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OSSU: Path to a free, self-taught education in computer science

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Re: OSSU: Path to a free, self-taught education in computer science

#151

Post by nonameiguess »

jason0597 wrote: post #115

Why can't this exist for traditional engineering? Chemical, Civil, Mechanical, Electrical, etc.

Aside from the fact you generally need licenses to practice these professions, an additional challenge is you need lab equipment that may be expensive, regulated, or dangerous to acquire, to actually practice doing anything. I can't see any practical way to self-practice civil engineering in particular. Nobody is going to let you build a test bridge. Universities provide lab facilities for you to do this kind of thing.

CS is the outlier because the only lab equipment you need is a used laptop or a Raspberry Pi and Internet access.

Granted, computational engineering where you can just simulate the lab has come a long way, but even there, you generally need a lot of compute power if you don't want your simulation of a bridge to take 3 months to run.

Re: OSSU: Path to a free, self-taught education in computer science

#152

Post by krageon »

actually_a_dog wrote: post #135
imwillofficial wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Do the advertise encryption?" Do they need to? The point wasn't "they falsely advertise encryption" The point was "they do not respect privacy" Their advertising is irrelevant.

No, that was not, in fact, the question I asked. I asked whether they were " particularly privacy averse." And, to me, it seems like they are not any more privacy averse than any other messaging service, given that they don't claim to offer any more privacy than any other service. In fact, the only real difference I see between Discord and an IRC server is that Discord forces you to create an account and associates y…

> nobody complains about needing a Github account to contribute to FOSS projects.

Of course people do, that's why there are other platforms and self-hosted solutions. Github is antithetical to the idea of free open source, especially now that it's been "acquired" by Microsoft.

Re: OSSU: Path to a free, self-taught education in computer science

#154

Post by ericmay »

randomdata wrote: post #153
ericmay wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s that metric?

Whatever they state the metric is, I imagine.

Interesting. Well I'll just assume it's based on number of degrees and that it's probably not an accurate assessment of how educated a country really is, since degree != education.

Re: OSSU: Path to a free, self-taught education in computer science

#155

Post by randomdata »

ericmay wrote: post #154
randomdata wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever they state the metric is, I imagine.

Interesting. Well I'll just assume it's based on number of degrees and that it's probably not an accurate assessment of how educated a country really is, since degree != education.

> Well I'll just assume it's based on number of degrees

Seems like a pretty fair assumption given that is the topic of discussion.

> since degree != education.

Quite true, but as everyone gains an education every minute of their lives, the most educated will be the oldest population. I'm not sure that's particularly useful information.

Re: OSSU: Path to a free, self-taught education in computer science

#156

Post by ganafagol »

foolinaround wrote: post #105
ganafagol wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While that's true, most of the valuable employees have 1 top skill: communication. That's neither trained nor witnessed by having gone through 2 years of I-did-this-alone-at-home.

Does the 4 year education in college improve that skill better? Most likely, the self-taught person is also doing some other job, etc as well. So, he is managing a tougher-than-normal schedule, and communication/planning comes into play for sure.

Not sure about the loner generally having an edge over college here. I had to communicate, collaborate and team work plenty back in the college days.

Re: OSSU: Path to a free, self-taught education in computer science

#157

Post by larodi »

alexeldeib wrote: post #25
larodi wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

at the end of all this self-thought modern approach to education i see only one thing - alienation.

Alienation from? The academic community? I question whether those are the folks this content targets.

alienation from any community. from peers, from elders, from others that are passionate about sharing knowledge via human-to-human transmission. and no - automated learning is not a computer-mediated transmission in the very sense that reading 12 books by 12 authors does not mean you had 12 teachers.

Re: OSSU: Path to a free, self-taught education in computer science

#158

Post by larodi »

detaro wrote: post #42
switchb4 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes alienation from the academic community

Who cares? The academic community is often alienating everybody who is not in academia, degree or not. And where it isn't, it doesn't care if you have a degree or not.

self-educated know-it-alls are much more responsible for the appalling level of alienation of people in IT in general. since so many people are self-taught they are eventually not learned into exchanging knowledge with other humans.

Re: OSSU: Path to a free, self-taught education in computer science

#159

Post by larodi »

cinntaile wrote: post #19
larodi wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

very much true. better computer scientist needs interaction with other people, needs to learn to respect their views or at least understand them, evaluate. perhaps needs to meet other scientists. to exchange ideas and approaches. this is what schools and academia is for. this whole self-taught thing is a time-bomb. we already have too many self-taught engineers, architects and what-nots who can only work with themsel…

This is a red herring. This is for improving your technical competency, not for improving your social skills. It doesn't mean social skills are unimportant, it just means that this doesn't focus on that part of the equation. Do you have any issues with the technical material they suggest you focus on?

automated tools are top for improving certain tech skills. like Duolingo is good for as a language starter. But only talking with other people will really teach you the language - people teach each other even if they don't have the intent to do it. Same with technology.

Social skills are very important, cannot be more important in these times. 15+ years in academia, not as researcher, but as teacher, showed one thing - the best learners are those who are best at listening, at interacting with others, not the top-bookshelf-worms. Usually not the top kids, but most usually become top contributors to teams and companies at later point.

Surely now and then an Einstein is born, but we also know of people who were very active in their social interaction without all the academia fuss about it. and academia is one place to find people to interact with. and academia is not only Oxford and MIT where entry level is very hard, nearly impossible.

So all of this is not about academia, rather about being human with humans.

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