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The case against CS master's degrees

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Re: The case against CS master's degrees

#41

Post by yks »

throwlaplace wrote: post #37
daniel-thompson wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OMSCS student here. I agree with the parent. However, the one downside of the program is that since the marginal cost of admitting an additional student is very low relative to the tuition amount, GT has an incentive to not be very selective about who they let in. From a democratization-of-educational-opportunities perspective, that's good: if you can hack it, then you can hack it, regardless of what formal qualifica…

>One of the guys on the class slack just posted that when testing & debugging the projects, he just printed stuff to stdout... for the whole semester... because he doesn't know - and didn't bother to learn - how to use a debugger. Lol that's like the best way to debug C

yep, 10+ years in industry and that's how I usually debug (and I know how to use a debugger).

Re: The case against CS master's degrees

#42

Post by bryal »

theamk wrote: post #38
bryal wrote: post #23

Not everything has to be about work and employability. Some of us actually enjoy learning and exploring the more theoretical topics in CS.

Sounds like you should be doing PhD then? At least in my university, MS students were usually paying full tuition, with the understanding that they'll take classes and leave for (presumably) high-paying job. On the other hand, PhD students were usually paying no tuition at all -- instead, after getting their masters-equivalent, they were expected to do the research for a few years and therefore "pay back" by advancin…

Indeed, I've been considering getting a PhD. The situation in Sweden is quite different to yours however. To begin with, all university education is free, and we further get a student grant of ca. $300 USD / month and access to an almost free student loan for up to 6 years. PhD students all get a salary of ca. $3k USD / month. Also, here you don't get a PhD "instead" of a master's -- a master's is rather a prerequisite to getting a PhD, in practice if not formally. Generally, the path to a PhD in Sweden is: 3 years for bachelor's degree -> 2 years for master's -> 4 years for PhD.

Re: The case against CS master's degrees

#43

Post by leetcrew »

Hercuros wrote: post #20
xhkkffbf wrote: post #4

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…

I think that just because most people do not write compilers for a living does not mean that it’s not useful to have implemented one. Writing a toy compiler properly is an interesting programming exercise that involves steps such as parsing/validating input and transforming it in a structured way. Even if you never write a compiler again, it can teach you many things of how to approach similar problems. (Also, Apple…

I think the compiler project we did in college was probably one of the most valuable assignments I ever had. I still have barely any understanding of how a modern compiler works, but it made me much better and understanding compiler error messages.

Re: The case against CS master's degrees

#44

Post by leetcrew »

anta40 wrote: post #33
xhkkffbf wrote: post #4

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…

>> but I'm not even sure a bachelors in CS is a good idea If your goal if "simply" to be a software developer (who usually use existing APIs), nope CS education is not needed No need to study fancy theoritical stuffs. Just straight learn anything practical like Java/SQL/Python/etc. And thanks to internet, you don't even have to wait to be enrolled in university. Any high school kids can do that. >> Most of the CS cur…

it may not be necessary, but I think getting a cs degree from a regional tech school is still the easiest path for a recent highschool grad to get a good software dev job.

Re: The case against CS master's degrees

#46

Post by NotSammyHagar »

xhkkffbf wrote: post #4

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…

How many people will get your sarcasm? Why, I could add to your post that even hacker news no longer serves its purpose to be at the central core of computing ;-)

Re: The case against CS master's degrees

#47

Post by alexktz »

kixiQu wrote: post #45
alexktz wrote: post #30

My CS masters completely changed my life. Would 100% recommend if you are open to learning a bunch of cool stuff.

* if you are open to paying tens of thousands of dollars for learning a bunch of cool stuff

Mine was £5000. UEA in the UK.

It has paid for itself many, many times over since then.

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