliam1234 »

djsumdog wrote: post #32

Almost seems like the writer treated the process like playing a video game, without all the pretty colors and sounds that give you that dopamine hit. I feel like I did get a lot out of my Computer Science degree. I got it in 2004 and I picked up a lot of stuff I don't think I would have learned on my own. I also went to a small state University in the middle of nowhere that' wasn't very expensive, and I didn't rack u…

I think that what happened here was almost the opposite of gamification.

Gamification is adding of artificial goals and artificial rewards, with the idea that achieving them will be addictive enough that you will continue playing. Like if you do math on Khan Academy, and then you have the animations of "you have completed the challenge" and "you have gained another level", and if you are intrinsically motivated and you came there to do the math, this is actually distracting. External motivation helps those who have none, but hinders those who already have internal motivation.

In some sense, dividing the university into grades, and organizing lessons in schedule is... a very primitive form of gamification. If you have a motivated person, you don't need to do this; just give them the books, and they will read. You don't need to set up a schedule for them, because the motivated person's natural schedule is "as soon as possible". The schedule is just slowing them down. (But it works the opposite for an unmotivated person, who without schedule would never get anything done.)

The deal is: pass these X exams, and you will receive a diploma, which is a certificate that you passed the exams. When you remove the distractions, it can be done pretty fast.

Gamification could be great for students with low motivation. But it would take a lot of time, because it means doing things that are not essential.

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

#315

Post by 908B64B197 »

jayd16 wrote: post #113
ajkjk wrote: post #36

> In 2012, I studied computer science at Concordia University and dropped out after 1 semester. > On my first day, I attended 2 lectures. I quickly realized that a 2-hour commute to listen to someone slowly recite a PowerPoint wasn’t the best use of my time. It's so depressing that a lot of expensive higher education is this pathetic. I wish our education system worked enough like a market that it could hold lecturer…

You don't pay for the slides, you pay for the course design, the office hours, and access to experts in the field that not only know the course material but can also guide you to further learning outside the syllabus. ...But you have to actually show up and talk to your professor.

Never really heard about Concordia CS.

Some public universities seems to just be concert-hall sized lectures. Is it one of them?

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

#316

Post by bonoboTP »

abfan1127 wrote: post #270
alistairSH wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So 46,000 in disposable income? That's a massive amount of money by normal-person standards. Hell, the fact that you had $30k in a 401k that you could borrow from yourself already makes you exceptional.

Yes. I had ~$500 payments for each of those every month. Luckily, once I got the first one paid off, I was able to roll that previous payment into the next one. 401k match is nice and I'd had been working for 5-6 years when I did this, so it was vested. I was in a deep hole, but I had a big shovel. I wish I hadn't dug the hole though. I encourage others to not dig holes either now that I've learned my lesson the hard…

How was this "the hard way"?

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

#317

Post by abfan1127 »

bonoboTP wrote: post #316
abfan1127 wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I had ~$500 payments for each of those every month. Luckily, once I got the first one paid off, I was able to roll that previous payment into the next one. 401k match is nice and I'd had been working for 5-6 years when I did this, so it was vested. I was in a deep hole, but I had a big shovel. I wish I hadn't dug the hole though. I encourage others to not dig holes either now that I've learned my lesson the hard…

How was this "the hard way"?

going into debt in the first place is the hard way.

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

#318

Post by abfan1127 »

pertymcpert wrote: post #308
abfan1127 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Living expenses is a flexible item. You learn to keep your living expenses down.

You're being completely tone deaf to the point that its frustrating to believe that people like you exist.

tone deaf to what? That some people have big problems? That those big problems may be bigger than mine? That sometimes solutions to big problems are hard? That sacrifice for some isn't the same for sacrifice for others?

Or that some people's problems are as big as they are because they fail to recognize the change needed to solve them, or are unwilling to make that change? That often times, people fail to recognize the change needed because it first requires them to acknowledge and take responsibility.

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

#319

Post by w0mbat »

gabereiser wrote: post #136
bserge wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people on Reddit did say they completed 2-3 month bootcamps/courses with no prior experience and got junior dev jobs (in the UK), so I don't even know. Then again it's online and on Reddit, so they may be just lying. I believe it is possible to learn enough to be decent in 3 months full time, and then learn everything else as you go. However, I don't see anyone hiring with that kind of experience. But then why p…

Here in the US we also take a good hard look at bootcamp graduates. Code school/bootcamp graduates I’ve found to be good enough to do most of the mundane web work broiler-plate we have to write. It gives them experience, it give us that broiler-plate code no one wants to write. Bootcamp’s here like Turing or Galvanize cost $20k and take 4-6mos but you’ll get an entry level Dev job at $75k or more when you’re done. It…

It's "boilerplate".

It's because a reusable letterpress metal plate of text is called a "boilerplate" because it looks like the manufacturer's nameplate on a steam-train's boiler. That led to any reusable block of text being called "boilerplate". No BBQ equipment was involved.

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

#320

Post by Viliam1234 »

908B64B197 wrote: post #307
rsweeney21 wrote: post #117

Requiring a computer science degree to apply for a programming job has always been bizarre to me and this blog post is a great example of why. "The bulk of the effort was memorizing things that I normally would have Googled." And given how memory works, in a few weeks you'll probably have to Google them again. To earn my CS degree I learned a lot of stuff before starting my career that I never used. It would have bee…

> Requiring a computer science degree to apply for a programming job has always been bizarre to me and this blog post is a great example of why. What folks don't realize is that it's a signal to noise ratio issue [0]. It's not perfect but saves a lot of time down the line. > "The bulk of the effort was memorizing things that I normally would have Googled." That's missing the point. A lot of Engineering is being able…

There are two horrors here:

1) most people who apply for programming jobs can't write FizzBuzz;

2) the traditional way to signal that you are not one of them will cost you 5 years of your life, and probably burden you with decades of debt.

Employers of course worry about the first one, because the costs of too much interviewing come directly from their pockets. Students worry about the second one, because they pay for that one directly with their money and time.

The fact that if you can learn in 3 months what the average student learns for 5 years, there is a possibility for you go get a signal that really only costs you 3 months of your time, and also proportionally less money, is a fantastic improvement over the traditional way where if you are faster, you just have to spend more time waiting... while still paying huge money for that time.

(The equivalent improvement for the employers would be like, doing FizzBuzz tests during phone call, so you would only spend 2 minutes per hopeless candidate, instead of scheduling one hour of your time.)

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