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Poll: What is your highest educational qualification?

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Re: Poll: What is your highest educational qualification?

#101

Post by stan_rogers »

_pius wrote: post #17
erlanger wrote: post #7

Pst. Don't exclude people without college degrees. They're often far more resourceful, in my experience, and there's little that college gives you as a developer. Hire the person, not the school.

there's little that college gives you as a developer I hear this fallacy a lot. A lot of people seem to give it a pass and nod along with it, maybe because it makes them feel better or maybe because it seems like the politically correct thing to say in a room full of talented hackers, only some of whom went to college. While you in no way need to go to college to be a developer, I think people should be highly skepti…

It's not that a CS program has no useful content, but that the content is available to anyone interested in finding it. Knuth is accessible to a mathematically-inclined person with a tenth grade (equivalent) knowledge of mathematics (and three hundred bucks in his pocket), SICP is eerily transparent, the Dragon Book is certainly not beyond the ken of mere mortals, and so it goes. Admittedly, it takes more work to move beyond naivete without a formal education, but those who care about the craft will eventually get there. Those who do not care will still bubble sort despite their degree.

Re: Poll: What is your highest educational qualification?

#102

Post by 10ren »

flooha wrote: post #40

I attended a networking event recently where I was pitching to a guy who had a high rank in our local university's IT program and is respected as an entrepreneur also. Anyway, he was challenging me on everything I was saying (which I thanked him for at the end), and one question was: "If what you are doing is so great, why aren't the big boys already doing it." My first response was that the key is to do it better, w…

I don't quite understand what he meant, as "working on a doctorate" isn't an answer to "why aren't the big boys already doing it?"

However, Larry Page got enormous benefits from his PhD: he met Sergey; he had connection with Andy Bechtolsheim; great people around him; and Stanford supported his patent (they own it). Actually, these are mainly contacts acquired through Stanford (similar to "location"), not of a PhD program itself. I don't recall Larry learning anything from doing a PhD itself, as opposed to doing the work independently.

BTW: I had a very critical advisor like that, and it was really unpleasant. Not everything he said was helpful or relevant - but some were. And at the end, I was rightfully grateful - and also rightfully annoyed. I think seeing criticism as impersonal, specific and temporary is helpful; as well as responding only to the factual denotations, not connotations (including attitude and tone); and responding without connotations myself.

Re: Poll: What is your highest educational qualification?

#103

Post by Retric »

edw519 wrote: post #97
keefe wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a pretty useless metric. How many lines of code did the people who invented quicksort (pick great algo of your choice) write in their first implementation? It's certainly important to have some minimum # so you can say you know what writing software is like, but imho judging by counting lines of code is roughly equivalent to judging mathematicians by # of lines in their proofs... that is to say, totally ridiculo…

Somewhat useless, but not totally ridiculous. I brought this up to show that the I have received 10x the education from the code I have written professionally than from all my formal schooling. I realize as well as anyone here that the best code usually have less lines. At least mine does. But "years of experience" has less meaning, believe me. So do title, company, number of jobs, number of customers, etc., etc., et…

It's not about lines of code it's about the number and type of problems solved. I have spent days looking for a solution when all I needed to do was change a single constant. I have also written hundred of lines of code whole hog, been surprized that it compiled without errors, and shocked that it was bug free. Yet, I have no idea what was more usefull.

Spending a few months working on hard problems without a functional debugger can compleatly change how you aproach programming. But, so does finaly understanding how to use a debugger. Spending a few weeks reading other peoples code to document a working system was also an incredably valuable experence.

PS: The closest thing to a single nuber I can think of is "how many diffrent months of experence do you have?"

Re: Poll: What is your highest educational qualification?

#104

Post by 10ren »

Roughly (at 4 hours in):

  bachelor's: in the top 75%
  master's:   in the top 33%
  doctorate:  in the top 10%
(I'm assuming that a higher degree is "better", though some would differ. I've heard evidence that startup success inversely correlates with education. Some high-profile anecdotes: Bill Gates doesn't have a bachelors, Woz didn't have one at the time he designed the Apple, and I think the only degrees that Larry and Sergey got were their bachelors).

Re: Poll: What is your highest educational qualification?

#105

Post by philwelch »

edw519 wrote: post #99
dhawest wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's a D. There are other D's besides a Ph.D.: there's the Psy.D and others: (from Wikipedia) The Doctor of Psychology (Psy.D.) degree is an applied doctorate on the same level as (in alphabetical order) the D.B.A. (Doctor of Business Administration), D.D.S. (Doctor of Dental Surgery), D.Div. (Doctor of Divinity), D.M. (Doctor of Ministry), D.M.F.T. (Doctor of Marriage and Family Therapy), N.D. (Doctor of Naturop…

So which one is best to have around if you happen to get hit by a bus?

It depends. If you're mostly unhurt but your teeth are knocked out, a D.D.S. would be rather convenient. If you're badly hurt but can still survive, then the M.D. would be best. If you're mostly unhurt and the bus rolls over your foot, it looks like the D.P.M. would be a safe bet. However, if you're hurt too badly to recover, then the D.Div. or D.M. may be appropriate, depending upon your religious beliefs.

Thanks to the popularity of physical injury or wrongful death lawsuits, the J.D. will be with you soon regardless of who else is around when the bus hits you.

Re: Poll: What is your highest educational qualification?

#106

Post by philwelch »

tjic wrote: post #70
mannicken wrote: post #2

I don't have a high school diploma but I'm in college. Voted for "elementary school" :)

I bailed out of high school after three years and went to college. I tried to avoid getting my high school diploma (skipped my graduation), but they mailed it to me. I tried to avoid getting my college diploma (skipped my graduation) but they mailed it to me. I've got to come up with better tactics to avoid credentials...

It turns out if you actually attend graduation, you don't really get your diploma then, either. It's too soon for them to know whether you passed your finals or not. So they end up mailing the diploma even if you went.

You do, however, manage to get out of spending an afternoon wearing robes and a squareish hat.

Re: Poll: What is your highest educational qualification?

#108

Post by keefe »

edw519 wrote: post #97
keefe wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a pretty useless metric. How many lines of code did the people who invented quicksort (pick great algo of your choice) write in their first implementation? It's certainly important to have some minimum # so you can say you know what writing software is like, but imho judging by counting lines of code is roughly equivalent to judging mathematicians by # of lines in their proofs... that is to say, totally ridiculo…

Somewhat useless, but not totally ridiculous. I brought this up to show that the I have received 10x the education from the code I have written professionally than from all my formal schooling. I realize as well as anyone here that the best code usually have less lines. At least mine does. But "years of experience" has less meaning, believe me. So do title, company, number of jobs, number of customers, etc., etc., et…

I think it's just too difficult a problem to distill down into a single metric. I did CS and Math for my undergrad and I was in the PhD program for CS but left with my MSc. My focus was on design and analysis of algorithms and based on that training, in my 3 years of professional activity (2 at a NASA contractor) I've run into very few problems that compared to the kind of work I did in my thesis. I think lines of code is one metric - but a really high number could actually be a sign of a really bad programmer! So, it's an inherently noisy signal. I think you have to look at successful projects completed and individual roles in those projects and judge that way.

Re: Poll: What is your highest educational qualification?

#110

Post by brent »

10ren wrote: post #102
flooha wrote: post #40

I attended a networking event recently where I was pitching to a guy who had a high rank in our local university's IT program and is respected as an entrepreneur also. Anyway, he was challenging me on everything I was saying (which I thanked him for at the end), and one question was: "If what you are doing is so great, why aren't the big boys already doing it." My first response was that the key is to do it better, w…

I don't quite understand what he meant, as "working on a doctorate" isn't an answer to "why aren't the big boys already doing it?" However, Larry Page got enormous benefits from his PhD: he met Sergey; he had connection with Andy Bechtolsheim; great people around him; and Stanford supported his patent (they own it). Actually, these are mainly contacts acquired through Stanford (similar to "location"), not of a PhD pr…

"I don't recall Larry learning anything from doing a PhD itself, as opposed to doing the work independently."

Seeing as one major focus of a PhD is to learn to do independent research, this statement is essentially vacuous. It also disregards the influence on his thinking process from his advisor (Winograd) and fellow graduate students.

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