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OSSU: A path to a free self-taught education in computer science

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Re: OSSU: A path to a free self-taught education in computer science

#81

Post by hogFeast »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #65

Given there is variation of skill at anything, there will be variation of skill at self-teaching. Not all self-teaching is created equal. If you’re not good at self-teaching, then you get a bad teacher every single time. Colleges diversify this risk. A few teachers might be bad, a few will have their back to the gigantic lecture hall the whole time, etc. But averaged over all your classes, most of them are actually p…

If you can't tell whether someone else is skilled or not, you aren't competent enough to be making decisions.

Re: OSSU: A path to a free self-taught education in computer science

#82

Post by sharadov »

Merrill wrote: post #70
Pfhreak wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 50/50 on this. Part of me really agrees with you -- you need time and practice and mistakes to learn this stuff. But also, I'm not sure it has to be wall clock time. Four years at university gets you breadth that is probably good for you as a human, and probably important for contextualizing your work as an engineer (oh hey, history might be a valuable lesson for your understanding of ethics. Art and literature m…

The 4 years of college includes a lot of non-college time during summers, breaks, holiday vacations, etc. There is no reason why a serious student shouldn't be actively learning 50 weeks a year, minus holidays, and putting in the same work time as his peers who entered the job market after high school. In which case, 3 years is easily enough. However, 3 * 50 * 40 is only 6000 hours, which won't make you an expert. Th…

That "10000 hours will make you an expert" thesis has been debunked. http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20121114-gladwells-10000-hou...

Re: OSSU: A path to a free self-taught education in computer science

#83

Post by sharadov »

Pfhreak wrote: post #73
Merrill wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 4 years of college includes a lot of non-college time during summers, breaks, holiday vacations, etc. There is no reason why a serious student shouldn't be actively learning 50 weeks a year, minus holidays, and putting in the same work time as his peers who entered the job market after high school. In which case, 3 years is easily enough. However, 3 * 50 * 40 is only 6000 hours, which won't make you an expert. Th…

> There is no reason why a serious student shouldn't be actively learning 50 weeks a year Except... being a human? Having a family? Decompressing from the stress of studying? Earning a living? (I worked 35 hours a week in school so I could eat...)

No, you're not allowed that!

Re: OSSU: A path to a free self-taught education in computer science

#84

Post by keithnz »

unnouinceput wrote: post #10

Browsing throughout those courses I found out that more then 50% of them require you to either sign in with FB or Google in order to access them, so no thank you. Remember, if something is free then you're the product.

how much did you pay to use HN?

Re: OSSU: A path to a free self-taught education in computer science

#85

Post by jvrossb »

Pfhreak wrote: post #4
tombert wrote: post #2

This is a bit hypocritical coming from a self-taught dropout, but I have kind of grown to dislike a lot of these "learn programming on your own!" things/bootcamps/courses. This isn't because of some idea that it's bad to learn programming for fun, but more that I think it's kind of reductive to try and squeeze things down to a streamlined lesson to begin with...There's a reason college takes four or more years; it ta…

I'm 50/50 on this. Part of me really agrees with you -- you need time and practice and mistakes to learn this stuff. But also, I'm not sure it has to be wall clock time. Four years at university gets you breadth that is probably good for you as a human, and probably important for contextualizing your work as an engineer (oh hey, history might be a valuable lesson for your understanding of ethics. Art and literature m…

At the risk of being too self promotional.. you’re describing what we’ve done at Make School. An accredited 4 year bachelors condensed into 2 years of intense study, primary focus is project-based CS but we have a robust general education component as well.

As another commenter points out, the prototypical 4 year degree (which many in the US actually complete in 4-6 years) is a fairly American phenomenon. There’s plenty of precedent elsewhere for college as 2-3 years of rigorous study.

Re: OSSU: A path to a free self-taught education in computer science

#86

Post by woat »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #65

Given there is variation of skill at anything, there will be variation of skill at self-teaching. Not all self-teaching is created equal. If you’re not good at self-teaching, then you get a bad teacher every single time. Colleges diversify this risk. A few teachers might be bad, a few will have their back to the gigantic lecture hall the whole time, etc. But averaged over all your classes, most of them are actually p…

If the self-taught candidate can pass an interview screen at the same level of a new grad, then how does hiring the former become more riskier than the latter?

Re: OSSU: A path to a free self-taught education in computer science

#87

Post by quaquaqua1 »

I am entirely self taught. I have a degree in History but didn't do any programming in college courses.

Everything I learned I learned from a non-structured source.

I talked my way into my first technical job, then talked my way into my next, and so on. Many people denied me during coding test or on resume screens.

But for the few employers who didn't, I thank them for taking a chance on me and it seems they're keeping me around because I deliver valuable code to end-users.

Re: OSSU: A path to a free self-taught education in computer science

#88

Post by el_dev_hell »

sharadov wrote: post #82
Merrill wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 4 years of college includes a lot of non-college time during summers, breaks, holiday vacations, etc. There is no reason why a serious student shouldn't be actively learning 50 weeks a year, minus holidays, and putting in the same work time as his peers who entered the job market after high school. In which case, 3 years is easily enough. However, 3 * 50 * 40 is only 6000 hours, which won't make you an expert. Th…

That "10000 hours will make you an expert" thesis has been debunked. http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20121114-gladwells-10000-hou...

I find the "10,000 hour rule" odd (after reading both Ericsson and Gladwell). It's often misinterpreted as "10,000 hours of X will make you an expert in X", but that's not how I interpret the claims by Ericsson or the simpler repackaging by Gladwell.

I read the article you linked and was hoping it contained new research to clarify or refute the work done by Ericsson, but it didn't. The linked article regurgitates two of the key points in The Road To Excellence by Ericsson:

* You need to be engaged in deliberate practice (e.g pushing yourself outside of your current area of expertise). Not mindless work. I'm not an expert driver from my 10,000+ hours of commuting. * 10,000 hours isn't a set figure. It's an average at best. The premise is claiming that people in the top-tier (2%-5%) spent a lot of time consistently practicing their area before reaching the top-tier.

The "10,000 hour rule" hasn't been debunked. It just doesn't mean what some people assume it means when first hearing it refereed to as the "10,000 hour rule".

Re: OSSU: A path to a free self-taught education in computer science

#89

Post by Merrill »

Pfhreak wrote: post #73
Merrill wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 4 years of college includes a lot of non-college time during summers, breaks, holiday vacations, etc. There is no reason why a serious student shouldn't be actively learning 50 weeks a year, minus holidays, and putting in the same work time as his peers who entered the job market after high school. In which case, 3 years is easily enough. However, 3 * 50 * 40 is only 6000 hours, which won't make you an expert. Th…

> There is no reason why a serious student shouldn't be actively learning 50 weeks a year Except... being a human? Having a family? Decompressing from the stress of studying? Earning a living? (I worked 35 hours a week in school so I could eat...)

The newly graduated BS-CS is going to be expected to work at least 40 hours/week, with two weeks vacation, and to study outside work hours to get up to speed with his co-workers.

And his cousin, the apprentice electrician has been working 40 hours/week, with two weeks vacation, studying to become a journeyman and doing all those other things.

Why are college students given such a light schedule?

(I also worked my way through college, but that seems to be less practical now, since the price of college has risen much faster that wages for jobs that students can get. Although I think it is a good idea for students to have jobs off campus to get an introduction to real work.)

Re: OSSU: A path to a free self-taught education in computer science

#90

Post by brunonian- »

tempsy wrote: post #13
tombert wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> College CS courses aren't necessarily designed to be practical; many are more theoretical and not really practical for day-to-day SWE jobs. This is the mentality that I really dislike about these courses. How exactly do you get to decide if something is just "theoretical" and "not really practical"? Everything in CS was purely theoretical at one point. It's easy to say "practical means stuff that is used in the ind…

I guess my question is if there's even such a thing as a "non self taught front end developer"? No 4 year university will teach you React as part of a CS degree. Most probably won't even teach JavaScript. Point is, becoming a good developer is largely a self-taught discipline as is.

Brown's UI/UX course spends a small amount of time on React.
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