Ask YC: How many people here have a degree and are programmers? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask YC: How many people here have a degree and are programmers?

#181

Post by edu » Fri, Feb 08, 2008, 4:17 PM UTC

albertcardona wrote: post #112

abstractbill wrote: post #46

PhD in pure mathematics, University of Nottingham, UK. Self-taught as a programmer, but it's a similar mindset.

PhD in Biology (Developmental Genetics), Univ. Barcelona, Spain. Self-taught as a programmer as well, but it's a totally different mindset.

BSc in Computer Systems Engineering, UPC, Spain.

Currently studying MSc in Computation, also at the UPC, Spain and working as a programmer (mainly in Perl and JavaScript).

Programming since I was 14 (currently I'm 23), lot of self-acquired knowledge.

Re: Ask YC: How many people here have a degree and are programmers?

#182

Post by trick » Fri, Feb 08, 2008, 5:39 PM UTC

3.5 years studying CS at Georgia Tech, life forced me to pull out and I'm working at a startup in Orlando.

Re: Ask YC: How many people here have a degree and are programmers?

#183

Post by mnemonicsloth » Fri, Feb 08, 2008, 7:06 PM UTC

albertcardona wrote: post #112

abstractbill wrote: post #46

PhD in pure mathematics, University of Nottingham, UK. Self-taught as a programmer, but it's a similar mindset.

PhD in Biology (Developmental Genetics), Univ. Barcelona, Spain. Self-taught as a programmer as well, but it's a totally different mindset.

PhD student in EE/solid-state, currently vacationing in the math department.

I started out in CS and hated it, but I still spend a lot of my time coding.

Most of my math classmates can program a little, but all the engineers I know are hopeless.

Re: Ask YC: How many people here have a degree and are programmers?

#184

Post by wallflower » Sat, Feb 09, 2008, 12:07 AM UTC

dgabriel wrote: post #170

wallflower wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you still practice your art for fun and non-profit? I think exercising creativity is important for personal satisfaction.

Absolutely. I'm very involved as an organizer & I still do workshops, etc. I make maybe $500 a year off of the work I do as an artist, which is great, but also clearly demonstrates why programming is the more prosperous carer path. Fortunately, I really, really enjoy programming & I've been able to use it to benefit the arts community I work with.

I'm glad to hear that you are able to contribute both your programming and artistic (and probably leadership) skills. My brother-in-law is a photographer and he's started to sell some of his photographs at small art fairs.

I've always wanted to be able to sit in a busy city park and either do caricatures or play classical guitar and draw a crowd to a stop and make a moment of their day more beautiful.. But it takes practice and practice. Not a priority, just a pipe-dream right now.

I'm starting to get involved with a non-profit - PHP stuff - I think it's better than stuffing envelopes (e.g. provide value with your skills)

Re: Ask YC: How many people here have a degree and are programmers?

#185

Post by jalammar » Mon, Feb 11, 2008, 6:24 AM UTC

Xichekolas wrote: post #125

BS Comp Sci - University of Kansas - 2005

Go Jayhawks!

BS Comp Sci Kansas 2006 here.

Re: Ask YC: How many people here have a degree and are programmers?

#186

Post by anaphoric » Mon, Feb 11, 2008, 2:27 PM UTC

ashwinl wrote: post #162

anaphoric wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yeah and B.S. Computer Science University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 1991

I'm a current undergrad at University of Michigan, AA studying mechanical engineering. But, I started programming at 11 when I first got paid for my programming skills. I've worked in the "real world" each summer and have found my hacking abilities more useful than many other skills. Sometimes it's a php script to scrape data, other times it is a vb macro to make excel work more efficiently or a bash script, etc. etc…

Sounds like you are doing well. What are your plans?

I was back to A^2 last year for a week. It has the same feel. I must admit that I miss the place from time to time.

Re: Ask YC: How many people here have a degree and are programmers?

#187

Post by MaysonL » Wed, Feb 13, 2008, 11:53 PM UTC

No degree, but 990 GRE in maths, and 3 top 200 scores on the Putnam. First programmed in '63, unless you count wiring a Brainiac, which I did some years earlier. Finally getting around to studying Lisp .

Re: Ask YC: How many people here have a degree and are programmers?

#188

Post by whacked_new » Thu, Feb 14, 2008, 4:04 AM UTC

mironathetin wrote: post #179

ardit33 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool. I minored in physics, and I thought it was much harder than CS. Respects from me.

Thank you! Maybe I drop a word about why. CS was an option for me, but I would have done it only to learn more about programming (and maybe how the hardware works). Since I already knew a lot about programming when I was 18, I decided to go for physics, because Astronomy and Quantum physics were both also strong interest of mine. Basically this decision opened a bunch of very interesting job opportunities in science…

How rare is this? The caliber of mind required for physics should be more than enough to make a decent programmer. What's preventing your colleagues from just picking up what they need to know?

Re: Ask YC: How many people here have a degree and are programmers?

#189

Post by whacked_new » Thu, Feb 14, 2008, 4:04 AM UTC

mnemonicsloth wrote: post #183

albertcardona wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PhD in Biology (Developmental Genetics), Univ. Barcelona, Spain. Self-taught as a programmer as well, but it's a totally different mindset.

PhD student in EE/solid-state, currently vacationing in the math department. I started out in CS and hated it, but I still spend a lot of my time coding. Most of my math classmates can program a little, but all the engineers I know are hopeless.

Can you elaborate on "hopeless," and why do you say this?