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Completing a computer science degree on Coursera

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Re: Completing a computer science degree on Coursera

#51

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

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…

It is true that most software development jobs don't need much CS knowledge to perform. The majority of developers simply kludge together common libraries, frameworks, and software packages without needing to understand all that much about the internals.

It is also true that the software development jobs that don't need much CS knowledge to perform are the ones most vulnerable to being automated away by LLMs. If a kludge is sufficient, AI can kludge it cheaper than a human.

Re: Completing a computer science degree on Coursera

#52

Post by beej71 »

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 never regretted getting a BS and MS in CS. It was a lot of fun learning, landed me my first industry job with basically no extra effort, and it ultimately allowed me to be an instructor at a university after a couple decades at work.

But I did get my degree when it was 5x cheaper than today (inflation-adjusted). There is that.

One thing about on-the-job learning is that employers are increasingly reluctant to pay for that. So non-degrees will still have to get on their indy learning.

And, yes, networking is king more than ever now.

Re: Completing a computer science degree on Coursera

#53

Post by hirvi74 »

jimmaswell wrote: post #33
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…

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 mach…

> I had to write compilers in college and I can easily make a simple lexer/parser.

I'm jealous. My university did not make that a core class of our degree. While in hindsight, I wish they did. I did have the luxury of a lot of low-level exposure, which has served to be quite useful at times (digital logic, assembly, etc.).

Re: Completing a computer science degree on Coursera

#54

Post by AlexB138 »

doezi wrote: post #5
DenisM wrote: post #3

How do employers perceive such diploma? I would try to find out before spending time or money. Did you?

So… obligatory not in HR and also not a manager. But I’ve helped hire a couple engineers over the last 5ish years. Seems that HR at my companies filter for college degrees, and basically require 2 - 4 more years of experience (sans degree) or pedigree at their last couple companies. Maybe this depends more on the size of the company, but, for Kinda sucks that the first barrier to interviewing at most companies is HR,…

I've hired probably 200+ people in my career and I totally share your opinion. It's just an unfortunate reality of how things currently work.

Re: Completing a computer science degree on Coursera

#55

Post by giraffe_lady »

jimmaswell wrote: post #33
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…

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 mach…

I was self taught and went back for a bachelor's after ten years working and then a masters after another four. There was a lot of wasted time in the BS (ie the trade-school-for-programmers classes) but the pure CS has been valuable to me quite regularly as a working developer.

Not every day, maybe not even every month, but I've faced plenty of problems I was well equipped to solve directly because of the formal study of them.

Re: Completing a computer science degree on Coursera

#56

Post by bonoboTP »

apsurd wrote: post #50
oooyay wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You already have a lot of replies here and the comment is provably divisive. I'll toss in that while only you can judge whether it was truly a waste of time, a lot of that factors in how you used it. If it benefited you in interview material understanding, increased the probability that you could extend your network with someone, or other somewhat intangible signals then I'd say it wasn't as much of a waste as you sa…

Same experience. "Is school worth it" is divisive because it speaks to people's investment and value system. I too have a full and successful career in software without any degree largely for the same reason you mentioned: I learned the hard way and continued to show up. Earned experience is objectively valuable. The problem is people don't want to be fools so "working hard" looks suspect when you see plenty of peopl…

Regarding "university isn't worth it, you can just learn by doing, none of this theory matters in practice", I've usually heard this from people who weren't able to pass the math courses (or even the programming courses), so it seemed more like sour grapes.

I have to admit though that they were right, in that they were indeed able to make a career at some multinational companies even after barely getting through a bachelor's with bad grades and with many more years needed than the normal time.

Real mass-scale software jobs are indeed significantly easier than the math courses in CS university programs. At least in a cognitive capability sense. There can still be many other kinds of challenges that are more about social skills which are not much needed for passing college courses but are quite important in jobs.

Re: Completing a computer science degree on Coursera

#57

Post by traes »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #41
heresie-dabord wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Further to this point, it's quite common to favour a candidate with a strong STEM degree who has learned to code as an adjacency.

> Further to this point, it's quite common to favour a candidate with a strong STEM degree who has learned to code as an adjacency. ... because they know less about programming, and thus think much less deeply how a novel abstraction could look like which solves the problem much more elegantly. In other words: these applicants more obediently do their work instead of regularly questioning whether there could be a bet…

As someone who has met a lot of math majors and a lot of CS majors, I am skeptical of your supposition that CS majors are better at finding and applying novel abstractions than math majors who know how to code.

Re: Completing a computer science degree on Coursera

#58

Post by hodgehog11 »

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 won't try and argue the merits of Bachelor's and Masters. But if you honestly believe that you can pick up the same experience from PhD on the job, then is seems like you learned little from that PhD that you were supposed to and your supervisor failed you. PhD is not about learning content. It's about picking up research independence, confidence, and a strong capacity for critique. It is supposed to be suffering of a special kind, an experience in grinding and radical unproductivity when the problem really is that hard. Maybe you did get that but you aren't using it in your job; if so, then maybe you didn't need that PhD, but that's hardly the fault of the degree.

Re: Completing a computer science degree on Coursera

#59

Post by abhaynayar »

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…

What a hook of a first line!

BTW, does anyone recommend doing a masters degree in bio-stats or not? Or something similar, bio-tech-like?

Re: Completing a computer science degree on Coursera

#60

Post by apsurd »

bonoboTP wrote: post #56
apsurd wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same experience. "Is school worth it" is divisive because it speaks to people's investment and value system. I too have a full and successful career in software without any degree largely for the same reason you mentioned: I learned the hard way and continued to show up. Earned experience is objectively valuable. The problem is people don't want to be fools so "working hard" looks suspect when you see plenty of peopl…

Regarding "university isn't worth it, you can just learn by doing, none of this theory matters in practice", I've usually heard this from people who weren't able to pass the math courses (or even the programming courses), so it seemed more like sour grapes. I have to admit though that they were right, in that they were indeed able to make a career at some multinational companies even after barely getting through a ba…

the distinction is specific to the economic value calculation.

it’d be disingenuous to assume the conversation is about anything other than the economic trade off. That said, wholly agree that if school was about learning, it’s great for advancing and curating an environment for learning as its own value.

fwiw in high school, authority figures justified college as a way to counteract the failure scenario of dead-end jobs. success looked like a good paying job and opportunities to do what you’d like like vacations and raise a family. Maybe thats the right framing for the rank and file public school, but it’s why I didn’t even apply to college, let alone attend.

edit: it is objectively economically more valuable to hold a degree, the data is clear. my issue is that it’s reverse causality as is always the issue with data signals.

when you go back to the scenario of what to tell a public school kid, going to college actually works as a negative motivation tool, because the majority of kids won’t go to college so you’re basically telling them their economic value is shit before they are even grown. I don’t believe in that.

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