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A CS degree is better than teaching yourself how to code?

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Re: A CS degree is better than teaching yourself how to code?

#211

Post by matwood »

barbellguy97 wrote: post #148
innocentoldguy wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got a degree and graduated summa cum laude with a 4.0 GPA. I don't think my college education has been anywhere near as valuable to me as reading software engineering books and coding a lot has been. If I could do it all over again, I would save the $60,000 and buy a sailboat.

What do you think about getting a Masters degree in a non-specialized field (e.g. Software Engineering and not Artificial Intelligence) while having a Bachelors degree already? I am currently at the crossroads of going into work, a masters degree or both. Am also currently an intern at a FAANG atm.

I did my masters while working. My job at the time paid for it, and there was a good school in the area. I found it fun because I was exposed to things I wouldn't have gotten exposed to in my job (programming language design, automata theory, etc...), but those things also didn't change my salary or future job prospects.

If you find learning in a structured environment fun and can get someone else to pay for it, a masters may be right for you :)

Re: A CS degree is better than teaching yourself how to code?

#212

Post by gerbilly »

Almost all the work done in industry is O(1) programming.

It's difficult work, but not complex.

I'm not surprised every thread started by a person who hires grads undervalues their education, because they probably don't have any work to assign to them that contains any complexity.

This doesn't say much for us as an industry. The simple and avoidable difficulties of 'real world' programming are not much to brag about.

The only difficulties we face nowadays in programming are almost always down to buggy libraries and frameworks that have nonexistent documentation.

I remember when I was starting in the work world, that you could buy a whole wall full of paper bound books for your IBM machine, or Sun, and when you looked up a function in there it was well documented and correct.

Nowadays, I suppose we're too cool to do something like that, better to move on fast and go break something somewhere else.

To any recent grads, I'll tell you a secret. If you want to move up the ladder in this industry, the most important thing is to keep outrunning your mistakes.

Build a system, brag about it, move to another role and let some other poor sucker maintain the stupid thing.

Re: A CS degree is better than teaching yourself how to code?

#214

Post by happy-go-lucky »

lmilcin wrote: post #201

I find people really misunderstand the purpose of a degree. The purpose of a degree is to get knowledge (yes!) but, more importantly, work and get connected with people in the field and get a proof of your ability and the work you put in in the form of a degree. Now, if you want progress further in the field, maybe you think about teaching or doing research, this is going to be pretty important. On the other hand if…

> dealing with complexity in large systems,

This is very important if you are working for a big company. As a self-taught programmer, having never dealt with large systems, I had to struggle a lot early in my career.

Re: A CS degree is better than teaching yourself how to code?

#215

Post by bachmeier »

matwood wrote: post #196
greggman2 wrote: post #105

Teaching 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…

> Teaching yourself to code while getting a CS degree is best IMO. This is effectively what I did. I found a job at a small company programming part time while I was still in school. Class was very much this is how things should work, and the job was this is how things actually work when you're coding for clients with unrealistic schedules just trying to make rent. I learned a lot in both scenarios. The other thing I…

> the job was this is how things actually work when you're coding for clients with unrealistic schedules just trying to make rent

This description comes with an important disclaimer. You learned how things worked at a particular company and for the one or more projects that you were assigned. There's no reason to think any of the knowledge you pick up in a specific job will be valued outside the company, or even in a different team within the company. The PHP you learn at one company won't help with a different company using the latest JS framework, and the skills you learn at a small company might not even get you an interview at a large corporation.

This is not to say there is anything wrong with your answer. I see similar statements all over the place, but seldom does anyone clarify the part about how specific those skills are. "I have a degree in CS from Stanford" is not specific at all.

Re: A CS degree is better than teaching yourself how to code?

#216

Post by ubercow13 »

zabana wrote: post #146

> Most CS degrees have group projects. These are great for learning how to interact within a multidisciplinary team, how to behave, and how to communicate technical concepts effectively. These are excellent skills to have while working in Software development. Plenty of CS graduates have very poor communication / social skills. It's very unfortunate but it's the sad reality. As somebody with computer science knowledg…

Two things I thought were most useful about university were being able to talk to peers learning the same material at the same level, which is one of the most efficient ways to learn complex things quickly that I have come across, and regularly being able to talk to professors and experts with plenty of time for you.

Re: A CS degree is better than teaching yourself how to code?

#217

Post by scaryclam »

jcims wrote: post #82
czbond wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you; I have a CS degree, and when I work with those who learned the programming mechanics (aka making code work) - are often skipped other topics that came in handy for me making other decisions. I can understand why code is slow (eg: BigO for cpu or memory), what structures and algorithms to use in different scenarios (Data Structures & algos), how things are working (Computer Architecture, Programming…

Is there any part of a CS degree that educates students on how networks operate or what a protocol looks like on a wire? Most of the new grads I work with seem to think of all of that as a black box and are completely stuck when things aren’t working.

Mine here in the UK covered quite a lot if networking protocols, so yes, there are some out there. In fact, it's never occured to me that this wouldn't be covered. I'd be pretty disappointed if a new grad couldn't figure out how to how to at least approach diagnosing an issue :(

Re: A CS degree is better than teaching yourself how to code?

#218

Post by torgian »

After reading the short article, I can’t agree on all the points the author made. But, this really depends on your situation.

In my case, I taught myself how to code over a few years.

I got a job with Georepublic and I love it. I’ve learned a lot.

But, in my case, I had the skills that the author mentions already. Time management, communication, etc.

All that came from my previous careers ( Navy, then teaching.)

And quite frankly I’m not really interested in studying computer science. I studied criminal justice and psychology.

For my Masters, I’ve decided to study Geoinformatics (which is directly related to the kind of work I’m doing at Georepublic).

So, in my opinion, I feel like if someone is getting into programming, they should study something related to the field they are in. Of course, this is assuming the person is older, changing careers, etc.

Re: A CS degree is better than teaching yourself how to code?

#219

Post by ggambetta »

innocentoldguy wrote: post #102
ggambetta wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People with no degrees hate degrees. People who can't pass FAANG interviews hate FAANG interviews. It's a defense mechanism, along the lines of "I'm not a bad student, the teacher hates me".

I got a degree and graduated summa cum laude with a 4.0 GPA. I don't think my college education has been anywhere near as valuable to me as reading software engineering books and coding a lot has been. If I could do it all over again, I would save the $60,000 and buy a sailboat.

> I don't think my college education has been anywhere near as valuable to me as reading software engineering books and coding a lot

But how would you know that? I thought I was a pretty decent programmer when I started college - I had been programming since I was 5! But a five-year engineering degree gave me some much-needed structure around the things I already knew, and filled massive gaps in knowledge I didn't even know I had.

Re: A CS degree is better than teaching yourself how to code?

#220

Post by [deleted] »

lmilcin wrote: post #201

I find people really misunderstand the purpose of a degree. The purpose of a degree is to get knowledge (yes!) but, more importantly, work and get connected with people in the field and get a proof of your ability and the work you put in in the form of a degree. Now, if you want progress further in the field, maybe you think about teaching or doing research, this is going to be pretty important. On the other hand if…

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