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Completing a computer science degree on Coursera

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Re: Completing a computer science degree on Coursera

#31

Post by eager_learner »

angarg12 wrote: post #10

I got a Bachelor, Master, and PhD in Computer Science, with a total of 11 years of education. It's the biggest waste of time of my entire life. As I progress in my professional career I'm more convinced that pretty much everything in tech is on-the-job learning, and universities are little more than a social club. Nowadays you can learn everything you do at university and far more online and for free. Universities (e…

Antony Trollope says in 'Eustace Diamonds' that he feels in a lot of professions, experience creates more competent people than mere learning. (Rough paraphrase). In other words, you don't get to be truly competent unless you are earning that experience!

Re: Completing a computer science degree on Coursera

#32

Post by bfung »

Congrats!

> Group projects were also a common complaint. You were randomly assigned a group, but it was often unclear if the participants were even doing the course - many people were in completely ghost groups.

I see that nothing has changed in 20 years. Even when attended the courses physically in person, group project usually had 1 or 2 people doing all the work and the rest nowhere to be found, or just hanging out. :p

Re: Completing a computer science degree on Coursera

#33

Post by jimmaswell »

zerobees wrote: post #26
angarg12 wrote: post #10

I got a Bachelor, Master, and PhD in Computer Science, with a total of 11 years of education. It's the biggest waste of time of my entire life. As I progress in my professional career I'm more convinced that pretty much everything in tech is on-the-job learning, and universities are little more than a social club. Nowadays you can learn everything you do at university and far more online and for free. Universities (e…

Computer science is a weird degree because it was meant to produce computer scientists. Theory of computability, graph theory, discrete math, formal logic, etc. But the world just doesn't need as many computer scientists as it needs people who know JavaScript. Over time, many CS degrees shifted toward producing software engineers, and it sounds like this person's experience was closer to that. But the problem is that…

My day job is relatively boring JavaScript components and SPA's, but even there I find things I learned in my Computer Science degree valuable. "Hey, this looks like a finite state machine.." "This could be a simple domain specific language, good thing I had to write compilers in college and I can easily make a simple lexer/parser.." "This other thing is easy to parse if I ingest it into a lexer-resembling state machine.." And I would think the value of understanding algorithmic complexity and so many other fundamental things is obvious, no matter what someone is doing. And you won't waste your time accidentally trying to solve the Halting problem, among other things. Obviously there's nothing a university can teach you that you couldn't theoretically learn somewhere else but I'm seriously not convinced that a Computer Science degree is useless or a poor signal even for someone doing run of the mill React apps.

Re: Completing a computer science degree on Coursera

#34

Post by [deleted] »

yodsanklai wrote: post #29
angarg12 wrote: post #10

I got a Bachelor, Master, and PhD in Computer Science, with a total of 11 years of education. It's the biggest waste of time of my entire life. As I progress in my professional career I'm more convinced that pretty much everything in tech is on-the-job learning, and universities are little more than a social club. Nowadays you can learn everything you do at university and far more online and for free. Universities (e…

> Nowadays I wouldn't recommend anyone to get a tech degree in a university unless it's a world class one. I'm in Europe where education is mostly free or inexpensive so it may be different in the US, but it sounds like terrible advice. In most fields, it will be virtually impossible to get a job without a degree, and even in tech it'll be hard. I work in a big tech company, and as far as I can tell, most SWEs do hav…

[deleted]

Re: Completing a computer science degree on Coursera

#35

Post by apsurd »

yodsanklai wrote: post #29
angarg12 wrote: post #10

I got a Bachelor, Master, and PhD in Computer Science, with a total of 11 years of education. It's the biggest waste of time of my entire life. As I progress in my professional career I'm more convinced that pretty much everything in tech is on-the-job learning, and universities are little more than a social club. Nowadays you can learn everything you do at university and far more online and for free. Universities (e…

> Nowadays I wouldn't recommend anyone to get a tech degree in a university unless it's a world class one. I'm in Europe where education is mostly free or inexpensive so it may be different in the US, but it sounds like terrible advice. In most fields, it will be virtually impossible to get a job without a degree, and even in tech it'll be hard. I work in a big tech company, and as far as I can tell, most SWEs do hav…

causality direction violation. is it because of the degree that people get jobs or is it because everybody tells everyone that they need a degree that they get a degree to permit themselves to apply to get the job?

the productive takeaway is that of course its safer to come with a degree but it’s hardly proof that one needs the degree. Nobody is going to risk their or their kids livelihood on being the variant for the a/b test though.

Re: Completing a computer science degree on Coursera

#36

Post by aleph_minus_one »

zerobees wrote: post #26
angarg12 wrote: post #10

I got a Bachelor, Master, and PhD in Computer Science, with a total of 11 years of education. It's the biggest waste of time of my entire life. As I progress in my professional career I'm more convinced that pretty much everything in tech is on-the-job learning, and universities are little more than a social club. Nowadays you can learn everything you do at university and far more online and for free. Universities (e…

Computer science is a weird degree because it was meant to produce computer scientists. Theory of computability, graph theory, discrete math, formal logic, etc. But the world just doesn't need as many computer scientists as it needs people who know JavaScript. Over time, many CS degrees shifted toward producing software engineers, and it sounds like this person's experience was closer to that. But the problem is that…

> But the problem is that as an engineering discipline, software engineering is just profoundly underwhelming. There are basically no universally-respected design best practices, no governing bodies, no calculations of safety limits, no nothing.

I somewhat disagree: there exist a lot of deep questions in software engineering, and there do exist some (very, very partial) answers.

The problem rather is that most people don't want to listen to and/or do deep literature research about the few answers that we do have, but rather want to aggressively push their private political agenda about how they want software to be built. With some literature research, it is often not too hard to disprove the "foundations" on which this political agenda is built. But this does not make you admired because you showed serious knowledge about software engineering, but rather near to an outlaw.

TLDR: the problem is not software engineering, the problem is organizational politics.

Re: Completing a computer science degree on Coursera

#37

Post by unlikelytomato »

none2585 wrote: post #13
angarg12 wrote: post #10

I got a Bachelor, Master, and PhD in Computer Science, with a total of 11 years of education. It's the biggest waste of time of my entire life. As I progress in my professional career I'm more convinced that pretty much everything in tech is on-the-job learning, and universities are little more than a social club. Nowadays you can learn everything you do at university and far more online and for free. Universities (e…

I think the biggest thing is most software "engineering" jobs are in no way engineering and are closer to a trade like being a mechanic or (imo) a doctor. It's fairly rote - you need good judgement and to stay current in latest state of the art but generally speaking you're not researching (nor should you be) cutting edge algorithms or anything. Add a new button, add some parameters to this analytics call, implement…

and yet, the collective industry has still continued to expand for decades because people overwhelmingly cannot consistently do these tasks without their code collapsing on itself.

imagine if people regularly had tires fall off on their way home from the mechanic. or regularly having to get bones rebroken to set them correctly.

I can agree that much of the work is not true "engineering" but most of what I've seen produced over the years is closer to fraud than anything else.

Re: Completing a computer science degree on Coursera

#38

Post by aleph_minus_one »

alpinisme wrote: post #25
colechristensen wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a stark difference between self motivated curious people and certification collectors even though on the surface they can look very similar.

Yeah but writing detailed blog posts about the experience is usually a signal pointing toward the former group

> Yeah but writing detailed blog posts about the experience is usually a signal pointing toward the former group

Writing detailed blog posts about the experience is rather usually a signal that the person is an annoying self-promoter. :-(

Re: Completing a computer science degree on Coursera

#39

Post by none2585 »

unlikelytomato wrote: post #37
none2585 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the biggest thing is most software "engineering" jobs are in no way engineering and are closer to a trade like being a mechanic or (imo) a doctor. It's fairly rote - you need good judgement and to stay current in latest state of the art but generally speaking you're not researching (nor should you be) cutting edge algorithms or anything. Add a new button, add some parameters to this analytics call, implement…

and yet, the collective industry has still continued to expand for decades because people overwhelmingly cannot consistently do these tasks without their code collapsing on itself. imagine if people regularly had tires fall off on their way home from the mechanic. or regularly having to get bones rebroken to set them correctly. I can agree that much of the work is not true "engineering" but most of what I've seen pro…

Ha, definitely agree well said :D

Re: Completing a computer science degree on Coursera

#40

Post by sky2224 »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #36
zerobees wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Computer science is a weird degree because it was meant to produce computer scientists. Theory of computability, graph theory, discrete math, formal logic, etc. But the world just doesn't need as many computer scientists as it needs people who know JavaScript. Over time, many CS degrees shifted toward producing software engineers, and it sounds like this person's experience was closer to that. But the problem is that…

> But the problem is that as an engineering discipline, software engineering is just profoundly underwhelming. There are basically no universally-respected design best practices, no governing bodies, no calculations of safety limits, no nothing. I somewhat disagree: there exist a lot of deep questions in software engineering, and there do exist some (very, very partial) answers. The problem rather is that most people…

What questions in particular are you thinking of that's purely about the engineering and ultimately not the political agenda?
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