not everything in life is about money and coding skills.
I loved my time at university. I played in bands, met my future wife, made lifelong friends and occasionally even studied.
A CS degree is better than teaching yourself how to code?
151–160 of 330 posts
Re: A CS degree is better than teaching yourself how to code?
#152The lack of appreciation of pure knowledge in this thread is truly saddening. If all you care about is getting a job, this question boils down to simple finance. If you want to truly learn, understand and engage in a topic, what can possibly be better than emmersing oneself in an environment of learning, inquisitive students and knowledgable professors full-time?
Re: A CS degree is better than teaching yourself how to code?
#153Talking with co-workers who completed 4 year CS degrees, I feel like I got a much better value out of my now defunct 2 year trade school. Mind you this was 15 years ago, but I came out of it with a decent enough working knowledge of C, C++, VB.Net and Java - and basic understanding of SQL, PLScheme and functional. On top of that there was a solid year of data structure class. Trade schools have been largely demonized…
> Trade schools have been largely demonized and shut down in the last couple years, I didn't know this and I find it incredibly surprising. I've literally never heard anyone say anything bad about trade school ever. In fact, I almost always hear about it in contrast with college, which is said to be an expensive waste of time that turns kids into gay communists.
Gay communist here, can confirm
Re: A CS degree is better than teaching yourself how to code?
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The courses you list are mostly very necessary for well-rounded knowledge and ability to synthesize research and share knowledge (like in a team project), I can only repeat what I said: Look - I think I gained quite a bit from the well rounded education I got. And my general advice is that people should go for it. However, I also have the reality of experience: Most of my peers who have degrees are poor at writing,…
To add, as much as I love university... it was mostly a waste of time for me. Paradoxically, the humanities are now more interesting because I am older and seeking to understand what the fuck is reality. I'm of the opinion we need to split school in a way where young people focus first on how to be useful, then be useful for a period of time. From here, humanities are more relevant once one has enough wealth and time…
> Paradoxically, the humanities are now more interesting because I am older and seeking to understand what the fuck is reality.
I’m in the same boat as you, I for myself am a former CS student now approaching 40. Up until my late 20s - early 30s I was really trying to absorb almost anything I could that was CS-related and which I reguarded as interesting (for example I used to spend time reading lambda-the-ultimate even though I had never written a compiler and most of the stuff written in there was way over my head), but since then I’ve started realizing that reality (and human interactions) is (are) a lot more complex and difficult to understand compared to anything CS-related. I have since started using some of my CS “skills” in order to further understand said “reality”, as part of some personal projects of mine.
Re: A CS degree is better than teaching yourself how to code?
#155Embrace the healing power of AND. (OR is for losers)
I taught myself to code, and sold my first commercial project at the age of 14. And learned a lot.
I then went on to get a CS degree (in addition to physics, math and EE degrees - all undergrad). And learned a lot. (The structured program of learning about Databases, Compilers (and more about compilers!) and Operating Systems was far above what I would have (could have?) learned on my own. Data Structures and Algorithms - that is straight forward enough if you already know how to code)
And then went on to sling a LOT of lines of code. And learned a lot.
Now - I don't think ANY of those (except maybe the last one) teaches one to be a systems engineer, which one needs to be for large systems, but they are all excellent building blocks for when you get there!
Re: A CS degree is better than teaching yourself how to code?
#156Teaching 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 y…
This is the only correct answer. So many times these questions are posed as a false dichotomy. The simple answer is: why not both?
That being said, personally I thought for a long time that I didn't need to study CS and could teach myself to code (which is true), however I do notice that sometimes I lack a deep fundamental understanding of CS, which I regret.
Re: A CS degree is better than teaching yourself how to code?
#157This 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…
> This is a very strange article and premise to me. A university education is not vocational training.
I know right? Stupid plebeians expecting to get something that will help them earn a living out of spending three or four years learning something and foregoing the earnings they could have made in that time. If you don’t know that university is for signaling your social class rather than learning skills that will be useful in earning a living why are you even there?
At least the nerds who think university is about learning don’t have the stink of trade about them.
Re: A CS degree is better than teaching yourself how to code?
#158IMO if need just get a job then having degree should help. If you enjoy building stuff and have curiosity then it will be more fun to learn it by yourself. Learning a language and basic concepts can take just few months, but that is just a beginning of an endless journey. The skill of learning by yourself is probably most important for engineers because there are always new things to learn, and every job will require you to learn something new.
Keep in mind there are many other things that we can learn
https://medium.com/our-team/the-tale-of-the-two-lumberjacks-...
Knowledge should be like a lake, wide and deeper in a middle
Re: A CS degree is better than teaching yourself how to code?
#159I think CS i still very much a discipline we fail to teach - And no wonder when you look at the curriculums.
In our last hiring round, we filtered a lot of applications down to 5 individuals we wanted to interview. During the interview they were all asked to write their own implementation of Fizzbus in whatever language they desired. 3 out of 5 completely failed to arrive at a working function, the 4th was able but with massive help. The 5th were hired. All had 4+ years of education in CS.
Re: A CS degree is better than teaching yourself how to code?
#160The lack of appreciation of pure knowledge in this thread is truly saddening. If all you care about is getting a job, this question boils down to simple finance. If you want to truly learn, understand and engage in a topic, what can possibly be better than emmersing oneself in an environment of learning, inquisitive students and knowledgable professors full-time?
Yes, many responses seem not to distinguish between Computer Science and programming.