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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

#341

Post by IgniteTheSun »

Uptrenda wrote: post #33

I read something ages back about a lesser known process called 'testing out' where you are basically able to just do the exams at universities to get a degree. It's suppose to encourage life-long learning and its based on the assumption that many professionals and adults accrue relevant experience outside of academia. I had always wanted to look more into this myself but it seemed to require too much bureaucracy. OPs…

Testing out of a course used to generally be available for freshman level courses but rarely for anything more advanced than that. (The exception might be that one could generally test out of up to a year of calculus since some people don't consider calculus a freshman course - e.g., business majors, etc.) It was a cheaper option at some universities than the AP exams were for students that had taken AP courses, although AP courses were not required to test out of a course. The testing out option enabled high school students that had taken advanced courses to start university more in-line with their backgrounds rather than having to repeat courses for no reason.

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Edit: that was decades ago - don't forgo an AP exam thinking you can test out unless you already have admission and have verified the availability and costs of testing out of a course.

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

#342

Post by thewebcount »

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.

Yeah, not only that. I went to a state school and we had access to a lot of computing resources I likely wouldn't have had otherwise. I attended in the 90s and unless you already had a job in the industry, you were unlikely to find a network with hundreds or thousands of computers with different OSes on them. I not only got to use macOS and Windows, but VAX, and just about every flavor of Unix at the time (AIX, HPUX, Apollo, Solaris, A/UX, etc.), and even got time on an IBM mainframe to see what that was like.

I remember, during my senior year, interviewing with a well-known company that had a grand idea for putting together a new documentation system that would allow cross-linking of documents so you could just click on a word and it would take you the definition of that word or the manual page for it. I asked, "Oh, like HTML?" to which they responded, "What's HTML?" This was around 1992-93-ish. Needless to say, I had a leg up on those already in the industry thanks to having had access to those resources at school.

It also has a lot of job opportunities. I got to be a Unix sys admin on the school network which both helped pay my expenses and gave me real-world experience. It wasn't glamorous, but it looked better on a resume than having worked flipping burgers.

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

#343

Post by criveros »

astura wrote: post #137
rement wrote: post #125

How important is a CS degree to a hiring manager? I have two unrelated degrees (both STEM though). Does a CS degree play a role when looking at a resume or does several years experience say more? I've been a software engineer for over 5 years and people still ask why I have the degrees that I do.

I can only speak to my own experience (east coast). At my current company we won't hire or consider anyone without a degree, however, it doesn't have to be a CS/SE degree. We even have a few people with liberal arts degrees.

This makes no sense. How about someone from a bootcamp or with an associate's degree?

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

#344

Post by jventura »

Buttons840 wrote: post #334
jventura wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I completed Operating systems in 5 weeks with about 15-20 hours of work a week. I used Georgia Techs Udacity course on operating systems to supplement my learning. Which gives ~75h-100h, way more credible than the 15h the author mentions in the post.. My students have 3h/week of Lecture, 2h/week of labs which is about 75h of classes (15 weeks). If we add ~60h estimated time for two projects, it's 135h. It means to…

Here you say that the time spent is "way more credible" than the authors. I think it's worth noting though, that it's the same course .

Im not a native english speaker, what I mean by more credible is the outcome, not the degree itself. In other words, this guy that took 100 hours, I would say that it seems more credible to have learned more than the other that says he took only 15 hours...

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

#345

Post by imtringued »

caeril wrote: post #196

I see a lot missing, here. No assembly, compilers, linear algebra, or digital design courses that you find in every other CS program. How did this courseload get accredited? (and I say this as someone who never graduated - just showing some respect for the courseload required by some of my peers, here)

I was wondering about linear algebra as well. Not sure how you can skip on that.

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

#346

Post by astura »

criveros wrote: post #343
astura wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can only speak to my own experience (east coast). At my current company we won't hire or consider anyone without a degree, however, it doesn't have to be a CS/SE degree. We even have a few people with liberal arts degrees.

This makes no sense. How about someone from a bootcamp or with an associate's degree?

No, at my job we don't consider anyone without a bachelor's degree - that's a hard requirement.

I don't personally make the requirements. There seems to be plenty enough talent applying with bachelor's degrees where that doesn't seem to stop us from hiring really great engineers.

Our work is more complicated than simple CRUD apps though.

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

#347

Post by ishjoh »

rement wrote: post #125

How important is a CS degree to a hiring manager? I have two unrelated degrees (both STEM though). Does a CS degree play a role when looking at a resume or does several years experience say more? I've been a software engineer for over 5 years and people still ask why I have the degrees that I do.

I've hired lots of software devs over my career at startups and mega corps.

1) At startups and some larger companies only experience and competency matter, the interviews are used as the filter.

2) At many large companies HR goes through resumes first, and there are certain booleans they use, a popular one is, has any degree. Many of these companies had easier interviews than (1), but some still have very difficult interviews

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

#349

Post by ghaff »

ghaff wrote: post #304
caspper69 wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That was pretty much my experience at least for lecture-type courses.

I actually read that as 2-3x the in class time. No, where I went people generally spent way more than 2-3 hours/week of their own time on many courses.

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

#350

Post by caspper69 »

ghaff wrote: post #349
ghaff wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was pretty much my experience at least for lecture-type courses.

I actually read that as 2-3x the in class time. No, where I went people generally spent way more than 2-3 hours/week of their own time on many courses.

It is per credit hour. A 3 credit course would require 6-9 hours per week, a 4 credit course 8-12.
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