131–140 of 176 posts
I have a non-cs degree (film making) and I am a CS undergrad... Here in Brazil it is very hard to get a job without a diploma, no matter your resumé and past works.
I'm from Brazil (SP), I'm a computer engineering dropout studying / developing by myself for 1.5y and I'm having pretty great offers... Please contact me.
I've got some ground to recover.
I have a traditional, theoretical-focused CS degree, which I followed up with a more practical CS master's and half a PhD in natural language processing. I dropped out of the PhD to do a startup. I do not currently program for my job - I'm a product manager - so this is a counterpoint to the "no CS degree but I rock at programming" responses. I'm actually a mediocre programmer, but an excellent improviser and duct-ta…
Was in a Computer Engineering program but wound up dropping out due to a bout with clinical depression. The school was a big state school and poor fit for me anyway. I don't do well in 3000-student lecture classes with no personal connection to the teacher. My mom still wants me to finish a degree someday, but at almost 32 years old my work experience is worth a lot more, and I'm pretty sure any company that wouldn't…
I too am currently having the same problem. I am attending a very large state school (over 40,000 students) and I am struggling to connect with people. I also have severe depression and OCD which prevents me from getting things done. I feel very disappointed in myself and in my life because I was having high expectations about how awesome college would be after a crappy high school experience.
Though the crowd might make you uncomfortable, you can take solace in the fact that you need not connect with all of them. Friends, or close friends, are mostly in single digit for most people.
> I also have severe depression and OCD which prevents me from getting things done.
Letting the mind wander isn't a bad thing, provided you get some stuff done as well. Plan for small tasks which you can get done. Are you familiar with lexers and parser? Implement an infix(a+b) to postfix(ab+) converter, where `a+b` can be an arbitrarily complex expression. Learning Python? Build a web app which takes a movie name as an input(use any web framework), searches twitter for mentions(use urlliib2 or equivalent), classifies tweets as negative/positivie(simple bayes classifier or use a library) and assigns a rating to the movie.
These are just examples. Getting things done makes you feel good and can help you counter the "disappointment" you mention.
My degree is in fine art, with a concentration in design (and a minor in art history). I started out as "designer who can do a bit of development" and over the years, that's changed to "developer who can design." I didn't plan it that way, it's just where the work has taken me, and I do enjoy programming slightly more, I think (maybe - I love both). I've engaged in a ton of self-directed learning and have been fortun…
what is the US definition of "degree"? Bachelors or Master? I'm a B.Sc. in CS, Master is on the way.
every now and then a degree will refer to a high school degree, but usually people say diploma or high school diploma, not degree.
in the US a bachelor's is at least 4 years of work (some degrees like architecture require 5) and from what my european friends (sample size master's degrees usually take about 2 years to complete. some require a thesis like a doctorate, but many just require taking classes. if you are combining a masters with a bachelors degree within the same program at the same school, then usually a masters only takes 1 year instead of two.
Degree in Computer Engineering. 5 year program covering how a computer works inside, culminating in designing ad building your own computer from scratch (I mean literally from scratch, just wires and basic AND/OR/NOT gates) to make a Von Numen like architecture with a basic (also from scratch) OS. I definitely learned more practical stuff from that to help me in every day software design than I would with a CS degree…
Most university engineering departments were torn between creating a new discipline (Computer Engineering) versus keeping the original Electrical Engineering designation and allowing students to take elective CS courses. It seems like such a trivial issue since most universities (I believe) now offer the distinction, but 20 years ago you would probably have been joining the 'young' Computer Engineering discipline. As…
Out of high school I went to pursue a Computer Science degree because I wanted to be a programmer. First year was a lot of math, calculus and the like. First year computer science courses were kinda cool and fun, they used Scheme, a functional programming language to teach concepts. I kept telling myself though, that upper year would be more programming/cs and less math. Boy, was I wrong. Upper year "computer" scienc…