How useful is a Physics degree? • Hacker News Board

Re: How useful is a Physics degree?

#31

Post by mechanical_fish » Sun, Apr 29, 2012, 3:18 AM UTC

You don't have to compete with CS grads. There aren't enough of them. (Even if we assume that they are all brilliant and charming and competent and productive and interested in working on what the customers need and will pay for... which we do, of course. ;)

Moreover, much of what needs to be done with programming doesn't require CS knowledge as such, but rather a lot of ancillary skills that aren't taught in any school; some of them are barely even mentioned in books. There you and the CS majors start out tied.

Conspicuous among that set of skills are business skills: Not MBA stuff, but things like "here is a potential customer: what are their actual problems, can I help solve them, can I prove that to myself, can I prove that to them using words they will understand and like, will they really pay me?" So much of your work will be about these things, in programming or in physics, and CS training doesn't teach them any more than stat mech class does.

Re: How useful is a Physics degree?

#32

Post by slickrick » Sun, Apr 29, 2012, 4:22 AM UTC

Going by your assumptions, you will be far ahead of the curve. the principles of physics and the mathematics that underpin it are skills you can take anywhere. Computer science students are generally not math illiterate, but a BS in physics will arm you with that ability to out gun any CS student.

I don't know what you want to do in life, but if you know physics, a few languages, and have rock solid higher level math skills then the sky is the limit. David Pines spoke at my sister's graduation and he changed my outlook on life, hence my praise for the field.

I reccomend reading "Forunte's Formula" by poundstone, Complexity The emerging science at the edge of order and chaos by waldrop. My life as a quant by dermann. Oh and And Ploya's "How to solve it". If that doesn't give you an idea of how valuable a legitimate BS in physics is then I'm afraid you cannot be helped.

CS degree or not what matters at the end of the day are your own abilities.

Re: How useful is a Physics degree?

#33

Post by rsanchez1 » Sun, Apr 29, 2012, 8:13 AM UTC

Can go into game programming.

Re: How useful is a Physics degree?

#34

Post by codeonfire » Sun, Apr 29, 2012, 9:17 AM UTC

The people that should be getting jobs are the ones developing software for four years before they graduate. The degree does not matter, the ability to do the job does. don't skimp on coding ability, as most interviewers can tell if you have been coding for four year or just in a few classes from a short code sample.

Re: How useful is a Physics degree?

#35

Post by 9k9 » Sun, Apr 29, 2012, 1:06 PM UTC

michaelpinto wrote: post #5

If you really want to do something then why waste a "few years" doing something else? Honestly it doesn't matter if you're studying physics, programming or trying to invent the next slap chop -- what counts is that you have a passion for what you do and invest the time in that passion. Although be careful that your passion for programming is indeed that and not something else.

The "few years" would be spent finishing what I have started, it is a shame that my primary passion may be elsewhere but changing course now would set me back to far.

Re: How useful is a Physics degree?

#36

Post by lorenzofarris » Sun, Apr 29, 2012, 10:36 PM UTC

I have a PhD in physics. Most physicists cannot avoid doing some coding, and will tend to focus on simulations and numerical algorithms. Most physicists I know that have left the field are in the high-tech world. If you have successfully completed a physics degree, you have picked up a way of looking at the world, and you will have an attraction for simple, elegant solutions. If you are an experimental physicist (this distinction only comes into play if you work towards a PhD) you will develop an ability to deal effectively with the practicalities of limited resources and time. If you want to compete in getting a job, have some coding experience you can show, spend some time boning up on algorithms. Younger technical interviewers will focus on algorithms and whatever they are having a problem with at the moment. They are the ones you will have to convince. More experienced interviewers will be looking at how you think and solve problems, and a physicist won't usually have a problem with those.

Re: How useful is a Physics degree?

#37

Post by leeny » Wed, May 02, 2012, 1:29 AM UTC

i do interviewing/hiring for a successful startup, and, historically, candidates with physics degrees have performed very well.

the one concrete piece of advice i'd have for you is in line with what most of the comments are saying: build stuff in your spare time, make sure the stuff you build is front and center on your resume, and get good at algorithms.

Re: How useful is a Physics degree?

#38

Post by kentonwhite » Wed, May 02, 2012, 2:23 PM UTC

I look at the difference between a computer science major and physics major like the difference between an english major and a history major. The first has an in depth knowledge of writing & literature: its history, limitations, how it got to its present state. The later knows none of that, but has a lot to say about history and uses writing as a tool. I've rarely seen history majors worrying about competing with english majors for writing jobs. They bring something different, and valuable, to the table.

Being a physicist, you probably can't wax eloquently on the tradeoffs of functional v. object v. imperative programming styles. Or the subtle nuances between closures and Lisp and closures in Javascript. But that is Ok because you will use code to say something useful about the world around you.

Your physics training will help you do these things (and more) in the software world: identify patterns in large datasets; predict the evolution of a complex system; create models of real world processes; reason about how a black-box system might be working.

These skills are in demand. If you focus on these aspects from your physics training you should have no problem competing with the computer science majors.

BTW, I have a PhD in Physics. A little over 6 years ago I stopped doing physics and engineering full time and focused on what can best be described as computer science full time. I'm also an adjunct professor of Computer Science.

Re: How useful is a Physics degree?

#39

Post by drostie » Thu, May 10, 2012, 11:10 PM UTC

9k9 wrote: post #35

michaelpinto wrote: post #5

If you really want to do something then why waste a "few years" doing something else? Honestly it doesn't matter if you're studying physics, programming or trying to invent the next slap chop -- what counts is that you have a passion for what you do and invest the time in that passion. Although be careful that your passion for programming is indeed that and not something else.

The "few years" would be spent finishing what I have started, it is a shame that my primary passion may be elsewhere but changing course now would set me back to far.

Well, it depends in what ways you're competing against Comp Sci majors, but even in their own major there is a lot of competition from competent physicists -- especially as we try to understand more and more about what quantum computers can and can't do. (Scott Aaronson's page and blog are wonderful to see what theoretical comp sci looks like; http://www.scottaaronson.com/ ).

If you just want to code, pick up a language, do it in your free time. CS majors will know a couple of more involved things; for example, many of them may have written a functioning, if minimal, compiler. If you want at least some familiarity with this, and if you can stand retro video clips with bad audio quality, you should watch the Abelson-Sussman lectures online: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-comput...

I mention them in part because I think you might also like the ideas that Sussman brought back to his native engineering discipline; the above lectures are for a course called "The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs," but he later put out a book called "The Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics," available here: http://mitpress.mit.edu/SICM/book-Z-H-4.html#%_toc_start

The point is that it doesn't have to be two divergent skill-sets. When I was at Cornell, they advertised their applied physics programme with the wonderful statement: "once you know the fundamentals, you're ready for everything." The simple habits you pick up as a physicist, like reasoning about the size of observable quantities or the cultivated habit of "whenever I hear a mathematical term I am going to look it up and read the definition until I understand what the hell they're saying" -- those can really become powerful when you start to write programs. Depending on what you're doing, it's maybe not as helpful as being fluent in the database language SQL, but SQL is much easier to learn and understand sometime later.