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A CS degree is better than teaching yourself how to code?

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Re: A CS degree is better than teaching yourself how to code?

#101

Post by innocentoldguy »

I've been a software engineer for 30 years and by far the best programmers I've ever known were all self-taught.

I'm not knocking college degrees. I have one myself. However, those who are self-taught tend to take far more initiative and invest far more time in studying and understanding how things work than those who just got a degree. They seem to be intrinsically drawn to the craft and don't just do it for grades or accolades. Software engineering is an integral part of who they are and they are brilliant because of their unquenchable fascination with it. At least that has been my experience.

Re: A CS degree is better than teaching yourself how to code?

#102

Post by innocentoldguy »

ggambetta wrote: post #100
honkycat wrote: post #83

People REALLY hate college degrees on this site. I think my degree was a great decision. I've met a few decent self-taught programmers. Most are awful. Over and over again the bootcamp grads and people who have never attended school end up being the worst performers on my team. A LOT of the people I have worked with who do not have degrees have bad attitudes and are hyper-vigilant about "no degree" microaggressions.…

People with no degrees hate degrees. People who can't pass FAANG interviews hate FAANG interviews. It's a defense mechanism, along the lines of "I'm not a bad student, the teacher hates me".

I got a degree and graduated summa cum laude with a 4.0 GPA. I don't think my college education has been anywhere near as valuable to me as reading software engineering books and coding a lot has been. If I could do it all over again, I would save the $60,000 and buy a sailboat.

Re: A CS degree is better than teaching yourself how to code?

#103

Post by innocentoldguy »

ShadowKitten wrote: post #97
czbond wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I - disagree here. My CompSci background gets me called in to deal with the hard stuff that others skip bc the theoretical parts of CS are not present. As mentioned in a further comment below - I can understand why code is slow (eg: BigO for cpu or memory), what structures and algorithms to use in different scenarios (Data Structures & algos), how things are working (Computer Architecture, Programming Languages [theo…

> I know what is happening at a network layer, OS layer, memory layer, application layer, and system layer, and code layer. Yep. For me, the biggest reason I think a degree is necessary is because it is comprehensive. Self taught people are going to inevitably have multiple holes in their understanding. And worst of all, they will be ignorant of where those holes lie and how large they are.

In my experience, self-taught engineers are self-taught because engineering is a passion and they spend their lives doing it.

I can see the "I want to earn more money" boot-camp types having holes in their knowledge, but those who read engineering books and stay up all night coding always seem to have the deepest understanding of all because they live for it.

Re: A CS degree is better than teaching yourself how to code?

#104

Post by diminoten »

honkycat wrote: post #83

People REALLY hate college degrees on this site. I think my degree was a great decision. I've met a few decent self-taught programmers. Most are awful. Over and over again the bootcamp grads and people who have never attended school end up being the worst performers on my team. A LOT of the people I have worked with who do not have degrees have bad attitudes and are hyper-vigilant about "no degree" microaggressions.…

Have you considered the bad attitudes you're encountering are because you think most of the self-taught programmers you've met are "awful" and that they shouldn't have been given opportunities to begin with, instead preferring to, "throw them in the trash"? Seems like you're getting out of those relationships what you put in.

I've met CS grads who can't code FizzBuzz, and I've met self-taught programmers who work 1/10th as hard as I do and are 10x as productive. There's no correlation whatsoever, and the industry reflects that; the pay scale is exactly the same.

Re: A CS degree is better than teaching yourself how to code?

#105

Post by greggman2 »

Teaching yourself to code while getting a CS degree is best IMO.

Just teaching yourself you'll likely miss lots of topics and not challenge yourself as much.

Conversely I've met plenty of students that don't really care about the topic and are just taking the class to get a job.

So do both! Take the class and teach yourself. In other words pursue your hobbies and use code where those hobbies match. Learn the things you need to achieve your hobby goals. All while taking CS classes and as much as possible making those two things overlap

Re: A CS degree is better than teaching yourself how to code?

#106

Post by innocentoldguy »

roywiggins wrote: post #94
jcims wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any part of a CS degree that educates students on how networks operate or what a protocol looks like on a wire? Most of the new grads I work with seem to think of all of that as a black box and are completely stuck when things aren’t working.

My undergrad had a good computer architecture class, but it didn't cover networking. That's definitely a pretty big hole in my knowledge. A networking class would absolutely have slotted in quite easily to the CS curriculum.

This would have been a great class to replace the "How to Double-click a Mouse 101" class that my college required all students to take.

Re: A CS degree is better than teaching yourself how to code?

#107

Post by reimertz »

I’d argue what you do before you get your first job doesn’t matter as long as it helps you moving towards getting there. The faster, the better.

What is important is to understand what you want to do first since CS is very broad. If you can find a subset within CS, such as web development, app development etc, then things become easier.

It enables you to get a job/internship quicker; boot camps, self-learning, bachelors degree, so many paths!

Once I got my internship at a company located in a tech hub city, the connections I got there and the ability to write it on my resume was all I needed. I went back home and started my masters while working remotely but I very quickly realized that no one asked for a degree anymore, references / portfolio was all I needed.

I continued taking my masters, but only doing the courses I enjoyed. :)

Re: A CS degree is better than teaching yourself how to code?

#108

Post by fivre »

jcims wrote: post #82
czbond wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you; I have a CS degree, and when I work with those who learned the programming mechanics (aka making code work) - are often skipped other topics that came in handy for me making other decisions. I can understand why code is slow (eg: BigO for cpu or memory), what structures and algorithms to use in different scenarios (Data Structures & algos), how things are working (Computer Architecture, Programming…

Is there any part of a CS degree that educates students on how networks operate or what a protocol looks like on a wire? Most of the new grads I work with seem to think of all of that as a black box and are completely stuck when things aren’t working.

My CS degree had it as an elective. It was the class I did the worst in, and I now work primarily with network protocol implementations. Good foundation though, even though the prof was terrible at designing assignments.

Re: A CS degree is better than teaching yourself how to code?

#110

Post by spoondan »

This is a very strange article and premise to me. A university education is not vocational training. A CS education includes courses in programming, but learning to program—indeed, learning CS—is only a part of the education you are signing up for at university.

I arrived at university having already worked for a couple years in open source and a bit of contracting. I worked as a professional programmer throughout my undergraduate degree. I was bored by most of the introductory programming courses. The liberal arts, being around other young adults, the theoretical CS parts, the electrical engineering bits, and some of the project work were the only valuable parts, but that was plenty of value to me.

Going to university to learn to program is like going to university to learn refrigerator repair or how to play the guitar. Vocational and on-the-job training will go deeper into the craft. If you only want vocational training, go to a vocational school, get a private teacher, or teach yourself. Don’t go to university just to learn a skill. You certainly can, but it’s not an efficient way to do that. People study music in university to become better rounded musicians, not to learn an instrument. Same with CS.

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