21–30 of 47 posts
I hate to be super-negative, but I'm not even sure a bachelors in CS is a good idea. Oh sure, you learn a few good things along the way, but then the professors start dragging you down their favorite theoretical paths. I'm all for philosophizing and navel gazing, but there's not much practical in things like lambda calculus, NP-completeness and some of the other topics. To make matters worse, these pursuits can confu…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So why not explore a university degree? Let me give you 300,000 reasons-- in other words, the price (in dollars) at a fancy university for said degree. I'm not debating whether anyone should study this. I'm just saying that people who want to get jobs shouldn't need to study it. If you want to do the theoretical stuff, have at it. I'm just saying that it's failed my team as often as it has helped. If the theoretical…
> the dimensions of the problem were such that a quick heuristic did perfectly fine. This is also a theoretical model that they teach in CS programs.
My point is that many of these theoretical models cause as much trouble as they solve.
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I don't know if anyone (anymore) thinks that computer science is the same as software development. Knowing the latest library APIs, versus doing research to find a faster hash sort, are two different areas, IMO. I also wonder about the different industries and how they compare (SaaS vs CGI vs HFT). I think if you want to forge new roads in programming, a little theoretical studying doesn't hurt, so why not explore a…
So why not explore a university degree? Let me give you 300,000 reasons-- in other words, the price (in dollars) at a fancy university for said degree. I'm not debating whether anyone should study this. I'm just saying that people who want to get jobs shouldn't need to study it. If you want to do the theoretical stuff, have at it. I'm just saying that it's failed my team as often as it has helped. If the theoretical…
I hate to be super-negative, but I'm not even sure a bachelors in CS is a good idea. Oh sure, you learn a few good things along the way, but then the professors start dragging you down their favorite theoretical paths. I'm all for philosophizing and navel gazing, but there's not much practical in things like lambda calculus, NP-completeness and some of the other topics. To make matters worse, these pursuits can confu…
In my experience, the biggest reason doing a bachelors in CS sucks is because it's a massive waste of time, leaving little to no time for side projects. Programming assignment questions tend to be vague and come with poorly scoped requirements. Usually the professor also forgets to tell you several essential details or has made several errors in the code. An average assignment can take upwards of 40 hours, with 10 or…
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I'm only being partially snarky when I say that sounds like a great preparation for working in a production environment.
Every time I make this point someone says something to this effect. If you spend your career writing garbage for a ransomware gang or an outsourced app development agency you probably won't have too high an opinion about software development. It's just a difficult thing for me to believe that this happens in large amounts at the best companies.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my experience, the biggest reason doing a bachelors in CS sucks is because it's a massive waste of time, leaving little to no time for side projects. Programming assignment questions tend to be vague and come with poorly scoped requirements. Usually the professor also forgets to tell you several essential details or has made several errors in the code. An average assignment can take upwards of 40 hours, with 10 or…
At U of Washington you get to choose your own senior project (so I've heard firsthand).
I hate to be super-negative, but I'm not even sure a bachelors in CS is a good idea. Oh sure, you learn a few good things along the way, but then the professors start dragging you down their favorite theoretical paths. I'm all for philosophizing and navel gazing, but there's not much practical in things like lambda calculus, NP-completeness and some of the other topics. To make matters worse, these pursuits can confu…