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

#361

Post by Mandatum » Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 3:14 AM UTC

jimbokun wrote: post #336

Buttons840 wrote: post #235

I'll repost my WGU experience from another comment: I dropped out of traditional college. Last class I remember they were talking about what a GET and POST request were. I had been a professional web developer for years at that point. I felt it was a waste of time. In WGU I had a similar easy class, stuff that was "way below me". Not to worry, I passed the class in a day and stopped worrying about wasted time. I rece…

From your comments and the article, seems like the WGU model could completely disrupt the normal 4 year university experience, for self motivated learners. Of course, if the goal is 4 years of fun social life and putting off "adult" responsibilities, the WGU approach is counter productive. But for people who want the benefit of a degree as an employment credential, looks like this is the fastest and cheapest way to a…

I think you'll enjoy this: https://tracingwoodgrains.medium.com/speedrunning-college-my...

There's actually a bit of a college speed running community.

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

#362

Post by mycall » Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 4:49 AM UTC

dguaraglia wrote: post #143

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…

As someone in the same position that the author was in (dropped out of college, have had a successful career in Silicon Valley) I can understand the allure of doing a 'speedrun' to get a degree. For one, if you want to emigrate to Europe, most work visas will require you to have a degree, no matter how many years of experience you've had in the US. You might also be tempted to do a masters or PhD in a particular topi…

You made me curious if a degree is required for most foreign visas around the world.

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

#363

Post by w0mbat » Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 5:05 AM UTC

gabereiser wrote: post #351

w0mbat wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Indeed, I wrote it on my phone, brisket wins on iOS apparently. I usually write it boiler-plate.

No worries.

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

#364

Post by jerry80 » Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 5:29 AM UTC

daralthus wrote: post #216

Is this accreditation accepted to apply to Georgia Tech's OMS CS?

Yes. I did the WGU BSCS purely to get into GaTech OMSCS, and I got in with no problem.

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

#365

Post by barry-cotter » Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 6:22 AM UTC

graycat wrote: post #203

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 ugr…

> 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.

It’s vastly easier to get into a Master’s than into a grad school programme where everyone is supposed to be aiming at a doctorate. Most terminal Master’s programmes are cash cows. GA Tech isn’t. They just don’t want to make a loss, but the population of people who can get into a terminal Master’s is quite different from those who can get admitted to a Ph.D. And GA Tech’s OMSCS can be completed while working a full time job. Good luck doing that while in proper grad school.

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

#366

Post by barry-cotter » Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 7:06 AM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #357

codingdave wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have heard exactly the opposite from people who work in the administrative side of academia. If your future job prospects are research-based, sure it matters. But if you just need to hold a doctorate to apply to be a president of a local college, or to get a leg up on a superintendent job at a school district? Any doctorate is fine.

> But if you just need to hold a doctorate to apply to be a president of a local college, or to get a leg up on a superintendent job at a school district? Ok I'd never heard of such of thing.

This is the entire purpose of the Ed.D. degree, as a box ticking exercise for promotion purposes. A JD will work as well, and that doesn’t even have the pretense of being a research doctorate the Ed.D. does.

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

#367

Post by barry-cotter » Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 7:15 AM UTC

xwdv wrote: post #35

Could I do the same with a masters?

In six months? I doubt it. Go to degreeforum.net and ask. The forum is devoted to that kind of stuff.

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

#368

Post by dumpHero2 » Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 7:20 AM UTC

jimbokun wrote: post #336

Buttons840 wrote: post #235

I'll repost my WGU experience from another comment: I dropped out of traditional college. Last class I remember they were talking about what a GET and POST request were. I had been a professional web developer for years at that point. I felt it was a waste of time. In WGU I had a similar easy class, stuff that was "way below me". Not to worry, I passed the class in a day and stopped worrying about wasted time. I rece…

From your comments and the article, seems like the WGU model could completely disrupt the normal 4 year university experience, for self motivated learners. Of course, if the goal is 4 years of fun social life and putting off "adult" responsibilities, the WGU approach is counter productive. But for people who want the benefit of a degree as an employment credential, looks like this is the fastest and cheapest way to a…

Considering that most of my social life (in late 20s) is made of people I met and worked with in bachelors and grad school, I am really unsure about this approach. Apart from the social factor, I was also got immense support and motivation from my peers. Given the emotional/social support a brick and mortar education institute gives, their graduates will fare better at jobs.

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

#369

Post by rualca » Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 8:37 AM UTC

jimbokun wrote: post #336

Buttons840 wrote: post #235

I'll repost my WGU experience from another comment: I dropped out of traditional college. Last class I remember they were talking about what a GET and POST request were. I had been a professional web developer for years at that point. I felt it was a waste of time. In WGU I had a similar easy class, stuff that was "way below me". Not to worry, I passed the class in a day and stopped worrying about wasted time. I rece…

From your comments and the article, seems like the WGU model could completely disrupt the normal 4 year university experience, for self motivated learners. Of course, if the goal is 4 years of fun social life and putting off "adult" responsibilities, the WGU approach is counter productive. But for people who want the benefit of a degree as an employment credential, looks like this is the fastest and cheapest way to a…

> From your comments and the article, seems like the WGU model could completely disrupt the normal 4 year university experience, for self motivated learners.

I don't agree at all. The "normal" university experience is designed around the assumption that the student is not familiar with the subject, and thus they specify a path comprised of a combination of lessons and assignments that allows everyone to get up to speed on a topic and share a common base level of all the fundamentals at a given stage.

The OP's comments mention nothing of the sort. They show that, even though the student lacked some fundamentals, the preliminary work already had covered most of the topics.

Thus OP's story is one mostly about getting a certification instead of actually learning something new. It involves learning stuff at their own pace instead of being forced to ramp um on a time budget with hard constraints on where the acceptable speed of growth must be.

We should not confuse the two, and we should certainly not mistake being able to pass a certification as a reflexion of intelligence or capability. The challenge of getting from cluelessness to have a solid command of the fundamentals of a topic in less than 4 months is incomparably higher than just casually cruising on a topic for 10 years.

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

#370

Post by Viliam1234 » Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 12:34 PM UTC

908B64B197 wrote: post #326

Viliam1234 wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fo…

> 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 author did code professiona…

Yes, the author was not just an ordinary student. I still consider this a fantastic improvement for two reasons:

> many opportunities ... out of reach because I didn’t have the required papers

> From there, a Bachelor’s degree typically requires an additional 3 years of study.

1) The author had a problem he wanted to fix; the traditional way required 3 years and lots of money; the alternative required only 3 months and less money.

2) If, hypothetically, there is an 18 years old genius who could accomplish this trick right after high school (maybe not in 3 months, but 6 or 12 months -- still faster and cheaper than the traditional way), they can, and this is how.