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The limited value of a computer science education

nathanmarz.com

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Re: The limited value of a computer science education

#131

Post by pacaro »

mwfunk wrote: post #128
capote wrote: post #34

Post number 7,819,394 talking about how useful or not useful a CS degree is to a programming job. Here are some lessons I learned by going to school that I find incredibly useful: 1. How to shut up and get some work done, even if I don't see the point to it. 2. How to shut up and get some work done, even if it isn't directly applicable or valuable to a job or something I want in the future. 3. How to take feedback an…

Also, while people like to argue that it's possible to get programming jobs without a CS degree, it is guaranteed to be some value of harder to get those jobs. Especially if you dream of working in less common and more specialized areas, like (for example) working on compilers or doing HPC stuff, etc. Yeah, in theory someone can get a job without a CS degree. But it'll be a lot harder, and it's very likely that doors…

I'm not sure. So I'm going to ramble on about myself a bit...

I have a mediocre degree in an unrelated subject (History and Philosophy of Science) from a good school (Cambridge). I learned to program as a child by messing with 8-bit computers.

My first job was very much an apprenticeship, I found a small company that was willing to employ me based on some level of aptitude, a modicum of demonstrable programming ability, and a willingness to work for very little (£12k in 94)

Three years later, I was able to move to a more interesting, still not brilliantly paid (£23k in 97), job at a startup, which was acquired by MS a couple of years later. I spent 14 years at MS, and was a Principal Engineer by the time I left. My experience since then is that there are no doors closed to me.

There are two places where I got lucky, 1) finding a company that was willing to make a bet on me. 2) joining a top tier company through an acquisition.

but with regards to 1, over a 9 month period in 93-94, I applied to over 100 companies, and had three job offers in the end - so it was good luck to find a job based on my resumé at the time, but the jobs were out there

And with regards to 2, not everyone who joined through that acquisition was successful at MS, regardless of education. Some hated the idea of working for MS, others weren't suited to a large corporation, and many other reasons.

Comparing myself with peers, I find that their CS degrees possibly gave them a 3-5 year head start on me, they could go straight to better jobs, but the value of the apprenticeship type job, is that I was already pushing 10000 hours (or equivalent) by the time I was ready for the better job.

Re: The limited value of a computer science education

#132

Post by neutrin0 »

laichzeit0 wrote: post #116

So I did a 4 year computer science degree about 10 years ago. It's really hard to understand why anyone would bash a degree. What I still find "relevant to practice" from then is: - Any good CS curriculum is basically a calculus, statistics, linear algebra, real analysis, combinatorics, discrete mathematics course with a bunch of CS modules thrown in on the side - All the computational intelligence stuff we did (part…

Huh. I'm a 2nd year undergrad atm, and came across an instance of the nurse scheduling problem at my on-campus job. I did some research and delved into evolutionary computation, eventually deciding on genetic algorithms to solve my schedule problem. (I'm using a self-adapted version of NSGA II)

Anyways, all my research has gotten me very interested in all the topics you mentioned, also neuroevolution. I actually brought up neuroevolution and optimization problems to my professor to get his insight, but he wasn't able to help me out much.

I keep finding that people state computational intelligence was all the rage about 10 years ago, and can't find much work on what is going on with it now. Can you provide me with some more info in the field?

Re: The limited value of a computer science education

#133

Post by xyience »

capote wrote: post #34

Post number 7,819,394 talking about how useful or not useful a CS degree is to a programming job. Here are some lessons I learned by going to school that I find incredibly useful: 1. How to shut up and get some work done, even if I don't see the point to it. 2. How to shut up and get some work done, even if it isn't directly applicable or valuable to a job or something I want in the future. 3. How to take feedback an…

#5 and #7 are great, I too don't like the anti-intellectualism a lot of degree seekers seem to have. But the typical tuition these days is a large price to pay for intellectualism. I paid a high price for my CE degree, which I entered into in large amount for the intellectual curiosity of understanding hardware, knowing full well I'd probably end up in some web dev software engineering job afterwards (that pays better anyway) since I already had prior experience with that, and in any case as long as I had some job in the tech industry I'd be making enough that student debt wouldn't cripple me.

I would only encourage people to make the choice based on a sober calculation of expected costs (including opportunity costs) and gains rather than because "it's the thing to do". Before I went to my school of choice I planned out the course sequence for my entire time there -- of course it ended up being different but not hugely so. Unexpected things will come up (#1 and #2 should have been learned by high school, what I didn't expect was that for me continuing the related path of "shut up and get BS work done" through college would result in burning out my tolerance for BS work in general and it's taken a long time to build that back up enough that I can perform ok in enterprisey roles) but that in itself is a useful thing to learn. If past me had future me as a mentor, I'd encourage past me to skip school and satiate his curiosity more directly, but not everyone has access to a mentor.

Re: The limited value of a computer science education

#134

Post by syngrog66 »

capote wrote: post #34

Post number 7,819,394 talking about how useful or not useful a CS degree is to a programming job. Here are some lessons I learned by going to school that I find incredibly useful: 1. How to shut up and get some work done, even if I don't see the point to it. 2. How to shut up and get some work done, even if it isn't directly applicable or valuable to a job or something I want in the future. 3. How to take feedback an…

I can confirm from direct/life experience that all 7 of your points can be learned/reinforced both on the job and outside/beyond job/college/school.

Folks, just use your brain. Observe, read, study, converse, imagine, think, analyze, hypothesize, apply, try, test, revise, repeat, carry on. Good general process regardless/before/after/outside school/college/job. You can spend either $100k and 4-6 years, or, $0 and N years -- you get to decide.

Re: The limited value of a computer science education

#135

Post by imtringued »

capote wrote: post #34

Post number 7,819,394 talking about how useful or not useful a CS degree is to a programming job. Here are some lessons I learned by going to school that I find incredibly useful: 1. How to shut up and get some work done, even if I don't see the point to it. 2. How to shut up and get some work done, even if it isn't directly applicable or valuable to a job or something I want in the future. 3. How to take feedback an…

>7. That a lot of people seem to think that the only things in life worth learning or paying for are those that will be useful at a job. This is a sad one.

Where is the money supposed to come from? If you're paying 50k or more for your education you might want to at least break even. If there is no ROI then it's just regular consumer debt which is both bad for you and the economy as a whole.

Re: The limited value of a computer science education

#136

Post by j45 »

curun1r wrote: post #78
j45 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People without CS are miss out, and also, some CS programs come up short: Learning soft skills are as important as any technical chops. Learning how to learn and realize you're never really done learning how to solve problems. This is one of the reason some self-taught people often have more people skills than those who self-select to hide behind a keyboard most of their university years instead of getting out there,…

It's funny that you mention working in a group because that's one area where I've found where academia isn't really preparing CS grads. It seems that the most our new grads have been exposed to is an ad-hoc group that was supposed to work together and threw something together which they made work but with complete disregard for having to maintain the code 1+ years in the future. They then enter an environment where t…

I didn't mean to imply CS consciously was setup to prepare me for group work at all intentionally - it only exposed and forced me to figure out how to get better at it in my case when I recognized it was a core skill. Having extra curricular group activities based around tech helped me a lot. I do think group work and social skills should probably be a course for CS majors as it attracts many introverts.

Many people don't having experience with having a relationship with a codebase for more than a few months, let alone a few years, let alone a few years old.. so it always seems the best way to start is fresh and from scratch because it seems easier to understand that way.

Re-factoring, or working with the reality of a codebase teaches that reading and understanding code is as important of a skill than writing.

Re: The limited value of a computer science education

#137

Post by imtringued »

capote wrote: post #55
elliotec wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are about going to school , though, not getting a CS degree. And 100% of these things could, and probably should, be learned in the real world and not through paying tens of thousands of dollars under the guise of education. I did not go to school for a CS degree, and that has not hampered me in any way when searching for a job in software. All I learned in college was how to game the system of the institution…

> that institutions like that are a societal racket and waste of time and money. This is completely wrong. Universities are tremendously useful and do many great things for society and humanity. I'm not going to provide evidence because I think that any reasonable person will agree with me.

And before galileo any reasonable person agreed that the earth was flat... And precisely this is the reason why you need evidence to back up your arguments and not the influencable opinion of other people.

Re: The limited value of a computer science education

#138

Post by lsc »

nikdaheratik wrote: post #109

Another thing that bothered me about the article, although it did make some good points, is that it just assumes that the choice is either four years of employment as a programmer at some level or four years of uni. If you're trying to get a job as a developer as an 18-year-old with a fresh H.S. diploma and maybe some tech school credits, your competition isn't other H.S. diploma carrying developers, it's a 22 year o…

>If you live somewhere that you can get a job in the field directly out of High School, that's all well and good, but it's alot harder for a variety of reasons than someone who has finished a degree. Which is one reason why so many people go that route.

that is key; there is a strong argument in favor of jumping right to a programming job if you have the opportunity... it's what I did. but I got lucky on a bunch of fronts. (parents in the industry, timing, etc) - I mean, if you have a programming job right there it's hard to argue that you should go to school instead. And in my case, the job was available in large part due to timing; it would have been way harder to get a job in 2001 than it was in 1997, even if I had gotten a degree meanwhile.

I guess the other thing to consider is how hard it is for you to go to school later. I mean, if the parents are willing to foot the bill for your education now and won't be willing a few years from now? that's a pretty big thing. I'm slowly working on getting myself into college now, and it's harder in some ways, because the typical application process was not designed for me, but easier in others, because things like money aren't a huge problem anymore, and I am so much more self-disciplined.

I'm too early in the process to tell you if it's easier or not (I've got either 9 credits, or 0, depending on how you count) - but it's certainly different. It is... difficult to pay people to

But, in general, if you have the opportunity to get a coding job right out of high school, and nobody is paying for your college, take the job. If someone is paying for your college and you don't have the opportunity to get a coding job out of high school, go to college. The optimal course of action gets foggy if you have both opportunities or neither.

Re: The limited value of a computer science education

#139

Post by imtringued »

capote wrote: post #99
stale2002 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats totally fair. But what you need to understand is that the vast vast majority of young people don't give a shit about anything other than the getting the job part of the equation. Young people need money to buy food and pay for rent and to have fun. Thats what they care about. I went to a top tech school, but I know so many people at the school who DIDN'T go into tech and are now working as consultants doing 80…

You're right. Which is why I have been pushing to entirely separate the concepts of university education and of a job in the minds of Hacker News readers. If you want a job, go to dev bootcamp. Or online school. Or watch YouTube videos. Or just get a job. Or go to school then get a job. If you want to go to school, go to school. Let's all get along and stop trying to dismiss the other path as invalid, worthless, or d…

Most developers already have a well paying job (likely including you) that's why they don't prioritise job education as much as a student who enrolls this year.

Re: The limited value of a computer science education

#140

Post by imtringued »

capote wrote: post #57
elliotec wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what is the point then?

If you can't see the point, then maybe university isn't for you. I'm not going to write an essay on what point I saw in school because I don't have time or interest. The point is that I saw value in it. I liked learning about computer science. Why can't people stop shitting on this concept?

Because you can learn about computer science without going to college. It's that simple.
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